by Pete Peterson and Leslie Thompson
If you’ve been around the Rabbit Room for long, you’ve benefited from Leslie Thompson’s creative work, even if you haven’t realized it. She’s been involved behind the scenes in a wealth of ways over the years, whether it’s brand-managing the Every Moment Holy series, lending her voice and skills to the Rabbit Room Podcast Network, or building the Hutchmoot: Homebound and Hutchmoot websites. Beyond that, she works with a variety of other podcasts, like Charlie Peacock’s Music & Meaning, and Christianity Today’s weekly news podcast, The Bulletin.
But while Leslie has been a long-time champion of others’ voices, it’s been a delight to hear her sharing more of her own. Last year, she wrote a number of liturgies for Every Moment Holy, Volume 3: The Work of the People, and now she’s launched a brand new podcast called Niche to Meet You.
As someone who gets to work with Leslie on a regular basis, I’m constantly delighted by how curious she is about the people around her, and it was a delight to sit down and talk with her about where that innate sense of wonder comes from and how her curiosity has become part of her creative work in Niche to Meet You.
Pete: You, Leslie Thompson, are no stranger to podcasting. This is not your first . . . I'm trying to come up with a funny metaphor instead of rodeo. Let’s just say that you do not have a low number of rodeos.
Leslie: Cool, rodeos! I guess I'll say this: it's not my first podcast, but it's not my last, hopefully. In 2018, I started doing my first interviews for a show that I had completely made up. There wasn't anything it grew out of. I just wanted to learn how to pull all of the levers. So I did all the interviewing myself. I did all the editing, everything.
It was called The Rogue Ones.
Pete: Oh yeah, I remember that!
Leslie: You were on it.
Pete: Oh right! I went out to your house and you interviewed me! My, how the tables have turned.
Leslie: Ha ha ha! And here we are now, yes indeed. So that was why I wanted to learn how to do it, because I loved it, and I thought I could do it, and I loved listening to them.
And there's a lot of life leading up to that point. I had immersed myself in little things that all came together in podcasting. Things like audio editing, talking on mic, branding, building a thing. All these things kind of come together. From there, I started getting hired to do production on other shows.
Pete: One of the things I love about you is that you've got a wildly overdeveloped sense of curiosity, and I mean that in a good way.
Leslie: Yes, I'm taking that in a good way.
Pete: It's not uncommon for us to be having a conversation, and you bring the whole conversation to a halt and say something like, “Wait a minute, what was that word you just said? I have to look up that word and figure out what it means, and I'm going to add it to my list of words.”
Leslie: In a meeting two weeks ago, you said “draconian,” and it made my list. There were two words that week. It was “draconian,” and it was, where's my note of words . . . um, “wheedle.” You said wheedle. WHEEDLE. So yeah, I am wildly curious. And I will stop a conversation to learn something. But I think it comes from . . . I feel like I don't know anything.
Pete: That sounds funny coming from somebody who's so curious and has so many interests.
Leslie: Well, I don't know. I feel like we approach our insecurities with the right posture, they actually can become strengths.
Pete: So they become “securities”?
Leslie: That's right. Your insecurities can indeed become securities. It's because a certain part of yourself needs to be worked on, and that's okay. We all have those parts.
Pete: That’s so interesting. I would never look at you and think, oh, she doesn't know very much. But the fact that you look at yourself and think you don't know very much drives you to curiosity about so many things.
Leslie: Yeah, it’s fascinating. I've always felt like I was around smarter people than me, which is good.
Being around the Rabbit Room has helped with that so much. In one of the first conversations we ever had, you talked about how terrible the old Mary Poppins was and how much you hated it. [Pete’s note: “Hate” is a strong word, but I’ll allow it.]
And I just looked at you, and I said, “Pete, I disagree with you, and I don't know what to do with that because clearly you know more than me about films.”
And it just broke this spell of my whole life, of being around all of these people who were clearly convinced about their thing, and I didn't agree with them, and that made me feel like I was wrong.
Pete: Because it's not that people necessarily know more or less; it's just that some people state things more strongly or defend them more passionately.
Leslie: And in such a way that it sounds definitive.
Pete: Right. I'm certainly guilty of that.
Leslie: You are! Yeah. But what's great is that you are also open because I believe your answer to that Mary Poppins thing was, “Well, why do you think it's better?”
And so, we have very different opinions on movies, and maybe people reading this will side with you more than me [vote here], but I don't care. I think I've become disinterested in letting other people's definitive opinions define me. So yes, I am wildly curious because I think it makes us better to be curious.
Pete: Well, I love that. It's a huge strength. It's a great security.
Leslie: It is a great security. I feel secure.
Pete: That’s a good segue because my next question was going to be about where your new podcast, Niche to Meet You, comes from, and it seems you're suggesting that it arises directly from your curiosity.
Leslie: This project is entirely based on who I am as a person. I've always had this interest in drawing people out. And so when you extrapolate that out over years, you start getting curious about things, and you find that people really like talking about the things they think are weird to other people.
Pete: Or they love how weird it is.
Leslie: Yes! And so this project has been years in the works because I also have this bad habit of trying to make something that shouldn't be a whole thing into a whole THING. For instance, I got into dog sledding, right? And then I ended up at the freaking starting line of the biggest race of the entire season.
Pete: When you say you got into dog sledding, you mean you were driving?
Leslie: No, no, it's worse than that, Pete.
Pete: It's worse?
Leslie: I get into dog sledding like people get into watching football who've never played football a day in their life. Like, I do the fantasy mushing thing, and I'm terrible at it. I'm terrible at fantasy mushing.
Pete: Wait.
Leslie: Yeah. Fantasy mushing. Fantasy dog sledding. Fantasymushing.com. You pick teams using coins. It’s a whole thing. Also, I am so bad at it. Normal people would be like, “I'll get a shirt,” or, “I'll watch the GPS tracker when Iditarod comes around,” or “Maybe I'll follow some Facebook pages.” But me? I went to the starting line of the 2020 Iditarod and wanted to be behind the scenes with arguably the most iconic musher of all time. He was a guest on my podcast in 2019, and that's what got me there in 2020. I have this propensity for going the extra mile . . . or two.
Pete: That should be the tagline for the Iditarod. “Going the extra mile . . . or two.”
Leslie: 1049 is the actual mileage. So yeah, the extra mile or 1049.
So there are just these things in my personality that have led to Niche to Meet You.
Pete: So, let's talk about the podcast specifically. It’s called Niche to Meet You. What is a “niche” in your mind?
Leslie: Well, the description says, “Little-known hobbies, or niche subcultures,” because there are some things that bleed over from hobby into something else, like a lifestyle. Dog sledding is a great example. You have some people who essentially pay to play. A good friend of mine up in Wisconsin doesn't make very much from the sport of dog sledding, yet he's probably one of the biggest names in the field. And then, on the other side of the spectrum, there’s a family of mushers up in Alaska who make a real living with summer tours and the like. So it's not fair, I think, to merely call something a hobby because sometimes it becomes more than that.
That’s why I bring in niche subcultures. For me, and for the purposes of this show, I focus on these central things if you were to talk to someone, they'd say, “Oh, I'm into this.”
I’m interested in things you can discuss with people from all generations, all walks of life. Is it Warhammer 40,000? Is it dog sledding? Is it Santa portrayal artists? Nobody's gonna be uncomfortable.
Pete: It's interesting that there's a sense in which, over time, certain niches cease to be niches. You've just done this miniseries on Warhammer 40K, but in another generation, there's a chance it could be the new Marvel Cinematic Universe. And in that future, everybody knows what Warhammer 40K is, and we're all sick of it.
Leslie: Yes, right.
Pete: It's interesting to look around and wonder about all those potential things that the next generation will not even think twice about.
Leslie: What's interesting about the Marvel thing is that they're the biggest summer blockbusters. Everybody went to see Avengers: End Game. I mean, I even went to see that, and I enjoyed myself. I don't want to go to another one, but where it really becomes niche is when people are collecting the comics.
Pete: Or cosplaying.
Leslie: Cosplaying, yes. Going to the comic cons. And it becomes a larger part of your personality. When I talked to the creator of Warhammer 40,000 [a popular science-fiction/fantasy wargame], I was coming from this hobby standpoint.
He lays out the four things about hobbies that have become my grid for how I determine if, yes, this is something I'm willing to cover. First, you have to have some sort of craft. Now, it doesn't have to be art, but it has to be some sort of craft, something you would do with your hands.
Second, skills have to be present. It has to be something you can hone over time.
Third, socialization. Getting others around to do the thing.
Finally, you can spend time thinking about the thing, the “hobby,” when you’re not actually doing that thing.
I look to see if those four things are present, and that's how I define my subjects.
So, in terms of, say, comic books, we can all go to a movie together and experience a Marvel film. So, that checks off the socialization aspect. But we aren't all collecting or appreciating the art.
Pete: Or drawing, sculpting, painting, and all that, but then I can also say that I like the trading aspect of it. I can buy this here and sell it over there, and keep this one for five years, and that's a skill.
Leslie: That's it. That's a skill. And then the fourth leg is thinking about it when you’re doing other things.
So, while something might become part of mass culture, there are still niche subcultures around the thing.
Pete: It also makes me wonder if there are some niche subcultures that we would identify as unhealthy.
In high school, we called somebody a nerd sometimes because they were interested in a thing that isolated them rather than socialized them. Or at least according to our perception. And I wonder if things tend toward unhealthy when you don't have that, or if you don't have the opportunity to engage that socialization aspect.
Leslie: It plays into one of the things that triggered my desire to do this show now. The surgeon general came out with a report early last year, 2023, which said that even before COVID, we were more isolated and lonely than we've ever been. And it's having serious health repercussions. Literally heart disease. There are studies that have proven that isolation leads to loneliness, which leads to deteriorating health.
And those same studies reference other studies about leisure activities and hobbies being the sort of antidote. Even the surgeon general says that social interaction is the antidote. And what's even better is he takes it one step further and says that giving back and helping others is your sort of next step.
So I think you're right in that anything done in isolation is not going to give us a full experience and a flourishing human experience. There are some things that are best done in private, right? But a thing that isolates us can cut us off from further doing the thing, doing it well, and helping other people, and engaging with other people.
Pete: Maybe it’s fair to say that anything healthy should lead you to other people, not into isolation.
Leslie: Yes, yes, yes. Because we've been put on this earth with others. We haven't been put on this earth in isolation, and there's a reason for that.
Pete: With anything you love, I think there's an implicit desire to share that with somebody else. And we're frustrated when that's not the case.
Leslie: I mean, there are immense wounds. I'm just taking clips from the show and putting them on TikTok. And there are people commenting on them, these men that have been playing Warhammer 40k for years saying that it is so touching to hear people talk about this subject like it matters. And I think for many of us, maybe it starts in high school where we're told what you do doesn't matter and go do that somewhere else.
I think a lot of people are wounded. We are all wounded people from having those experiences over and over and over. And so humanizing these things that people have dehumanized over the years is giving a lot of healing to people.
Pete: So let's talk specifically. In the podcast, you've come out with a fully-fledged miniseries on this thing we've been mentioning called Warhammer 40K. Can you briefly recap that a little bit?
Leslie: I did a four-part miniseries about this sci-fi tabletop war game that has become, honestly, like a friend of mine at this point, and it is HUGE.
Henry Cavill recently signed a deal with Amazon to do a film franchise in the 40K universe. We're all about to hear a lot more about Warhammer 40,000. And I thought this was an opportune time to profile it. So I’ve done this four-part series. That starts by giving an overview of the activity to orient the listener, and we start to introduce some of the characters present throughout the series.
Episode two is typically where I experience the thing myself. So I try to play a game of 40k while learning about the folks who play it themselves, and in Episode three, I talk to the people who made the game. Episode four is all about the relevance. Why does it really matter?
So that’s 40k.
And there’s another miniseries coming on Wild Turkey Conservation. And that'll hit in the summertime. It's about birds, not liquor. Birds, not liquor. And I'll be spending two days at the NWTF conference in Nashville next week. That’s the National Wild Turkey Federation conference.
Pete: You’re good with the acronyms.
Leslie: A lot of research, Pete. But what compels me about it is that we’re talking about conservation, which, surprisingly, requires hunting.
Those things work hand in hand. Conservation tends to be a very liberal idea. Hunting, very conservative.
Pete: But they are inseparable.
Leslie: Inseparable, right, exactly. And what I'd like to do, and we'll see if this actually happens, is I would like to tell a story of mending the gap at a time when we are heavily inundated with division.
Pete: Are you going to go hunt a turkey?
Leslie: I absolutely am. This Saturday, actually. It’s the end of hunting season, and a man named Farmer Billy is taking me out an hour before sunrise to call a turkey. I actually tried to call one on a friend’s property and could hear it, but couldn’t get it to come to me. Billy says turkey hunting is his favorite thing to do. So I’m expecting to finally see a gobbler.
Pete: Amazing. It's fun. It's such interesting, creative work. I think for some people it's easy to forget just what a creative medium this is for you.
Your ability to produce, shape, and present something to the audience, to the listener, that takes them on a journey, sounds great, and is engaging is the result of a whole lot of creativity on your part. Which is wonderful. It's not a thing that I have.
Which is maybe why it's so fascinating for me to watch you do it.
Leslie: Really? I think you do.
Pete: Not in the journalistic way that you do.
Leslie: You know, what I'm doing isn't original to myself, in that when you listen to the show you might hear things that sound like This American Life, or RadioLab, or Dolly Parton's America.
And it's a highly creative process because, for example, when the music ends, when does it end? It's not just like, oh, it'll end when it's done.
Pete: And you know when it's wrong, too.
Leslie: Yes, so does the listener. But you have to feel the emotion of what somebody just said or, you have to imagine what is in the listeners’ heads right now and give it enough space for that to breathe? Or do I want to cut it off? Those sorts of creative choices are all over the place.
Even though I'm just sitting at a computer with a hoodie over my head with a candle burning, and it's like 6:00 am before my child wakes up and I'm working on the script, I feel so creative. I feel like a rock star, honestly. It's a very rock and roll sort of atmosphere where you're just chugging coffee and zoned in.
I could sit at a computer and work on this stuff, and ten hours could pass, and I wouldn't even know it. I've always felt that way about computers and tech stuff.
Pete: I would argue that this is your niche. You've found a way to satisfy the communal need, the connection, that key socialization component, because the thing that you love drives you to other people. Not only through interviews and all that, but your editorial work with Chris Theissen, and then, ultimately, the goal is to connect with other people via your listenership.
Leslie: Well, no creative work is really done in isolation, and I’m so grateful for Chris and his sensibilities as my co-conspirator and editor, but also to keep me from being totally alone. I have learned that while I am extroverted in a sense, I also like being at home; I'm a homebody, but if I'm not around people every few days, interacting with people, I get very dark and things get grim.
So I've been able to craft a project that takes all of those things into account where I am getting to be this nerdy hermit creator, but then I can take that out and share it with other people.
Pete: It just occurred to me that the title of the show, Niche to Meet You, is so much more than a pun. It implies social connection, as in “Niche,” this very specific and narrow thing that I do, is actually something I’m doing “to meet you.” You know what I mean?
Leslie: Yeah, that's the whole point.
Pete: I think you're doing great work, and I love the show. Everyone should love the show.
Leslie: Thanks for talking, Pete!
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