When Losing My Podcast App Made Me a Better Worldbuilder
Discover how losing a favorite podcast app opened new avenues for creativity and richer storytelling in worldbuilding.
This is a READ post, it’s for lifelong learners, who can’t help but find new ways to learn new things. The people who love typing TIL, collecting strange facts, and useless bits, knowing that someday, someplace they’ll connect the dots.
TL;DR:
Losing my favourite podcast app felt like losing a familiar trail. But the detour led me to new territory and richer worldbuilding.
If you’re writing, building, creating anything: Let yourself wander. And let the voices you listen to reshape the stories you tell.
When Google Podcasts died, a part of me went with it.
It was a simple, clean little app that did what it did well.
No up sell, no feature bloat. Well, not good enough for the Great Goog, apparently. So they snuffed it.
For me, it wasn’t just the inconvenience of finding a new app—it was the sense of being booted out of a carefully curated mental workspace.
My “writing brain” was tuned to certain voices, certain shows, and suddenly, I’d lost the frequency. We were force-switched to YouTube Music, with its buried and cumbersome podcast features.
My noise-to-signal went way up. I loathed convoluted multi-step setup to just listen to downloaded podcasts.
So I did what any stubborn audiophile does: I downloaded a new app (Pocket Casts) and told myself I’d rebuild my subs from memory.
But I didn’t.
Instead, I wandered.
And like a character veering off their quest to explore a strange night market, I stumbled onto something better: a new constellation of podcasts that didn't just keep me company—they started shaping my stories.
Research by Osmosis
I’ve always been more of a sponge than a strategist when it comes to worldbuilding.
I don’t start with a big idea—I soak, listen, wander, and only later do the puzzle pieces click. I often stare into the middle distance a light in my eyes but a blank look on my face…
“Honey, where are you?”
“Oh, sorry I’m writing.”
Podcasts, it turns out, are perfect for this.
They let me eavesdrop on real people doing real things, far outside my bubble. Living in worlds I find interesting and want to write about.
And they let me listen in while I’m driving around town or running in the burbs.
Take Darknet Diaries
Darknet Diaries is a window into the world of hackers, the seedy side with the internet. The real syndicates and crimes and some truly heinous stuff.
Like hacking a mental hospital database and releasing thousands of psychiatric patient records, all their private secrets onto the web.
A hundred patients a day.
Until you get your money.
But also the people that counter them - the good guys.
That crack the code of pernicious ransomware and save UK hospitals and healthcare networks. It gives such flavour and texture for an entire group of people in my story world. Because what’s cyberpunk without hackers?
One episode, a guest mentioned that DEF CON badges often had secret puzzles embedded in them—part of a tradition where hackers create challenges for other hackers.
That little detail lit a fuse.
I scribbled down:
“What if djinns lived in versions of those badges?”
Cobbled together, hacked from spare parts, and worn on your person. A home for a djinn. A lamp.
A light bulb moment (no I won’t apologise for that dad joke) if you will, and one of many that come from listening while your legs are busy.
There’s something special about your mind drifting through audio making connections when it wants to.
It’s a little like aimlessly playing with Lego.
That stray idea became the seed for something bigger in my novels. And it all began because I went looking for my old feeds and found a rabbit hole instead.
Not Just Fiction
What surprised me most was how this habit started creeping into my work, too. As some of you know, I daylight as the Comms Lead (and One Man Agency) at Jembi Health Systems.
And somewhere between Science Weekly and More or Less: Behind the Stats, I started collecting tidbits—odd data stories, clever connections, overlooked insights—that I could feed back into our newsletters.
I even pitched a new section in our company newsletter—Healthy Brain Bytes—as a space to share what I’d learned.
No technical diagrams, no heavy lifting.
Just interesting stories and their health tech connections gathered while I ran. Things that make you think, “Oh, really?”
And to my surprise, people loved it.
Turns out, story-fuel is story-fuel.
Whether I’m writing about AI gods whispering in abandoned servers or real-world efforts to digitise and interconnect healthcare in across Africa, it all comes down to how well I listen.
The Running Loop
Lately, I’ve been listening while I run.
It’s a bit of habit-stacking: slow miles, steady breath, and a voice in my ear unraveling the dark history of the internet, or explaining how chess grandmasters use deliberate failure to train faster.
And by the time I get home, my brain’s on fire.
Sometimes I’ll hear a turn of phrase and think: “That’s how my villain talks.”
Or a framework for decision-making that fits my hero’s dilemma perfectly.
Or just a stray detail like: “Oh. A city built entirely on reclaimed shipping containers. Write that down.”
It’s not research in the academic sense. It’s more like foraging.
And when you're writing speculative fiction—especially the kind of grounded, near-future work I love—those wild finds can be gold.
Like hunting for truffles.
Try this:
Switch one input source this week
On each run/commute, note one detail that could live in your story
File it in a “Sparks” list with a one‑line why
Want to see what lamps and AI-djinns actually look like in fiction?
Check out the Djinn Protocol my series of spec fiction set in a dystopian Cape Town, South Africa.
Or just hit reply and tell me your favorite podcast rabbit holes.
I’m always collecting.
—Zane
PS — Today’s my birthday! 🎂 🥳