Nailing It – Reduced Listening’s new radical entertainment podcast
Award-winning podcast production company Reduced Listening’s latest offering is Nailing It, a new Spotify Original vodcast.
The vodcast features comedic trio Sayo (simplysayo), Priscilla (Love Island) and Wunmi (The Wunmi Bello Show) with a different take on being a woman in today’s society.
Reduced Listening’s Head of Development, Nicole Logan explained to PodcastingToday, their latest offering is aimed at Gen Z: “It’s really about empowering women and girls to take control of their lives and normalising the variety of life,” she says.
“For a lot of young women who grew up in the social media generation, they’re only used to seeing the perfect part of peoples’ lives, especially those they admire, respect and look up to, and this show is about normalising the fact that sometimes life is a bit… rubbish.
“It’s also about widening the conversations about love, romance and dating in a way which doesn’t rely on “click baity” titles. And some of the conversations that come up, like who should pay for the first date, for example,” Nicole explains.
The idea of it being set in a nail bar was developed during the first lockdown, when Nicole was at home, not getting her nails done and watching a lot of 90s sitcoms like Sister, Sister and Girlfriend.
She says it sparked the idea of wanting something that felt like it embodied that sort of sisterhood, in the sense of ‘all girls together’. It also needed to incorporate what is important to girls who want to feel glamourous, such as getting their nails done and feeling good about themselves – what would it be like to overhear those conversations?
With Nailing It being a Spotify Original, Nicole says it means there has been a process where the hosts and the team worked on it for over a year before it was launched.
“The hosts are really important to the show,” says Nicole. “They all knew each other before we started the development process, but watching their relationship grow as friends, co-hosts and show anchors has been integral to why the show works, they bring such a great energy together – they’re such a good little secret find,” she adds.
Spotify were important to the growth and shape of the vodcast. As well as working on their platform and audiences, Spotify also helps with the ambitions Reduced Listening has as a company, to bring the form of radical entertainment into podcasting.
It’s a fairly new production company, with offices in London, Manchester and Norway. Explaining their idea behind radical entertainment, Nicole says: You can have shows that are entertaining, engaging and fun, but at the same time might bring you to new worlds, academics, or experts you would never have encountered.
“Another thing we really care about is shining a light into new areas, be that through cutting edge arts and music, or finding new ways to tell stories about issues like climate change that connect viscerally with our listeners. We’re working with Crooked Media on a British version of Pod Save America. Pod Save the UK is really exciting for us as we’re moving into politics and current affairs.”
There are plans to expand Reduced Listening to build on the successes of its roster of shows. These include the UK rap deep-dive Decode Seasons 1 & 2, Dream Fuel with Arlo Parks, Radio 3’s flagship experimental music offering Late Junction, BBC Sounds new take on the cult radio 4 show, Sleeping Forecast and of course Nailing It, which they have confident, big hopes for.
Nailing It will be a success with Nicole behind it, it’s one of her missions to make audio that becomes a favourite with listeners: “I love to make addictive listening and pieces of content that people just can’t wait for the next episode to drop,” she says enthusiastically!
You can find out more about Nailing It and other podcasts on the Reduced Listening website.