None, and Hirwe resumed work as a graphic designer to pay his bills. But, several months later, he tried again, this time reaching out to a podcast company, Mumum Ximum Fun, which has been distributed in “Memory Palace”.
“It was a perfectly consistent idea that made immediate sense from the start,” said Jesse Throw, founder of Maximum Fun and host of the podcast, “Bullsey with Jesse Kanto,” in the Greenlit “Song Explorer”, 2014. (The show is now shared by Radiotopia.) “And he was such a skilled editor and producer that he needed very little help to get it up and running.”
If listening to “WTF” sounds like getting stuck in Maron’s singular, hypersensitive mind, then “Song Explorer”, in its own way, is just as personal. The show is a reflection of its creator’s constitutional miniature. Each of its nearly 200 episodes featuring Lindsay interviews with artists including Buckingham, Bjર્કrk and Solanj is surgically edited (run time can be as short as 11 minutes) and quickly builds, tying different elements of a featured song with artist jokes. And reflection.
Hirve raises his own side of the interview, presenting the story consistently, as a first-person narrative. Initially, this was to some extent a defense against his insecurity as an interviewer, but that concern proved to be misleading. More than what Hirven lacked in journalism training for intuition and first experience.
In the REM episode of the television show, we see him in action, interrogating the stern Michael Steep about “losing my religions.” At the beginning of the interview, Stipe coyly declares the protagonist of his most famous song to be a “total fake”. But then Hirve asks him to live in the character behind the songs. Not long ago, his subject, began to melt, weeping at length about insecurity, delusions and heartbreak pain.
“Okay, so maybe there’s a little bit of autobiographical content,” he finally allows.
Morgan Neville, director of “20 Feet from Stardom” and director and executive producer of the television series “Song Explorer”, said Hirway’s ability to connect with guests on a granular level is the show’s secret weapon.
