Meg Wilcox and Ashley King

Abstract

In this research note, the authors describe their experiences collaboratively producing Static: A Party Girl’s Memoir, an award-winning podcast that, through audio drama and interviews, tells the true story of how Ashley King lost her eyesight from methanol poisoning while travelling in Bali in 2011. Through an edited conversation that mirrors their accessible podcasting practice, King and Wilcox reflect on Static as engaged journalism and how the values of disability justice and community informed an ethic of care in their work. In developing and nurturing a working relationship that created space for feedback and collaboration, the authors discuss how this relationship helped them navigate issues around accessibility, consent and traumatic personal narratives, particularly after international reports of methanol poisoning in Laos put Static and King back into the news cycle. A trained journalist, King also reflects on her dual role as someone who both makes media and has been the subject of media coverage, and how working collaboratively to tell her story has differed from having it told by journalists.

Keywords: podcasting, blindness, visual impairment, accessibility, disability, disability justice, methanol poisoning, engaged journalism, collaborative media production, practice-based research

Résumé

Dans la présente note de recherche, les auteures décrivent leur expérience de la collaboration pour la production de Static: A Party Girl’s Memoir, un balado primé qui, par l’intermédiaire d’une dramatisation audio et d’entrevues, raconte la véritable histoire d’Ashley King, qui a perdu la vue à la suite d’un empoisonnement au méthanol lors d’un voyage à Bali en 2011. Au fil d’une conversation éditée qui reflète leur pratique de la baladodiffusion accessible, King et Wilcox abordent Static comme le résultat d’un journalisme d’engagement et explorent comment les valeurs de la justice pour les personnes handicapées et de la communauté ont sous-tendu l’éthique du care appliquée dans leur projet. Les auteures ont développé et cultivé une relation de travail propice aux échanges et à la collaboration; elles explorent la manière dont cette relation leur a permis de naviguer parmi les enjeux liés à l’accessibilité, au consentement et aux récits personnels de traumatismes, notamment après que des reportages internationaux sur des cas d’empoisonnements au méthanol au Laos ont ramené Static et King dans le cycle de l’actualité. Journaliste de formation, King réfléchit également sur son double rôle, à savoir créatrice de contenu médiatique et sujet de couverture médiatique, et sur la différence entre le fait de collaborer pour raconter son histoire et voir son histoire être racontée par des journalistes.

Mots-clés : baladodiffusion, cécité, déficience visuelle, accessibilité, incapacité, justice pour les personnes handicapées, empoisonnement au méthanol, journalisme d’engagement, production médiatique collaborative, recherche ancrée dans la pratique

RESEARCH NOTE | NOTE DE RECHERCHE

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Building Static: Podcasting through community and care

Meg Wilcox and Ashley King

 

INTRODUCTION

An ethic of care is at the core of engaged journalism—but can certain types of media better support an ethic of care than others? Over 2024, we co-produced a podcast and discovered that podcasting’s intimacy and authenticity, through personal voice and first-person storytelling, along with its flexibility in production practices, actively supported our goals for creative and journalistic collaboration.

Sue Robinson (2023) identifies trust building as an essential part of engaged journalism. Building that trust requires what she calls an “identity-aware caring practice” that is enacted through listening and learning (p. xvii). This ethic of care, which promotes relationships and values the process of storytelling as much as the final product, requires journalists to develop new skill sets like radical transparency, power dynamic accounting, reciprocity, and collaborative production. These challenges were all front of mind as we worked together to produce Static: A Party Girl’s Memoir, a four-episode podcast detailing the true story of how Ashley King lost her eyesight at the age of 19 while traveling in Bali. There were many reasons why podcasting was the right medium for this project, but it was only once the series was completed that we were able to understand how podcasting, as a medium, can support the goals and practices of engaged journalism.

Podcasting is an “intimate” and “authentic” medium, where people reflect and share stories in their own words and through their own unique perspective (Spinelli & Dann, 2019, p. 19-22). Podcasts can feel like an unmediated conversation (McHugh, 2016), creating a sort of hyper-intimacy through often subjective perspectives (Berry, 2015; Lindgren, 2016). Authenticity is a core value of digital culture more broadly, but applies particularly to podcasts (Perdomo & Rodrigues-Rouleau, 2022), as interaction between producers and listeners can blur roles and create a sense of connection and intimacy in what’s made, shared, and discussed online (Berry, 2006; Millette, 2011). Swiatek (2018) calls podcasting an “intimate bridging medium” as it affords a sense of intimacy between creators and listeners while bridging boundaries of knowledge, geography and social context (pp. 173-174). In the context of engaged journalism practice, this means podcasting is a tool journalists can use as they listen and learn with communities—it’s also a way to relate to one another through story and conversation, a format familiar to everyone regardless of their media experience.

Podcasting is also a flexible medium in that its open publishing system allows anyone to produce or listen to content, bypassing the “traditional model of ‘gate-kept’ media and production tools” (Berry, 2006, p.146). Many scholars have discussed how this can empower creators and listeners (Ball et al., 2025; Florini, 2015; Fox et al., 2020; Sienkiewicz & Jaramillo, 2019; Vrikki & Malik, 2019). But, more importantly, this break from traditional hierarchical means of production, dissemination, and consumption opens possibilities for journalists to change how they approach their work, to challenge certain long-established practices and norms that may be difficult to question in the newsroom. As a digital, “democratic” medium, podcasting values transparency, reciprocity, and collaborative production—all foundational values of engaged journalism as well.

When we began to collaborate on Static, an ethic of care was central to our practice—not necessarily with the plan of building trust, as Robinson notes, but because the podcast, centring on King’s lived experience and disability, was rooted in the principles of disability justice. James Charlton’s Nothing About Us Without Us (2004 [1998]) is a foundational text that outlines the principles of disability justice, such as interdependence, support, and a reciprocal approach to community that advocates for its members. While the terminology may shift depending on activists and scholars, the topics of intersectionality (whether disability, race, class, etc.), sustainability (also referred to as care and self-care) and interdependence (also called relationality, reciprocity and community) are core values of disability justice and disability arts practice—and can and should align with the values of engaged journalism as well.

But what exactly can an ethic of care look like in podcast practice? Considering Static as a case study, we sat down to discuss how we developed a working relationship, based in an ethic of care, that served as a foundation for creating a flexible media-making practice that ultimately helped us co-produce the series as we navigated issues around accessibility, consent and traumatic personal narratives.

CONVERSATION

November 19, 2025. It’s a cold, sunny afternoon in downtown Calgary, Alberta. Meg Wilcox and Ashley King are seated at the table in King’s dining room, mugs of tea in hand and a Zoom H3-V recorder between them. Ducky, an anxious-yet-sassy senior rescue dog, sits on a couch behind them, occasionally throwing in barks and whines to the conversation. After catching up on the past week since they’d last seen each other, Wilcox starts the recorder; this is an edited version of their conversation.

 

Meg Wilcox: We should probably start by introducing ourselves. Want to start?

Ashley King: Sure! I’m Ashley, I’m a legally blind actor and playwright based in Moh’kinstsis. I also trained as a journalist and graduated from Mount Royal University’s journalism program in 2018. I still do some freelance media work from time to time. My visual description… so I’m a five-foot-one, racially ambiguous Mexican-Canadian. I’ve got olive skin, long dark brown hair, dark eyes, and usually a lot of gold jewelry.

Wilcox: Fantastic gold jewelry, I feel like I should add! I’m Meg, and I had no work experience in theatre at all before we collaborated—I completed my master’s in journalism in 2010 and have been working in the field since. I’m an associate professor in journalism at MRU.

King: But you didn’t teach me… We didn’t meet until a couple of years ago.

Wilcox: Right! I taught some of your friends but we didn’t cross paths until I reached out to Inside Out Theatre about my thesis. Oh, I should probably add that I’m working on my PhD at the University of Glasgow—in Media and Cultural Policy in Cultural Industries, to be precise.  For a visual description, I’m about five-foot-eight, a white female. I’m very pale. My makeup color is normally something like “sunlight” or “sickly Victorian boy.” I have blue eyes and shoulder-length dirty blond hair.

King: And very good style, if I may add.

Wilcox: Well, thank you… I try to keep up with you! Thinking about how all of this began… we met officially in August 2023, when I was looking for an organization to partner with on my practice-based doctoral thesis. I’d reached out to Inside Out Theatre hoping they might want to collaboratively produce some sort of audio or podcast project together. At that point, that was about as far as I’d developed the concept—since I was trained in what would be considered traditional North American journalistic practice, I wanted to explore collaborative production methods and how they could perhaps serve a more ethical and/or inclusive way to make media. So I reached out to Col Cseke, the company’s artistic and executive director, and he introduced us—because not only do you work at Inside Out as an artistic associate, you were the one behind the company’s biggest upcoming project, which was Static.

King: Yeah! Static is a play that I had been working on for at least… four… years at that point? It’s a two-person show that tells the true story of how I lost my eyesight when I was 19 from methanol poisoning while travelling in Bali. It was still a draft but had been through a few workshops, including one with Chromatic Theatre, and they were going to co-produce the show with Inside Out. The full title of the show is Static: A Party Girl’s Memoir.

Wilcox: And I remember our first meeting that October—it was at a little bar just down the street from here.

King: That’s right!

Wilcox: And a lot of things were still up in the air, but you knew the play would have another development workshop in Spring 2024 and would premiere later that fall. So it was a good time for me to come in and see how everything came together before we planned out the collaborative audio part. I don’t think we hammered anything specific out at that meeting.

King: I think it was more of a vibe check for me. I mean, I’m usually up for anything—it wasn’t going to be hard to convince me—but just seeing who you are and what you wanted to do. Honestly, at first I just saw it as your PhD thesis, that you’re doing it on me and my project. I wasn’t really thinking that there was anything beneficial for me coming out of it.

Wilcox: Wow, knowing this, I’m kind of surprised you agreed to it! I should have made a better case.

King: Yeah, it wasn’t until we started actually recording the podcast that I realized the benefits—that it was another way that I could share my story, another outlet for me to act in front of people, another way for me to share about methanol poisoning—that I’d be able to have this forever and share it with other people and hopefully have an impact on other folks.

Wilcox: Well, I’m very glad you agreed, since it was the start of a pretty wonderful collaboration, if I do say so myself. I joined as a participant-observer for the workshop in May 2024, and we started to work on the podcast a bit in June. In August and September, I was around for the play rehearsals and the show’s two-week run. Once the show was over, that’s when we really got into producing the podcast, from mid-September until mid-December 2024. In the end, the podcast version of Static: A Party Girl’s Memoir was a four-part series with a bonus fifth episode that we released weekly starting mid-November.

King: And you can hear Static wherever you get your podcasts! Gotta get that promo in! (laughs)

Wilcox: (laughs) You know it! So today we’re talking about how Static fits within engaged journalism and what we’ve learned in making the series. The podcast is rooted in the play, but since the play is based on a true story, we really leaned into that for the podcast and brought in more journalistic elements.

King: Absolutely. Each episode includes part of the play as an audio drama, but I also have interviews and conversations with people who were part of the story, and reflections on my experience. And chats with you, too, as my producer!

Wilcox: (laughs) True! So not to be too technical, but if we’re talking about engaged journalism, we should probably define engagement. Sue Robinson (2023) is a journalist and professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and she defines engagement as participating, sharing or partaking in a relationship with someone. And in terms of engagement—or the relationships—in this project, I think it happened on three main levels. I imagine them kind of like a stone hitting the water, and the ripples that come out from it. The first ripple—

King: You mean the splash?

Wilcox: (laughs) Sure, that makes way more sense. The splash was how you and I collaborated in making the podcast. From there, the next ripple would be how we engaged with the rest of the team that supported both the play and the podcast.

King: So, that would mostly be the team at Inside Out and Chromatic Theatre… and anyone else who was connected to the podcast, like the people we interviewed?

Wilcox: Exactly. And then, from there, it would be the audience—which includes members of the broader community as well as the media outlets that covered the story. Robinson also talks a lot about how engagement can connect different communities, which Static did as well.

King: For sure. You can’t really talk about the podcast without talking about the play, and the play really set the direction for which communities we engaged with. Most obvious is the disability community, the blind and low-vision community specifically—not just because I’m legally blind, but also that I wrote the script with blind audience members in mind. And then, of course, because the story has to do with my Latin culture, working to create a story that reflected my experience but would also be relevant to a Hispanic or Latinx audience. And that all came from working with two organizations whose sole mandate is to uplift and work with disabled stories and storytelling—Inside Out Theatre—and then also marginalized artists of racialized backgrounds—Chromatic Theatre.

Wilcox: And one thing that really stuck out for me while working with the many talented people in the broader production team was how they rooted their work in an ethic of care. I point this out because Robinson identifies care as one of the key aspects to engagement and building trust in journalism—but this is also a core value of disability justice. I think of Sins Invalid’s Principles for Disability Justice (Berne et al., 2018) or James Charlton’s (2004[1998]) advocacy through Nothing About Us Without Us.

King: Yes—and that’s a line that’s now used around access and inclusion more broadly, but not everyone knows that it started with disability rights.

Wilcox: Exactly! It was so interesting for me, with my thesis, to learn more about the foundational theories around disability rights and advocacy. Because disability includes so many different things, and is unique to everyone, it really opened my eyes to how disability justice can be a framework for all forms of access and inclusion. But I digress! Let’s go back to that first ripple—or the splash—at the centre of this project, which is how we engaged with each other and built our working relationship. Because it was that time getting to work together and know each other before actually getting to the podcast that really played a big part in the success of the project. From a disability perspective, it makes me think of Mia Mingus (2011) and her work on access intimacy—that through getting to know people on a personal level, you’re in a better position to support their needs.

King: Yeah. And I find I’m much more comfortable when I’m with somebody that I already know, and we got to know each other at that first workshop. And later, even at rehearsals, you just came in and sat in and you were there to talk to me about literally anything—not just the podcast. We were able to build that relationship so that when we did work on the podcast, I already felt comfortable. I was able to ask for what I needed, and I feel like you probably felt more comfortable to maybe—

Wilcox: Screw up?! (laughs)

King: (laughs) Maybe. Because it wasn’t this super formal relationship that we had where if you got it wrong, I would go to HR.

Wilcox: Or that you’d pull out of the project.

King: Because we took that time to build that relationship. And I think we would have had a very different outcome if we didn’t take that time to get to know each other, compared to if you were just the journalist on this. I felt like there was more care involved, in you taking care of me and my story. I didn’t feel like it was going to be transactional.

Wilcox: I mean, on some level we could always say there’s an element of transaction. You have advantages in adapting and publishing your work; I have advantages by doing the thesis. But at the same time, we weren’t about to complete the project at each other’s expense.

King: Right. Where often I find that, in journalism, at least what I’ve done in the past, you have your subject, you interview them. Most likely, you never talk to them again unless you’re reviewing or need more information, and then you publish a story. And that’s really just for the benefit of you or the publication you work for. It might benefit the source for exposure. But it really is like you’re being given this gift from this source, because they’re talking to you, sharing, and then you just get to keep the gift. For me, it’s been hard because I’ve mostly been in the news regarding my eyesight, and in my earlier years of going into blindness, I don’t think I was ready to share my story. I thought, you know, the bigger picture is that people need to know about methanol poisoning, so I’m going to talk so people are aware. But it often felt like there was an agenda and I met the need the journalist had. And the aftermath was actually detrimental for me because of how I or my disability was portrayed, usually made to look inspirational. My story was used in a way that was probably done with good intentions, but I had no say after the fact and then I was left worse off than if I never did the story in the first place.

Wilcox: Are you thinking of a specific example?

King: When I was in university, I was crowdfunding for my tuition alongside a bunch of other students through some new organization. But once my story about being blind made it to the media, all of a sudden I was this golden, amazing star, just for going to university. And it was really made to be this clickbait-y puff piece—like, ‘Blind student is standing up and crowdfunding for her tuition, how incredible that she’s doing this!’ And I remember thinking back, this is not that incredible. It’s an organization where many other students are also crowdfunding for their tuition—it just so happens I’m blind. The issue is how unaffordable university is, and how inaccessible it is. If university education was a fully accessible thing, no one would think it’s amazing that I’m going. So, I feel like sometimes when I’ve done news pieces for folks and I’ve been a subject, they’ve not worked with me. They’ve had their angle of what the story is going to be, usually about my personal life and what I’m going through, which is not what I want up for debate. Because with that story, it allowed for people to then comment on whether or not I actually deserved that crowdfunding… but also on my disability and other things. I realized I wasn’t actually strong enough for any opinions or rejection or adversity around my story. Especially since a lot of people can say some pretty horrible things about methanol poisoning—usually that it was my fault. Once you’re in the news, your story is everybody’s story, they feel they have a say in what’s going on. When it was just my story, it wasn’t up for debate. Whereas this whole process of doing the play and the podcast, I was so ingrained in what we delivered, it’s something that I was happy for people to debate about or have an opinion on, because it’s what I put out into the world rather than a second-hand account from somebody else.

Wilcox: That really shows the impact of the media and how, by virtue of putting your story out there, it opens you up to that kind of personal commentary. It’s a real type of vulnerability. And it’s something that’s relatively new in terms of being on the news, too—even 15 years ago, that wouldn’t really have been an issue.

King: Yeah. And I think that’s where you have to have more care with your subjects in the community that you work with, especially if it’s a vulnerable community, because that’s another part about journalism—that the stories you tell are open to community critique or commentary. That, of course, is probably not the intention of the journalist or the publication, but it comes alongside. I think that’s something that journalists need to remember when they think, ‘Oh, that would be a great story’—by going into that engagement with that person or the subject, you could actually be setting them up for more harm.

Wilcox: This makes me think of the importance of informed consent, and what does it mean to provide informed consent? Because if a source doesn’t really understand the possibilities of where that story could go, the good and the bad… How do journalists provide this in an understandable way? And since we often don’t know the impact of something going viral, or necessarily check-in with sources after a story, to what extent do we even understand?

King: And, I mean, I’ve been in the news a lot and have a background in journalism, so I get it a bit more. Even though I’ve been pretty informed, I have still been hurt by it. It would have been really great if, say, that journalist who interviewed me had told me that there would be open comments online. Thinking of my experience in j-school, I was taught how to be a journalist and do it ethically, but I wasn’t really taught how to be a source. Obviously, there’s no school to teach you how to be a source, unless you’re a public figure. But I think the average person is just like, ‘Oh, that’s so exciting, they want to interview me!’ and doesn’t think that any harm is going to come from being in the news. I think this also comes back to the importance of—maybe lack of?—relationships. Because often when I’ve been interviewed, they’ll say, ‘Stay in touch if you ever need anything’—but what am I going to need from them? What are they going to need from me? There’s probably no reason why I would reach back out to a publication unless I’m trying to create exposure for something, to promote something.

Wilcox: It’s true, I think even when there’s good intent on both sides, the only time that would make sense to reach out or follow up is for more reporting, because that’s the relationship that was established. But since I came to the workshops as a participant-observer, we got to know each other outside of that context.

King: Yeah, we had so many instances where you came into rehearsals and I would be cutting things down and changing things in the script and you’d be giving me advice, even though that wasn’t your job. But you were just there, being a friend.

Wilcox: I mean, as someone who didn’t really have a job at the workshops, I had the time and was always happy to chat with you. It was more just like me being like, ‘Well, if I was in your shoes, I would approach it this way.’ I think it also kind of helped that I could give you advice and you didn’t have to take any of it.

King: You established very quickly that you had my back—I think back to our breaks and you’d ask how’s it going, and I’m just, you know, lost on whatever it was that I was lost on that day, and you would give your honest thoughts. By being a friend and being open and being willing to hear me out, you were there to help and take care as well. And so I knew I had allyship in you pretty early on, which I didn’t necessarily feel with everyone. If we had just started the podcast at that initial workshop, maybe I wouldn’t have felt the same way.

Wilcox: And for this part, working on the play, you had the creative control. So I was the one out of my comfort zone, learning about theatre and disability culture and accessible arts—which laid the foundation for the podcast. That, along with our growing friendship (if it isn’t too awkward to say that) made it easier for when we actually began to collaborate on the podcast.

King: Yeah, I felt like a true equal to you working on the project, like I could have differing opinions or change the direction of an episode. It wasn’t like I was over your shoulder watching every edit, but I felt comfortable and safe to have a different opinion and share that with you because it equally felt like this was as much my project as it was your thesis. The actual podcast, I don’t feel like it was Meg’s podcast and I was just a subject. It wasn’t a podcast made about me. I feel like it’s my podcast. And most people, when they’re interviewed in the news, they don’t really have ownership over whatever gets written or made about them.

Wilcox: Absolutely. And a big part of this, for me at least, was making sure to build in time and space for your feedback and for us to talk about it. Which is usually not what I’m doing in more traditional reporting. But the time we committed to it, especially for the first two episodes, was essential for us to get it right, I think. Since I was doing the editing, it was important for me to share really rough early drafts. I wanted you to literally hear the spaces where you could change things and make it better. But I was also nervous about sending you those drafts because I knew my vision for them and I wasn’t sure if I was communicating that to you. And since this is your story, I was worried that you’re thinking I’ve sent you a piece of hot garbage! But I knew that if I sent something that sounds fully finished it would be harder for you to hear how it could be changed. So as uncomfortable as it was for me, I think it was essential for opening up those conversations.

King: I mean, you could have done it the other way. You could have literally just made finished episodes and then sent them to me. And you’re right, I would have felt I had less agency to make edits on it.

Wilcox: Looking back on it, how we approached the editing was very similar to how I would have gone through a vet with a newsroom colleague. It had the same consideration and discussion—if not more because of our longer timelines—but the biggest difference is that you would, in a news context, be considered a source instead of a colleague. Of course, this was probably partly because you have a journalism background, so our points of understanding came from a similar place.

King: I also think that part of the reason editing went so well was because I’m pretty easygoing, I was like, ‘Just do whatever you think is right.’ But I also felt confident saying that because you spent so much time on the piece before the podcast. The only two people that know Static as well as I do are you and Kodie [Rollan, the show’s dramaturge]. I kind of felt like I was already in your brain, so I had a lot of trust that, whatever you came up with in those initial editing sessions, I was probably going to like it because I knew you understood the story and you took the time to get the story right.

Wilcox: That means a lot, Ash. Thank you.

King: (laughs) Well thank you!

Wilcox: I think, for me, one of the biggest things about developing our relationship was that—this sounds so basic to say—but it required that time. And time is a really difficult commodity, especially in the media world. I can’t quantitatively express how this improved the project, right? I can’t say the project is 65% better because, you know, we did this.

King: Yeah.

Wilcox: But I can think of so many examples of how this informed our decisions around Static. I’m thinking of how, with most of the script edits we made in adapting the play to podcast, I ended up going back to old drafts and bringing in scenes or elements that had been cut. If I’d only seen the play in its final form, I wouldn’t have known to go back and look.

King: Yeah, and I think it also meant that you could make choices like turning the fight between me and Carolina in Episode 3 into lucha libre [Mexican wrestling]. I never would have thought of that!

Wilcox: And I’m sure there are so many other examples that we weren’t even aware of… I wanted to bring up what was happening in the world while we were releasing Static, because it played a big part in how the podcast was received at the time. Just before our second episode came out in November, news outlets from around the world were reporting that six tourists were killed by suspected methanol poisoning at a backpackers’ hostel in Laos (Ore & Lamb, 2024). Obviously, this was horrible news that we didn’t want to hear. But it also completely changed the context of the podcast and put Static in the news cycle. How was that for you?

King: I guess, selfishly, it reminded me of how relevant my story is. When something happens to you, especially as unique as methanol poisoning, it’s easy to feel like you’re the only person in the world that has gone through it. And I’ve felt very alone and isolated in the years leading up to this [Static], feeling like I didn’t have much of a community around methanol poisoning—which we don’t really want, because you don’t want it to happen to anybody! I grew up with the idea that people are interested in my story because it’s so unusual and no one can imagine that ever happening, but the reason that I educate and advocate for methanol poisoning is that it could happen to somebody, because it did happen to me. And I’d like to think that sharing my story has made a difference. If it’s warned at least one person, that’s enough for me.

Wilcox: The story also put you back in the news cycle—you were contacted by outlets around the world for interviews about Static and your experience with methanol poisoning. But as you’ve already shared, you haven’t always felt good about how past stories came out. How did you feel about those interviews after we’d made the podcast? Did you feel more confident, or—?

King: Oh, absolutely. I have never done as many methanol poisoning related interviews than I have in the last year. And because I had just finished writing a play, doing this podcast, talking ad nauseam about my trauma and methanol poisoning and understanding it from every angle, it allowed me to speak about it much more easily, with more agency, with more confidence and with a stronger message than I would have before doing any of this. I felt more equipped to do it.

Wilcox: But I want to point out this was a multi-year process—thinking about the play and the work you put into processing and understanding your story—to get to a point where you could do those things. It’s not like working on the podcast singlehandedly did it.

King: Right. Yeah, I started that work years ago and still work on it. I think the podcast and the play helped solidify some of those things, it has almost been like free therapy for me to really understand what happened to me and where I sit with all of it.

Wilcox: I think it’s really important to highlight that because, as a journalist and a producer, I could support you in some of those things. But I’m not a therapist.

King: Right.

Wilcox: Because this project required a lot of emotional engagement to tell the story, and we both—but mostly you—needed to be in a position to do it. I wonder, if you hadn’t been ready to tell this story, if that work hadn’t been done, would this have gone horribly? Would we have come into this with great intentions but just not been able to follow through on it?

King: Right. I think that goes along with working in community—is that community ready to share that story? Having a strong understanding of the subject is so important, and journalists usually don’t have much established knowledge—you have that one opportunity to become as much of an expert as you can on what you’re covering, then you move on to the next thing. And it’s so easy for people to get it wrong. Even my own writing! For example, when I first wrote about the Good Host program [at Inside Out Theatre] as a journalist, I thought it was separate to Inside Out Theatre. That’s how I portrayed it in one of the first articles I ever wrote about Inside Out. And now that I work here, I’m like, ‘Oh no, I totally got that wrong.’ And seeing the way we’ve worked together on this [podcast] has made me look at being a journalist differently. I’d always just figured journalism was what I learned in school, pretty black and white: you interview somebody, you transcribe it, you write the article, you submit it, it’s done, and you move on to the next piece. And in a lot of cases, that’s what’s required. But being able to work on and give care to the piece has made me realize that journalistic work doesn’t have to be transactional. I can ask how to involve and collaborate with sources in the process, so that it’s something that can be more than just a deadline or an assignment for myself and my editor.

Wilcox: You’ve already mentioned how you’ve benefitted from the podcast, but I wanted to talk about how you were able to connect with Bethany Clarke, one of the women who survived the recent methanol poisoning in Laos. Because you did end up interviewing her for a bonus sixth episode—and it’s led to so much more beyond what we originally planned for the series.

King: Yeah — Bethany’s best friend, Simone White, was one of the people who died in Laos, and she’s been doing incredible advocacy work around methanol poisoning since. She’s gotten the government to add methanol poisoning education to the health curriculum in the United Kingdom, where she’s from, and she’s pushing for those changes in Australia, where she lives now. She also started a Change.org petition to put safety warnings in airports and schools in the U.K. and Australia and encouraged me to do the same here in Canada. Our petitions now have more than 25,000 signatures! It was the beginning of a great friendship and we’re continuing to advocate together. We even met up in person when I was in Australia this fall.

Wilcox: It’s been so cool to see this project grow… I mean, I always knew the podcast could be a platform for your story and connect you to a broader audience. But I think it’s fair to say we never expected so many people would listen, for it to get the media coverage that it did, or that it would become a way for you to make even more connections around methanol poisoning awareness. And the journalist in me is just thrilled to see public policy changes come out of all of this!

King: That’s so true, Static has turned into so much more than I know I had ever planned for it. And I think that has to do with the great relationship that we built. If it was just transactional, then it would have just been the podcast. But we’ve been fluid in the way we’ve allowed for the podcast to grow and to discover as we went. Even though we had no idea in the beginning!

Wilcox: And I think the flexibility of podcasting as a medium played into that too, it meant we could change the project as needed. But I agree it was our relationship that led to Static expanding into something bigger—it was something we both cared about and were invested in. There were stakes in it for both of us. We should probably wrap things up here, but I just wanted to say thank you for agreeing to go on this wild ride with me, and for bringing your talents and thoughtfulness and Ashley King magic to it. And for making the time to talk about all of it today!

King: Aw, thanks Meg! I’m just so thankful for all of this. I just love sitting here with you so much.

Wilcox: I mean, same.

King: Hmmm… Is there a Season 2? Maybe a spin-off series? I don’t know, I feel like maybe our work’s just begun…

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Dr. Meg Wilcox is Associate Professor in Journalism and Digital Media, Mount Royal University and holds a PhD in Media and Cultural Policy in Cultural Industries from the University of Glasgow.
Email mwilcox@mtroyal.ca.

Ashley King is Artistic Associate at Inside Out Theatre in Calgary, Alberta.

Acknowledgements: The authors would like to thank Inside Out Theatre and Chromatic Theatre, co-producing companies for Static: A Party Girl’s Memoir.

Disclaimers: The authors used transcription software for the original transcribing of this article, which was then reviewed and edited by the authors. AI was also used for the first round of French translation for the article title, abstract and keywords, which were then reviewed and edited by the authors and journal editors.

Media Link: Static: A Party Girl’s Memoir
Website: https://www.insideouttheatre.com/static-a-party-girls-memoir

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