Welcome to the next in the Podcast Showcase series, where we share podcasts with you in the words of the podcasters themselves. This time, we talk to Mystery on the Rocks
Sum up your podcast in three sentences
Unsolved mysteries meet mixology as award-winning comedians Sooz Kempner, Masud Milas and Chris Stokes pick a real-life unsolved crime or unexplained phenomenon and ham-fistedly try to solve it while drinking cocktails.
Sometimes they’re joined by an amazing special guest, sometimes it’s just the three of them being very silly indeed. Featured on The Guardian’s 50 Funniest Podcasts 2021 list.
What made you start this podcast?
Masud had secretly been a whizz at making cocktails for some time and Chris had secretly been an obsessive of impossible crime and locked room mysteries so we decided to combine the two in a project that would allow us to explore both of these things and, crucially, have a laugh doing it.
We’d also been working with Sooz on some comedy shorts for BBC Three, who is outrageously talented and extremely funny so we couldn’t imagine doing the podcast without her to be honest.
What have you learned about your subject thanks to this podcast?
Since lockdown forced us all to record separately, Sooz and Chris have had to begin making their own drinks for the show so making cocktails is definitely something we’ve learned! We’ve also learned that through bare-faced logic and persistent scepticism, it’s easier than you might think to imagine a possible solution for some of the most bizarre mysteries.
In doing the podcast we discovered the existence of a real-life Sherlock Holmes, an American private investigator called Ken Brennan who has been able to solve some really baffling cases simply by being single-minded in getting to the truth.
Equally, the capacity for superstition in almost everyone is larger than you might think and that’s been really interesting as the show has gone on because we’ve sort of discovered how this can feed into geopolitics and the state of the world.
We’ve also learned that we all make each other laugh a LOT.
What has your experience of podcasting been? What do you love / hate about the process?
We started in a studio with a production company and lockdown forced us into our own homes 2 years ago. Then some business changes with the studio made us a completely independent outfit about a year ago so our experience has been really varied so far.
Being in the studio to begin with, though, really prepared us for how to make it ourselves. There were a few hiccups at first when we started doing it ourselves but we’ve found a rhythm now and been able to let the podcast evolve organically.
That’s probably what we love the most about the process. Any changes to the format have just sort of happened rather than us deciding everything by committee, which has been really fun. It’s also just a lot of fun recording together, being silly and learning about some really fascinating things to do with history and politics on a grander scale, as well as finding some really cool stories.
There’s nothing really to hate about the process, editing takes the longest but that is still pretty fulfilling creatively.
If someone wants to start listening to your podcast, which episode would you recommend they start with? Why?
There are several jumping-on points. If you want an idea of how the show has changed over time, start at the beginning with ‘Nick Helm and the Mystery in Room 1046’ or to have a better grasp on what kind of show we are now, jump on a little more recently with ‘The Vanishing Blonde and the Mercury Man’. If you start with that one, though, we recommend listening to ‘The Body in Room 348’ first as it’s kind of a prequel. Or you could start with our themed series of Hollywood mysteries.
We each have our own individual favourites too so if you’re after a particularly interesting case or story, we can recommend ‘Nish Kumar and the Curious Tale of Clairvius Narcisse’, ‘Alison Thea-Skot and the Secrets of the Coral Castle’, ‘Bec Hill and the Persian Princess’, ‘Jen Brister and the Death of Hugues de la Plaza’, ‘Carl Donnelly and the Formidable Dolly Osterreich’ or ‘Niamh Walsh and the Baffling Murder of Laetitia Toureaux’ if you wanted to pick one at random to sample first.
Which other podcasts do you love listening to?
Between us we really enjoy Last Podcast on the Left, Axios’ How it Happened series and the new Always Sunny Podcast. It would be remiss of us to not also point out that Sooz also co-hosts the official Queen podcast Queenpod, Chris co-hosts the true-life storytelling podcast Natural Born Storytellers and Masud has also co-hosted the podcast I Just Bought Myself a Pocket Synth and I’m Gonna Sell My Beats to Drake.
If people want to find you online, where can they do so?
You can find our podcast on the usual platforms or most easily at https://play.acast.com/s/mystery. We’re also on Twitter and Instagram @mysteryontherox and you can go one extra step in supporting the podcast by joining our Patreon at https://patreon.com/mysteryontherocks, where there is lots of exclusive content and merch.
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Image: Kate Scott Photography