Lights, camera, action, print, distribute, queue, empty wallet, fill face, get anxious about noisy audience member, resist urge to check phone, watch film. Steev and Nick discuss their experiences with the cinema and ask whether the magic of the place has been diminished by the way the industry has treated itself, or whether your hosts are just too…

Oxygen is in plentiful supply. There is enough to go around for everyone, and doesn’t seem to have a problem supporting even more, despite the distant threat it could all be taken away. Some people like to take up more oxygen than they really need, and one can find themselves wondering whether the hoarders are really contributing enough to make tha…

Communication breakdown on several fronts lead to this episode of Unanswered. The show was intended to be a discussion on the differences between loneliness and solitude, and the upsides to be found in the latter. Somehow the conversation stuck around an aside about introverts and extroverts. Additionally, the traditional recording set-up on Nick’s…

Recorded in a month all about Europe, Steev and Nick freewheel into a conversation about the UK’s political climate, and in particular the debate around immigration. Captured before the European Parliament elections and released after the dust had settled, this episode is as much a snapshot of a specific moment as it is a record of our own politica…

Naked as the day you were born is the only true day you were naked as the day you were born. Before long, however, it’s clear we’ve got to cover up: first for warmth and to stop our untrained selves from defecating where we stand; and later, because as much as our egos don’t want to hear it, the rest of the world isn’t particularly interested in de…

Empathy in a world of sympathy must feel like an apologist in a room full of outrage, whilst sympathy in a world of empathy must feel like a narcissist in a room without a reflective surface. It’s just as well the world is much larger than a four metre squared patch of carpet otherwise the complexity of humans could get a bit noticed. It’s a heady …

It took Steev and Nick thirteen months to record their first podcast after deciding they would make one together. Twenty episodes of Unanswered later they get around to tackling procrastination as a topic. They are well suited to discuss it. Is procrastination a manifestation of boredom, distractibility or fear? What are the barriers procrastinator…

Returning from a month’s hiatus turns out to be a tricky thing, thanks to the disruptive power of moving home. Steev’s moving moving experience is the starting point for a discussion on what home means to us. We look at the various places we call home, and try to figure out what turns a collection of bricks and stuff, or roads and places, into an e…

We are all prone to bouts of wondering what it is we’re supposed to do with our lives, and it seems one of the most popular answers is to be happy. Our governments and corporations wish for us to be happy as much as our nearest and dearest do. Whilst all this goodwill is lovingly received, can we even begin to understand what our pursuit of happine…

“You don’t get a second chance to make a first impression” so the infamous phrase goes, and whilst you often have it told to you before a job interview or going on a date, it also applies to a good book or this year’s must-watch box-set TV show. Inspired in part by the fuss whipped up around the farewell of Breaking Bad, Steev and Nick delve into t…

Despite themselves and their often inflated sense of self-importance, humans do a relatively good job of all getting along. That is, unless one of their contemporaries is proving to be an obstacle purely by performing the duties their employer has bestowed upon said ghastly hurdle. Surely it is not too much to ask to appeal to the hurdle’s better n…

Everybody’s business is their own until it becomes somebody else’s. The question is: who gets to decide to make it somebody else’s business? Steev and Nick address privacy: where it exists in real life, and how online life has eroded our boundaries and highlighted the breadcrumb trail we leave, causing us to wonder what we’re left with. Follow us o…

With only days to go before the birth of his first child, Nick is in the mood to talk about some of the big changes in life and how we come to make them. Specifically, we discuss the milestones we pass in our relationships, why the decision to pass them seems like a big deal at the time, and why the weight of expectation can have a detrimental effe…

The neighbourhood, let alone the world or the universe, is a pretty large place compared to a single solitary human being who would struggle to put a dent in anything most days. If we are so powerless to affect change wouldn’t it be more comforting to know that someone or something is making the dents for us? Luck is the term we commonly use to giv…

When a person finds themselves offended it is described as them ‘taking offence’. We should be thankful for this grammatical distinction for offence, like beauty, lies in the eye of the beholder. This episode explores the modern malaise of militant indignation where the simple act of getting the hump somehow means this poor, fictional victim awards…

When a like turns into a devotion and becomes a part of your emotional well-being, it’s possible you have become a fan. You enjoy, support and loyally follow an individual or group making something entertaining, or succeeding or failing in a sport. And that’s OK because you’re allowed to enjoy the fruits of another’s hard work. The person who worke…

Nick has taken a look through his many swanky notebooks full of ideas, thoughts and observations. Starting along the path of youthful exuberance, and whilst the tenth episode started with the intention to be a bit of a round robin, we ended up focusing on affairs of the heart. We dissect the hopeless romantic; deconstruct the honeymoon period; and …

Cities: Hulking great machines keeping its populace in sportswear and takeaway coffees, hiring people to sell sportswear and takeaway coffees. With our attention so divided between threats, opportunities and more bus stop ads than you could shake Adam Sandler at, are we able to focus on anything but the next few minutes? Steev and Nick are your tou…

Once only residing in Nordic legend, trolls have rampantly multiplied and found new, fertile ground along the Information Superhighway. As the world started to connect, and as technologies and services grew to house it, the human race re-encountered behaviours that the rigours of meatspace had started regulating years before. What’s troubling is, a…

Nick takes us back to his formative years to share a story about a llama, and relates it to the type of true stories told on The Moth podcast. This leads us to examine whether his tale could cut the mustard on the stage. We also ponder whether anecdotes or verbal vignettes, which don’t always guarantee a tidy resolution or lesson learned, really fi…

Sometimes we can be wrong without even knowing we’re wrong, because the meaning we thought we knew turns out not the be the meaning at all. Whilst this could lead to potentially disastrous effects, Nick and Steev instead prefer to focus mainly on songs. That is when they do actually focus on the topic and don’t find themselves distracted by social …

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day, Nick and Steev are back; and this time it’s time to talk about time. Predictable chunks of time such as minutes, evenings and weeks can find a way of either running away from us or conversely wear out their welcome. For example: the long and possibly rose-tinted summer holidays of childhood stretche…

Who we are as a person can depend on where we are, both in time and location. While we are busy adapting to our ever-changing environment is it possible to ever really be our true self? We look at the times and places that influence us and try to discover why we have subsets of our personality. We successfully fail at not focusing on the workplace.…

Christmas is coming and for those who choose to observe the seasonal celebrations, there’s a lot to do. There are lists to write, gifts to buy, cards to send, people to please and white lies to tell—so it’s just as well it happens but once a year. Everything and everyone is telling us what a happy time it is, so why can it end up feeling like work?…

Nick recalls his first experience flying on a small aeroplane, noting it can be quite different from long-haul journeys on much larger jets. This kicks off a conversation about the fear of flying or, more to the point, the myriad fears and issues captured within. In addition we discuss dreams, other tales of disaster, and we entirely resist the iss…

In the debut episode, we tackle the slippery subject of opinions in a rip-roaring display of low self-awareness as if Unanswered is in any way qualified to define what opinions are and who gets permission to express them. Marvel at our abuse of science and religion. Gasp as we wrangle Godwin’s Law. Restrain the urge to faint as we decide who is res…

In our pilot episode we talk about how objects that are owned have a curious way of becoming far more than objects, representing and reflecting aspects of our personality, and digging in their hooks way beyond the point of their usefulness. Mugs, comic books, VHS cassettes, vinyl records and other seemingly harmless objects have their inherent evil…