When you’ve created a new, twisty, sci-fi fictional podcast with a mystery at its center, how do you provide enough info to draw in listeners, but not so much that you spoil its surprises?

That was the question facing Michael Alan Herman and Josie Eli Herman, the Ann Arbor-based co-creators (and married couple) behind the just-launched podcast Silvertongues.

While emphasizing the adventure-blockbuster vibe of the show, Michael explained, “It’s about two people who discover a paranormal conspiracy on this tropical island, and that conspiracy blurs the lines between truth and lies.”

“A big theme in the show is this idea of emotional homelessness,” Josie said. “This idea that you don’t even feel at home in yourself. … That’s just something, post-pandemic, we’ve noticed is, a lot of people … having this feeling of, ‘I don’t know what to do with my life, or who I am.’ … That’s something that the characters feel in the show, and there’s a supernatural reason for that, but I think, at a human level, a lot of people can relate to that.”

The show’s title, meanwhile, comes from the idiomatic description of a persuasive person as a “silver-tongued devil.”

“We're very much playing with that idea,” Michael said. “Voice can be used powerfully, either in a good way or in a bad way.”

“And we found that the audio medium would be really perfect for that because that’s all you have,” added Josie.

This isn’t Michael and Josie’s first venture into podcasting. Silvertongues—consisting of seven main episodes and six half episodes—follows on the heels of the couple’s highly successful, horror-tinged first show, The Call of the Void, which launched in early 2020 and ran for three seasons. That award-winning project earned a jaw-dropping 1.3 million downloads across 150 different countries. 

So the Hermans, founders of the Acorn Arts and Entertainment production company, are hardly newbies. But with Silvertongues, they’ve pushed themselves to be even more ambitious with their sound design.

“We were joking with the cast, how it does feel a little bit like The Mummy sometimes, or like Indiana Jones, where it just has this big adventure feel,” Michael said. “There are planes, there are boat chases—there are lots of different soundscapes that we had never challenged ourselves to do before.”

“With audio, it’s so much more affordable to do something really high concept,” Josie said. “A high-budget science fiction or fantasy-horror thing can sound amazing, and it’s way cheaper than you could do in film or even in theater. … You can make all the sounds yourself in your living room like we did, add some scary music, and all of the sudden, there’s an alien invasion, or a car explosion, or some kind of terrifying monster or ghost or supernatural element that would be hard to make on a small budget in film.”

The Silvertongues cast, meanwhile, includes lots of local theater artists, many of whom the couple first got to know while studying theater together at Eastern Michigan University. But going from stage or film work—where the actor can employ facial expressions and body language/movement—to audio takes some adjustment.

“A lot of actors, when they first jump onto the microphone, tend to make it a little too big,” said Josie, who directed Silvertongues. “And actually, a lot of times, it’s just about bringing them back down and making it more human. Finding the truth in the lines. … But another thing about directing a podcast is, the directing goes all the way through the process. So I’m directing the actors in the room, and then afterward, in the editing, … I’ll make sure to take all of the right takes, and then, even pacing a scene can become a huge part of the directing.”

Also, because some actors’ voices might sound similar on a recording, the Hermans had to make sure each character was audibly distinct. 

“It’s very easy in audio to get confused,” said Michael. “Where you’re like, ‘Who’s talking, again? I don’t remember who this person is.’ So we spend a lot of time trying to make sure people have distinct textures to their voices and finding a variety of voices to represent the characters.”

Michael carried much of the writing load for the show, which was considerable, and took nearly a year.

Silvertongues "is about 2.5 feature films’ worth of content,” he said. “So it’s a lot. … You make a lot of mistakes, and you write a bad draft, and then you rewrite from there.”

“We have to hear every little action,” explained Josie. “Like, ‘Quick, he’s got the knife!’ or something like that, because we need to hear who has the knife. … We have to paint the picture of the audio world a lot when we write our dialogue, and sometimes we tend to overwrite a little bit, too. We’ll make sure the action is clear for the audience, and then sometimes, we’ll put it in and go, ‘OK, we don’t really need that line.’”

Such are the technical challenges of audio storytelling. Of course, Michael and Josie learned a ton while building The Call of the Void throughout three seasons, but listeners can bank on Silvertongues telling a contained story in just one.

“But this is by no means the last fiction podcast that we’re going to be doing,” said Michael.

“I’m just so excited to finally get to the finish line, where [Silvertongues] is ready for release,” said Josie. “More than anything, we’re excited to say things openly, and talk about it with people who listen to it when it goes out there.”

Jenn McKee is a former staff arts reporter for The Ann Arbor News, where she primarily covered theater and film events, and also wrote general features and occasional articles on books and music.

Related:
➥ "Michigan-based theater artists create 'The Call of the Void,' a sci-fi audio drama set in New Orleans" [Pulp, Februay 8, 2020]