What connects baking sourdough, climbing mountains, keeping chickens, deer stalking, forestry, fishing, farming and knowing how to sharpen a chainsaw?
In this episode, Richard Prideaux and George Browne attempt to explain what SideCountry actually is, why they built it, and where the network is heading.
They start with George’s idea of the “sourdough pipeline”: the idea that apparently unrelated countryside interests are often connected by the same desire to learn, make, understand and do things for yourself. From there, they look at how SideCountry brings those worlds together – not as one enormous general-interest podcast, but as a network of shows, articles, films and resources covering different parts of life in the British countryside.
They also explain why SideCountry aims to occupy some of the ground between the usual rural tribes and echo chambers; bringing farmers, foresters, anglers, shooters, walkers, conservationists, climbers and others into the same wider conversation without insisting that every subject needs a simple good-versus-bad answer.
Richard and George discuss plans to establish SideCountry as a Community Interest Company, how the project will be funded, why commercial income will be reinvested into the network, and the importance of maintaining editorial independence.
There is also a look at what’s already here – SideCountry, Countryslide and Fish and Game – and some of what is coming next, including Wild Food People, a forestry show, How the Countryside Works and Land Girls, alongside articles, gear guides, practical resources and films.
Plus drive-by agronomy, aggressive protein acquisition, Kevlar kilts, Heath Robinson smokers, professional explaining and the continuing possibility of a company yacht.
This episode is being published across the SideCountry podcast feeds as an introduction to the wider network.
Find out more, sign up for the newsletter or get involved at sidecountry.co.uk.
Credits
Presented by George Browne and Richard Prideaux
Produced and edited for SideCountry by Amy Green.
DISCLAIMER
Views are those of individual speakers and do not necessarily represent SideCountry, its presenters, contributors, partners or sponsors. For general information and entertainment only. Laws, seasons, access and guidance change; check official sources, obtain permission and act within your competence.
This transcript was generated using AI and may contain minor errors.
Richard Prideaux: So before we do anything else, I need to explain that this episode is going out on all of the feeds for every SideCountry podcast all at the same time. So if you're a fish and game listener, if you're a countryslide listener, you'll be getting this you might get it two or three times depending on how many of those shows you're subscribed to, but it just seemed like the easiest way to broadcast this to everyone. So I'm getting that out of the way right now in case some of you are horrendously confused. I live my life being horrendously confused, but it sort of works out for the best, really.
George Browne: I'm deeply distrustful of anyone who's not confused most of the time, I have to say. It implies a level of confidence that I think probably indicates a lack of intelligence.
Richard Prideaux: Sort of, if you're that confident, you obviously aren't aware of everything that's going on.
George Browne: Yes, exactly that. Which sort of explains this episode a bit, really, doesn't it?
Richard Prideaux: It does because, I mean, the sort of this episode exists a little bit because of feedback that we've had and a little bit because we've had it in, I've certainly had it in the back of my mind thinking we should really explain what the hell this SideCountry thing is. But I think the best way to do that is for you to explain what the sourdough pipeline is.
George Browne: Okay, so regular listeners to Countryslide will know that Richard had a horrible accident. earlier this year and that meant that he had nothing much to do other than phone me and we talked for hours and hours and hours about the countryside. the outdoor lifestyle and so on. And I started talking to Richard a lot about something I call the sourdough pipeline, which stems from one of those sort of a regular internet me, video type thing that basically says, if your wife has started baking sourdough, congratulations, you're a farmer now. And it's sort of the implication is that sourdough is the gateway drug to all sorts of other kind of self-sufficiency related stuff. And I was explaining to Richard, I think it goes beyond that, an interest in baking sourdough might eventually lead to you, climbing Kilimanjaro or something like that. And that All of these things that we do outside, we tend to think of in sort of a compartmentalized way. it's farming here and, as it might be, deer stalking there. And they're only really related because they happen in the same place or in similar places. But really, I think that they are all linked. Partly due to a sort of, I don't know, it's not quite a philosophy, is it? But it's We care about them for the same reasons.
Richard Prideaux: Yeah, I think it's an agency. So you can go and buy bread, you can go and buy sourdough bread, but you can also make it at home with more effort, but that more effort also normally comes with the first five loaves being pretty terrible until you sort of work out your ratios and get timings right. But once you've got it dialled in, you can make sourdough bread pretty reliably time after time, can't you?
George Browne: Yes, but it brings with it a degree of pride. I think the bread, while possibly objectively not as good as the sourdough you could buy at the supermarket, or maybe it isn't, I don't know. But because it has been created by your own hand. You take a sort of a degree of pride in it and it somehow tastes better. And it's, to use the mountain climbing example again, climbing mountains is objectively pointless. Making your own sourdough is objectively pointless when you could just go to the shop and do it and it would be much and buy it and it'd be much easier. We still do them. And I think that's where the link is.
Richard Prideaux: You have a stake within doing it. So the fact that you're doing it yourself changes your perception of that thing. So you're not just consuming content, you're not just going to a shop to buy something. You're not just doing things because an external thing says you have to, or this is the only way you're allowed to do it. You're sort of on a self-discovery journey.
George Browne: I think that, yes, the journey is a really interesting one and it sort of doesn't matter where on the journey you begin. It's a bit like that novel that you can pick up and open at any page and then when you get to the end, go back to the beginning and the story is the same. I forget the name of the novel now, but it's that sort of, you can start anywhere on the journey. So you might be an extremely experienced wild camper, but we reckon that you could also be interested in keeping chickens because it sort of all comes back to itself.
Richard Prideaux: Could it be more like one of those books that we probably both had as kids, which sort of choose your own adventure?
George Browne: Yes. Would have been a good name for this, really.
Richard Prideaux: If you want to stab the goblin, go to page 47.
George Browne: Exactly, yes. Yeah. And if you want to suffer the trauma of all of your chickens being eaten by a fox, go to page 52.
Richard Prideaux: So that's, so the sourdough pipeline then, that's sort of the The genesis for this, but it's a way of bringing all these things together because I have this real problem in life where to me, several completely different things all make sense to me as being the same thing. So I constantly having to explain to people why being able to do your own welding on the chassis on the car relates to being able to help out if there's an accident on the roadside or something like that.
George Browne: Yes.
Richard Prideaux: To me, that's all the same thing, but not to other people. It's a bit opaque.
George Browne: Yes, but the problem is, Richard, is we once again have not done a brilliant job of explaining what the SideCountry Network is.
Richard Prideaux: So let's go to that. So you on your podcast player now, if you look at the screen and under whatever title of whichever show you're listening to, it will say SideCountry Network. So that's effectively a publisher. So if you say listen to Countryslide, the rapidly popular rural podcast that we produce and I host alongside Richard Negus and Callum McInerney Riley and was produced by Amy. The publisher for that was effectively me because as a publisher, and I don't want to give anyone ideas here, but as a publisher, you take the sort of liability for what you publish to a degree. So We were the publisher for that. We still are the publisher for that. But what we've done is taken that publishing role and expand it out into this much wider project, which is several podcast titles and articles and videos and a resource section on the website and other as yet to be unveiled project, which is why it's a network of things. Is that a better explanation?
George Browne: Yes, I think it is. that yes, the idea that this is a network of podcasts is the main thing. And with an accompanying website that will also feature additional content that is complementary to the podcasts. And I think the network, people often talk about networks in terms of media groupings. I think of the of this as very much a network in the sense that this is the central show to which everything else is related or possibly the other way around. So if you're into one of those other things and we'll come on to some of the other shows that we plan to have in the near future, you should be able to enjoy this show as well. There'll be niches that are related to one another as well. It'll look, if you were to visualise it, would either look like that meme with all the red string or a spider's web.
Richard Prideaux: Yes, I was going to say spider's web, if you want to torture the listener with yet another thing to visualise. SideCountry, the podcast is in the middle of the spider's web, but out on each one of the strands you have sourdough and baking out over there and gardening is over there and how to sharpen A chainsaw is over there and how to navigate whilst hill walking is over there. And it's, to me, everything on that spider web is related to each other because it kind of all happens in the British landscape and the British countryside to 1 degree or another.
George Browne: And has this link of the satisfaction of doing it for oneself.
Richard Prideaux: So should we talk about the shows then? We've got, if SideCountry is Netflix, it is the network. What are the shows that are on Netflix?
George Browne: Yeah, I mean, just another way for people might be familiar with MeatEater and that's another way of thinking about it, right? Where they have the central show and then they have a bunch of other shows that are sort of vaguely related that sort of go deeper into some of the more specialist areas of things, don't they? So Yeah, we've got the shows that people are already familiar with that you mentioned at the top. So that's Fish and Game, which is all about fishing and shooting and stalking and protein acquisition in the countryside and all that sort of stuff.
Richard Prideaux: That's A t-shirt, isn't it? I acquire protein. Aggressive protein acquisition.
George Browne: Yeah, exactly. Fish and Game, Countryslide, and this show. But there are plans for future shows as well.
Richard Prideaux: Yes, very soon, like within weeks, really. These are just the three, or Countryslide already existed and there's over 100 episodes there for you to listen to right now if you don't know about Countryslide. Fish and Game launched round about the Glorious Twelfth or just after for sort of that mark of the start of the shooting season, I suppose, in the calendar. That was one of the reasons for choosing that date. And then SideCountry launched at about the same time because we recorded the second episode at the Game Fair. So it was about right to deliver that because the second episode is all about managing uplands and the problems and the risks and the challenges associated with that and including wildfire. So it's very topical. We're accidentally relevant.
George Browne: I think that's going to happen A lot. I think we're going to be accidentally relevant A lot. I get another good t-shirt actually. What we haven't touched on, Richard, is why. We've talked about the sort of theory and we've talked about the, you know, the structure. But why?
Richard Prideaux: Yeah, why this? Why not just do other podcasts and have them and just have them all doing things on their own. There's this thing that you taught me about, which is the network effect, which is you sort of people cross-pollinate from one audience group to another. So if you're interested in more than one thing, you might want to consume content. These are horrible phrases to talk about how, just doing things you like, but you listen to content, you read things, you watch videos about stuff that you like doing or that you'd like having in your life. You might have two or three different things. So if you like dog walk, going, taking the dog for a walk, you may also like fishing. Or if you like cooking at home, you may also like deer stalking or something like that. There's the opportunity to get both of those things or more than one of those things from one place. So that's sort of the network effect. And you can find out because all the shows mention each other. about what else is happening on the network. So there's an article that's on there. There's a resource that's just gone there. There's a news item that's just gone on to the website or went on there a few weeks ago. You can go through the network and say, oh, there's this and there's this and there's this, rather than having to go to 10 different places, which is what happens, that's just how the internet works.
George Browne: Yes. But I mean, there's lots of reasons for starting a podcast or starting a podcast network. So, if you're Gary Lineker, it's so that you can become unbelievably wealthy, even more so than you were before. Or it might be just because you absolutely love the topic and feel that everybody needs to hear your opinions on it. This that neither of those things is strictly true. with SideCountry. We'll come on to the filthy rich bit in a minute. But there is a bit of a mission.
Richard Prideaux: There is. And that's what we're working through now. I think there's a place in rural media, so whether that's podcasts, videos, articles, whatever, to have a sort of middle ground that bridges over these disparate worlds because everything else tends to talk to just one world. You just talk to the hill walkers and hikers, you just talk to the mountain bikers, you just talk to the farmers, just talk to the forestry people, whatever it is. But all of those things, whether it's work or an activity or just a life event, they all take place all pretty much in the same brown and green and blue bits. of the British countryside. So bridging the gaps between those disparate worlds is part of the mission of this, but also to create content that's sort of, well, it's not polarizing. It's just saying things, you know, this thing is without, this thing is good, this thing is bad.
George Browne: Well, this is the interesting thing, isn't it? Because, you know, if you take, say, canoeists and anglers, you know, they are often set up in opposition to one another. competing interests or whatever. But ultimately, they're just people who like rivers and they just like enjoying them in slightly different ways. And I've always felt that, maybe it's because I'm A millennial and I remember a time before everything was culture war. I sort of think, Does it have to be like that? Can we not all just agree that we like rivers and then see where the conversation goes from there? Yeah.
Richard Prideaux: I think, well, that millennial thing is important because we are the last generation that remembered a time before the internet and then the internet was everywhere and then social media took over and when social media took over the discourse and everything became about social media, even work and news and politics and everything was driven by social media. The way social media works is it pushes you into silos. It pushes you into a place where everyone around you and all the stuff you see is either there to reinforce your beliefs or show you an enemy, show you someone who's the enemy to whatever you love. Because positive and negative interactions both work to keep you on the social media platform. So you are stuck in this echo chamber where everyone around you, say if you're into driven game shooting and that's your thing, then everything you see, if you go onto Facebook or Instagram or places like that about driven game shooting, the communities, not the businesses, but the communities tend to be all about everything we do is fine. There's never a problem. We can't do any wrong. Meanwhile, anyone who thinks anything slightly negative about what we do are uninformed towny idiots.
George Browne: Yeah.
Richard Prideaux: And you could then take that and put it onto fishing, mountain biking, hill walking, rewilding, forestry, and any community.
George Browne: Yes. The bridge building or, you know, the lack of burning them down perhaps is a better way of putting it, is sort of central to this whole idea. You know, I think it's about connecting people to the landscapes that we love spending time in and it sort of doesn't matter what it is you like doing in them.
Richard Prideaux: Yeah, I think there's an element of interpreting those landscapes as well by the people who work in them are often very good at interpreting them in a neutral way. Whereas a third party isn't always the best person to talk about how that forest is managed. because they would put a value judgment on it. I'd rather go and talk to the forester who manages it and say, okay, what do you do here? Not which of the best bits do you think, which are the good bits? Why are you only growing Sitka or something like that? Just what do you do here? How does that thing work?
George Browne: Yes, and actually I think, you know, this is maybe it's we're getting on to some of the some of the shows that are a bit further down the line, but we had a long conversation, didn't we, about the the ability to read a landscape or a stretch of water and understand not only the sort of ecological processes that have shaped it, but also the human processes that have shaped it. To be able to say, yes, that wood is there because it's a forestry plantation or it was planted as a fox covered in the 1700s or, you know, that riffly bit of water there is like that because below the surface X, Y and Z is going on and that's probably where the trout are. That sort of understanding of landscape is something that for some people it feels almost sort of instinctive, doesn't it?
Richard Prideaux: Does and I think sometimes when I look at how places I know and places I feel like I've got a good understanding of or at least a better understanding of than I used to. When I see those places being discussed in sort of neutral media or for some reason your little world ends up becoming ends up on the news, I often the thing that gets to me when I see people make comments about it is, well, you don't really understand that. But then I have to think, okay, well, who showed it to you? Did anyone make an effort to show it to you? Did anyone make an effort to take you there and show you these things? I think if you grow up in the countryside it's sometimes easier to connect to these places because it sort of becomes part of the language. A couple of years ago you wrote an article for Scribehound on field names.
George Browne: Yes.
Richard Prideaux: Which from memory that was sort of the field names end up being a story either of the people who worked there or the bit that happened next to it or an event that happened there or something that's lost to the mists of time, but now it's the name for that place.
George Browne: Yes, there is always, there's sort of, I can't remember what the phrase was I used, but there's sort of micro names, micro locations, you know, every salmon pool has a name. and it has a name because something of note happened there. But only, a very, maybe 100 people know the name at all and even fewer know what the original meaning of the name was. I think that's fascinating that you can go, that there are these kind of little pockets of information that are sort of hidden from most of us.
Richard Prideaux: Yeah. I've witnessed I used to be an outdoor instructor. I used to, that was pretty much my full-time job. And I remember 10, 15 years ago, we were leading a group somewhere in the Peak District and there was another mountain leader there with me. And she, I heard her describe to the group grouse shooting in a way that I did not recognise in any way, shape or form. She was talking about how the grouse are reared in pens. down in the valley and then they are released on the morning of the shoot for rich people to shoot. And every element of this was wrong but it was sort of a half misunderstood thing from 7 different worlds all at the same time and none of those were quite accurate. But she was quite firm in her belief that was what happened. And to anyone she spoke to, that is what happened. And.
George Browne: But the people in the grouse shooting world will have a similarly misguided view of what it is to be a mountain leader and what mountain leaders do and how those people interact with the landscape. Oh, well, they're all crapping up the mountain, the filthy cagool wearers or whatever it is. And that will be equally as incorrect.
Richard Prideaux: And these are all vocational occupations, working in the outdoors. I suppose if you're a gamekeeper or if you're a mountain leader or if you're a forester or if you're someone like that. If you're working in that place and that is your profession, you have a training scheme that takes you there. None of those training schemes cover the opposite side of the coin. None of the mountain leader awards or the training for it says, okay, you also have to show that you spent a week rebuilding footpaths. in the mountains or doing conservation work in areas where too many people access it and it creates a difficult habitat for ground nesting birds or something like that. But that would give you a very good idea of what the other side of that world is. And likewise, gamekeepers could spend a week working in tourist areas or something like that. You know, this is a very poorly thought out manifesto, but it does kind of show that if you come at something from one direction, you often only see things from that direction.
George Browne: Yes. Yeah, that very kind of blinkered perspective and never, this isn't really the, as we discussed before with the silos, it's not really anybody's fault. It just sort of happens. I think What do you want to talk about first? Do you want to talk about the filthy rich bit or should we talk about some of the shows that we and that we envisage being part of the network?
Richard Prideaux: I think now you've said filthy rich everyone wants to hear about that because it's sort of it well it that actually leads on quite well from this thing of you know it's not anyone else's fault because the business model of media sort of it rewards putting people in silos, because that is a defined user group that you can sell things to, which means that that's basically what happens again and again and again. If you go down to, I was about to say go down to WHSmith, but it's not WHSmith anymore, is it? It's changed.
George Browne: It has a new name, which is very similar.
Richard Prideaux: You don't sort of get newsagents. So go to the big Sainsbury's or the big Tesco where they've got lots of magazines and go and look at all the hobbyist magazines. And you'll just see this huge range of hobbies that you have no idea existed. But for some reason, there's a user base there that will support a couple of magazines and have adverts and supply an audience with what they want week after week or month after month. There are several models for how you do a media business and how you fund it. And because I'm not very good at making money, we have decided that we're going to do the one that means we cannot make a profit. So we're going to set this up as a non-profit organization. So I think we're going for a community interest company, a CIC. which you hadn't really sort of heard of these until I mentioned them, or you hadn't sort of looked into it.
George Browne: Well, I was only aware of them because I knew that you have a CIC that happens in the real world rather than... Yeah, exactly. So I was aware that they exist. And I think, quite a lot of market gardens are set up as CICs as well and that kind of thing. But yeah, I think it's a really good model because It kind of takes away any suggestion that the message is in any way funded by Group X or Group Y or that we're a mouthpiece for something.
Richard Prideaux: Yeah.
George Browne: Which I think is important.
Richard Prideaux: It does. I mean, we are, we have to be transparent about it to a degree. Okay, another way to think about this is it's a limited company, just like most small and medium companies in the UK, except The directors are more like trustees of a charity. They do not own any of the assets. They do not get dividends. They do not get payouts just for being a director. You are creating this entity, this thing, which owns all of the assets of that company. So if we went out to buy microphones, cameras, stuff like that for all that, stuff is owned. by the company, not by the directors. Likewise, any surplus from trading after costs has to be reinvested back into the projects and you can't just go and buy a yacht or something like that.
George Browne: Yeah. And I think that sort of feeds into the sort of slightly vague mission that we stated earlier as well, right? But because we're going to be a CIC, we sort of have to have this There has to be a community interest, right? We have to be serving a community in some way.
Richard Prideaux: Yes.
George Browne: Can you explain a bit more about that?
Richard Prideaux: Well, yeah, you have to have articles of association that are listed and publicly viewable that this community interest company is set up for the express purpose of doing this. The community it serves is this. That community doesn't have to be a geographical location. It doesn't have to be, one village or something like that, although that's how a lot of organisations choose to work. It can be the community. So our community is anyone who loves the British countryside or might love the British countryside or wants to love the British countryside. So it's a pretty broad community. But the focus of that is through creating media that helps tell that story and educate people and allow people to discover it. for themselves. There are rules that you can't do, like you can't do political lobbying. You can't be a religious organization. And there's a few other rules that you cannot do, but there is sort of the equivalent of Companies House or the Charity Commission for community interest companies that there's a register that you are bound by and very strict things that you're allowed to do in law, which are all listed on these articles of association. So that's why I was a bit fuzzy about sort of what the mission statement is, because I have to actually think quite carefully what we put down, because once that's down, we are bound by that. We are stuck. Actually, stuck isn't the right word. It's actually, that is now the guidance for the organization moving forward. And everything we do, editorial policy, who we speak to for advertising, who we work with, the content we put out, all of that is legally bound into this structure, which I quite like because it means that I can stand there hand on heart and say, we can do this, we can do this, but we'll never do this.
George Browne: Yeah, I think it's a great structure. And, I've worked in media in various guises for probably a decade, yeah, at least a decade now. And it's sort of, the problem always comes down to money and you end up having to do things that you don't feel quite right in order to, for whatever the purpose of the publication or the platform or whatever it is, you always end up going, well, that's not quite what I want this to be, but this seems to be where the money is. So I guess we have to do it. And Ten quid is 10 quid. Yeah, exactly. Because we'll have that buffer of being able to say, well, actually we can't do that. It gives a certain sort of clarity.
Richard Prideaux: Yeah, and there are, you have to run this thing as a business. This sort of model of company is relatively new within the business world, but a lot of people adopted it, particularly sort of here in Wales and I know a lot of organisations in Scotland adopted it for similar reasons because of the grant funding structure in Wales and Scotland is sort of very heavily biased towards community interest companies, charities, social enterprises and so on. But what a lot of places do is actually they just rely effectively on grants and other handouts, which is a very, very inelegant term for something, but basically means it's not trading income. Whereas this will be a trading company that has to cover its own costs, has to have a way of, have a business plan, have a way of developing out over three years, five years, 10 years, and we know what we're doing. So The income sources will be a mixture of what we have already for Countryside and will just be. taking that model and making it broader, which is the Patreon platform, which is a way we can have supporters and people can sign up to pledge support for the show for a small amount per month or per week or whatever we set it to. And in return, they get additional content and things like that. And we can add different levels to that. The problem with platforms like that is they take a hefty chunk in fees. They're 20%, 25% or something like that. So it's a significant chunk of that income. And there's weird things that you get charged extra if you pay for it via the Apple Store, but rather than just a Patreon website, I think it charges you an extra dollar a month or something. So you've got those things there. We want to look at advertisers because there are brands that we like, that we genuinely like, because actually, when we speak to them, because you and I have both worked in this sort of, well, you're very much in the media world and I'm sort of in the periphery for other reasons. These brands that have a similar guidance, they have to make money as a brand, as a business, but also they give surplus or they give part of their profits to the GWCT or the Gamekeepers Welfare Trust or something like that. You know, they want to do good with their business. and we want to work with businesses like that want to help support the wider work that we're doing. So that's another income stream. There's t-shirts, I mean, anyone at the Game Fair probably was wondering why people were wandering around wearing a Hello Cows t-shirt, but that's all the fault of Countryslide, which became sort of the best seller of the Countryslide t-shirts, but we will have t-shirts for sale, we'll have merchandise, but all of the income from those worlds will go back into supporting this social enterprise because not everything will make money. Not every show, not everything we want to do is rabidly commercially successful. Some of the things just need to happen because we think that community is underserved or that community is underrepresented in the rest of what we do. So that's kind of how we're going to reinvest the profits back in is by making more things with that money. We could do a yachting podcast, couldn't we?
George Browne: That would definitely fit.
Richard Prideaux: I don't want, yeah, let's I don't want to paint myself out of that court. I want to leave the room to have the company yacht at some point, but the company will own it, not us.
George Browne: Is there a private jet podcast in here somewhere? skiing chalet podcast. I don't know. I'm just a bit boring here.
Richard Prideaux: The caviar and cigars podcast might sound quite good.
George Browne: Yes. And I think this is probably the bit where you do your pitch for founder members, isn't it?
Richard Prideaux: Yes. We very soon will have the opportunity for people to become founder members. If you just want to give us some money from the start and say, look, here you are. I'm now a supporter for life. I've given you a chunk of money and you are able to do that in your life and you want to support this wider work, there will be the very soon, as in within a week, there will be the opportunity for you to do that. And you're basically in on the ground floor, you are supporting this. I will carve your name in a tree somewhere or something like that.
George Browne: I thought you were going to say into your newly metal, in your new metal leg.
Richard Prideaux: Actually, laser etching, get laser etching into the plate. There's room for 25 names. It's 2 grand a piece. But there will be a structure. So if people want to pledge support, and we've already, from the launch of this, three episodes into the SideCountry podcast, this is #4. The emails we've had saying, this is brilliant, This is what the countryside needs. This is what we really need. I love the middle of the road approach. I love the apolitical approach. It's exactly what I need. I won't say who it is, but there's a guy who's a teacher who is also a trustee of a rivers trust and they work in the conservation sector there as well. And they go fishing and they also, you know, dog walks, countryside. It's always been in their life. But he was asking whether this could be a resource he could use with school. is there something here that we could use with the kids at school as a sort of reliable resource of here's how he can talk about the countryside to them in a way he knows what to expect. And the fact that we're going to be a non-profit just really feeds into that. So There's a lot of opportunity there for support at every level, whether it's just can you make suggestions all the way through to can you help us out with quite a large chunk of money that will go towards a lot of good. If you go to the website, if you go to, I probably should mention the website at some point, sidecountry.co.uk, there's a newsletter sign up thing on there. If you just sign up for the main newsletter, you're going to hear all about this straight away. But you can get in touch. You can get in touch via the things in the show notes, a little episode description that goes with this episode. Get in contact with myself or George, if you know who we are. I think we should probably also mention who's involved here as well, shouldn't we?
George Browne: Probably, yes. So obviously there's you and me.
Richard Prideaux: Right.
George Browne: We're iniscapable. I am George Brown. I have been working in, I guess we'll call it outdoor media for about 10 years, mainly in the fishing and shooting sector. I grew up on a farm, so have deep roots there. I'm the grandson of of two farmers, the son of a farmer, the brother of a farmer. So farming is very much in the blood. I even worked in farming for a bit. You weren't very good at it. Well, yes, it turned out that I was not very good at it. My dad had warned me off it. He'd said, I'm very flattered that you'd like to be a farmer, but don't. And I ignored that and it turned out he was right. So, that's me. I'm A fisherman. I go shooting. I enjoy walking and skiing and just generally cocking about outside. I particularly like, as we've discussed on Countryslide before, a big fan of cooking over open flame, all that sort of stuff. Yeah. You're a bit more professional than me at all of this stuff.
Richard Prideaux: Sort of, although I do enjoy setting fire to meet in a variety of locations. I've done everything I can to avoid having a real job. I think when I first met you, I was still in the midst of being a professional forager, which is a stupid job to have. But for some reason, I ended up being sort of sorcerer of wild ingredients for skincare brands and gin companies and all sorts. But.
George Browne: Which is why you look so youthful.
Richard Prideaux: As one of the people who owns one of those companies said when we had Tatler magazine come around, he says, okay, this is Richard. He's our forager. As you can see, he is not a skin care model.
George Browne: They should have just said that you're 75.
Richard Prideaux: Exactly that. Yeah. It's just pre-aged. No, it's being outside all the time. And that's I left school and decided I didn't want to go to university. So I went to go and become a mountain leader instead and worked in the mountains here in the UK and overseas. Got into being an expedition medic, which is sort of a fancy name for first aider who shouts at middle-aged people in various corners of the world. Did stuff with adventure races and things like that. Had a parallel career doing stuff in mountain rescue and then training police, military, search and rescue people. But the side, that's all sort of work. And then the SideCountry stuff is all the things I really, really like doing, like cooking outdoors, messing around with chainsaws, and not always to the best of my health, as we found out.
George Browne: Earlier this year, safely messing around with chainsaws these days.
Richard Prideaux: Well, the chainsaw set use was completely fine. It was standing in the wrong place that did me. All those kind of things. I've got sort of a very broad experience. So I'm a mile wide and an inch deep on a lot of these topics, but I want to dive deep further into some of them. Somebody pointed out to me that what my job has actually become now is I explain things. I explain things at a very broad level to a very broad audience so that they have a better understanding of it, which I think actually is I quite like that. I might start rebranding myself as an explainer.
George Browne: Professional explainer. It's very good. You're a sort of human explainer video.
Richard Prideaux: But you and I will both be directors of this social enterprise, which doesn't mean we get, you know, 1,000,000 pounds straight away. It just means we have to manage it for free.
George Browne: Yes. So who else is involved then? Behind the scenes, we have producer Amy, who is listening to us prattle on right now.
Richard Prideaux: Amy Green is her full name. Although people just call her producer Amy, apparently she's producer Amy in lots of people's phones.
George Browne: But Amy is going to be allowed in front of the microphone as well.
Richard Prideaux: Yes, I will let her speak, which as she's my partner, I probably should do anyway. I can go over to her bio on the SideCountry website where all of our creators and all the people involved have their own bios. Amy Green is a North Wales-based, I'll start again. You'll hear a lot about these shows. Amy Green is a North Wales-based countryside professional, practical conservationist and podcast host. Her career across the countryside sector has been varied with roles as a ranger, biodiversity officer and conservation advisor, assisting land managers with habitat creation and ecological restoration alongside overseas travel to volunteer on species conservation projects in Australia and Sumatra. And then in early 2020, she said, I'm going to go and work with Richard full time in his businesses because all these outdoor businesses, it's going to be a great life. About 3 weeks later, COVID hit and all of that was grenaded and we had to sort of work out what we were going to be instead. And now Amy's been working alongside me doing the media stuff. I was podcast production sort of crept into that through various other projects and this is where we are. So Amy has been the producer of the Countryslide podcast for the last couple of years and is very good at whipping us into shape for what you should do and say and editing out the bits where we're going to get in trouble.
George Browne: She says get on with it more politely than anyone I've ever come across. Okay, so then the wider network then?
Richard Prideaux: Should go through the list. So if you go again, if you go to sidecountry.co.uk and go to our people, you'll see all these names on there.
George Browne: Yes, I think that's the best way to do it. Yeah.
Richard Prideaux: Well.
George Browne: Because we still need to talk about the content. So we've talked about the three shows we already have. You've just mentioned the website. There's going to be a whole bunch of stuff on there.
Richard Prideaux: So we've got the shows. We've got the three podcasts, SideCountry, which is this show, but it's on the other feeds at the moment. We've got Countryslide, we have Fish and Game, and we've got some other shows coming out soon. There are articles on there. I think there's about 50 articles on there. Some of these go back in time a few years because when we set up the project, a few people we know and love said, oh, can I move my article from this place over to SideCountry? And we said yes. it covers such a breadth of topics. So looking through here, we've got, well, a bit of how you see what's culture and class in the countryside, managing fields with sheep, the plight of the snipe, why Wales is, actually much bigger than you think, even though everyone thinks it's tiny, peat burning, grouse, saltwater flats, fly fishing. There's such a range of stuff on there. There's hours and hours and hours of articles on there. The aim is to keep those coming, several per week, engaging articles that cover a really wide set of topics, everything to do with the countryside. I think you're going to write something for there.
George Browne: Yeah, I think I probably will. Yes.
Richard Prideaux: Find time, you know.
George Browne: Yeah, I'll definitely be writing some stuff on there. And we're going to have, you know, gear stuff on there. I think gear reviews is quite the right phrase, but maybe gear guides or something along those lines.
Richard Prideaux: I think a bit of both, yeah. We sort of do, you know, here's this thing, this is why it's good, or this is the bit that fell off whilst we were using it, and then some other sort of generic Okay, here's a weird one. Lacing your boots. There are all these different ways you can lace boots so that it relieves pressure on your instep or makes it grip a little bit better or means that you don't, the laces don't slip constantly. And there's just, there's an article just in, okay, here's 10 different ways to lace your boots for 10 different purposes.
George Browne: Yes, teaching people how to tie their shoelaces is perfect. Yeah, exactly. And that is the level of granularity that we're going to go to.
Richard Prideaux: And there's videos as well. We're going to do films. One of the series that we've sort of worked out already is basically yourself and me and Amy working out how to do things. I think building a smoker is one of yours, isn't it?
George Browne: Oh yes, this is, I mean, people who've been consuming content that I'm involved in for a while will know that I have this delight in the kind of bodgery that takes place in the countryside a lot of the time. And I want to build a properly Heath Robinson smoker out of sort of cold smoker out of sort of found items, you know, a bit of an old Hoover and, you know, that kind of a filing cabinet from which the lead paint has been carefully removed.
Richard Prideaux: May or may not be food safe.
George Browne: Yeah, exactly. So we, so there's gonna be all that sort of stuff that, you know, the content on the website is going to be really varied. but hopefully quite easy to navigate. Future shows.
Richard Prideaux: Yes.
George Browne: I mean, the list is endless. So perhaps we should just pick out the ones that we think are imminent and then the ones that we're most excited about for, you know, to get going once those ones are off the ground.
Richard Prideaux: I think so. there's something called Wild Food People, which up until very recently, as in the next few days, was where Amy and I ran foraging courses and worked with all sorts of brands doing wild food things. That's all moving to the other social enterprise that we run. So we've sort of got this brand astray and we ran the Wild Food People podcast alongside that. And the last episode I think we did was last year. So it's quite a while ago, which was with John Miller, the author. So we're bringing that back and bringing it over to the SideCountry network. So that's going to be every bit of wild food, foraging, everything to do with cooking game, but also expanding that out to any kind of food that is related to the wild or conservation. So farming from calf at foot, regen grazing dairy and beef herds and stuff like that.
George Browne: Yes, I think I said to you the other day that the title is beautifully ambiguous because it could either be the food or the people that are wild.
Richard Prideaux: Yes.
George Browne: Yeah. So there's going to be really varied, as we've already established, I'm really excited about that one. There's going to be lots of fun things to do there. What else is coming down the pipes soon?
Richard Prideaux: Forestry. So we have some very talented foresters and communicators in our wider network of people. And we want to have a, well, we need a forestry podcast because It's such a misunderstood thing, but also if you expand that out into every bit, everything to do with wood, sort of field to fork or fork, stalk to fork, that thing of taking the raw ingredient all the way to the finished product. You can do that with wood as well, because you've got how far to manage, how harvesting works, all of those things, all the way through to what do you do with that weird shaped oak tree? Oh, you can actually make it into one of the ribs for the Sutton Hoo ship replica that they're building or something like that.
George Browne: Yes. Or as it might be in my case, probably a three-legged stool, which I think is the most basic piece of furniture you can make.
Richard Prideaux: Yes. Part of the reason these are all so disjointed and I'm saying, well, there's this coming and this coming is because we've got to work out how quickly we can get them done because we are so excited about all of them. We've got so much support already for them. But I know there's one that you're particularly excited about.
George Browne: There is, I mean, there's loads that I'm really excited about, but the one I think you're referring to is a show that we're calling How the Countryside Works, which it sort of, it's a bit of a Ron Seal title, isn't it? But to go a bit into a bit more detail, even if you are really, really au fait with, you know, your part of the world, you will probably not, let's say you're an arable farmer in the south of England, like my family is. I know sort of very vaguely how dairy farming works, but I don't know the nuts and bolts of it really, but I know I'm interested in it. Equally, I sort of vaguely know how rivers are managed, but not that well. And I think that there's a real opportunity to kind of explore some of the niches within the countryside. and find out from the people who do the doing what it is that they do and how that all feeds into the rest of the countryside or what lessons can be taken from that particular aspect and ported across to other bits of it. So it would just be a really interesting opportunity to meet people who do things that I have a vague familiarity with. and go from vague to, slightly less vague.
Richard Prideaux: As we established in other shows, that you have a real knack for drive-by farming and drive-by agronomy, where you sort of drive past a field and say, oh, yes, that's ready to go, or, you know, they've done that incorrectly or something, but you do it at 60 miles an hour on an a road. This is, that's your entry point into this topic, that is. You've driven past it and you think, I think I know what's happening there, but what's actually happening?
George Browne: Yeah, I think I know what a mountain leader does. it sort of makes sense, but I'd like to know some of the detail. And I think that, I think the great beauty of that is it's infinitely recursive. You know, we can start off with top level stuff and then get deeper.
Richard Prideaux: I do dairy farming and then it's every type of dairy farming and then all the way down to cheese and all the different types of cheeses.
George Browne: Exactly. How is dairy farming for cheese different from dairy farming for the milk that you get in the supermarket? Is artisan cheese made from a different kind of milk to the milk that you buy in the supermarket? Is dairy farming in Scotland different to dairy farming in Cornwall? all of these questions. I mean, I'm sure the answer to all of those things is yes, but how and why is what I'm driving at. Yeah.
Richard Prideaux: And then another show that's coming up, which with great irony, it's two blokes talking about, is the Land Girls podcast, which Amy is going to be hosting, which is, there are several female focused field sports podcasts and things like that already, but this is something slightly different. This is talking to conservationists, ecologists, people who manage landscapes, foresters, people who work on the land rather than necessarily commentate on it or promote it or work in those other fields. These are actual practitioners working on the ground and it's It's entirely women focused, but it's going into very broad topics. How do you get into this work? What challenges have you faced? What opportunities have you had? If you were going to advise somebody coming into this world now as a woman, what would you advise them? Those are the sort of things I've seen coming up and I've seen in the stuff that Amy's putting together. So that's what I'm really excited about because that's sort of a generic, I know how to use a chainsaw in the woods, but I don't know what it's like to be a woman working in the woods. I've tried wearing a skirt doing it and people just look at me funny. I think it's the beard.
George Browne: Yeah, the beard will do it. I imagine that's probably not recommended PPE for chainsawing.
Richard Prideaux: Can you get can you get a Kevlar kilt? That's one to go for, but that's an it's another show which is a complete it's a sector that's I couldn't do anything about. And that's another thing with this is it's not just going to be you and I talking to people on every single thing. We are going to have, as we delve further and further into these niches, more people coming into the network, more hosts, more creators who bring their experience and their knowledge to the network.
George Browne: Yeah. And the things I'm really excited about apart from the ones we've already discussed is, I'm really interested to get into some of the other outdoor recreation topics. I mean, we've already mentioned, sort of hiking and mountain climbing, but I'm a very poor indoor boulderer. I've never, which is a sort of climbing. I'm really interested in that sort of wider climbing world. mountain biking I used to be super keen on when I was a kid and I've sort of dropped away from that. all this sort of stuff, expeditions, all that kind of stuff I think is going to be really interesting to get into. And I know that there's super cool people in those worlds who I'm excited to bring into the wider network and start building this community of creators and listeners And then I guess the thing that probably is the most exciting of all is the prospect of us all gathering in a field somewhere and setting fire to bits of meat and rigging up harnesses and generally sharing knowledge and experience and jokes.
Richard Prideaux: I think maybe we should work on the pitch document for that event, maybe to broaden the description a little bit to make it sound a little less horrifying or less niche than it is. And The thing I'm really excited about is, which I've seen already through the support we've had and the people willing to pledge their support for this mad idea. is just that network of people that I'm going to meet more people who work and do these things, people I wouldn't be exposed to normally, I wouldn't get to see because they're not in my echo chamber, they're not in my little, my group of friends that do the same things and think the same way. I'm really looking forward to finding people I think completely the opposite to, but finding out why, you know, finding out why they think that thing can actually would I change my mind once I've heard what they say or how they see the world? And I say go and have a look at the people that have appeared or decided to, write for us or do things for us, including the, this is all built on the idea that came about with Countryside, which was coming up two years ago where I convinced Callum and Richard that what we really needed to do was take our real life chats where we're just talking crap, like we're in a pub. And often those conversations did happen in a pub and take them into the wider world, which is the role that Countryside will keep performing as we move forward. It will be effectively the morale section. So it will be the jokes, it will be the banter, it will be, this is the thing, the moment you start talking about comedy in any serious fashion, it sounds like the most boring thing on earth.
George Browne: Yes, and I've made an editorial decision, by the way, just now, which is that the word banter is never going to be mentioned again. Cheeky. So my grandfather was a tremendous man in many ways, and he had lots of sayings, one of which was, only dirty people wash. which I always enjoyed. And then he'd say, and only boring people get bored, which I have then always turned around and thought, interested people are always interesting themselves.
Richard Prideaux: Right.
George Browne: And so that's what, that's what I've learned through being part of the countryside WhatsApp community is that all of those people are interested in the countryside. And they are all fascinating in their own right. And so it's just going to be that but bigger. That's what's going to be so fun.
Richard Prideaux: It is. And those, you know, those of you who have experienced that Countryslide community and the madness of that show and what will continue with that show. That's the energy I want to bring to this, but in lots of different ways. Some of them which are sort of very LinkedIn-friendly, some of them are just very niche talking about a certain topic and we're going to cover that in lots of different ways as is appropriate. So I think What we'll move on to now is just if you've listened to this and you think, this sounds marvellous, what can I do? Well, at the moment, you can go to sidecountry.co.uk and it's at the top and it's at the bottom as well. Sign up for the newsletter. That's where you'll hear the next things. There is a SideCountry Instagram account, there's a SideCountry Facebook page. You'll get things there. If you're listening to this as a podcast, which basically you are, go and If you go to whichever podcast platform you're on, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, wherever it is, if it will let you leave a review on my platform and Apple and Spotify do, leave us a review. That really, really helps. Get the show recommended to other people on the platform. So you've got that and then share it with other people you think might like this and say, this is coming. I think you'll like this thing. Go and listen to the other shows. If you have any interest in fishing or shooting as in game as in driven game, deer stalking, any kind of fish or game activity, go and listen to that show. If you haven't listened to Countryslide yet, go and listen to that one. I think we'll put a couple of links to some really... representative episodes in the show notes for this. Have a look at what's on the website there with the articles and things like that. But there's also a contact page if you have any ideas. If you think, oh, I might be able to help with this. I've got some ideas for this. Can I get involved? Then go on to that or go to hello at sidecountry.co.uk. e-mail us there. We answer every e-mail. We'll answer every comment. Anything you can do to help us with this mad project. please get in touch. even if you think, it's just a tiny trivial thing, get in touch, see if you can help us, because you probably can.
George Browne: That was brilliant. I mean, what a speech. I'm not going to add anything. Brilliant. I'm so excited about the whole thing. Please help us get there.
Richard Prideaux: Yes, because this is a project. This is a mission. This is going to take years and years, but it's going to be great fun as we go. So.
George Browne: Actually, I told a lie. And there's one thing that I'm going to add, which is if you think there is a show that we should do, a topic that we should do, let us know.
Richard Prideaux: Yes. I mean, if you're the only person in Britain who enjoys doing that thing, then it might not be viable. But if you think this is an unrepresented sector and it's not something we're covering, then it just happens in the British countryside. Get in touch. Say, I think you need a show on this. even if it's just an article or a resource to go on the resource page or a news item or something like that, feed us content. We will do what we can to make it work on the other side.
George Browne: Brilliant. I think that's it. I think we've done almost exactly an hour because we're extremely professional podcasters and it's been tremendous fun. I can't wait for all of this to start taking an even more obvious shape. Keep an eye out for the shows landing on the other feeds over the next little while. I know there's some very cool stuff coming up on the Fish and Game Show if you're into that kind of thing. And even if you're not, you should probably listen anyway, just so you can get a feel for what it's all about.
Richard Prideaux: Thank you for listening. Thank you for putting up with us and well, just thank you and we'll see you on the next episode, the next show or just the next thing that we do. Bye.
George Browne: Bye.
Richard Prideaux: So before we do anything else, I need to explain that this episode is going out on all of the feeds for every SideCountry podcast all at the same time. So if you're a fish and game listener, if you're a countryslide listener, you'll be getting this you might get it two or three times depending on how many of those shows you're subscribed to, but it just seemed like the easiest way to broadcast this to everyone. So I'm getting that out of the way right now in case some of you are horrendously confused. I live my life being horrendously confused, but it sort of works out for the best, really.
George Browne: I'm deeply distrustful of anyone who's not confused most of the time, I have to say. It implies a level of confidence that I think probably indicates a lack of intelligence.
Richard Prideaux: Sort of, if you're that confident, you obviously aren't aware of everything that's going on.
George Browne: Yes, exactly that. Which sort of explains this episode a bit, really, doesn't it?
Richard Prideaux: It does because, I mean, the sort of this episode exists a little bit because of feedback that we've had and a little bit because we've had it in, I've certainly had it in the back of my mind thinking we should really explain what the hell this SideCountry thing is. But I think the best way to do that is for you to explain what the sourdough pipeline is.
George Browne: Okay, so regular listeners to Countryslide will know that Richard had a horrible accident. earlier this year and that meant that he had nothing much to do other than phone me and we talked for hours and hours and hours about the countryside. the outdoor lifestyle and so on. And I started talking to Richard a lot about something I call the sourdough pipeline, which stems from one of those sort of a regular internet me, video type thing that basically says, if your wife has started baking sourdough, congratulations, you're a farmer now. And it's sort of the implication is that sourdough is the gateway drug to all sorts of other kind of self-sufficiency related stuff. And I was explaining to Richard, I think it goes beyond that, an interest in baking sourdough might eventually lead to you, climbing Kilimanjaro or something like that. And that All of these things that we do outside, we tend to think of in sort of a compartmentalized way. it's farming here and, as it might be, deer stalking there. And they're only really related because they happen in the same place or in similar places. But really, I think that they are all linked. Partly due to a sort of, I don't know, it's not quite a philosophy, is it? But it's We care about them for the same reasons.
Richard Prideaux: Yeah, I think it's an agency. So you can go and buy bread, you can go and buy sourdough bread, but you can also make it at home with more effort, but that more effort also normally comes with the first five loaves being pretty terrible until you sort of work out your ratios and get timings right. But once you've got it dialled in, you can make sourdough bread pretty reliably time after time, can't you?
George Browne: Yes, but it brings with it a degree of pride. I think the bread, while possibly objectively not as good as the sourdough you could buy at the supermarket, or maybe it isn't, I don't know. But because it has been created by your own hand. You take a sort of a degree of pride in it and it somehow tastes better. And it's, to use the mountain climbing example again, climbing mountains is objectively pointless. Making your own sourdough is objectively pointless when you could just go to the shop and do it and it would be much and buy it and it'd be much easier. We still do them. And I think that's where the link is.
Richard Prideaux: You have a stake within doing it. So the fact that you're doing it yourself changes your perception of that thing. So you're not just consuming content, you're not just going to a shop to buy something. You're not just doing things because an external thing says you have to, or this is the only way you're allowed to do it. You're sort of on a self-discovery journey.
George Browne: I think that, yes, the journey is a really interesting one and it sort of doesn't matter where on the journey you begin. It's a bit like that novel that you can pick up and open at any page and then when you get to the end, go back to the beginning and the story is the same. I forget the name of the novel now, but it's that sort of, you can start anywhere on the journey. So you might be an extremely experienced wild camper, but we reckon that you could also be interested in keeping chickens because it sort of all comes back to itself.
Richard Prideaux: Could it be more like one of those books that we probably both had as kids, which sort of choose your own adventure?
George Browne: Yes. Would have been a good name for this, really.
Richard Prideaux: If you want to stab the goblin, go to page 47.
George Browne: Exactly, yes. Yeah. And if you want to suffer the trauma of all of your chickens being eaten by a fox, go to page 52.
Richard Prideaux: So that's, so the sourdough pipeline then, that's sort of the The genesis for this, but it's a way of bringing all these things together because I have this real problem in life where to me, several completely different things all make sense to me as being the same thing. So I constantly having to explain to people why being able to do your own welding on the chassis on the car relates to being able to help out if there's an accident on the roadside or something like that.
George Browne: Yes.
Richard Prideaux: To me, that's all the same thing, but not to other people. It's a bit opaque.
George Browne: Yes, but the problem is, Richard, is we once again have not done a brilliant job of explaining what the SideCountry Network is.
Richard Prideaux: So let's go to that. So you on your podcast player now, if you look at the screen and under whatever title of whichever show you're listening to, it will say SideCountry Network. So that's effectively a publisher. So if you say listen to Countryslide, the rapidly popular rural podcast that we produce and I host alongside Richard Negus and Callum McInerney Riley and was produced by Amy. The publisher for that was effectively me because as a publisher, and I don't want to give anyone ideas here, but as a publisher, you take the sort of liability for what you publish to a degree. So We were the publisher for that. We still are the publisher for that. But what we've done is taken that publishing role and expand it out into this much wider project, which is several podcast titles and articles and videos and a resource section on the website and other as yet to be unveiled project, which is why it's a network of things. Is that a better explanation?
George Browne: Yes, I think it is. that yes, the idea that this is a network of podcasts is the main thing. And with an accompanying website that will also feature additional content that is complementary to the podcasts. And I think the network, people often talk about networks in terms of media groupings. I think of the of this as very much a network in the sense that this is the central show to which everything else is related or possibly the other way around. So if you're into one of those other things and we'll come on to some of the other shows that we plan to have in the near future, you should be able to enjoy this show as well. There'll be niches that are related to one another as well. It'll look, if you were to visualise it, would either look like that meme with all the red string or a spider's web.
Richard Prideaux: Yes, I was going to say spider's web, if you want to torture the listener with yet another thing to visualise. SideCountry, the podcast is in the middle of the spider's web, but out on each one of the strands you have sourdough and baking out over there and gardening is over there and how to sharpen A chainsaw is over there and how to navigate whilst hill walking is over there. And it's, to me, everything on that spider web is related to each other because it kind of all happens in the British landscape and the British countryside to 1 degree or another.
George Browne: And has this link of the satisfaction of doing it for oneself.
Richard Prideaux: So should we talk about the shows then? We've got, if SideCountry is Netflix, it is the network. What are the shows that are on Netflix?
George Browne: Yeah, I mean, just another way for people might be familiar with MeatEater and that's another way of thinking about it, right? Where they have the central show and then they have a bunch of other shows that are sort of vaguely related that sort of go deeper into some of the more specialist areas of things, don't they? So Yeah, we've got the shows that people are already familiar with that you mentioned at the top. So that's Fish and Game, which is all about fishing and shooting and stalking and protein acquisition in the countryside and all that sort of stuff.
Richard Prideaux: That's A t-shirt, isn't it? I acquire protein. Aggressive protein acquisition.
George Browne: Yeah, exactly. Fish and Game, Countryslide, and this show. But there are plans for future shows as well.
Richard Prideaux: Yes, very soon, like within weeks, really. These are just the three, or Countryslide already existed and there's over 100 episodes there for you to listen to right now if you don't know about Countryslide. Fish and Game launched round about the Glorious Twelfth or just after for sort of that mark of the start of the shooting season, I suppose, in the calendar. That was one of the reasons for choosing that date. And then SideCountry launched at about the same time because we recorded the second episode at the Game Fair. So it was about right to deliver that because the second episode is all about managing uplands and the problems and the risks and the challenges associated with that and including wildfire. So it's very topical. We're accidentally relevant.
George Browne: I think that's going to happen A lot. I think we're going to be accidentally relevant A lot. I get another good t-shirt actually. What we haven't touched on, Richard, is why. We've talked about the sort of theory and we've talked about the, you know, the structure. But why?
Richard Prideaux: Yeah, why this? Why not just do other podcasts and have them and just have them all doing things on their own. There's this thing that you taught me about, which is the network effect, which is you sort of people cross-pollinate from one audience group to another. So if you're interested in more than one thing, you might want to consume content. These are horrible phrases to talk about how, just doing things you like, but you listen to content, you read things, you watch videos about stuff that you like doing or that you'd like having in your life. You might have two or three different things. So if you like dog walk, going, taking the dog for a walk, you may also like fishing. Or if you like cooking at home, you may also like deer stalking or something like that. There's the opportunity to get both of those things or more than one of those things from one place. So that's sort of the network effect. And you can find out because all the shows mention each other. about what else is happening on the network. So there's an article that's on there. There's a resource that's just gone there. There's a news item that's just gone on to the website or went on there a few weeks ago. You can go through the network and say, oh, there's this and there's this and there's this, rather than having to go to 10 different places, which is what happens, that's just how the internet works.
George Browne: Yes. But I mean, there's lots of reasons for starting a podcast or starting a podcast network. So, if you're Gary Lineker, it's so that you can become unbelievably wealthy, even more so than you were before. Or it might be just because you absolutely love the topic and feel that everybody needs to hear your opinions on it. This that neither of those things is strictly true. with SideCountry. We'll come on to the filthy rich bit in a minute. But there is a bit of a mission.
Richard Prideaux: There is. And that's what we're working through now. I think there's a place in rural media, so whether that's podcasts, videos, articles, whatever, to have a sort of middle ground that bridges over these disparate worlds because everything else tends to talk to just one world. You just talk to the hill walkers and hikers, you just talk to the mountain bikers, you just talk to the farmers, just talk to the forestry people, whatever it is. But all of those things, whether it's work or an activity or just a life event, they all take place all pretty much in the same brown and green and blue bits. of the British countryside. So bridging the gaps between those disparate worlds is part of the mission of this, but also to create content that's sort of, well, it's not polarizing. It's just saying things, you know, this thing is without, this thing is good, this thing is bad.
George Browne: Well, this is the interesting thing, isn't it? Because, you know, if you take, say, canoeists and anglers, you know, they are often set up in opposition to one another. competing interests or whatever. But ultimately, they're just people who like rivers and they just like enjoying them in slightly different ways. And I've always felt that, maybe it's because I'm A millennial and I remember a time before everything was culture war. I sort of think, Does it have to be like that? Can we not all just agree that we like rivers and then see where the conversation goes from there? Yeah.
Richard Prideaux: I think, well, that millennial thing is important because we are the last generation that remembered a time before the internet and then the internet was everywhere and then social media took over and when social media took over the discourse and everything became about social media, even work and news and politics and everything was driven by social media. The way social media works is it pushes you into silos. It pushes you into a place where everyone around you and all the stuff you see is either there to reinforce your beliefs or show you an enemy, show you someone who's the enemy to whatever you love. Because positive and negative interactions both work to keep you on the social media platform. So you are stuck in this echo chamber where everyone around you, say if you're into driven game shooting and that's your thing, then everything you see, if you go onto Facebook or Instagram or places like that about driven game shooting, the communities, not the businesses, but the communities tend to be all about everything we do is fine. There's never a problem. We can't do any wrong. Meanwhile, anyone who thinks anything slightly negative about what we do are uninformed towny idiots.
George Browne: Yeah.
Richard Prideaux: And you could then take that and put it onto fishing, mountain biking, hill walking, rewilding, forestry, and any community.
George Browne: Yes. The bridge building or, you know, the lack of burning them down perhaps is a better way of putting it, is sort of central to this whole idea. You know, I think it's about connecting people to the landscapes that we love spending time in and it sort of doesn't matter what it is you like doing in them.
Richard Prideaux: Yeah, I think there's an element of interpreting those landscapes as well by the people who work in them are often very good at interpreting them in a neutral way. Whereas a third party isn't always the best person to talk about how that forest is managed. because they would put a value judgment on it. I'd rather go and talk to the forester who manages it and say, okay, what do you do here? Not which of the best bits do you think, which are the good bits? Why are you only growing Sitka or something like that? Just what do you do here? How does that thing work?
George Browne: Yes, and actually I think, you know, this is maybe it's we're getting on to some of the some of the shows that are a bit further down the line, but we had a long conversation, didn't we, about the the ability to read a landscape or a stretch of water and understand not only the sort of ecological processes that have shaped it, but also the human processes that have shaped it. To be able to say, yes, that wood is there because it's a forestry plantation or it was planted as a fox covered in the 1700s or, you know, that riffly bit of water there is like that because below the surface X, Y and Z is going on and that's probably where the trout are. That sort of understanding of landscape is something that for some people it feels almost sort of instinctive, doesn't it?
Richard Prideaux: Does and I think sometimes when I look at how places I know and places I feel like I've got a good understanding of or at least a better understanding of than I used to. When I see those places being discussed in sort of neutral media or for some reason your little world ends up becoming ends up on the news, I often the thing that gets to me when I see people make comments about it is, well, you don't really understand that. But then I have to think, okay, well, who showed it to you? Did anyone make an effort to show it to you? Did anyone make an effort to take you there and show you these things? I think if you grow up in the countryside it's sometimes easier to connect to these places because it sort of becomes part of the language. A couple of years ago you wrote an article for Scribehound on field names.
George Browne: Yes.
Richard Prideaux: Which from memory that was sort of the field names end up being a story either of the people who worked there or the bit that happened next to it or an event that happened there or something that's lost to the mists of time, but now it's the name for that place.
George Browne: Yes, there is always, there's sort of, I can't remember what the phrase was I used, but there's sort of micro names, micro locations, you know, every salmon pool has a name. and it has a name because something of note happened there. But only, a very, maybe 100 people know the name at all and even fewer know what the original meaning of the name was. I think that's fascinating that you can go, that there are these kind of little pockets of information that are sort of hidden from most of us.
Richard Prideaux: Yeah. I've witnessed I used to be an outdoor instructor. I used to, that was pretty much my full-time job. And I remember 10, 15 years ago, we were leading a group somewhere in the Peak District and there was another mountain leader there with me. And she, I heard her describe to the group grouse shooting in a way that I did not recognise in any way, shape or form. She was talking about how the grouse are reared in pens. down in the valley and then they are released on the morning of the shoot for rich people to shoot. And every element of this was wrong but it was sort of a half misunderstood thing from 7 different worlds all at the same time and none of those were quite accurate. But she was quite firm in her belief that was what happened. And to anyone she spoke to, that is what happened. And.
George Browne: But the people in the grouse shooting world will have a similarly misguided view of what it is to be a mountain leader and what mountain leaders do and how those people interact with the landscape. Oh, well, they're all crapping up the mountain, the filthy cagool wearers or whatever it is. And that will be equally as incorrect.
Richard Prideaux: And these are all vocational occupations, working in the outdoors. I suppose if you're a gamekeeper or if you're a mountain leader or if you're a forester or if you're someone like that. If you're working in that place and that is your profession, you have a training scheme that takes you there. None of those training schemes cover the opposite side of the coin. None of the mountain leader awards or the training for it says, okay, you also have to show that you spent a week rebuilding footpaths. in the mountains or doing conservation work in areas where too many people access it and it creates a difficult habitat for ground nesting birds or something like that. But that would give you a very good idea of what the other side of that world is. And likewise, gamekeepers could spend a week working in tourist areas or something like that. You know, this is a very poorly thought out manifesto, but it does kind of show that if you come at something from one direction, you often only see things from that direction.
George Browne: Yes. Yeah, that very kind of blinkered perspective and never, this isn't really the, as we discussed before with the silos, it's not really anybody's fault. It just sort of happens. I think What do you want to talk about first? Do you want to talk about the filthy rich bit or should we talk about some of the shows that we and that we envisage being part of the network?
Richard Prideaux: I think now you've said filthy rich everyone wants to hear about that because it's sort of it well it that actually leads on quite well from this thing of you know it's not anyone else's fault because the business model of media sort of it rewards putting people in silos, because that is a defined user group that you can sell things to, which means that that's basically what happens again and again and again. If you go down to, I was about to say go down to WHSmith, but it's not WHSmith anymore, is it? It's changed.
George Browne: It has a new name, which is very similar.
Richard Prideaux: You don't sort of get newsagents. So go to the big Sainsbury's or the big Tesco where they've got lots of magazines and go and look at all the hobbyist magazines. And you'll just see this huge range of hobbies that you have no idea existed. But for some reason, there's a user base there that will support a couple of magazines and have adverts and supply an audience with what they want week after week or month after month. There are several models for how you do a media business and how you fund it. And because I'm not very good at making money, we have decided that we're going to do the one that means we cannot make a profit. So we're going to set this up as a non-profit organization. So I think we're going for a community interest company, a CIC. which you hadn't really sort of heard of these until I mentioned them, or you hadn't sort of looked into it.
George Browne: Well, I was only aware of them because I knew that you have a CIC that happens in the real world rather than... Yeah, exactly. So I was aware that they exist. And I think, quite a lot of market gardens are set up as CICs as well and that kind of thing. But yeah, I think it's a really good model because It kind of takes away any suggestion that the message is in any way funded by Group X or Group Y or that we're a mouthpiece for something.
Richard Prideaux: Yeah.
George Browne: Which I think is important.
Richard Prideaux: It does. I mean, we are, we have to be transparent about it to a degree. Okay, another way to think about this is it's a limited company, just like most small and medium companies in the UK, except The directors are more like trustees of a charity. They do not own any of the assets. They do not get dividends. They do not get payouts just for being a director. You are creating this entity, this thing, which owns all of the assets of that company. So if we went out to buy microphones, cameras, stuff like that for all that, stuff is owned. by the company, not by the directors. Likewise, any surplus from trading after costs has to be reinvested back into the projects and you can't just go and buy a yacht or something like that.
George Browne: Yeah. And I think that sort of feeds into the sort of slightly vague mission that we stated earlier as well, right? But because we're going to be a CIC, we sort of have to have this There has to be a community interest, right? We have to be serving a community in some way.
Richard Prideaux: Yes.
George Browne: Can you explain a bit more about that?
Richard Prideaux: Well, yeah, you have to have articles of association that are listed and publicly viewable that this community interest company is set up for the express purpose of doing this. The community it serves is this. That community doesn't have to be a geographical location. It doesn't have to be, one village or something like that, although that's how a lot of organisations choose to work. It can be the community. So our community is anyone who loves the British countryside or might love the British countryside or wants to love the British countryside. So it's a pretty broad community. But the focus of that is through creating media that helps tell that story and educate people and allow people to discover it. for themselves. There are rules that you can't do, like you can't do political lobbying. You can't be a religious organization. And there's a few other rules that you cannot do, but there is sort of the equivalent of Companies House or the Charity Commission for community interest companies that there's a register that you are bound by and very strict things that you're allowed to do in law, which are all listed on these articles of association. So that's why I was a bit fuzzy about sort of what the mission statement is, because I have to actually think quite carefully what we put down, because once that's down, we are bound by that. We are stuck. Actually, stuck isn't the right word. It's actually, that is now the guidance for the organization moving forward. And everything we do, editorial policy, who we speak to for advertising, who we work with, the content we put out, all of that is legally bound into this structure, which I quite like because it means that I can stand there hand on heart and say, we can do this, we can do this, but we'll never do this.
George Browne: Yeah, I think it's a great structure. And, I've worked in media in various guises for probably a decade, yeah, at least a decade now. And it's sort of, the problem always comes down to money and you end up having to do things that you don't feel quite right in order to, for whatever the purpose of the publication or the platform or whatever it is, you always end up going, well, that's not quite what I want this to be, but this seems to be where the money is. So I guess we have to do it. And Ten quid is 10 quid. Yeah, exactly. Because we'll have that buffer of being able to say, well, actually we can't do that. It gives a certain sort of clarity.
Richard Prideaux: Yeah, and there are, you have to run this thing as a business. This sort of model of company is relatively new within the business world, but a lot of people adopted it, particularly sort of here in Wales and I know a lot of organisations in Scotland adopted it for similar reasons because of the grant funding structure in Wales and Scotland is sort of very heavily biased towards community interest companies, charities, social enterprises and so on. But what a lot of places do is actually they just rely effectively on grants and other handouts, which is a very, very inelegant term for something, but basically means it's not trading income. Whereas this will be a trading company that has to cover its own costs, has to have a way of, have a business plan, have a way of developing out over three years, five years, 10 years, and we know what we're doing. So The income sources will be a mixture of what we have already for Countryside and will just be. taking that model and making it broader, which is the Patreon platform, which is a way we can have supporters and people can sign up to pledge support for the show for a small amount per month or per week or whatever we set it to. And in return, they get additional content and things like that. And we can add different levels to that. The problem with platforms like that is they take a hefty chunk in fees. They're 20%, 25% or something like that. So it's a significant chunk of that income. And there's weird things that you get charged extra if you pay for it via the Apple Store, but rather than just a Patreon website, I think it charges you an extra dollar a month or something. So you've got those things there. We want to look at advertisers because there are brands that we like, that we genuinely like, because actually, when we speak to them, because you and I have both worked in this sort of, well, you're very much in the media world and I'm sort of in the periphery for other reasons. These brands that have a similar guidance, they have to make money as a brand, as a business, but also they give surplus or they give part of their profits to the GWCT or the Gamekeepers Welfare Trust or something like that. You know, they want to do good with their business. and we want to work with businesses like that want to help support the wider work that we're doing. So that's another income stream. There's t-shirts, I mean, anyone at the Game Fair probably was wondering why people were wandering around wearing a Hello Cows t-shirt, but that's all the fault of Countryslide, which became sort of the best seller of the Countryslide t-shirts, but we will have t-shirts for sale, we'll have merchandise, but all of the income from those worlds will go back into supporting this social enterprise because not everything will make money. Not every show, not everything we want to do is rabidly commercially successful. Some of the things just need to happen because we think that community is underserved or that community is underrepresented in the rest of what we do. So that's kind of how we're going to reinvest the profits back in is by making more things with that money. We could do a yachting podcast, couldn't we?
George Browne: That would definitely fit.
Richard Prideaux: I don't want, yeah, let's I don't want to paint myself out of that court. I want to leave the room to have the company yacht at some point, but the company will own it, not us.
George Browne: Is there a private jet podcast in here somewhere? skiing chalet podcast. I don't know. I'm just a bit boring here.
Richard Prideaux: The caviar and cigars podcast might sound quite good.
George Browne: Yes. And I think this is probably the bit where you do your pitch for founder members, isn't it?
Richard Prideaux: Yes. We very soon will have the opportunity for people to become founder members. If you just want to give us some money from the start and say, look, here you are. I'm now a supporter for life. I've given you a chunk of money and you are able to do that in your life and you want to support this wider work, there will be the very soon, as in within a week, there will be the opportunity for you to do that. And you're basically in on the ground floor, you are supporting this. I will carve your name in a tree somewhere or something like that.
George Browne: I thought you were going to say into your newly metal, in your new metal leg.
Richard Prideaux: Actually, laser etching, get laser etching into the plate. There's room for 25 names. It's 2 grand a piece. But there will be a structure. So if people want to pledge support, and we've already, from the launch of this, three episodes into the SideCountry podcast, this is #4. The emails we've had saying, this is brilliant, This is what the countryside needs. This is what we really need. I love the middle of the road approach. I love the apolitical approach. It's exactly what I need. I won't say who it is, but there's a guy who's a teacher who is also a trustee of a rivers trust and they work in the conservation sector there as well. And they go fishing and they also, you know, dog walks, countryside. It's always been in their life. But he was asking whether this could be a resource he could use with school. is there something here that we could use with the kids at school as a sort of reliable resource of here's how he can talk about the countryside to them in a way he knows what to expect. And the fact that we're going to be a non-profit just really feeds into that. So There's a lot of opportunity there for support at every level, whether it's just can you make suggestions all the way through to can you help us out with quite a large chunk of money that will go towards a lot of good. If you go to the website, if you go to, I probably should mention the website at some point, sidecountry.co.uk, there's a newsletter sign up thing on there. If you just sign up for the main newsletter, you're going to hear all about this straight away. But you can get in touch. You can get in touch via the things in the show notes, a little episode description that goes with this episode. Get in contact with myself or George, if you know who we are. I think we should probably also mention who's involved here as well, shouldn't we?
George Browne: Probably, yes. So obviously there's you and me.
Richard Prideaux: Right.
George Browne: We're iniscapable. I am George Brown. I have been working in, I guess we'll call it outdoor media for about 10 years, mainly in the fishing and shooting sector. I grew up on a farm, so have deep roots there. I'm the grandson of of two farmers, the son of a farmer, the brother of a farmer. So farming is very much in the blood. I even worked in farming for a bit. You weren't very good at it. Well, yes, it turned out that I was not very good at it. My dad had warned me off it. He'd said, I'm very flattered that you'd like to be a farmer, but don't. And I ignored that and it turned out he was right. So, that's me. I'm A fisherman. I go shooting. I enjoy walking and skiing and just generally cocking about outside. I particularly like, as we've discussed on Countryslide before, a big fan of cooking over open flame, all that sort of stuff. Yeah. You're a bit more professional than me at all of this stuff.
Richard Prideaux: Sort of, although I do enjoy setting fire to meet in a variety of locations. I've done everything I can to avoid having a real job. I think when I first met you, I was still in the midst of being a professional forager, which is a stupid job to have. But for some reason, I ended up being sort of sorcerer of wild ingredients for skincare brands and gin companies and all sorts. But.
George Browne: Which is why you look so youthful.
Richard Prideaux: As one of the people who owns one of those companies said when we had Tatler magazine come around, he says, okay, this is Richard. He's our forager. As you can see, he is not a skin care model.
George Browne: They should have just said that you're 75.
Richard Prideaux: Exactly that. Yeah. It's just pre-aged. No, it's being outside all the time. And that's I left school and decided I didn't want to go to university. So I went to go and become a mountain leader instead and worked in the mountains here in the UK and overseas. Got into being an expedition medic, which is sort of a fancy name for first aider who shouts at middle-aged people in various corners of the world. Did stuff with adventure races and things like that. Had a parallel career doing stuff in mountain rescue and then training police, military, search and rescue people. But the side, that's all sort of work. And then the SideCountry stuff is all the things I really, really like doing, like cooking outdoors, messing around with chainsaws, and not always to the best of my health, as we found out.
George Browne: Earlier this year, safely messing around with chainsaws these days.
Richard Prideaux: Well, the chainsaw set use was completely fine. It was standing in the wrong place that did me. All those kind of things. I've got sort of a very broad experience. So I'm a mile wide and an inch deep on a lot of these topics, but I want to dive deep further into some of them. Somebody pointed out to me that what my job has actually become now is I explain things. I explain things at a very broad level to a very broad audience so that they have a better understanding of it, which I think actually is I quite like that. I might start rebranding myself as an explainer.
George Browne: Professional explainer. It's very good. You're a sort of human explainer video.
Richard Prideaux: But you and I will both be directors of this social enterprise, which doesn't mean we get, you know, 1,000,000 pounds straight away. It just means we have to manage it for free.
George Browne: Yes. So who else is involved then? Behind the scenes, we have producer Amy, who is listening to us prattle on right now.
Richard Prideaux: Amy Green is her full name. Although people just call her producer Amy, apparently she's producer Amy in lots of people's phones.
George Browne: But Amy is going to be allowed in front of the microphone as well.
Richard Prideaux: Yes, I will let her speak, which as she's my partner, I probably should do anyway. I can go over to her bio on the SideCountry website where all of our creators and all the people involved have their own bios. Amy Green is a North Wales-based, I'll start again. You'll hear a lot about these shows. Amy Green is a North Wales-based countryside professional, practical conservationist and podcast host. Her career across the countryside sector has been varied with roles as a ranger, biodiversity officer and conservation advisor, assisting land managers with habitat creation and ecological restoration alongside overseas travel to volunteer on species conservation projects in Australia and Sumatra. And then in early 2020, she said, I'm going to go and work with Richard full time in his businesses because all these outdoor businesses, it's going to be a great life. About 3 weeks later, COVID hit and all of that was grenaded and we had to sort of work out what we were going to be instead. And now Amy's been working alongside me doing the media stuff. I was podcast production sort of crept into that through various other projects and this is where we are. So Amy has been the producer of the Countryslide podcast for the last couple of years and is very good at whipping us into shape for what you should do and say and editing out the bits where we're going to get in trouble.
George Browne: She says get on with it more politely than anyone I've ever come across. Okay, so then the wider network then?
Richard Prideaux: Should go through the list. So if you go again, if you go to sidecountry.co.uk and go to our people, you'll see all these names on there.
George Browne: Yes, I think that's the best way to do it. Yeah.
Richard Prideaux: Well.
George Browne: Because we still need to talk about the content. So we've talked about the three shows we already have. You've just mentioned the website. There's going to be a whole bunch of stuff on there.
Richard Prideaux: So we've got the shows. We've got the three podcasts, SideCountry, which is this show, but it's on the other feeds at the moment. We've got Countryslide, we have Fish and Game, and we've got some other shows coming out soon. There are articles on there. I think there's about 50 articles on there. Some of these go back in time a few years because when we set up the project, a few people we know and love said, oh, can I move my article from this place over to SideCountry? And we said yes. it covers such a breadth of topics. So looking through here, we've got, well, a bit of how you see what's culture and class in the countryside, managing fields with sheep, the plight of the snipe, why Wales is, actually much bigger than you think, even though everyone thinks it's tiny, peat burning, grouse, saltwater flats, fly fishing. There's such a range of stuff on there. There's hours and hours and hours of articles on there. The aim is to keep those coming, several per week, engaging articles that cover a really wide set of topics, everything to do with the countryside. I think you're going to write something for there.
George Browne: Yeah, I think I probably will. Yes.
Richard Prideaux: Find time, you know.
George Browne: Yeah, I'll definitely be writing some stuff on there. And we're going to have, you know, gear stuff on there. I think gear reviews is quite the right phrase, but maybe gear guides or something along those lines.
Richard Prideaux: I think a bit of both, yeah. We sort of do, you know, here's this thing, this is why it's good, or this is the bit that fell off whilst we were using it, and then some other sort of generic Okay, here's a weird one. Lacing your boots. There are all these different ways you can lace boots so that it relieves pressure on your instep or makes it grip a little bit better or means that you don't, the laces don't slip constantly. And there's just, there's an article just in, okay, here's 10 different ways to lace your boots for 10 different purposes.
George Browne: Yes, teaching people how to tie their shoelaces is perfect. Yeah, exactly. And that is the level of granularity that we're going to go to.
Richard Prideaux: And there's videos as well. We're going to do films. One of the series that we've sort of worked out already is basically yourself and me and Amy working out how to do things. I think building a smoker is one of yours, isn't it?
George Browne: Oh yes, this is, I mean, people who've been consuming content that I'm involved in for a while will know that I have this delight in the kind of bodgery that takes place in the countryside a lot of the time. And I want to build a properly Heath Robinson smoker out of sort of cold smoker out of sort of found items, you know, a bit of an old Hoover and, you know, that kind of a filing cabinet from which the lead paint has been carefully removed.
Richard Prideaux: May or may not be food safe.
George Browne: Yeah, exactly. So we, so there's gonna be all that sort of stuff that, you know, the content on the website is going to be really varied. but hopefully quite easy to navigate. Future shows.
Richard Prideaux: Yes.
George Browne: I mean, the list is endless. So perhaps we should just pick out the ones that we think are imminent and then the ones that we're most excited about for, you know, to get going once those ones are off the ground.
Richard Prideaux: I think so. there's something called Wild Food People, which up until very recently, as in the next few days, was where Amy and I ran foraging courses and worked with all sorts of brands doing wild food things. That's all moving to the other social enterprise that we run. So we've sort of got this brand astray and we ran the Wild Food People podcast alongside that. And the last episode I think we did was last year. So it's quite a while ago, which was with John Miller, the author. So we're bringing that back and bringing it over to the SideCountry network. So that's going to be every bit of wild food, foraging, everything to do with cooking game, but also expanding that out to any kind of food that is related to the wild or conservation. So farming from calf at foot, regen grazing dairy and beef herds and stuff like that.
George Browne: Yes, I think I said to you the other day that the title is beautifully ambiguous because it could either be the food or the people that are wild.
Richard Prideaux: Yes.
George Browne: Yeah. So there's going to be really varied, as we've already established, I'm really excited about that one. There's going to be lots of fun things to do there. What else is coming down the pipes soon?
Richard Prideaux: Forestry. So we have some very talented foresters and communicators in our wider network of people. And we want to have a, well, we need a forestry podcast because It's such a misunderstood thing, but also if you expand that out into every bit, everything to do with wood, sort of field to fork or fork, stalk to fork, that thing of taking the raw ingredient all the way to the finished product. You can do that with wood as well, because you've got how far to manage, how harvesting works, all of those things, all the way through to what do you do with that weird shaped oak tree? Oh, you can actually make it into one of the ribs for the Sutton Hoo ship replica that they're building or something like that.
George Browne: Yes. Or as it might be in my case, probably a three-legged stool, which I think is the most basic piece of furniture you can make.
Richard Prideaux: Yes. Part of the reason these are all so disjointed and I'm saying, well, there's this coming and this coming is because we've got to work out how quickly we can get them done because we are so excited about all of them. We've got so much support already for them. But I know there's one that you're particularly excited about.
George Browne: There is, I mean, there's loads that I'm really excited about, but the one I think you're referring to is a show that we're calling How the Countryside Works, which it sort of, it's a bit of a Ron Seal title, isn't it? But to go a bit into a bit more detail, even if you are really, really au fait with, you know, your part of the world, you will probably not, let's say you're an arable farmer in the south of England, like my family is. I know sort of very vaguely how dairy farming works, but I don't know the nuts and bolts of it really, but I know I'm interested in it. Equally, I sort of vaguely know how rivers are managed, but not that well. And I think that there's a real opportunity to kind of explore some of the niches within the countryside. and find out from the people who do the doing what it is that they do and how that all feeds into the rest of the countryside or what lessons can be taken from that particular aspect and ported across to other bits of it. So it would just be a really interesting opportunity to meet people who do things that I have a vague familiarity with. and go from vague to, slightly less vague.
Richard Prideaux: As we established in other shows, that you have a real knack for drive-by farming and drive-by agronomy, where you sort of drive past a field and say, oh, yes, that's ready to go, or, you know, they've done that incorrectly or something, but you do it at 60 miles an hour on an a road. This is, that's your entry point into this topic, that is. You've driven past it and you think, I think I know what's happening there, but what's actually happening?
George Browne: Yeah, I think I know what a mountain leader does. it sort of makes sense, but I'd like to know some of the detail. And I think that, I think the great beauty of that is it's infinitely recursive. You know, we can start off with top level stuff and then get deeper.
Richard Prideaux: I do dairy farming and then it's every type of dairy farming and then all the way down to cheese and all the different types of cheeses.
George Browne: Exactly. How is dairy farming for cheese different from dairy farming for the milk that you get in the supermarket? Is artisan cheese made from a different kind of milk to the milk that you buy in the supermarket? Is dairy farming in Scotland different to dairy farming in Cornwall? all of these questions. I mean, I'm sure the answer to all of those things is yes, but how and why is what I'm driving at. Yeah.
Richard Prideaux: And then another show that's coming up, which with great irony, it's two blokes talking about, is the Land Girls podcast, which Amy is going to be hosting, which is, there are several female focused field sports podcasts and things like that already, but this is something slightly different. This is talking to conservationists, ecologists, people who manage landscapes, foresters, people who work on the land rather than necessarily commentate on it or promote it or work in those other fields. These are actual practitioners working on the ground and it's It's entirely women focused, but it's going into very broad topics. How do you get into this work? What challenges have you faced? What opportunities have you had? If you were going to advise somebody coming into this world now as a woman, what would you advise them? Those are the sort of things I've seen coming up and I've seen in the stuff that Amy's putting together. So that's what I'm really excited about because that's sort of a generic, I know how to use a chainsaw in the woods, but I don't know what it's like to be a woman working in the woods. I've tried wearing a skirt doing it and people just look at me funny. I think it's the beard.
George Browne: Yeah, the beard will do it. I imagine that's probably not recommended PPE for chainsawing.
Richard Prideaux: Can you get can you get a Kevlar kilt? That's one to go for, but that's an it's another show which is a complete it's a sector that's I couldn't do anything about. And that's another thing with this is it's not just going to be you and I talking to people on every single thing. We are going to have, as we delve further and further into these niches, more people coming into the network, more hosts, more creators who bring their experience and their knowledge to the network.
George Browne: Yeah. And the things I'm really excited about apart from the ones we've already discussed is, I'm really interested to get into some of the other outdoor recreation topics. I mean, we've already mentioned, sort of hiking and mountain climbing, but I'm a very poor indoor boulderer. I've never, which is a sort of climbing. I'm really interested in that sort of wider climbing world. mountain biking I used to be super keen on when I was a kid and I've sort of dropped away from that. all this sort of stuff, expeditions, all that kind of stuff I think is going to be really interesting to get into. And I know that there's super cool people in those worlds who I'm excited to bring into the wider network and start building this community of creators and listeners And then I guess the thing that probably is the most exciting of all is the prospect of us all gathering in a field somewhere and setting fire to bits of meat and rigging up harnesses and generally sharing knowledge and experience and jokes.
Richard Prideaux: I think maybe we should work on the pitch document for that event, maybe to broaden the description a little bit to make it sound a little less horrifying or less niche than it is. And The thing I'm really excited about is, which I've seen already through the support we've had and the people willing to pledge their support for this mad idea. is just that network of people that I'm going to meet more people who work and do these things, people I wouldn't be exposed to normally, I wouldn't get to see because they're not in my echo chamber, they're not in my little, my group of friends that do the same things and think the same way. I'm really looking forward to finding people I think completely the opposite to, but finding out why, you know, finding out why they think that thing can actually would I change my mind once I've heard what they say or how they see the world? And I say go and have a look at the people that have appeared or decided to, write for us or do things for us, including the, this is all built on the idea that came about with Countryside, which was coming up two years ago where I convinced Callum and Richard that what we really needed to do was take our real life chats where we're just talking crap, like we're in a pub. And often those conversations did happen in a pub and take them into the wider world, which is the role that Countryside will keep performing as we move forward. It will be effectively the morale section. So it will be the jokes, it will be the banter, it will be, this is the thing, the moment you start talking about comedy in any serious fashion, it sounds like the most boring thing on earth.
George Browne: Yes, and I've made an editorial decision, by the way, just now, which is that the word banter is never going to be mentioned again. Cheeky. So my grandfather was a tremendous man in many ways, and he had lots of sayings, one of which was, only dirty people wash. which I always enjoyed. And then he'd say, and only boring people get bored, which I have then always turned around and thought, interested people are always interesting themselves.
Richard Prideaux: Right.
George Browne: And so that's what, that's what I've learned through being part of the countryside WhatsApp community is that all of those people are interested in the countryside. And they are all fascinating in their own right. And so it's just going to be that but bigger. That's what's going to be so fun.
Richard Prideaux: It is. And those, you know, those of you who have experienced that Countryslide community and the madness of that show and what will continue with that show. That's the energy I want to bring to this, but in lots of different ways. Some of them which are sort of very LinkedIn-friendly, some of them are just very niche talking about a certain topic and we're going to cover that in lots of different ways as is appropriate. So I think What we'll move on to now is just if you've listened to this and you think, this sounds marvellous, what can I do? Well, at the moment, you can go to sidecountry.co.uk and it's at the top and it's at the bottom as well. Sign up for the newsletter. That's where you'll hear the next things. There is a SideCountry Instagram account, there's a SideCountry Facebook page. You'll get things there. If you're listening to this as a podcast, which basically you are, go and If you go to whichever podcast platform you're on, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, wherever it is, if it will let you leave a review on my platform and Apple and Spotify do, leave us a review. That really, really helps. Get the show recommended to other people on the platform. So you've got that and then share it with other people you think might like this and say, this is coming. I think you'll like this thing. Go and listen to the other shows. If you have any interest in fishing or shooting as in game as in driven game, deer stalking, any kind of fish or game activity, go and listen to that show. If you haven't listened to Countryslide yet, go and listen to that one. I think we'll put a couple of links to some really... representative episodes in the show notes for this. Have a look at what's on the website there with the articles and things like that. But there's also a contact page if you have any ideas. If you think, oh, I might be able to help with this. I've got some ideas for this. Can I get involved? Then go on to that or go to hello at sidecountry.co.uk. e-mail us there. We answer every e-mail. We'll answer every comment. Anything you can do to help us with this mad project. please get in touch. even if you think, it's just a tiny trivial thing, get in touch, see if you can help us, because you probably can.
George Browne: That was brilliant. I mean, what a speech. I'm not going to add anything. Brilliant. I'm so excited about the whole thing. Please help us get there.
Richard Prideaux: Yes, because this is a project. This is a mission. This is going to take years and years, but it's going to be great fun as we go. So.
George Browne: Actually, I told a lie. And there's one thing that I'm going to add, which is if you think there is a show that we should do, a topic that we should do, let us know.
Richard Prideaux: Yes. I mean, if you're the only person in Britain who enjoys doing that thing, then it might not be viable. But if you think this is an unrepresented sector and it's not something we're covering, then it just happens in the British countryside. Get in touch. Say, I think you need a show on this. even if it's just an article or a resource to go on the resource page or a news item or something like that, feed us content. We will do what we can to make it work on the other side.
George Browne: Brilliant. I think that's it. I think we've done almost exactly an hour because we're extremely professional podcasters and it's been tremendous fun. I can't wait for all of this to start taking an even more obvious shape. Keep an eye out for the shows landing on the other feeds over the next little while. I know there's some very cool stuff coming up on the Fish and Game Show if you're into that kind of thing. And even if you're not, you should probably listen anyway, just so you can get a feel for what it's all about.
Richard Prideaux: Thank you for listening. Thank you for putting up with us and well, just thank you and we'll see you on the next episode, the next show or just the next thing that we do. Bye.
George Browne: Bye.