Aaron Mahnke has been bringing terrifyingly true horror to the world since 2015 with his critically-acclaimed podcast Lore, each episode delving deep into a true-life scary story, highlighting both the truth of the tale and the embellishments added over time. Two days before Lore would officially break 200,000,000 total listens, I sat down with Mahnke to discuss Hollywood adaptations of true stories he’s covered on Lore, how he avoids burnout while running three podcasts, and how conventions can make podcasting feel less of a lonely endeavor for producers. 

Gavin Gaddis: I listened to the Winchester House episode of Lore this morning. In other interviews you’ve talked about enjoying finding that nugget of truth in the stories for Lore. What are your feelings about media that kind of just throws away that nugget of truth on the story? Much like the Winchester movie. 

Aaron Mahnke: Funny aside to that: There’s been a number of instances where I published an episode of Lore on a topic – the Mothman, Winchester House, La Llorona was the most recent – not knowing there was significance to the moment I released them. I released the Mothman episode on the week of the 50th anniversary of the Mothman events. That Winchester movie came out four days after I released [the Winchester] episode. But I plan these months and months out and then write them weeks, sometimes even months away. It just happened to be when it landed and the La Llorona – I published the episode and people said, “Um, that’s a really weird thing for you to do a tie in with the movie.” And I thought, “What do you, what do you mean?” And they said this La Llorona movie and I went and watched the trailer and I realized, oh my gosh, this came out this week. It just happens sometimes. 

All that said, being somebody who’s had the fortune of taking like an intellectual property, a thing that I created in one medium (audio) and have it adapted for TV; I know things get lost in translation and the Hollywood has a different sensibility than something- well ,than me. At the end of the day I’m my own boss for Lore, right? I’m, I know the metric that I measure what’s going to be the right angle to take or not. And I tend to prefer honesty and storytelling and say, “well, here is Sarah Winchester story.” And I personally feel like there’s a theme in her life, something that resonates through her story. I’m going to do my best to make sure that people notice that when I’m done telling the story. 

Hollywood’s different, they’re going to want to, I’ve never seen the movie, but I’m assuming that there’s some action in it or there’s something huge and dramatic or-

Gavin Gaddis: I read the Wikipedia synopsis last night. Each room in the house is a jail cell for a ghost until the, until the earthquake happens and then it lets them all out. Uh, there’s some significance to having 13 nails to trap a ghost in a room. Someone’s possessed by a ghost, that’s Hollywood.

Aaron Mahnke: That’s Hollywood. And it’s what they do well. I won’t say whether or not it’s right or not, but it’s certainly what they know works for taking a story and making it appealing to the most amount of people. Yeah. And that’s their business.

Gavin Gaddis: How does it feel to be the boss of Lore for over three different mediums? 

Aaron Mahnke: I mean there’s, there’s pressure there for sure. I want to make sure I make my listeners happy constantly, that I put out the best episodes possible. But it’s nice. I am my own creative, you know, chief creative officer. I decide what style of music is going to be a neat show or what songs I’m going to pick-, I mean it’s going to be Chad, but what tracks are they, what mood am I going to try to create? I get to make all those decisions myself. And for Cabinet and for Unobscured it’s the same. I still make those decisions. I’ll have new shows coming out this year that I’m executive producing, but I’m not the person who’s a recording them or writing them and it’s a chance to get some new creators some spotlight. I’m enjoying being the executive producer who still hovers over that and gives the creative direction. 

Gavin Gaddis: In your interview with Sarah Rhea Werner for Forbes you talked about enjoying having full control of the show and you get all the ad revenue instead of having to share it with the network. And that’s why part of why you enjoy staying indie. What was it like first finding out about Patreon? 

Aaron Mahnke: Well, before I answer that: networks aren’t bad. 

Gavin Gaddis: Yeah!

Aaron Mahnke: They off a ton of upshots for a lot of people, right? They can provide a platform that’s a lot higher and broader for new shows, which is great. Networks usually have, you know, a star to that that help bring that focusing on the new show. That’s great. Um, but sharing revenue, which networks earn by doing their own ad sales for you, sharing the revenue means that the finish line- if you’re trying to go from just hobbyist to full time job it’s essentially, it’s a dollar mark. Like what do you need to pay your bills every month? That’s your goalpost. Right. And if you say, now I have to share 25% of my revenue is somebody who, admittedly, is earning that 25%. Your goalposts move farther out. And so now you have to run farther before you can go full time.

So for me, the decision was, and it was less about like, let me keep all the money into myself and it was more about my goalpost not being super far out, but I knew that if I started sharing [revenue] I was going to have to work a lot harder at it. And I was, I was done working full time and, and doing this as a hobby. I was ready to move on and do it full time. 

Gavin Gaddis: Let’s be real, at this point, you work more than a full time job. 

Aaron Mahnke: I really do. Yeah. I really do. And I enjoy it more than I’ve ever enjoyed anything before. Patreon allowed me to do a couple of things early on. It allowed me to set a goal where I said, “Hey folks, if you can pitch in and get me to this mark I can afford to bring on a researcher, which would free me up. Instead of rushing to get these things done, I’m going to have a little more time.” Like you get that backlog of research and I just pick up an outline and I write it and when I’m done, I pick up the next one and I write it. 

Patreon was sort of the first place that I went to and said,” Hey, can you help me build my team?” And we did it. We got to the point where I could bring on a researcher. I did that about, um, I don’t know, maybe a year and a half into the show. Right now I’ve got six researchers who work for me and I give them a topic, you know, once a month or once every other month and they dig into it. It’s great. The other thing that Patreon has done for me is allowed me to build a community to get all of the listeners who want to, you know, comment on a post about an episode and they get discussion going between them and other listeners. They bounce off each other, it’s cool to see a community gathered in one place and I haven’t seen it done as well anywhere else as I do on Patreon.

Gavin Gaddis: I was actually gonna touch on that. How has that affected how you engage with the Lore fan base?

Aaron Mahnke: It’s the one place where I will reply to like a group, you know, a question or something. Where people have said “Hey Aaron, what do you think about this?” It’s the one place where I’ll jump in and comment. Facebook feels a little intimidating to me at like, it’s a little like jumping into the white rapids in Colorado and Twitter is a little bit more one directional. I feel like sometimes you just kind of announce things and you say things and some people will reply, but you know, there’s not a lot of conversation on there. Patreon is a great place where I can do that.

Gavin Gaddis: We’ve touched on how much work you do, how do you avoid burnout?

Aaron Mahnke: You know, one of the things that I learned early on- For eight years before Lore I was a freelance designer, so I was still in charge of my schedule. I was in charge of client projects and stuff. I learned skills that I brought into Lore about project management and time management. One of the things that I learned was you have to build a list of things you need to do and most of them need to have due dates. You know, you have to have an article to get to your editor by a certain time. I put them on a to-do list of some kind. I use an app that syncs between my devices and assign it to that date. But, also, don’t overpack your days, make them manageable days.

You want to get to the end of your day and know that you’ve accomplished them all. Look, I’m a really busy person. I managed three shows, a staff of six researchers, all that stuff. If I get done at four o’clock, I’ll sit down and play video games till five. I earned it. Right? And that’s one of the ways that I avoid burnout. Or I’ll pick up a book and I’ll read, or I’ll throw out a new record on the turntable and I’ll listen to something because if I just fill that extra time with work that I could be doing tomorrow, I’m just going to be tired and exhausted. You have to pace yourself, you really do. And it’s so easy to not do that because we love what we do. I mean, every single person that’s in this conference is either podcasting, hoping to go full time or are they’ve just gone full time, they love what they do.

It’s so easy to just throw yourself into it and forget that you have to take care of yourself too. I’m also aware that there’s seasonal aspects to things like this. This [PodX] is the first trip that I’ve taken since like February, so I’ve had a long downtime of just write, take it easy, write. Knowing that I’ve got 13 cities on a tour this year. I’ve got more conferences and some promotional stuff for things that haven’t come out yet. So you have to look at life as in seasons and say “right now I feel like I need to take it a bit easier.”

Gavin Gaddis: You are speaking at a lot of panels, this convention. What appeals to you about coming to cons as a feature guest? 

Aaron Mahnke: Two things I really love about coming to conventions like this, especially when it’s so focused on the creator and these other people that want to create shows or they want to level up their show. In a sense they’re my coworkers. I mean, I work by myself. I write alone in an office, I go into a booth and I recorded by myself, then I sit down with headphones on and then I edit by myself. I do a lot of solo stuff, so coming out and seeing other people who have frustrations with the same audio program or they’re learning about marketing the same way. There’s something invigorating about that. 

Then there’s the other side of it where I hit publish on audio and it just kinda goes out there. You can see downloads and measure success by that, but to stand in front of somebody who listens to your show and likes it and hear them talk about it. It’s not about, you know, fluffing your ego, but it’s- If you build homes for a living you can step back into the end of the day and see all the sheet rock you hung on the wall. And that’s visually rewarding that you accomplished something. I don’t get that most of the time, but when I come here I do, ‘cause I can talk to people who love the show and I know that I’ve built good stuff.

Gavin Gaddis: If you were to hit shuffle on whatever you use for podcasting, what would be a couple of like, once you’ve listened to frequently?

Aaron Mahnke: So 99% Invisible from Radiotopia with Roman Mars. He’s a good friend and has offered me a lot of advice as I’ve come up in the industry, but a good friend and he makes it damn good show. Um, and Still Untitled the Adam Savage Project

Gavin Gaddis: That was my first podcast! 

Aaron Mahnke: I think it might’ve been one of the first podcasts I’d listened to. I love listening to it. Partly because of the way they handle. It’s just three or four people talking around a table, but when you listen to it you feel like you’re sitting in the fifth seat and your microphone just doesn’t work. You know, like you can’t contribute, but you’re totally right there listening as they talk about stuff. I listened to that on runs and when I have a moment of downtime, it’s really great. They also are very good at labeling episodes that discuss a movie as a spoilercast. They’ll say like “Spoilercast: Avengers Endgame” so that you don’t mistakenly listened to it and ruin the movie. And I love that about them. 

Gavin Gaddis: All right. I just got one last one for you: If you were to get a blank check to produce whatever podcast your heart desires tomorrow, what would it be? 

Aaron Mahnke: I mean, and it’s a cop-out answer, but to some degree Unobscured was that project. I spent four years waiting for chance to tell the Salem witch trials story on Lore, but just knowing instinctively that it wasn’t, there wasn’t enough space in a Lore episode. Lore’s half an hour, you know, and it’s it’s one topic, but Salem… That was a, that was a deep, big event and it needed a lot more space. So when I partnered with iHeart, (then still How Stuff Works) it became clear that there’s an opportunity here. Not necessarily a blank check, but I have partners now who could help me with getting interviews and weaving those into the audio and doing production that matches that kind of style. I feel like I got to do that. I’d love to dip into some other genres at some point. I think audio drama is super compelling. My friend Lauren Shippen is fantastic at creating audio dramas. Paul Bae is another good friend of mine from The Black Tapes podcast. I love the work that they do. I mean, Lore started as a side project. This kind of came out of self published fiction and maybe someday I want to get back into fiction.