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Jemma Gregory stumbled across Denise Warner’s podcast more or less by chance.
It was 2006. Jemma, a student in Brisbane, Australia in her 20s, was looking for a LGBTQ+ listen on her “old school” chunky iPod.
“It was when Apple had just started promoting podcasts on iTunes like, way, way back in the day,” recalls Jemma.
“I just typed in ‘lesbian’ into the search bar to see what came up, and their show was one of the first ones at the top. So I listened – and it was funny and just really relatable.”
Jemma was hooked. When, at the end of the show, Denise and her co-host suggested listeners phone or email them with any questions, she decided to send a message.
Jemma didn’t think the hosts, based thousands of miles away in the US, would pay her email any attention.
But when Denise saw Jemma’s message in her inbox, she was delighted.
In 2006, Denise was in her late 30s and had just started podcasting. She’d started up the project with her best friend, recording the show from her apartment in south Florida.
“We just wanted to share our girls’ night with the world and spotlight LGBT projects,” Denise tells CNN Travel. “That was our goal.”
When Denise imagined her ideal listener, it was probably someone like Jemma – a person keen to listen to frank, funny and incisive discussions, and ready to propose questions and send in feedback.
But so far, most of Denise’s listener interactions had been disappointing, to say the least.
“We would say the phone number and then we would get all these awful call-ins that were men asking really dark or sexual questions, and we were like, ‘No, no, no, this is not what we want. Click, hang up on him,” says Denise, miming hanging up on a phone call. “We just couldn’t get the engagement that we wanted.”
That’s why Jemma’s email was like a light in the darkness.
“She came along, and it just snowballed – that was exactly what we were looking for.”
“I found your podcast,” wrote Jemma in her first message. “I love it. I’m…
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