Segun Akinola is a British-Nigerian composer for film and television. He is most known for his music in the three series of Doctor Who starring the first female Doctor, Jodie Whittaker. A BAFTA Breakthrough Brit 2017, Segun’s other work includes scoring Sundance 2019 favorite and World Soundtrack Award nominee The Last Tree, Apple TV+ feature 9/11: Inside The President’s War Room, and the BBC’s landmark series Black and British: A Forgotten History. His recent projects include Origin: The Story of the Basketball Africa League, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, and the BBC series Kingdom, narrated by Sir David Attenborough.
Segun talks with me about music as storytelling, the importance of determination and how we undervalue asking for help, the power of curiosity to drive learning, creative growth through collaboration, and a lot more.
Episode breakdown:
00:00 Introduction
04:04 Discovering music as a child.
08:37 Transformers film sparked deep interest in movie music.
12:11 Access to YouTube helped him learn about modern composers.
16:39 More composers today due to online resources and courses.
20:19 Networking and persistence led to first professional composing gig.
24:07 Collaboration and peer learning valued as much as formal education.
28:04 Focuses on music as essential part of storytelling.
32:07 Creative growth comes from tackling difficult, unexpected musical challenges.
36:37 Film scores’ emotional impact, balancing craft and artistry.
41:08 Fans and social media now deeply engage with film music.
45:27 Composing for Doctor Who brought excitement and creative freedom.
50:52 Always trying new styles, learning, and refining unique sound.
Show Links: Segun Akinola
Segun’s website
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Transcript: Segun Akinola
Please note: This is an unedited transcript, provided as a courtesy, and reflects the actual conversation as closely as possible. Please forgive any typographical or grammatical errors.
Nancy Norbeck [00:00:06]:
Welcome to Follow Your Curiosity. Ordinary people, extraordinary creativity. Here’s how to get unstuck. I’m your host, creativity coach Nancy Norbeck. Let’s go. Segun Akinola is a British Nigerian composer for film and television. He’s most known for his music in the three series of Doctor Who starring the first female Doctor, Jodie Whittaker. A BAFTA Breakthrough Brit in 2017, Segun’s other work includes scoring Sundance twenty nineteen favorite and world soundtrack award nominee, The Lost Tree, Apple TV+ feature, 9/11, Inside the President’s War Room, and the BBC’s landmark series, Black and British, A Forgotten History. His recent projects include Origin: The Story of the Basketball Africa League, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, and the BBC series Kingdom, narrated by Sir David Attenborough.
Nancy Norbeck [00:01:04]:
Segun talks with me about music as storytelling, the importance of determination, and how we undervalue asking for help, the power of curiosity to drive learning, creative growth through collaboration, and a lot more. Here’s my conversation with Segun Akinola. Segun, welcome to Follow Your Curiosity.
Segun Akinola [00:01:27]:
Thanks for having me. Sorry it’s taken so long, for me to be here, but I’m genuinely very much looking forward to chatting.
Nancy Norbeck [00:01:35]:
Me too. So I start everyone with the same question. Were you a creative kid, or did you discover your creative side later on?
Segun Akinola [00:01:43]:
Do you know what’s fascinating for me about this question is that I have a daughter and well, a daughter and a son now, actually. So I have a baby as well. But I have, a daughter who’s a toddler. And, it’s fascinating to me seeing her response to anything creative, anything at all. And, I mean, she kind of loves all of it, you know, whether it’s art or dancing. The fascinating thing about music because she’s basically always been extremely responsive to music from, I mean, literally from the moment that she was here where other babies were, like, not bothered. She was always always, has always responded to it. And it’s fascinating to me because then I kind of go back to my parents who one day my dad came home with a piano, and it must or the keyboard saw it, and it must have been five years old.
Segun Akinola [00:02:39]:
And I asked them about it, a couple of years ago because I just thought that’s quite random. Like, why did you come home with a keyboard? And they said it’s because I was really responsive musically. And I didn’t know that at all until a couple of years ago. So I think that it’s definitely the case that I I connected with music. I probably connected with art as well because I know that my eldest sister was really artsy, and I always kind of, you know, loved seeing what she was up to. So I think there was always something there, for sure.
Nancy Norbeck [00:03:16]:
Right. That’s great that he noticed and bought that keyboard.
Segun Akinola [00:03:20]:
Yes. Very grateful.
Nancy Norbeck [00:03:21]:
Did you spend a lot of time on it?
Segun Akinola [00:03:24]:
Weirdly, I can’t remember. Well, I actually remember him coming home with it, but I can’t remember what happened next. But, I mean, I guess I didn’t stop. I know that I actually actually I know that, I then started having piano lessons from someone else, like another I mean, he was, you know, he was probably, like, 16 years old, but someone from church who started teaching me piano. And then after a while, I then went on and got to a proper piano teacher. Things just kind of went on from from that point through.
Nancy Norbeck [00:03:58]:
Yeah. So I I think it sounds like it’s safe to say that nobody discouraged you.
Segun Akinola [00:04:04]:
No. Certainly not from not from learning. I mean, my my parents were always very encouraging. For them, you know, they they kinda came over from Nigeria, so it was very much a case of my sisters and I having opportunities that they didn’t necessarily have, and and they they worked hard to kinda make those possible for us. So, yeah, we all played something at some point, but I think I was the one who stuck with it all the time, basically.
Nancy Norbeck [00:04:34]:
And and now you’re writing music for movies. It’s amazing how that happens.
Segun Akinola [00:04:39]:
Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. And and, it’s, it’s it’s one of those things that I think when you’re in it, it doesn’t seem so far fetched because it’s the thing that I’ve been dreaming about since I was, probably 16. At least the specifically, when it comes to, like, music for film TV, that was from that was from 16. So it to me, it’s not that bizarre. It’s like, oh my gosh. What’s this thing? I must find a way to, like, be able to do it.
Segun Akinola [00:05:12]:
And I was just worked really, really, really hard. And it’s more so at this kind of stage where you kind of take a step back and see friends from school or that kind of thing. And they’re like, woah. This is cool. And I’m like, oh, yeah. I guess it is. I’m just kind of I’m in it and enjoying it and and loving the fact that I get to truly love what I what I do. But then in those moments, I realized, oh, yeah.
Segun Akinola [00:05:36]:
It is kind of a bit odd, to have kind of gone down this path.
Nancy Norbeck [00:05:41]:
It’s it’s normal for you because it’s your life. But, yeah, it is something that not very many people get to do, which is also really cool.
Segun Akinola [00:05:51]:
Yeah. Yeah. I definitely I definitely, do my best not to take it for granted. I mean, to be fair, though, I mean, I I really do love what I do. It’s not a case of, I’ve done this for a while, and I’m really grumpy. I’m like, no. I’m really excited to start the day. Obviously, I’m not excited to start every day.
Segun Akinola [00:06:13]:
Sometimes there’s something really boring that I don’t I don’t want to do, obviously. Like, it is still real life, and there are parts of it that are, you know, the the job as it were. But there is also so much of it which is just wait. Hold on. I I get to do this and and do it for a living, and I’m just kinda here having fun. I’m like a kid in a candy shop. And that happens a lot a lot of the time. So, yeah, I really I don’t take it for granted, and I’m I’m very grateful.
Nancy Norbeck [00:06:45]:
Yeah. It’s it’s great to be able to do that even when it’s not what you do for a living. It I think we forget Yeah. How how much we get out of the things that light us up. And, you know, we prioritize all the things that don’t because, obviously, we have to pay our bills and that kind of stuff. But Yeah. But, yeah, to be able to do any of those things in any capacity is such a a treat.
Segun Akinola [00:07:08]:
Yeah. I think if you can do anything and get lost in it, that’s really positive, because it shows that you’re doing something that you love doing in whatever capacity that is, whether that’s, you know, you just you’ve always wanted to learn piano and you’ve never learned piano. You start learning piano and you enjoy doing it. I think that is always really special.
Nancy Norbeck [00:07:32]:
Yeah. So I’m curious since you mentioned that you’ve known since you were 16. Was there a particular thing that happened when you were 16?
Segun Akinola [00:07:43]:
Yes. So by this point, I knew that I wanted to work in music. I was specifically looking at becoming a record producer. So I was, really influenced by Quincy Jones, Arif Mardin, Walter Fonassif, Dave Foster, extremely popular, amazing, and successful arranger producers who could just move around musically, do lots of different things. So I knew that I, at that point, wanted to be a record producer. So I learned, I had been learning for years all I could about recording studios and recording and production and everything. But what happened when I was 16 is that I went to stay my sisters are quite a bit older than me, so although they won’t appreciate me saying that, but but they are. So so they I I kind of had, like, half of another mum between them.
Segun Akinola [00:08:37]:
Mhmm. I went to, stay with them once summer, and they, they’re, like, effectively the equivalent of, like, cable subscription. Something wasn’t working, and I think we had to it was like we could just watch DVDs. And I was like, cool. And for some reason, they had a DVD of Transformers, and I was like, cool. And I watched it and not expecting anything. And it was literally the moment that changed everything for me. And I can’t tell you why because I was aware of music in films before that point for sure.
Segun Akinola [00:09:14]:
We’ve done I’m trying to think about what the equivalent is. So our wind and brass bands are not as cool as your marching bands in The States. But think of, like, a less cool, funky version, and that’s what when the brass bands were like. But we played some music from, I think, The Incredibles and a few other things. So I was aware of music in films. I don’t know what lit the spark specifically with transformers. I I I can’t quite figure it out, but something did. And it just came alive, in an instant, effectively.
Segun Akinola [00:09:51]:
And from that point onwards, I was like, what is this thing? And I basically then spent more of my life on YouTube and Wikipedia. So, like, trying to find out who are these people. They’re living people. What do they do? What is this thing? How does it work? Just I think I benefited from being of an age where YouTube was a thing. It’s not what it is now. It’s quite interesting. Like, I think about YouTube then to now, it’s basically completely different. But you had a lot of, like, behind the scenes featurettes from DVDs that would be put onto YouTube, those kind of things, or someone being interviewed, a composer being interviewed.
Segun Akinola [00:10:36]:
So there’s a lot of content like that. And so I think it was just a great moment to have discovered something that I loved, but also to have the means to find out more about it quite easily as well. So I was able to just find out about people and and listen and watch as many, interviews as I could. So it meant that at least I knew something about it. It wasn’t completely far off and mystical. It was real and tangible.
Nancy Norbeck [00:11:10]:
Yeah. I’m just imagining, you know, I don’t even remember now how old YouTube is. But, you know, if if it had been before then, then you have that isolated sense of people apparently do this, and I wanna I wanna know more, but I don’t even know where to go to find out.
Segun Akinola [00:11:29]:
Yes. Exactly. Exactly. That’s what I think was key for me. And I think that, I think you see this because well, I think of some composers who are more experienced, let’s say, born a few decades earlier, it for them, I feel like you hear more stories where people fell into it. You know, they would do they were musicians some other capacity and they fell into it. Whereas, I think for myself and a lot of the other composers who are around the same kind of age, there was much more intent, whether that’s because there were university degrees by that point. There was YouTube.
Segun Akinola [00:12:11]:
There there there were so many more avenues. And there are even more now because now it’s not even just about a degree. It’s that you can do a course on YouTube or online in on some other platform. But so I think that I definitely felt like there are a lot of people kind of around the same age who have got lots of experience because they knew from a similar age or 12 or 13 or 18 or something that they wanted to do this and they’ve been able to gather the information. And I I think that’s why there are more younger composers who have, you know, had a lot of experience or potentially more than they might have had.
Nancy Norbeck [00:12:48]:
Well, that’s an interesting point too because when you hear the word composer, most of us think of, you know, Mozart or Beethoven or somebody from a couple 100 years ago. We we kind of forget that obviously there are present day people writing the music in the movies that everybody we hear on the radio, no matter what genre they’re writing, is composing what they’re performing or someone is composing it for them. You know? So so there is sort of that that tendency to think that composers are old dead white guys and that, you know, who’s doing that now. And, and yet there are clearly a lot of people who are out there making all sorts of cool music that we may or may not even notice when we’re sitting through a movie or watching TV.
Segun Akinola [00:13:35]:
Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think that’s what’s been exciting about the last few years is the sheer amount of platforms and content and desire for something that is a little bit different and people coming into it from lots of different backgrounds and experiences. And, I think the landscape for writing music for, film and TV specifically is really interesting at this point because there’s always gonna be some sense of mainstream, but there’s a lot more that’s happening towards the edges of that and also outside of that as well. And I think it makes everything richer when that’s the case.
Nancy Norbeck [00:14:19]:
Yeah. And and yet I’m also thinking, you know, I talked to Dominic Glynn last year. And, you know, for him, he when when he decided that he wanted to, like, I think just do incidental music was where he thought he would start with doctor Who, he just sent a letter to John Nathan Turner and ended up getting a response, which I can’t imagine happening today. So it seems to me like, you know, there there is this there’s less gatekeeping, but at the same time, that probably means more competition or maybe maybe my guess is wrong.
Segun Akinola [00:14:59]:
Yeah. I mean, I can’t say that I have any facts and figures, but I would I would assume that is the case because the barriers to, at the very least, information are so low now compared to where they were, say, ten, fifteen years ago, twenty years ago, thirty or forty years ago as well. And it’s not just to to say that that you can go and study at the university. You can study on a course on YouTube or some other online platform. It means that more people want to do it. There is more competition. It means that yeah. Conversely, it means that there are more people who are looking for for people to work with as well.
Segun Akinola [00:15:52]:
So it’s it’s and I think that’s kind of what drew me to the whole, you know, writing music for on TV thing because I loved stories growing up. And in this world, anything goes as long as you find the right music for that project. So if you’ve got something that’s really, really dark, there is some film or show out there that needs that. You just have to find it. And that’s what’s exciting that your creativity isn’t limited by the fact that it has to be a certain way. Of course, there are certain things you have to do. You have to you have to work with the material you’re working with. Right? So you can’t suddenly put something really dark and scary on an animated feature film.
Segun Akinola [00:16:39]:
The kids, it’s like, well, that’s that’s not good. That’s not really gonna work in that scenario. But there’s a film out there that needs that music. And all the all the different shades between everything that you can think of, whether it’s, you know, light and funny or quirky or bizarre, whatever it is, there’s something out there that needs that music. You just have to find it. And I think that’s quite exciting.
Nancy Norbeck [00:17:07]:
Yeah. And and, you know, as as you’re talking, I was just thinking the barrier has been lowered for filmmaking too. So there were more films, undoubtedly, now than there ever have been before. So it probably all kinda comes out in the wash. There’s more composers and there’s more filmmakers and yeah.
Segun Akinola [00:17:24]:
Yeah. Absolutely. Completely completely agree with that. The there’s more of everything. And I think that I think that’s good. It makes it much easier for people to do things. It makes it much easier for people to try things as well. Yeah.
Segun Akinola [00:17:37]:
You might think that you want to do it, and then you get into a situation and you you’re dealing with the reality of working with a director. They don’t like the first thing that you’ve done, and you have to work on something that’s completely different. You might not enjoy that process. Conversely, you might love it and love the collaboration. And so you you figure that out and realize, you know what? I really love this kind of composing, and maybe there’s something else that you didn’t know about that you didn’t love. So it’s it’s definitely very good. And that’s
Nancy Norbeck [00:18:07]:
Yeah. So how did you actually make the move from learning everything that you could get your hands on to having films to work on?
Segun Akinola [00:18:21]:
I always say that my only talent is my determination because I was very, very determined, extremely determined. And that just pushes you into certain situations, whether it’s a case of well, actually, the good example here is that, I had someone who came in to teach composition at my school. I think it was once a week or once every two weeks, something like that. And when I after I’d seen Transformers and I was like, oh my gosh. This thing, and I wanna do this film, TV thing. And he happened to have a friend who was a film and TV composer. But he said, look. This guy is quite elusive, so I don’t know if I’ll be able to get hold of him.
Segun Akinola [00:19:05]:
And I was like, please, just, like, try and make contact. Now the 100%, this is a true story. I didn’t hear anything for a little while, and it was coming up to, I think, the summer, and I was looking to do some work experience during the summer. I hadn’t heard anything. So I and I knew the guy’s name. So I literally just went on to his website, found an email address, and I emailed him directly. And in the end, I, he got back to me, and he was like, look. I really impressed by the fact that you’re, like, you really wanna do this.
Segun Akinola [00:19:38]:
You’re really kind of coming after it. So, why don’t you come see me on this day, and let’s go for a coffee. Days later, I kid you not, an email lands that should have landed days before saying that he wasn’t available and he couldn’t actually do it because he’s really busy. But that it didn’t for whatever reason, I did not receive that email when I was supposed to. So I went and contacted him directly. And, anyway, I then actually went and I saw him, and I did some work experience with him. And, then the following summer, he hired me as his assistant whilst he was working on a TV show. All of this happened before I’d gone and done my undergrad.
Segun Akinola [00:20:19]:
So it was quite an quite an early stage for it to happen. But it meant that I learned a lot Wow. At quite a quite a young age. And the the reason why it links through to me then doing something is because the film that composer was working on, the first summer that I did some work experience with him, was then at the film festival, and he invited me. And I went to that film festival. And being a young inexperienced kid, I I was late. I’d forgotten something for my train ticket or something. So I was late, and my sister was going one of my sisters was going, as well to come see the film.
Segun Akinola [00:20:59]:
And so she got there before me. And because it was a film festival, they had, like, number of films on. They had some networking drinks and things. She got talking to someone. I arrived in time for the film, went to see the film, and then hung up with my sister afterwards. And she’d met some people when she was kind of waiting for me. Turns out she’d met a director and a producer. So then I spoke to the director and the producer.
Segun Akinola [00:21:24]:
And then the director asked me to, like, get in touch with him the next day, and I did. And not thinking any anything would necessarily come come of it, but, you know, around, I don’t know, six to eighteen months later, so I can’t remember, he was working on a, like, leisure TV series and needed some music, and he asked me if I would do it. And then that’s when I had, like, my first proper gig. So it just shows you how, like, something can come from almost nothing, or seriously from unexpected places.
Nancy Norbeck [00:22:01]:
Well, and also, you know, just the power of asking, I I think is so enormous and so undervalued. You know, if you, I, I, I don’t love the expression, you know, if you don’t ask, you don’t get, cause it’s gotta be a line from some old movie or something. It feels like it, but it’s true.
Segun Akinola [00:22:24]:
Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [00:22:24]:
You know, if you assume that, you know, this person that somebody else knows and mentioned to you isn’t gonna wanna talk to you because you’re you’re too fresh, you don’t know anything, whatever, you’re definitely not gonna get to talk to them.
Segun Akinola [00:22:39]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.
Nancy Norbeck [00:22:43]:
I love that you didn’t get that email.
Segun Akinola [00:22:45]:
Yeah. I I mean, that was, yeah. I found I I found that so just such a bizarre moment because, obviously, I’ve as I’ve, mentioned, that was the beginning of a lot of things, you know, because then I got my first gig. And then with all the money that I earned from that, I enrolled on a course, and I got some headshots and got a website design. And then that led to me missing more people and da da da da, you know, so many other things. As well as my experience with this composer who’s been a mentor to me for a number of years, for whom I learned so much ahead of the time at which I needed that information. And it really, really set me up for how I thought about what I’m doing or certain situations just in advance. So I often found that I could lean on what I learned.
Segun Akinola [00:23:38]:
And I learned a lot because when you come into something like this, it’s not like school where you I don’t know. You wanna become a doctor, and you can relatively easily have access to some kind of understanding of what it means to be a doctor, working shifts, and this kind of thing. It’s like there’s nothing. There’s absolutely nothing until you’re there with someone who’s doing it. So, yeah, I I learned a great deal. Great deal.
Nancy Norbeck [00:24:07]:
How was it to go from working with someone like that to you know, you mentioned this was before your undergrad. When when you went to school, like, was it was it kinda weird? Did you already know the stuff that they were trying to teach you in your intro classes, or did it kinda come together in a in a good way?
Segun Akinola [00:24:26]:
It came together in a really good way. My, undergrad was just composition in a classical music school, so it wasn’t focused on film and TV. So it was pretty broad in that sense. But the reason why it kinda came together is because I met two other students who are now well, not now. I mean, they extremely quickly became my best friends. So, so, but I met two other, basically, like, like minded people, who we were the three who were like, we wanna do film and TV stuff. And we basically just immediately we just clicked. It it it was like the first day as well.
Segun Akinola [00:25:11]:
We just clicked. And one of the one of the parts of minor grad that was such a joy was kinda going through it with them because we learned so much from each other. Because one person knew some stuff because they had some experience or knew someone, and someone knew something else. And we just learned so much from each other. I That’s so cool. Always feel that I learned as much from them. I mean, at least as much as what I learned from my own from my actual course, completely. So it helped because that, you know, I had something to offer that I learned from my experience, assisting someone and they’d learned other things, and we just kind of grew in that in that way.
Nancy Norbeck [00:25:54]:
Yeah. I think that shows the the balance. You know? You can learn plenty from regular school sources and books and YouTube videos and whatever, but there’s also so much to be learned from actual experience.
Segun Akinola [00:26:06]:
Yeah. Definitely with something like this because often, one of the difficulties of this line of work is that the people who are completely in the know are the people who are working regularly, which means that they’re too busy to be not all of them. There are absolutely caveats to this. But as a generalization, they’re often too busy to be teaching. Mhmm. And there are people who are successful and are teaching. I don’t have I have no idea how how they do it and how they kind of manage that, but it’s not it’s not what most people are able to do. And that also means that there can be, an information deficit for students because what they’re getting is probably quite close, but not, like, from the horse’s mouth.
Segun Akinola [00:26:58]:
People who are on the ground absolutely doing it day in, day out, which is why being an assistant for another composer is such an important part of most people’s trajectory, because that’s where you really learn what it’s like in the real world, not what you think it’s like or some kind of idealized version of, of what it means to be a composer for film and TV.
Nancy Norbeck [00:27:26]:
Yeah. Yeah. I I know they always say academia is a little bit behind what everybody else is doing in almost any field, so that that makes a lot of sense. I’m curious to know, like what, what your process looks like. You mentioned storytelling through music, which is something that probably is gonna make a lot of people raise an eye eyebrow even though we’ve all been to the movies and, you know, we all know that the movies would be very different if there were no music in it even if we don’t notice it. But I’m I’m curious to know how how that works for you.
Segun Akinola [00:28:04]:
I mean, for me, that’s the bit that I that I’ve always loved. You know? I see myself as a filmmaker. It’s just my, you know, my my creative weapon of choice is not a camera or my ability to act or direct. It’s music. You know, that’s the means through which I am a filmmaker, and that’s all about storytelling. And that’s that’s all I’m doing musically. It’s a character walks through a door and goes and talks to someone. Is that character accompanied by some kind of, like, heavy metal music? That’s gonna tell me one thing about them.
Segun Akinola [00:28:55]:
Is it accompanied by really emotional romantic music? That’s gonna tell me something else. You know, it it’s that’s all the music’s doing. That’s all that I’m doing in the in situation. But it all comes from a love of story. And I think that’s why, for me, I’m always I’m always kind of talking to directors and writers about, like, story and what’s going on. And if I ever get stuck, I try and break it down to what is the story in this moment. If it’s a really long scene and lots of things are happening and it’s kind of sometimes difficult to to really distill it, that’s what I’ll be trying to do. What is happening right now? Maybe it’s not really about what we are seeing.
Segun Akinola [00:29:46]:
It’s about what that character is feeling. So and maybe that, you know, is that maybe that juxtaposes what we’re actually seeing. So I’m I’m kind of honing in on, okay, well, what’s the character’s emotion? It’s, I don’t know, some kind of sadness. So even though we’re seeing something that might look happy, there’s there’s some kind of sadness in music. That’s that’s storytelling. That’s kind of getting you underneath the layers of the character to the heart of what’s really going on. Of course, it’s not always that. Sometimes someone’s being chased, and it is just someone being chased, and that’s it.
Segun Akinola [00:30:21]:
But it’s always for me, it’s all about the storytelling. It’s why my favorite bit of the process is actually just being sat down and writing and figuring out how to tell the story in a particular scene or a particular sequence. And especially if it’s hard, because eventually, I have to crack it. So it means that I will get to the point where it is working through a lot of hard work and lots of trial and error. And and sometimes, honestly, it’s really hard. But I find that usually those those cues where it’s been so difficult are the ones that I end up being most proud of because I’ve found a way, obviously, in a collaborative way with the director or producers to tell the story in the best way possible.
Nancy Norbeck [00:31:10]:
It’s always the hard things that we’re the most proud of, isn’t it?
Segun Akinola [00:31:13]:
Yeah. Yeah. Even when you think something that comes naturally is really great and it’s there and that you you know, so all the things that you kind of hope for, there’s something about the uphill struggle of something that’s difficult but which you have to just keep working at to get. And maybe that’s partly because you end up doing something that’s not what you expect. That’s certainly part of it for me that, sometimes because of the people you’re working with, you get led down paths that you wouldn’t go down yourself. And that’s really fascinating. It pushes you to different areas and you think, oh, I didn’t know that I could do this, or I didn’t know that I could mix these genres together or whatever it might be, or I don’t know how to write for this instrument. I have to learn I have to learn how to do it.
Segun Akinola [00:32:07]:
But that kind of hard work and then seeing the real tangible result is always really enjoyable.
Nancy Norbeck [00:32:16]:
It’s striking me how, you know, if you had decided to be a stand alone composer, your your experience in your music would be so different because you would be doing it just on your own without all of those influences. I’m finding that really, really fascinating.
Segun Akinola [00:32:34]:
Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. I would I mean, I I think I would I could say that my creative life would probably be worse for it if that was all that I did because for me and I do, you know, I do stuff that is, not film and TV, and and it is, like, just my own thing. And that’s always been part of what I wanted to do. But I love the collaboration, and I love the telling of stories, and I love working on something that then people can go and enjoy, You know? Whether it’s something very, like, family friendly. So it becomes the reason why some people sit down together as a family and watch something, whether it’s just something that I know, oh, my sister-in-law really loves this kind of show. And I’ve poured tons of work into this thing, and and it’s nice knowing that, actually, there’s good that someone I know really well is going to enjoy it, and that’s gonna bring them joy.
Segun Akinola [00:33:35]:
I I love that. For me, it I love the fact that other people get to enjoy all of that hard work. And it’s different for different people. Some people, it’s just the pure process of creation. And I also really enjoy that, but I love that then other people get to experience it and enjoy it.
Nancy Norbeck [00:33:52]:
Yeah. And and I know, like, there are film scores that stick with me. Like, one of my favorites is the the score from Sneakers.
Segun Akinola [00:34:06]:
Oh, interesting. Which I
Nancy Norbeck [00:34:07]:
think was James Horner. I have his name right with Branford Marsalis. And it’s just this really, really atmospheric music that fits that movie so well. And, and it’s one that, that comes up sometimes in conversation about favorite scores, if people have seen that movie. And if you haven’t seen that movie, it’s a real treat. You should see it. But, you know, things like that that stand out, not just, you know, everybody knows the James Bond theme.
Segun Akinola [00:34:34]:
Theme. Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [00:34:34]:
You know, it’s not just that. It’s the ones that where you sit there and you just are like, oh, I think I need to go, you know, in in the old days, buy this CD because I wanna hear this again and and really kind of get into it and play it in the car and whatever and and feel it because it did something to
Segun Akinola [00:34:54]:
me. Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [00:34:55]:
You know, I I think that’s how you really know, at least for me as somebody watching, if the score has done its job is that it’s not dominating things, but you still feel something from it, and you notice it just enough to notice that it had that effect.
Segun Akinola [00:35:14]:
Yeah. That I mean, that’s always the the dream scenario because everything in this world is on this, knife’s edge between craft and art and needing to fulfill the craft, the desiring to fulfill the arts of it as well. And sometimes you kinda lean more on what well, I’m not sure that sometimes you need more on one or the other. I think if you lean more one side, it’s always going to end up being craft because you have to get something that fits a particular form and function. But the best work is absolutely both. And for me, that’s definitely what what I’m kind of aiming for is something that can that can fulfill both that kind of, on the one hand, cannot be so noticeable in a negative way as to take people out of the viewing experience, but which can have a powerful effect, which helps with the the whole, you know, the the whole viewing experience for people. I’d know that I’ve had those experiences where I listen to some well, watch something, and I have to go home straight away and start playing it. You know, find the soundtrack, figure it out just by what is this thing.
Segun Akinola [00:36:37]:
And it’s such a has such a powerful effect. And that’s that’s definitely what you what you want and what you aim for in the right kind of, the right kind of projects that you’re working.
Nancy Norbeck [00:36:51]:
Yeah. Yeah. Those those moments and the the recognizable scores. I’m thinking a year or two ago, I found a, I think it was like a fifteen minute suite of the music from North by Northwest.
Segun Akinola [00:37:07]:
Sure.
Nancy Norbeck [00:37:07]:
And I was just so intrigued. I’ve seen that movie so many times. It’s such a great movie. The opening theme gets your attention right away. And I sat down with these headphones on and just you know, like people used to do fifty years ago when you would sit down with your headphones on and the cord next to the stereo so you weren’t going anywhere and just listen to something. And it was amazing to me to have that experience where I wasn’t actually seeing the images, so I could focus on the music. But I also could take pretty good guess as to what was happening in each of those sections from that score because I had seen it so many times. It was so fascinating to do that, to just sit down and pay attention and remember while also noticing more than you do while you’re watching the film.
Segun Akinola [00:37:59]:
Yeah. For sure. I think the, I think it’s wise that the best scores fulfill the craft, but also the art because somehow they have to be great music in and of themselves, but whilst actually fulfilling the purpose of telling the story. And that’s that’s really difficult to do. It’s not straightforward. And I think that’s why sometimes those schools that can have a really powerful effect and we kind of hit you because they’re able to do both. And it’s not it’s not easy to do that. And I know that for me, particularly now, those moments happen more well, they’re more rare, should I say.
Segun Akinola [00:38:42]:
Because when I was younger, it was like, oh my gosh. This is amazing. And and I kind of miss some of those moments of wonder where you don’t know how someone’s done something. Now it’s more like I’m deconstructing at the same time as Yeah. I try not to. And, actually, if it really grabs me, I’m deaf I’m really not. I’m just I’m just taking it in, and I’m not deconstructing. And it can have that effect.
Segun Akinola [00:39:08]:
But it can be really powerful, and it is what’s exciting about, doing this work. But different things hit people in different ways. It’s one of the things that’s fascinating about working, working in music for film TV because even when you’re working on something, you have a director, you have a producing, you have a script, and everyone can have a slightly different feeling to some music and a slightly different response. And so you’re kinda trying to navigate the different responses and the different experiences people have had with music and what effect it has on them. Like, some people who really love jazz, some people who don’t love jazz, and some people who if you put a piano in, it just it means jazz. That’s the and that’s that’s the end of that sentence. It did there’s no kind of rhyme or reason. It’s just if there’s piano, it means jazz, and it’s not a jazz scene.
Segun Akinola [00:40:03]:
So why is there piano? And you’re kind of navigating all of these Yeah. Experiences that people have had musically. So it’s always it’s always really exciting to kind of work on different things and know that, actually, one project is gonna impact one person and another what, you know, will impact someone else. It will have a different effect on different people.
Nancy Norbeck [00:40:28]:
Yeah. And, you know, when you’re talking about trying trying to sit through somebody else’s movie and not deconstruct everything, it occurs to me, I think so many fans now are more attuned to all of the elements that go into any part of the filmmaking, you know, the the lighting, the music, the directing, whatever. And definitely in the last ten, maybe fifteen years, I’ve heard more people talking about, you know, oh, but then they played this character’s theme again and I, you know, I don’t like that theme or they shouldn’t use it so often or, you know, something like that. So, so they’re deconstructing while they’re listening too. Does, does that influence how you put your music together, or do you just kind of isolate yourself from all of that?
Segun Akinola [00:41:18]:
Definitely a case of isolating. I feel like, when it comes to actually making the the film or TV series, it’s really it’s definitely not even not even on the agenda at all. When it comes to soundtrack album, I think it becomes a little bit more of an agenda kind of understanding that there’s probably someone out there who’s gonna notice that this person’s theme was shorter in the film or the TV show than it is in in the album, which could be for various reasons, like they edited parts of the score after the fact. And it it just doesn’t make sense or isn’t straightforward to kind of reconstruct what was done. But the other side of it is that there are people who are going to listen to your work really, really closely. They’re gonna be really attentive to what you do, and they really care about what you do, and they’re passionate about what you do. They’re excited about what you do. And that’s really special, and that’s something to be treasured that people want to listen that closely to the work that you’ve done on something.
Segun Akinola [00:42:24]:
Yeah. Sure. If it’s the next Star Wars film, you can expect that on a large scale. But even on stuff that’s much smaller, there’s usually always someone who’s going to listen really carefully. And, yeah, that’s always, so it’s great to know that there are people who care that much.
Nancy Norbeck [00:42:42]:
Yeah. It’s it’s amazing to me how TV viewing has changed that way so much in the last decade or two. You know? Yeah. The time when no one would have noticed anything.
Segun Akinola [00:42:54]:
Yeah. Yeah. Long long are those long gone are those days, but I think what’s interesting now is with the different ways that shows are released, particularly when it comes to shows, whether it’s kind of chapters on Netflix or it’s weekly on Apple or whatever it might be, that, that affects that affects what people say musically in a sense that if it comes out weekly, everyone’s experiencing it roughly the same time.
Nancy Norbeck [00:43:23]:
Mhmm.
Segun Akinola [00:43:23]:
Whereas if it all comes out at once, people are having different experiences at different times, so you don’t get that moment where, oh, actually, everyone’s watching that last episode, and they’re all kind of going going through this emotional roller coaster. You don’t know when people have had it because they’re all watching it at different times. So what you the feedback that you get from that, can come up at different times. So it’s but then, obviously, also we have social media, so you can get that information quite quickly and easily as well.
Nancy Norbeck [00:43:56]:
Yeah. So social media kind of made it impossible to take your time going through a TV show if you don’t wanna be spoiled or, you know, all all of that too. So it’s it’s interesting how how that whole entertainment scene has evolved that way.
Segun Akinola [00:44:12]:
Yeah. Absolutely.
Nancy Norbeck [00:44:13]:
And I’m I’m curious, you know, obviously, we first spoke at a Doctor Who convention. And so for you coming into a show like that, that has such a huge fan base that does pay attention, sometimes to a degree that I think is probably almost pathological. And I count myself in that occasionally. And what what was it like for you to to come into Doctor Who and, you know, be handed this iconic theme tune to rework and, you know, an iconic TV show to to do the rest of the music for too?
Segun Akinola [00:44:54]:
It was all a whirlwind, really, because I didn’t I didn’t know anything about anything. Like, I I hadn’t been watching the show. I hadn’t grown up watching the show. So I didn’t have any really close association at all. And I didn’t know that Murray wasn’t going to be doing it or anything like that. So it was all just like, oh, okay. This is happening. And, apparently, I’m gonna talk to Chris Chibnall or someone or what you know, this whole process.
Segun Akinola [00:45:27]:
I mean, I knew I knew who Chris was, but just what’s kind of going on? And it was really quick. Between the first phone call and me actually getting the job was really, really quick. There was then much there was a much longer time after that point where there was still filming, and I wasn’t gonna be working for a few months and all that kind of thing. But the other side to it, though, is that I actually studied the radiophonic workshop at school. It’s quite an important, like, chapter or section of, the music course that I did. So I was really aware of the Radiophonic Workshop and the impact. And, actually, one thing I missed is that the very first composer interview that I read when I was this was before I was even into film and TV music was an interview with Murray talking about Doctor Who. So I was really aware of, like, the past of the radio funding workshop, but also the recent past in terms of what Moe was doing and what he’d done and the impact it had and, you know, from the interview, what he was thinking musically.
Segun Akinola [00:46:33]:
So I was very aware of the love for the show. I was very aware of, the significance as well, and that probably probably fed the sheer terror when it came to the theme thinking, what am I gonna do? How am I gonna do this? But one of the great so so to just go into the, process a little bit, what I did is I I’m trying to remember if it was an official thing or not. I don’t think it was official, but I just had a chat with Chris, and I think I already went into it thinking on, well, either thinking that, yeah, I’ll just write something or maybe someone had mentioned something. I’m not sure. But I had a chat with Chris, and I wrote some music after the chat just as, like, here’s an example of the kind of thing I’m thinking. So it was a it was a pitch. One of the things I love about the pitching process is that it’s all or nothing. It’s one of the reasons some people don’t like it because the first idea might not be great, but then the collaboration you know, through collaboration, you might do another idea that’s really great.
Segun Akinola [00:47:42]:
But for me, if you do something that people love that first time, there’s a lot of buy in to your creative ideas and what you’re thinking. And that’s what happened that’s what happened this time around. So had a really good chat, got lots of thoughts and ideas. I went away and wrote something, and it went down extremely well. And I’ve told the story before. What I wrote was, the doctors’ theme, and it did not change one note at all from when the suit series then went out. Oh, no. Thirteen’s theme, I should say, specifically.
Segun Akinola [00:48:14]:
And so for me, it was really a case of I just get to put everything into this. And if they like it, they like it. And if they don’t like it, they don’t like it. And that’s fair enough. Because it was liked, it meant that there’s a degree of, as I say, buying into creative ideas. Like and I know that some okay. Well, they liked this and like what I do. And, you know, over time then, I found out that, you know, they’ve done a lot of research into me.
Segun Akinola [00:48:48]:
They kind of really knew my work. Like like, Chris knew, like, the really obscure things that are not everywhere. So, like, he’d really really done his research. So it was a case of, okay. Well, they they’re confident in me and what I do. And what I need to try and do is block out all the other noise about the show and how big it is and how much people like it and how passionate everyone is. I just need to do what I do, and that’s it. And I remember a really significant moment for me was actually that I then, my my cousin who’s sadly not with us anymore, came around, and he’s always really interested in, like, what I believe I’m doing.
Segun Akinola [00:49:31]:
And so we kind of went through it. I was like, what have you been doing over the last year? Like, playing me some stuff. And I remember that I went through that process with him, and it actually reminded me of what I what I’ve been doing and what everything sounds like. And I after that, I was like, do you know what? I think I know what this needs to be. And I always remember that after that point, I was like, okay. I just need to do what I do and just play around and experiment and find something that works and see where that goes. And I did get a lot of latitude and room from Matt and Chris to just try things. And, you know, they were they were really clear.
Segun Akinola [00:50:05]:
They’re like, don’t be afraid to try anything. But whatever it is, go for it. That’s what we want. That’s what we’re after. Be bold. Don’t be afraid. Keep it fresh. Do what you do.
Segun Akinola [00:50:19]:
Obviously, if they didn’t like it, they would reel me in, but it just ended up feeding into, where Chris was taking the show.
Nancy Norbeck [00:50:27]:
I feel like do what you do is both the easiest and hardest piece of advice to follow, but it’s also so important. I mean, I know every time I’ve tried to, you know, adapt the style of what I do to fit what I think is more appropriate for somebody else or for a a different situation, doesn’t necessarily go as well as if I just do what I do.
Segun Akinola [00:50:52]:
Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [00:50:53]:
You know, it it seems so simple, but it isn’t always.
Segun Akinola [00:50:58]:
Yeah. There’s definitely an element of you have to know what you do, and that, I think, is a process. Certainly, for me, that was a process kind of, like, early early on in my career of just trying lots of things. Anything and everything. I mean, I’ve really I’ve re I really was very determined to improve and try things, and I had an experience where, I think probably the moment it started is I did a horror short really early on, really, really early on, in my undergrad days. And just I realized that, oh, okay. Well, I actually really enjoyed this experience. And that means I need to keep trying new things that I haven’t done before, see what I like and what I don’t like.
Segun Akinola [00:51:45]:
And so it just meant that I would always try things. I would find a clip online, any clip I could find, and I can’t is it the through the Hubble Telescope? There’s there are, like, lots of free clips online, I think. And it would be like a thirty second clip of something happening with a planet, and I would set myself the task of scoring it like a nineties action film.
Nancy Norbeck [00:52:07]:
Oh, cool.
Segun Akinola [00:52:08]:
And so I would go on and be listening to things, and I would, some composers I won’t name them in case they shouldn’t have done it, but some composers put up, like, scores online on their website. And I was like, download, download, download. Thank you very much. I’m gonna study this and figure out what it is you’re doing and how you’re doing it. So then I would try all of those things out and just oh, okay. So this is what a nineties thing is like. Okay. What if I try and do it like a more contemporary naughties action score? Okay.
Segun Akinola [00:52:40]:
What does that mean? What does so then I’d go away and I would you know, lots of critical listening and trying to apply the same thing. Through that, it wasn’t just about it wasn’t about the perfect pastiche piece, but it was about understanding music and analyzing music and trying lots of different things. And within that framework, trying to do something that’s like me you know? Well, trying to do something that’s me, but I didn’t really know what that was. So it’s just trying lots of different things and realizing, oh, okay. Well, I really like themes and how themes can work and but what is a theme? And then, you know, you try looking at schools that are really melodic and then looking at schools that are not, but are still thematic. Maybe it’s because they’ve got maybe it’s their motifs. Maybe it’s a sound. Maybe it’s a, a couple of chords, whatever it might be.
Segun Akinola [00:53:29]:
So just trying these things out, doing short films, then trying these techniques out in reality as well. Just kind of having all these experiences to figure out what it is that I cut what I liked and and I didn’t like. And then in that moment where it’s, you know, do what you do, I have a better idea and understanding of, okay. Well, this is what I do. This is what I like. I think it’s distinctive. That’s always the thing that I’m trying to do. I’m not keen on the word unique because if everything’s unique, then nothing is unique.
Segun Akinola [00:54:04]:
But I think everything is still very distinctive. So I’m always trying to do something that could that has its own sound or like, examples in the case of doctor who, I wanted every series to sound a little bit different. I purposefully tweaked the sound world every series so that you well, if anyone who listens really carefully, they would be able to know this is series 12. This is series 13. This is series 11. You know, I wanted it to be like the the story is moving forward, so the music should move forward as well.
Nancy Norbeck [00:54:38]:
That’s really cool. And I, you know, I I think you you’ve encapsulated, you know, what what what courses are trying to teach you is what all of those people have done before. But when you’re actually sitting down and kind of reverse engineering it, I think you you have, I don’t know how, how better to put this than like you get into it. You kind of burrow into it in a way that is more, is more enlightening than just hearing about it in a class, you know, which is not to disparage. There were really good teachers who can help you with that kind of stuff too. But I think when you are actually sitting there trying to figure out what makes something tick that someone else did, how did they pull off, you know, this effect? How how did they you know, in my MFA, it was like, kind of, how did they write this scene and make this part work? I think you immerse yourself in it in a different way. But the net result is you’ve picked up these things from all of these pieces and all these places, and then you integrate them in that way that is uniquely yours because you bring your own lens to it. And so I I think there’s there’s so much value in that beyond and and above what you can learn in a class, which you should definitely take classes too because they can speed things up.
Nancy Norbeck [00:56:04]:
But but there’s so much to be gained that way.
Segun Akinola [00:56:08]:
Yeah. I think it’s definitely that there there are pros and cons. Different people learn in different ways. But if you can do both, which is what I was trying to do because I was, you know, doing my masters in my undergrad, and I was trying to, you know, doing all of these things. It’s all about learning as much as you can so that you can be the best version of yourself that you can be. That’s what, you know, that’s what I wanna do. I wanna write the best music that I possibly can. I still haven’t done that.
Segun Akinola [00:56:34]:
You know, that’s still something I’m I’m searching for. I want it to be the best musically. I want it to tell the story. I want it to sound the best, everything. And that’s a a lifelong ambition.
Nancy Norbeck [00:56:46]:
Yeah. Yeah. That’s a good lifelong ambition.
Segun Akinola [00:56:50]:
Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [00:56:50]:
Because then you keep learning. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.
Segun Akinola [00:56:54]:
And that’s part of it. You know, always be a student of life. You can always learn. There’s no point at which I think I’ve learned everything. And I always want that to be, you know, keep part of my, what the how I think about the world and what I do is that there’s always something that you can learn.
Nancy Norbeck [00:57:10]:
Yeah. I know you have a a new project coming out, and I wanna make sure you have a chance to tell us about it.
Segun Akinola [00:57:18]:
Yeah. Absolutely. So, Kingdom is BBC Studios and BBC America’s new natural history or nature series. It’s narrated by David Attenborough. It’s out on January 24, in America on BBC America and also AMC plus. And it’s a little bit different to your planet Earth and your blue planet. It’s a bit more like planet Earth meets dynasties. This is was a series that basically followed well, told stories of about characters and followed them around.
Segun Akinola [00:57:59]:
The in this instance, it’s literally that there are four families. It’s one location, and it’s the longest they filmed in one location before. And they followed these families for five years, and it’s just telling that story of what happened over five years. It’s kind of being billed as, like, Game of Thrones meets planet Earth, meets dynasties Wow. Meets succession, you know, with with a lot of drama. That’s the key thing and kind of, I guess, underlining and and bringing out the drama that’s taking place from, you know, someone who’s challenging the matriarch of a pack or whatever it might be. And there’s a loss of that that happens, over this time. So, yeah, that’s that’s the first thing that I’ve got, coming out.
Nancy Norbeck [00:58:49]:
That sounds amazing. Definitely like a lot of really fascinating storytelling going on there for you.
Segun Akinola [00:58:58]:
Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. And it was a really special project to work on. It was filmed in Zambia. And because the location was such a big part of it, I flew out to Zambia, and I recorded with Zambian singers and musicians, and I also sampled some Zambian instruments as well. And they’re all a really, really, really important part of the final score. And the whole point was to make it a lit sound a little bit different.
Segun Akinola [00:59:25]:
So you’ve got the Zambian stuff. You’ve got yes. It’s orchestral, but I’ve got some jazzy double bass in there. I’ve got bass flutes. I’ve got bass recorders. All sorts of things just to, again, try and make it distinctive and a bit different, but still do things you wanted to do, but also be more intimate. That was another facet of the show that the music should be really intimate, at times as well. So it it it does that.
Segun Akinola [00:59:51]:
It really does that.
Nancy Norbeck [00:59:52]:
It sounds amazing. I can’t wait to check it out
Segun Akinola [00:59:56]:
and see
Nancy Norbeck [00:59:56]:
how much I’m paying more attention to the music this time than I might otherwise.
Segun Akinola [01:00:02]:
Yeah. It’s it’s I’m really, really excited about it. And I also have another show called boss no. Origin, the story of basketball Africa League, which is coming out on ESPN as well, which is all about the NBA starting their first league outside of The US, because they started this league in Africa. With the whole idea that it gives Africa its own league, it means that for some people, they might start their move over to the NBA as well. So it’s the story of the first season, which took place during the COVID nineteen pandemic, which is quite a difficult moment. But we’re starting a league, in in Africa, but they went ahead with it. And it was it was, well, I don’t wanna give anything away, but it’s, it’s a very uplifting watch.
Nancy Norbeck [01:00:53]:
Excellent. Well, I will include links to those if I can so that folks can go find them easily, and we’ll look forward to checking them out. I have to admit, a series about a basketball league is not something that would probably fly to the top of my list, but that sounds really, really fascinating. So I can give it a look.
Segun Akinola [01:01:14]:
Yeah. It’s I think what’s nice about it is that the human story is there. The impact of the league on the I mean, the way they did it is, basically, they chose, like, the top one or two no. The top team from 12 countries, and they brought them together. So it’s not just it’s not just the fact that it happened. It’s the people who are involved. Some teams are all pros. Some teams are semi pro.
Segun Akinola [01:01:42]:
Some teams are no real pros. They’re also let’s say it’s during the COVID nineteen pandemic. They built a stadium, a new stadium in Rwanda for it as well. So there’s the impact that it has on the local area and economy. So it really it touches on everything. It doesn’t, shy away at all. It’s really but it’s still a very uplifting watch as well.
Nancy Norbeck [01:02:08]:
Fantastic. Well, I so appreciate you taking the time to come and talk with me today. I’ve found this a fascinating conversation and reminders of lots of good principles for how to dig into something and make the most out of it and and remember to ask.
Segun Akinola [01:02:25]:
Yeah. Always remember to ask. No. It’s been a real, real pleasure. It’s really nice to have such an engaging chat and to, yeah, read to someone who can, like, pick up on lots of interesting things and lead the conversation in interesting, directions. So, yeah, it’s been a real joy. Thanks for having me.
Nancy Norbeck [01:02:45]:
That’s this week’s show. I’m so grateful to Segun Akinola and to you for listening. Segun’s links are in the show notes. I hope you’ll leave a review for this episode. There is a link in your podcast app, and it is super easy and really, really makes a difference. If you enjoyed our conversation, please share it with a friend. Thanks so much. If you’re tired of thinking about answering a creative call but never actually doing it, come join me for an hour and start feeling like yourself again.
Nancy Norbeck [01:03:18]:
The Follow Your Curiosity Creativity Circle is a safe, welcoming, and encouraging environment where we send the shoulds and inner critics off to summer camp where they’re kept busy rather than getting in our way. You can find it at the link in your podcast app. See you there, and see you next week. Follow Your Curiosity is produced by me, Nancy Norbeck, with music by Joseph McDade. If you like Follow Your Curiosity, please subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And don’t forget to tell your friends. It really helps me reach new listeners.