Walt was invited to speak at a Toastmasters meeting last week. I was up to my eyeballs in manuscripts, so I wasn’t interested in going along, particularly when it was advertised to start at 8 p.m., which in Ireland means decidedly not 8 p.m. But Walt’s a major crybaby, and I’m a not so successful recovering people pleaser, so I ended up at the meeting.

While Walt was going through the whole sound check process–this should take 5 minutes, so it was kind of ridiculous that we were there at 6 p.m.–I got to chatting with a young woman, one of the coordinators for the event. For some reason we got onto the topic of podcasts, and she told me that she’d just finished binge listening to West Cork, did I know about it?

According to her it’s all anyone in the area is talking about. It’s a 14-part series about an unsolved murder in a nearby town that took place in 1996, and a pair of journalists from London who took an interest in it and began interviewing the old suspects, former neighbors and such, in search of a clue.

Thing is, people don’t get murdered around here, particularly blow-ins, which is what anyone whose family hasn’t lived in a given 3-square-mile radius for multiple generations is called in these here parts. (Walt and I are blow ins; our neighbor from Limerick, a blow in as well; even our friend from Skibbereen, the town we go to for groceries, a blow in.)

We went to the market on Saturday and stopped by a friend’s stall. All het up about the topic, I ask her if she’s heard of the West Cork podcast, and she immediately pulls me in, lowers her voice, looks around to see if anyone has overheard us. I’m used to personal opinion being treated like a state secret around here, but I wasn’t sure what was so sensitive about a show everyone seems to be interested in. “The murderer is sitting right over there,” my friend says, pointing to the fellow in a nearby stall. I note the weird hat he’s wearing, something straight out of Fargo, but can’t quite make out what he’s selling, as if that should matter. Passerbys great him; no one lingers in his vicinity.

Walt and I are driving up to Dublin tomorrow morning. We’ve got 4 or 5 hours in a car we’re staring down the barrel at. But I’m prepared. I’ve downloaded the audible app on my phone, purchased the podcast on Amazon for $0 because I’ve got Amazon Prime–If you don’t have Amazon prime, you’re crazy–and am currently powering up my phone. Time for a binge listen because I just love this kind of project, the randomness of a subject that drew a couple of writers in. Not to mention a deeper look at the culture in which we live.

I’ll let you know how it is.