Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford - Proceed with Caution - Pascal's Guide to Podcasts

Episode Date: August 14, 2026

How does a story on Cautionary Tales come to life? In this episode of our subscriber-exclusive series, Proceed with Caution, sound designer Pascal Wyse shows Tim how the audio magic happens. He explains how he picks the music in an episode, why it's best to avoid 'Mickey Mousing', and how to sound design some of the stranger moments of Cautionary Tales. To subscribe to the Cautionary Club and hear more like this, go to patreon.com/cautionary club.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Learn how podcasting can help your business. Call 844-844-I-Hart. On August 4th, 1962, Marilyn Monroe died. Then the rumors started and she died again. And now we're going to set the record straight and learn about the way Marilyn Monroe actually died, the third way. I'm Jake Brennan, and on my podcast, Hollywoodland, I revisit some of the biggest stories from Hollywood history,

separating the myths people want to believe from the reality underneath them. Hollywoodland is part of the Exactly Right Network. Listen to new episodes every Monday on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Pushkin. Hello, everyone. The cautionary crew were on our. summer vacation at the moment, but rest assured we're still busy cooking up plenty more cautionary tales

for the rest of the year. Usually we'd play some of our favourite classics from the archives, but this year I've got a treat from behind the curtain of the Cautionary Club. Once a month, we release a bonus conversation to Cautionary Club members in which I discussed the podcast with another member of the team, exploring tangents and behind-the-scenes details from a recent episode. I thought it might be nice for everyone else to hear one of these chats too. The conversation I'm about to play is with Pascal Wise, our beloved composer and sound designer. It was released just after the episode about incompetent Nazis, dumb and dumber. Pascal showed me his workspace for that episode, explained how he builds up a sonic atmosphere,

how he decides what type of instruments to use, and also talks about his most hated sounds with which to work. These interviews are all released in video and audio on our Patreon and there are plenty to listen to. If you'd like to hear more, head to patreon.com slash cautionary club. Enjoy. If we in the new year, we have a special treat for you. I am joined by Cautionary Tales, Maestro, Audio Wizard, Sonic Scholar, a multi-award-winning sound designer and composer, the one only Pascal wise. Pascal has been on cautionary tales since the beginning and we are never, ever, ever going to let him go because what he does in his studio is what brings our stories to life.

And Pascal has kindly agreed to take me through how he does what he does and to show me what an episode looks like when he's building it. Hello, Pascal. Welcome to proceed with caution. Hello, Tim. I mean, what a glorious introduction. I mean, we could just stop now, can we? you deserve more, you deserve more, but I'm not going to let you go until you answer some questions. So broadly speaking, what is the job of a sound designer? What is it that you do? Oh, in the podcast world, sound design really can mean, you know, practically anything from sort of making tea to cleaning up arms and ours to writing bits of orchestral music. It's a really big umbrella. I think in the origins of it in film, and one of the most plausible stories I've heard of where the term comes from is Walter Merch having at high speed to fill in a visa application when filming Apocalypse Now, for which he was editor and sound designer.

And he literally just needed to put something on the phone. Why are you here? What are you doing? Oh, a sound designer. And I think the term stuck. You know, a sound designer, I think is someone who is often. involved with creating worlds of sound and maybe even creating sound for things that, you know, don't really exist yet or perhaps particularly in things like science fiction. The Star Wars lasers, but which or whatever they are, phasers or blasters or whatever. Yeah, hammers on telegraph wires, you know, it's a great sound effect. But in terms of, you know, what happens on cautionary tales, I'm taking the words that you've beautifully recorded and have then been beautifully edited down by Marilyn.

and I'm putting everything else in. Everything else you hear. So Marilyn, Marilyn Rust, one of our producers, she's there in the studio with me while I am sitting in front of a microphone and I am reading my script and she's saying, do it properly this time, Tim, that kind of thing. So you will have delivered to you an audio file which has a fairly clean take of me reading the script

without ums and without errors. but so then what? Good question. What I would do next is what I think traditionally would be called spotting. What that involves is just sitting, listening to the story. And at this point, I don't tend to read a script at the same time. I just listen to it. And I will start putting, I don't know if my screen is already shared, is it?

I see these green bars kind of like expanding and contracting, like a concertina. What I'm showing you there, and this is interesting because, you know, the idea of spotting a show is, is very simple. It's sitting down and this will often take place, say, with a director or something, and deciding when it needs music and where that music should be. And in this case, I'm also deciding when does it need sound, sound effects, sound design. Yeah.

and where that should begin and end. I mean, it's an interesting question then. When does the music come in? When do the sound effects come in? Because I was listening to a recent episode, when Hitler invaded Florida, the Dormund Duma. Oh, yeah. I really enjoyed that episode. Yeah, I enjoyed it too.

But I was struck. There was a moment where I've described a U-boat, stuck on a sandbank. and it's revving its engines. And I don't think there was a sound effect for revving engines at that particular thing. I think you decided, or if there was, it was very subtle. Oh, there is, yeah, but it's subtle. It's an interesting question as to when you really want to go hard

and make the sound, put the sound effect right in the foreground and when you want it to be very subtle or maybe nothing at all. While I'm completely in favor of the idea that all rules are there to be broken, there are one or two little things that we have tended to do in this show. One is that you will hear something before it is mentioned rather than after it's mentioned. Now, that process, I think, of hearing something that has been said is sometimes referred to as Mickey Mouseing in reference to the extraordinary musicians who used to play against the cartoons.

such as Mickey Mouse, Tom and Jerry and all that, where literally what you see is what you hear and you get this kind of synesthesia, you know. And that's something that does happen very occasionally in cautionary tales, but I feel like it's something that should be reserved, it should be an exception rather than a rule. And I think, you know, you are in a sense the singer in the band. You know, I think it's a mistake when you're dealing with the spoken word

to not appreciate that in terms of the overall band, all of the sound and the music, you're sort of like the central character. You're delivering the story. So what we've got to try and do is kind of help you out and make the world for you, illustrate that world, but not just dumbly replicate what you're already doing very well for us. Something one of Frank Sinatra's arrangers said. And I'm now comparing myself to Frank Sinatra. and comparing you to Frank Sinatra's arranger.

So this is enormously vain of me. I need a different hat. Yeah. But what he said is when Frank's moving, get out of the way. And when he's not moving, you've got to get in there quick. And I wonder whether that resonated or not. I love that. I love that.

Yeah, that's really interesting. Yeah. Can we talk about Dumb and Duma? Yeah. I mean, spoiler for those, because it's fairly recent, Those who haven't heard it, you might want to pause and listen to it before we go through it because there might be spoilers. But this is a story about eight idiot Nazis who try to sabotage the US and do not succeed. But there's a lot of potential sound effects.

There's doors slamming and phones ringing and U-boats and yeah. So talk us through that process. Yeah, interesting. And I have that particular session in front of me. What a great start to 2026. You know, I opened up the computer rather rustily on January 5 or whatever it was and was immediately presented with a scene involving a man injecting his penis with diluted bicarbonate of soda. Yes. Yes. Interesting, I thought. Here we go. It's cautionary tales again. Strat myself in. How to deal with that? You know, what to demonstrate or illustrate and what not to.

So I decided on this that I liked the idea of starting the episode with this, you know, slightly ordinary fumbling around in the kitchen or whatever. Let's just hear that first bit. Joseph Schmidt drops a spoonful of baking soda into a glass of water and stirs until the powder dissolves. He takes a swinge and draws up some of the solution. Then he pulls down his pants and carefully injects the baking soda into the tip of his penis.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. Was this literally you in the kitchen kind of... Yes, it was. Some kind of evapresent thing in a glass, yeah. Hopefully your penis was not involved. But, you know, if it is, there's no judgment. No, no penises were harmed in the making of this episode. Yeah, yeah, it's sort of like method sound, isn't it?

Yeah, I literally brought some baking soda and water into the studio and did that. Now, the practicality. of making a show that's 35, 40 minutes long and needs scoring and sound designing in a certain time frame means there's often a lot of, you know, there's certain kinds of corner cutting and there's a lot, I have lots of sound libraries, but there are certain things that are just, they're not going to be in there. And so in the quality that you want or the style that you want and it's sort of quicker to do itself. And I really want, I wanted to illustrate that. So a sound library would be, oh, I'd like a sound of someone messing around in a kitchen or something.

The sound libraries are full of all the classic stuff, whether it's cars crashing or buildings falling down or, you know, arrows, bullets, screams, all kinds of stuff. And presumably a car crash or a building falling down is not, I'm sure you could have a go, but that's not the kind of thing it's easy to generate at home. Yeah, quite. I mean, I love to record my own material. I do lots of field recording and it gets used a lot in cautionary tales. But yeah, when we're in the business of crashing airliners or having tankers run aground, I just like, oh yeah, darling, I'm just going to go. You're going to run an oil tanker into the seven systems.

Yeah, I'm going to go down a 747. There was one particular plane crash episode, a very harrowing story of Air France 447, where an airline pilot wrote to me and said, you even got the correct cockpit alarms from the right kind of plane. So there is attention to detail there. I do admire. Yes, I think you're, I think it's this one. Yes, that's the episode.

And he was like, no, you've got, you didn't just make that one up. That's the real alarm. Anyway, sorry, I interrupted. No, not at all. So in that, I decided with that, that once you sort of start, to hear the fizzing of the bicarbonate of soda, I felt like the imagination kind of takes over. And I liked the way that sound was, yes, illustrative of what was happening. But it was also, it created almost just like a nice field of sound, you know, like a sort of a fizz that was just illustrative of the whole situation, not just, you know, what is actually doing.

And knowing that I really didn't want to Mickey Mouse a sense of like, you know, or whatever. Yeah. And what is the sound of a swinge anyway? So yeah, so that's where the music comes in. Yeah. I think what's really interesting is this really good example of where the music takes over from what you might call sound design.

It almost, it hands over. And I felt that the point of sort of him puncturing, if you like, was much better handled musically. He injects the baking soda into the tip of his penis. Desperate times called... Yes. There's something that's a sort of like... Yeah, but it's slightly removed from the practical, you know.

And that... I wouldn't know. Yeah, right. We'll do a workshop on that later. That also gives me something that can be recalled later in the episode. Hopefully what you've done then is you planted the idea of that note. being a moment of strange, you know, desperate discomfort. And then later, if I just pluck that note in,

hopefully there's a sense of, you know, recalling that. I've got a note up here of engines. Now, let's see. It's interesting what your memory is of this. Let's see what I did do. They followed the young Coast Guard through the fog to where he'd encountered the men. The men weren't there.

But they could hear the roar of engines and smell diesel fumes. The fog briefly eased, revealing a long, dark shape. A you boat. Yeah, so I've sort of hedged it. It's not a big roar. I've gone for a sort of a bit more of a putter.

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Think podcasting can help your business. Think IHeart. Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Call 844-844-I-Hart to get started. That's 844-844-I-Hart. I'm Jake Brennan, and on my podcast, Hollywoodland, I revisit some of the biggest stories from Hollywood history, separating the myths people want to believe from the reality underneath them.

Like how the story of Marilyn Monroe isn't just the story of a Hollywood icon. Marilyn Monroe has become so iconic that her death can only be explained through conspiracy theories. And for some fans who can't let go, these stories have metastasized from conjecture to accepted fact. So on August 4, 1962, Marilyn Monroe died. Then the rumors started, and she died again. And now we're going to set the record straight and learn about the way Marilyn Monroe actually died, the third way. Learn more about what happens when fame, media obsession, and conspiracy collide.

Listen to Hollywoodland on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We obviously in Cautionary Tales, we sometimes have aspects of it acted, and I think that's a really interesting conversation of its own, you know, when to do that and when not. Yeah, because often I will just read the lines that could potentially be given to an actor and it's partly a matter of budget and it's partly a matter of taste. Sometimes it's great to hear an actor and sometimes you've got like three words. So this was really interesting. You know, the Coast Guard is shouting at them.

Yeah. And it felt important, you know, the perspective of this felt important to me, you know, that this person should sound distant to them. This is Jamal, who I think is going to be in the next Star Wars film. That's what I've heard. Very exciting. And I know that in this, for instance, Marilyn, with a keen ear for what's probably going to happen further down the line, ask Jamal to stand off the mic, stand away from it, which is really important, actually,

and it's so easy not to forget that kind of stuff. You know, people, there's such a different sound when someone is shouting from a distance. and the way the perspective with you and the mic is really important. So there is a little bit of reverb still on this, but we go, Who are you? Which is close, that's close to, but not quite, but close to what was captured in the studio. So Jamal's in the studio yelling at a mic from across the room. Yeah.

Then we put on something in this case, which it's almost like a quick and easy, artificial thing to give it a sense of distance. Who are you? Now it hasn't given it a sense of distance yet in terms of it sounding further away. What it's done is it's taken off some of the high frequencies which would tend to be lost. And then I'll put it into this thing

which is a kind of binoral encoder which has a very good sense of placing something off to the distance and there's a head here and where I've placed him is demonstrated by the two dots here. So if you put it all together, it sounds, Who are you? Like that.

It's much more distance. Yeah. And then, Who are you? And again, once it's mixed with the background, it helps it sound even more distant. There's so much going on. And that's just,

that's, you know, one and a half seconds or two seconds of audio. And you've got, you've got Marilyn. in the studio with Jamal, they're working together to create a certain performance recorded in a certain way

and then you're then thinking okay how does this sound how does this fit with the sound effects do we want to sound like we're next to Jamal? Do we want to sound like we're a long way away from Jamal? There's so much and this is just a couple of seconds of yeah and then we've got

you know it's incredible exactly yeah we've got three layers of water got one plus a more of a distant sea wash so we know that's the close stuff there's the more distant sea wash and then we know that there's also going to be some waves we've got a few of those quite a lot going on even in a bit of the show actually which was fairly calm calm but there's a real sense of place there yeah and there's there's a they actually got a a foghorn and played around

with it changed its pitch quite a lot. Interesting because there's no, I don't think there's a foghorn actually in the episode, so this is subliminal. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. Oh, there's a gong in there as well. I forgot about that. That's giving us a sense of

something quite ominous, hopefully. Yeah. You know, one of the biggest problems you face when you sit down, particularly with the extraordinary technologies that are available, not to mention, you know, the huge resources in terms of instruments, is you're just faced with the infinite and it's almost a cautionary tale in itself. You know, how on earth do you start making decisions in an infinite space? It's like because you could do anything.

So I'm always hunting for ways to narrow my options down and I just find it very satisfying to try and build the music from instruments that just have some, some relationship to the story. And that could be something really simple. Like if we're at sea and constantly talking about vessels that are large and metallic, then I might aim for, you know, big metallic drums or in this, or like in this, you know, the foghorn. And even if it's not sounding like a foghorn, there's a kind of DNA in there that I think

hopefully travels through, you know, to the final thing. Tell me more about about how you, you, use music and how much you use music because, I mean, potentially you could compose music for every second of audio, but actually you want to be much more sparing than that. I remember Mike Figgers being interviewed, the film director and saying that applying music to film, and I think it could be said also of, you know, podcasting or any storytelling, he said it's sort of addictive. Once you start, it's very hard to kind of rein it in.

And before you know it, the whole thing is covered in music. And I think you then lose, you lose the power of it. You, you end up with something that never really, never really sort of surprises, never really makes the best of itself because it's just become a constant presence. And it's constantly illustrating or even trying to instruct the viewer as to what to hear. So I tend to look, I'm, it's almost. like I'm hunting more for places where I don't need to use music and that's part of that's just practical you know we haven't we've got a certain amount of time uh and budget to make the stuff you know I try rather than thinking oh I can have music here I try and be really disciplined

and go this this doesn't need anything you know because you've got to really force yourself to go well you know what do I add here what do I flesh out for the listener um I suppose my feeling is use it as sparingly as you can and try and find spaces around the emotion that the words are already conveying so pascal are you ready for a couple of quickfire questions to to wrap up yeah go on then i should have a sort of bell or something shouldn't i okay so what is the the hardest scene that you've ever had to work on for cautionary tales battles things with lots of footsteps do my head in. Although for the marathon episode,

I just literally went out running in Epping Forest and hung a mic in front of me. So that was quite a nice solution to that problem. But yeah, the really tricky bits are where you have a lot of human activity that needs choreographing, and I've decided we should hear it. You know, this sort of shuffling from one place to another, doing something like opening a bag, whatever,

closing a door. Footsteps and that kind of stuff are really tricky. They're a time sink and they're hard to get right, hard to get believable. Footsteps particularly. If I could nominate anything, it would be footsteps. They're a real pain. And do you have a favourite episode?

I'm really fond of Jaws, I have to say. I really enjoyed working that through. You had to pastiche the famous Jaws soundtrack, which we weren't at. allowed to use. You needed to kind of call it to people's mind. How to be John Williams in one afternoon. Quite often faced with that challenge, which is, you know, we are referring to a composer. So it would be ridiculous for you not to somehow nod to it, but you can't do it. You can't, you know, you have to try and satisfy your own creativity by doing something that resonates,

but you also need to make that person think of that composer. So, you know, same with Keith Jarrett in a Colne episode. trying to do my own John Williams' impression. I mean, yeah, fools errand that. But really good fun to work on. Lots of lovely sort of terms in that episode. We feel very lucky to have you, Pascal. I'm sure many of our listeners feel the same way.

It's great. Because the show resets every week, there's not a set. It's very difficult to tire of it because, you know, that sense of reset and the knowledge as I open up every new episode that I have no idea where we're going to be and what time we're going to be is what keeps it amazingly fresh for me. Well, thank you so much, Pascal.

I feel like we've barely scratched the surface, so I hope you'll come back and do this again for us very soon. Yeah, we could do a walkthrough of an app. That would be quite fun. Oh, yeah, that would be great. That would be great. I love that. Pascal, your website, Pascalwise.com?

or? Yeah, Pascal wise.com or dot net and that's Wise W-Y-S-E. That's sort of my memory bank, the website. It just reminds me what I've done. So most things I've worked on are up on there. And if you have any questions for Pascal,

just what do they say on YouTube? Just stick them in the comments. Stick them down there. I think that's possible on Patreon. So please do that. Yeah. I'm very happy to answer any queries, however small or obscure.

The obscure ones are the best. Pascal Wise, thank you so much. Lovely to see you. Thanks, Tim. On August 4th, 1962, Marilyn Monroe died. Then the rumors started, and she died again. And now, we're going to set the record straight and learn about the way Marilyn Monroe actually died, the third way.

I'm Jake Brennan, and on my podcast, Hollywoodland, I revisit some of the biggest stories from Hollywood history, separating the myths people want to believe from the reality underneath them. Hollywoodland is part of the exactly right network. Listen to new episodes every Monday on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast, guaranteed human.