Hyperfixed - Two Birds, One Hundred Stones (UPDATED)

Episode Date: January 1, 2026

This week, we re-air an oldie but a goodie (plus, a special update from our listener Keenan!).Become a member:https://www.hyperfixedpod.com/joinWe got merch (premium members get 15% off!)https://shop.hyperfixedpod.com/LINKS: CBC story: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/a-halifax-woman-s-40-year-old-recording-comes-out-of-the-basement-and-renews-her-love-of-music-1.7477984 If you are a Hyperfixed member, you can see some supplementary photos for this story by following this link. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Hey everyone, this is Alex. So the other day I got an email from a very nice listener who basically said to me, like, hey, I like hyperfixed, I want to support it. It is hard for me to justify spending $60 a year on a single show. And, you know, as much as I'd like everyone to become a premium hyperfix member, I get it. And, you know, as the media landscape gets more and more inhospitable to creators, people are needing to choose what to support and when. and the idea of spending, you know, $60 a year on a single show isn't for everyone.

So, right now we are in the middle of the fall Radiotopia fundraiser, and I just wanted to spot like that as an alternative to people who want to support not just my show, but a number of shows with a one-time or recurring donation. If you don't know what Radiotopia does for us, on top of selling our ads, they help us with promotion, they connect us with collaborators, they help us purchase ads for big stories, They help me with submissions for award shows. And, you know, Radiotopia is the home of some of my favorite podcasts of all time,

from limited-run series like appearances, to ear hustle and articles of interests, Kitchen Sister, Song Exploder, Memory Palace, and, you know, of course, Yo-A-Shaw's proxy, with whom we collaborated a couple months ago. You can donate one time or monthly at any level to Radiotopia, and 100% of that money will go to supporting all of those shows as well as Hyperfixed, and dozens of others. Your contributions to Radiotopia are tax deductible, and from now until December 31st, 2025,

every gift to Radiotopia will be matched one to one up to $50,000 by a generous PRX donor. So if the idea of a premium hyperfixed membership is just not your bag, I encourage you to support Radiotopia because we wouldn't exist without them. You can go to Radiotopia.org slash donate to support,

and thank you so much. for listening. OMGS is a website that the New York Times wire cutter featured as one of their most popular gifts and for good reason. It presents new findings from the largest ever research study into women's pleasure and intimacy. In partnership with researchers at Yale and Indiana University, they asked tens of thousands of women what they wished they and their partners had discovered sooner. They found the patterns in those discoveries and all that wisdom about pleasure and intimacy is organized as hundreds of short videos, animations, and how-toes.

Wirecutter doesn't give recommendations lightly, and when you see OMGS, you'll understand why they featured it. It's warm, honest, and has regular women talking about real experiences. It's truly eye-opening. I've spent a lot of time on OMGS, and it really does feel empowering to see these experiences and techniques detailed so openly, without any blushing or shame. What they're doing is long overdue. I love OMGS. Wirecutter loves OMGS, and I think you're going to love it too. See for yourself at OMGS.com. That's OMGY.Y IES.com. Hey, happy new year. I'm Alex Goldman. This is hyperfixed. Each week on our show,

listeners write in with their problems, big and small, and I solve them. Or at least I try. And if I don't, I at least give a good reason why I can't. But I guess technically that's not the case because this week we are airing a problem that we have already solved. We are hard at work as we speak on tackling new problems for 2026. But, you know, it's the holidays. Everybody's really busy. We're all traveling. And we thought this was a great time to re-air one of our favorite episodes of 2025. And when I say one of our favorite episodes, I can only speak for myself, but it was the first time we made an episode where I was like, oh, this is what the show can be if we are firing on all cylinders. If we are doing it right, this is the stuff we can make.

this episode had such like a profound impact on our listener and on our audience and if you make it all the way through to the end you can hear that it has a very profound impact on me as well the story is called Two Birds 100 Stones it aired in February of last year it was our first and to this date only live performance at a festival called On Air Fest in New York City

and if you've already heard this episode and you're thinking I'm about to dip do not do that because we added a special surprise at the end of this episode So if you want to hear that update without listening to the whole episode over again, you can scrub to the end approximately at, hold on, let me ask our engineer Tony Williams. Tony, when does the bonus stuff start?

It's at like 4,150. Okay, just skip to that to hear only the new stuff. And for everyone who hasn't heard this episode, please enjoy. This is Two Birds, 100 Stones. Last week, Hyperfix performed our first live story at On Air Fest in Brooklyn. And in most cases, if we did a live version of a show, we'd probably re-record the entire thing for broadcast. But in this case, the live aspect was simply not replicable in the studio, so we wanted to play you the story as it was performed at On Air Fest.

It's a story about regret, fear, and ultimately, the courage it takes to just try. Here's the story. Okay. This is a story that we produced especially for this. And I'm just going to launch right into it and we'll see how it goes. Thank you all so much for coming. I really appreciate it. And before I get started, I really need to do one thing which is I need to

shout out my team and you guys should give them all an amazing around applause. Our engineer Tony Williams, Sari Sofersukennekennick, Amory Yates, Emma Cortland, who sadly couldn't be here.

Thank you guys so much. This is impossible without you. Here we go. I am Alex Goldman. This is hyperfixed. Our first ever live taping. On this show, listeners writing with their problems

big and small, and I solve them. Or at least I try. And if I don't, I at least give a good reason why I can't. These words that I have just said to you are the words that start every episode of our show. And I like them because they provide the listener with a sense of calm and order. Like, Alex is here to solve problems. He's going to guide you from the beginning of the story to the end.

Everything's going to be chill. But when I wrote those words a week ago, I had no idea if we were going to be able to pull off what we're attempting to pull off today. And if I'm being totally honest, I still don't know if we're going to pull it off. But there's only one way to find out. So, this week, two birds, 100 stones, a live podcast in six chapters. Chapter one, the first bird. Okay. So I have my camera set up on a bunch of VHS tapes right now, and I'm going to use those to hold this thing up.

Perfect. Why do you have a bunch of VHS tapes? Because I'm a giant nerd. This is Keenan. He's a Toronto native. And if he is a nerd, he is the very best kind of nerd. He is a media nerd. And not just the kind that obsesses over stats and trivia.

Keenan is the kind of nerd that attends as much to the social world of the art as the art itself. He spent years working in record stores, concert venues. He has an insane collection of physical media. But there's one art. artist whose work continues to evade him. And that artist is his mother, Megan. What is your relationship with your mom like? Like, are you guys pretty candid with one another? Do you have an easy relationship? Is it difficult? Is it weird? Like, what kind of relationship do you have? I would say it's all of those things. That's totally fair. Yeah. I love my mom to bits.

She's been a very emotionally honest person my entire life. Like, there's nothing that she really hides or holds back on when we have any kind of personal difficulties like we can talk about it. She's not a very closed person. She doesn't hide things. So that's why I think that we have a great

relationship. But there is one thing that Megan has been reluctant to talk about. Her young dreams of being a songwriter. Over the years, Kenan's heard the story in bits and pieces, but the broad strokes of it goes something like this. In the early 80s,

Megan was a waitress at Second City in Toronto, and she was writing songs. A friend of hers, Second City's house piano player, said, hey, I have this friend. She's a singer-songwriter. I guarantee she would love to perform your songs. Her name's Katie Lang. Let's record some songs. You can give her your tape.

I'll put in a good word for you. She was a massive Katie Lang fan. She saw her perform at the Cameron House, which is like a not very large music venue here in Toronto. She did a week-long residency, and my mom was there every night, sitting in the front row by herself. Anyway, she has a cassette tape of her songs, and she handed that to Katie Lang at one point and never heard back. It was gone. After that, Megan was so devastated by the apparent rejection.

She sold her piano. She packed up all her music, and she charted a new career path for herself. Megan started working in film and television, and that's what she still. us today. She doesn't need a megaphone. She's the person on set who is just saying like, and we're rolling. And she's five foot nothing and just commands everybody. She is in charge of the set. And that's what she's like. These are some photos of Megan from her on set stuff. This is her with Don Johnson, Brian Denehy, Rutger Hauer. For all intents and purposes, ordinary life. She's worked with tons of celebrities, Jason Priestley, Billy Zane, Gabriel Byrne,

and she has a massive amount of insane stories about everyone from Leonard Cohen to Robin Williams. But Keenan has always sensed that somewhere inside his mother, there's still a person who longs to be a musician, or at least part of her that regrets that she stopped trying. Basically, she gave up on doing this. After the tape didn't live, lead to anything after Katie Lang never called her back, she just was like, fuck it, it's never going to happen. I'm abandoning this completely. That kind of bums me out.

I feel like... Yeah, me too, me too. She really felt as though she had something to say through these songs, and other than a handful of people, nobody's ever heard it. And I truly feel like that lingers. It still lingers with her. So I wanted to bring her some resolution to this thing that she always wanted and never had. Also for a woman who sounds like kind of brassy and willing to talk about anything, the fact that there is this one component of her life that she steadfastly refuses to talk about, it must feel like a gap, a knowledge gap in this person that you.

I think know pretty well. Yeah. I have never heard these recordings. Never. They exist on a real-to-reel tape that is sitting in a box somewhere, and then there's sheet music for all of them, all of the songs that I've never seen. I have memories of this one song that she did sometimes. It was about her friend.

That's all I remember, because we're going back over 20 years at this point. So I would love to see this tape get restored, and I have absolutely no, I have no knowledge of how to do that. It's a grimy old tape that, like, would need to be cleaned up. So that's where Keena reached out to me. He had an instinct that I could get his grimy tape cleaned up for his mom, so she could hear her music again and be inspired. And he was right about one thing.

I am the type of guy who has a reel-to-reel in his attic. it's because I'm cool. But I had a feeling he was wrong about something else, which is that I don't think that this project was entirely for his mom. Are you more interested in hearing this tape yourself or in her hearing it with you, I guess, would be the way I would put it? That's interesting. I mean, I want to hear it because I've never heard it. So I'm definitely interested in hearing it for myself.

But, like, I guess I would say I am doing this, it's for her as well. So I guess both. I would love to, I would love to get her to talk about it more. It's one of the few things that she doesn't want to talk about very much. And maybe that's just because I haven't asked the right questions. I'm always hesitant to kind of bring it out. Also, there's not many reasons for it to come up in conversation necessarily. Keenan told me his mother is coming to visit him in a couple days and that she'll be staying for a week so the plan is for him to bring it up sometime while she's there are you worried about broaching this with her like are you worried that it might upset her yeah but i think that it's not going to be i'm hoping that me saying you know what we're doing here i tell

her this story, that might excite her. Like, I'm leaning more. I am worried, but I'm hopeful. I'm also worried, this is another major thing that I need to bring up. I'm worried that these songs are bad. I am worried that there's a reason she didn't get signed, but I have no idea. I have vague memories of one of the songs that I remember sounding pretty good when I was a kid, but I'm like, all I know is that my grandmother truly believed in her. How's your grandmother's taste? Oh, my nana was the best. Do you worry about us recording this and then going to her and being like, hey, we talked about this deeply personal thing that you consider a failure in your life?

And we want you to revisit that thing that you consider a failure. Do you worry that she's going to be like, what's your problem? Like, why would you bring this up? A little bit? I mean, like, you know her well enough. What do you think her reaction to this being revisited would be? I'm leaning more towards the side of this could potentially excite her. I also think maybe she'll be like, well, I'll do this for my son, you know?

I want to believe the reason that I haven't told her about, about it yet is just because, one, I wanted to have this conversation first, and two, I didn't want to necessarily have her shut it down right away. So I wanted to have something on paper to be like, I've already had this, like, interview with these people who are interested in talking about it. Because she's somebody that, like, if, I'll secretly record a video of her doing something ridiculous because she's a very funny person. And she'll be kind of embarrassed that I did that, and then watch the video, and she will kind of acknowledge that she is very funny in it. So I think with a push, perhaps she will be on board, but I'm going to have to tell her,

and I've got a whole week with her. Like, this couldn't have timed out better. So we'll see. My advice would be talk to your mom, and then I guess we'll just see what happens, you know, like how she feels, and if she's comfortable with it. and I would love to talk to her about it. I would love to, at the very least, hear the tape and see if it's salvageable. That's daunting, but I'm not afraid to ask the question, that's for sure.

Let her know that some strange guy from the internet is interested in hearing her music. Chapter 2, the second bird. So I didn't tell Keenan this because I didn't want to put any pressure on him. But while I was trying to help Keenan solve his problem, I was standing waist deep in a problem of my own. And I was beginning to wonder if Keenan could help me solve that problem. So back in November of 2024, I'd been contacted by the organizers of On Air Fest about doing something for the 2025 festival. And I said, of course. Because even though we'd only made two episodes of hyperfixed at that point, and the team was only just starting to learn out of work together, the festival was four months away. also I have a policy of saying yes

to everyone who asks me to do podcast stuff unless they're fascists so anyway I agree to do the show and then I mean you guys know what happened November turns to December and we're like we should probably start talking about on Air Fest and I'm like oh yeah let's add it to the agenda for next week and then next week turns into next week

and that week turns into Christmas and Christmas turns into New Year's you get it and we were able to come up with a few decent ideas and if you were eagle-eyed you might have even spotted the original idea we were going to do for this on the On Air Fest website. But between January and the beginning of February,

every permutation of every idea we've had for the show has fallen apart. So by the time I hang up with Keenan on February 4th, which is what, today's the 20th, so that's 16 days ago, my hands are empty. And if we can't find a story,

we will have no choice but to stage our doomsday off, option, which is titled, On Air Fest presents Alex Goldman attempts to make new friends. Honestly, even the thought of that makes me shudder. It's as bad as it sounds. The idea was that I would bring people from the audience on stage and become friends with them during the session. But I have another idea, and it involves Keenan.

So two days after our first call, I shoot him in email to ask him if he has time for a quick conversation. Which brings us to chapter three, the first stone. One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four. Hi, Keenan, you are muted. You're going to have to unmute yourself there. Can you hear me now? Yes.

Amazing. Yes. At this point, Keenan's mom is at his house. She's just flown in from Nova Scotia. She's staying for about a week. And the visit's going fine, but Keenan hasn't told her about the podcast yet. So he has snuck out into his back. backyard to talk to us. I'll keep this brief and it's crazy. This is crazy. It is totally fine if you're

like, there's no way this is going to work. Okay. I just want to get that up front of that. I'm excited to hear it. So I tell him the story I just told you about how I had committed to this thing and then totally shit the bed and about how I'm exploring alternative options for this live show, which is scheduled to take place in two weeks. And I thought maybe this is an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. And then I very tactfully ask him. I was wondering, considering your mom, truly desires an audience, do you think she would like, we could make this a story where in two weeks, the look on your face is mad, skeptical. We can, I can compose this story and then at the end, she can come out and sing for us. Oh my God. That is.

I totally understand. Just think about it. No pressure. I know that's like a crazy thing. Do I want it to happen? 100%. Do I think it could happen? Big maybe.

If I don't know, I don't think she's done it in years. Again, totally fine if this is not a thing that is possible. I just want her to know that like if she feels comfortable doing it, I would love to give her the opportunity to sing the song. She felt like she wasn't able to sing to other people. Oh, my God. I will ask her. I'm still trying to think about how to broach this information to begin with,

but I have a whole day with her today. And again, I apologize, because I'm also putting pressure on you by doing this. I know this is nuts. I mean, technically you are, but this is like, God, if this could happen, I would be like just over the moon, but... Yeah, it would be so cool. Two weeks is like, I understand.

Yes, I understand. I will talk to her today. I mean, I got to broach the story thing first, and then I'll... I will tell her. Okay. Let's see how it goes. Can you hear the desperation in my voice?

Can you hear it? It's so bad. Listening to that gives me secondhand embarrassment for myself. That's wacky. Okay, chapter four, the first bird, part two. So, a couple days later, we got an email from Kenan saying Megan's agreed to talk to us, and we're like, holy shit, this is going to work. Megan's dream is going to come true.

Kenan's going to get to hear his mother's music. We're not going to get banned from on Air Fest. And best of all, I'm not going to have to embarrass myself trying to make new friends in front of a bunch of strangers. Everything is coming up Goldman. And then we get on a video call with Megan. And without saying it directly, she very clearly conveys that she does not want to even be talking to us. You good, Mom? Yeah, I'm really great, Kenan.

See what I mean? Now, under normal circumstances, this would have given me pause because the last thing I want to do is force a spotlight on someone who genuinely wants to avoid attention, even if it means that I'm going to walk away from this with nothing to show for it. but Keenan cautioned me about his mom that while she may hate the idea of attention once she warms up a bit Megan actually kind of loves it so all I had to do

was warmer up so I'm wondering just to start if you could introduce yourself my name is Megan Banning I am the mother of Kenan Tamlin who started this kerfuffle I live in Halifax Nova Scotia which is a beautiful coastal town

in Canada. And I'm here to visit my son. And he's ruined your whole trip, right? Well, I wasn't in the door. Like, I think it was like the first day, and I cried, and I don't cry. Very, very rarely. Oh, wow. Okay. I was like, this is so personal. How dare you?

And it was, it's a part of my life that breaks my heart because it's a shodokutta water. Right. Well, I want to, I like, want to ask you about that. Like, how did you get interested in music? I came from a very dysfunctional home. My mother was bipolar, and my father was an alcoholic.

But we had love in music, and we danced. On a good day, we danced, but music was always a thing. There was a piano in our home. My mother tells a story. I just clung under the piano, and everything shut out. It was my piece, and I could play anything. I play by you, I could hear everything I could play, and I could write music instantly.

I went to another place. I went to a place that I was calm. and it was like I was in another world. It was my world. It was my music. I played every day, probably eight hours a day. Eight hours? Yeah, I played.

That's all I did is play music. Now I just play Uca online. For the next 45 minutes, Megan told me about her life and her music. She told me about her dreams of becoming a songwriter and about when she didn't hear back from Katie Lang, she decided it meant she wasn't good enough to be a professional musician.

So she sold her piano, stashed the last of her recordings and nondescript boxes and drawers where she expected they'd stay until long after she died. Keenan would later tell me this was the most he ever heard his mom talk about her music, and even though it was clear that revisiting these memories was indeed very painful for Megan, it also seemed like the process of actually doing that, of sifting through these old painful memories. It was almost liberating for her.

it reminded me of that thing that Mr. Rogers used to say about how if it's mentionable, it's manageable. Like, as long as we can figure out a way to talk about it, we can figure out a way to carry it. And I think for Keenan, watching his mom talk so openly about her music, also kind of freed him

to talk about what the silence around this music has meant to him and why he started this whole thing in the first place. I guess it most came from a desire to hear those songs because my mom is a very, very open person as you can hear. And this seemed to be one of the only things

that she didn't want to talk about that much. And every time I said, can I hear those songs? No. No. They were all. they're only on a reel to real tape and that's going to take, I don't know how to clean that up and I got the sheep, I don't know where it is. And I didn't know how much of this was true and how much was her holding back. And I thought maybe all this story is, is my problem is that I need to get

this tape restored and that way I could present it to her and then I could listen to it and that was that. And then now the story has kind of become a lot more about her, which I love because she has a story. I think that because this is one of the few things that she is hesitant to talk about, it seemed like a unfinished chapter of her life. And it could be a bit of a bookend to that story, but not necessarily the end. Yeah. Can I say, let me tell you what this means. to me that my son knew I love to

tell it. I'd hope so. Well, yeah. But I didn't get how much he knew how much it meant to me until he did this.

I never thought it mattered to him. I didn't think he... To me, it was just something I did. I didn't realize that he paid attention to it.

And when he said, Mom, I got this about your music. I went, what about my music? Like, I'd cried, I was mad, ask him, I was in tears, I can't talk

about this? He said, can we talk about it? No, it wasn't until today that I would let him talk about it. Because it's so personal because it's when you let yourself down when I didn't do something that was I should have done

I didn't do something I was supposed to do and it's a regret but in my heart of hearts I'm a musician by this point we'd been talking to Megan for over an hour and I feel like I understand everything that Kenan told me about his mom this woman has not had an easy life she's been knocked around beaten down but there's still so much fire inside of her

and yes she spent decades carrying the weight of her regrets and fears but I am a firm believer in the idea that it is never too late to change your life. And also, Keenan had told me that all his mom needed was a push. So, I decided to push her. I say, Megan, I don't want to beat around the bush. You're a musician with songs that nobody's ever heard, and I'm a podcaster with an empty stage and an audience hungry for something that stirs their souls. Would you do us all the honor?

of performing your music live at On Airfest in Brooklyn, New York. Oh, not happening. I'm not, that's never going to happen. I'm never going to be on the stage and sing my songs because, eh, I can't sing anymore.

Like I can't. Like my voice, I smoke fucking Marlboros. Just because you don't sing like Katie Lang, doesn't mean you can't sing. No, I don't want to fucking sing like her anyway. She's too twangy. No, I just could not do that. But here's what I could do.

I would love to have someone else sing. Like, to have my music heard and my song heard, that would be, I would die to hear that. Yeah? I'm getting teary-eyed just thinking about it. No, I mean, it would be, it'd be some. If there was one song that we could get someone to perform, what song would that be? It's called Room.

Rooms, Megan told me, is a song about a feeling she had years ago after her then-fiancee broke off their engagement. It's about that singular kind of heartbreak you experience when you're by yourself in the same spaces you used to share with someone you love. when the volume of your sadness and anger is only outweighed by how much you miss being in a room with them. What would it mean to you for people to hear that music? Would it mean anything at all to you now? Like, what would it feel like to have people in public hear that?

You would take you back to me back then. That young... I was never sweet. I can't say sweet. No, but that part of me that still exists To hear that music in To I And is it good? I mean, it could be shit I mean, I haven't listened for so long, but

I just know Heart, in my heart, I know it's good You should tell the people who we are and what our new show is. I'm Robert Smith, and this is Jacob Goldstein, and we used to host a show called Planet Money. And now we're back making this new podcast about the best ideas and people and businesses in history and some of the worst people, horrible ideas and destructive companies in the history of business. We struggled to come up with a name, decided to call it,

business history. You know why? Why? Does this show about the history of business? Available everywhere. You get your podcasts. chapter five 99 stones okay so we spoke to megan she's told us she wants to do this and that when she gets back to halifax on tuesday she's going to send over the sheet music and the cassette and all of this is great we say goodbye we hang up the call and then all we can do is wait and pray that at some point between now and then Megan doesn't change her mind because if she does we have no backup plan for this live show, and no time to figure out an alternative. And if you think I'm mentioning this simply for the sake of ramping up narrative tension,

one, you're right. Two, let me remind you, this woman has not let anyone hear her music in nearly four decades, including her son. And now we're expecting her to turn over the only recordings via snail mail to a bald stranger whose end game is to share it with the world. So needless to say, I did not sleep well on Monday of last week. I spent the evening imagining what the organizers of On AirFest would do with this programming slot if I failed to fill it. My most fantastical idea would be that there would be an Alex Goldman effigy contest,

during which the most realistic Alex Goldman would be strung up right there in the main hall so attendees could take turns beating it like a piñata. Tuesday When I wake up on Tuesday, I said about finding out. a singer. I don't know a lot of musicians in New York, so I texted my friend, Eliza McLean, who lives in L.A. Eliza is a musician and a podcaster. She hosts a podcast called Binchotopia. But her voice. Guys, her voice. It's somehow delicate and cuts right through you. She sounds like she could sing you a lullaby and eat you alive simultaneously. And honestly, she would have been a perfect for this,

but I was hoping she could recommend someone in the city. And when I got in touch with her, she told me she had actually just moved to the city. And immediately, I'm like, oh, this was meant to be. So I got on my knees, and I started begging. And she was like, calm down, dude. I'd love to sing Megan's song. And I'm like, great.

As soon as I get the music, I'll send it over. We check in with Keenan throughout the day. Keenan checks in with Megan, but by 7.30 p.m., there's still no news. Megan's told Keenan that she knows exactly where the cassette tape is but that the sheet music might take a bit longer to find and as for the reel to reel

which contains the only copies of the studio recordings Megan made for Katie Lang that was completely MIA so we agree to circle up on Wednesday morning Wednesday Wednesday morning there's good news from Kenan the sheet music and the cassette have been located but the sheet music is just

piano chords. The lyrics were written by hand. Megan has no way to play the cassette, and, and, and. There's a huge snowstorm coming to Nova Scotia. So we scrapped the idea of sending this stuff through the mail. Keenan starts calling audio nerds in Halifax looking for someone capable of converting a cassette into a digital file they can send to us. Obviously, this is not an ideal situation, but then again, none of the work we've done on this project is ideal. And yet it is starting to feel like we have inadvertently assembled a small army of people who are deeply invested in the outcome of this operation. Like within hours, Keenan has made contact with a legendary local musician named Rich O'Coyne who has the gear to get the job done. And Rich is like, yes,

bring me your tired, your poor, your busted tapes, I will convert them. And then we can get them to Eliza. But due to the storm, nobody is able to get over to Riches until Thursday. At 7 a.m. on Thursday, Keenan texts to say that the tape is on its way to riches. And at this point, we are exactly one week to the day from our show at On AirFest. And the organizers of On AirFest have started sending us follow-up emails, reminding us that our script and our clips and our photos are due by Friday, a.k.a. tomorrow.

But the thing is, we don't have any of that stuff. because this whole story hinges on a single song a song we've never heard and at this point there's a pretty good chance we never will because remember this tape that's heading to Richards

it's nearly 40 years old and it's been hiding at the bottom of a box filled with all kinds of other shit and there's really no telling what kind of condition it'll be in when it arrives or if it'll even be salvageable so when Rich sends this photo of the cassette

our heart fucking sink. The tape is visibly bent, twisted up inside the cassette's plastic casing, and as I'm looking at it, there's a brief moment where I wish I had quicksand near my house. Then I could just take a walk and end up accidentally buried up to my collarbones and explained a passerby that unfortunately I will not be able to attend the on-air fest 2025, the premier festival of sound and storytelling, featuring intimate conversations, performances, is in live podcasts

because I'll be here in quicksand. Anyway, about an hour later, the thought evaporates completely because Rich, he goes in manually, re-reels the tape with the kind of care and precision one might expect from a man

who's deactivating a bomb. And by noon, we have digital copies of Megan's songs in our inbox. And the moment we hear them, it's like look I don't believe in destiny but over the course of my life

I have experienced I'm going to start crying but over the course of my life I've experienced alignments that certainly felt like they were faded and when Megan sent music to my friend Eliza I felt like I was in the middle of one of those things where 100 crazy elements

suddenly and inexplicably aligned precisely the way they were meant to. So without further ado, I'd like to invite Eliza McLean to join me for the sixth and final chapter of our show. The song Rooms by Megan Banning. Thank you. rooms and lonely afternoons empty faces go in nowhere places idle chatter as we gather at no name bars no introductions needed I've been here before nowhere once forgotten nowhere once forgotten nowhere once forgotten well I'm ambling on and it's all gone wrong because I'm missing you

I'm missing you. I can't complain it's been a gambling game. I'm just a few cards short. So I'll wrap myself up in your memory just to get me through the rough. spots I'll lift my glass to survival

meanwhile I'll be missing you I'll be missing you. I'll be missing you. I'll be missing you. Smoke-filled rooms in lonely afternoons

Empty faces going nowhere places Idle chatter as we gather at no name bars No introductions needed I've been here before. Thank you. So what you're hearing right now is the recording from a boombox on top of a piano from 1983, I think. So what you don't know is that Keenan and Megan have been watching via a Zoom call, which is being held by my producer, Sari, this whole time.

time. So, I'm wondering if I could just bring the phone up. Yep. Yep. Yep. Hey guys How are you doing? Hold on a second I'm going to put you on speaker No I don't know how to put you on speaker Can you help? Oh yeah you have to unmute yourselves

Can you unmute yourselves real quick Can we bring the music down The house music down? Hi Hey guys, how you doing? How was? What did you think? That was something Eliza

Thank you. You did a great job, sweetheart. Really great. Kenan's breaking my heart. He's on Zoom. He's in Toronto. I'm in Nova Scotian to see his sweet little face. We both broke into tears.

And thank you. For someone who I was like, this is not happening. Really quite something. And Alex and all your team, I appreciate it. It was a bit much pulling this off in a week, going in a blizzard and finding all this memories. 40 years ago of stuff I never thought

would happen in the fact that there's people that are hearing the song. I mean, I got five more, they're even better, by the way. Very much like her to save something like that. There's more. And they're great. And you're rich McCoyne who helped me out. This strange man, I just ran up and said,

hi, in the blizzard. Here's a tape. Good luck, Chuck. Bye. And ran on a lot. He happened to live five minutes away from her, too. He lived five minutes away. And he wasn't home. It's like, Kenan, this is enough.

And there's a snowstorm. I'm in all the bugs. This is the wand, really. Alex, you convinced me, I was like, this is not happening. Like, it's a lot. And I am blessed and the love of my son who remembered and kept the memory of my music and remembered because I forgot. It was in a box in the basement that I spent four hours looking for. And it's been quite an experience, you know, the poor 23-year-old that wrote it so many years.

years ago. So what has inspired me is I'm going to go buy myself a keyboard and get back to my music because I'd love to play the piano. But the music is still in me. All right, guys. Well, I'm going to hand you back to Sari because I'm running out of time. No, you're great. Thank you both so much for sharing this party. I'm going to start crying again. Thank you both so much. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for coming. So at the top of the episode, I teased that we had a special addition to the story. And that edition is that about a month ago, hyperfix producer Emma Cortland and I jumped on a phone call with Keenan to find out what he'd been up to since we last talked and what Megasie.

and what Megan had been up to after they opened their lives to us in such a big and vulnerable way. Which I gotta say, opening up to a podcast is big and vulnerable anyway, but the stakes felt so much higher with Keenan and his mom because we were performing her songs to a live studio audience for the first time ever.

And we were just curious how they were doing once the dust had finally settled. And I also knew that Keenan had some pretty big news in their life since we last talked. So we jumped on a video call to catch-up. So, Kenan, you got married. I did. Yes, I did get married. How long have you been married now? August 30th. Congratulations. How long ago was August 30th? You do the math. I'm not a whiz at it. Me either. August 30th. October, November. Oh, so like three months? Not very long. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, so actually, technically, we signed the papers in April, but then we did.

didn't have the ceremony till August 30th. So we signed the paper on our 10th anniversary because I was like, well, that seems very fitting. And we were going to do the ceremony out in Nova Scotia where my mom lives. And she was like, don't do it. The weather's going to be terrible. Just do the ceremony later. And she was right. It was perfect weather the entire time we were there at the end of August. And the day of the ceremony, pouring rain, we had had to move the ceremony back half an hour because Spencer's family was arriving late and we're like, okay, let's push it to 4.30. I kid you not. 428, like the clouds part, because we were doing an outdoor ceremony. So, and we didn't, we had a backup, kind of, but it was like, if we can't do this outside,

it's not going to work out. And it was, the timing was unbelievable. And like, I'm reading my vows and this heron flies by right in front of my view. And I was like, I don't know. Is that a sign? Whoa. Is that good luck? I'm just going to say it's good luck. Aren't herons like harbingers of death? I'm sorry. You know what? I don't know that to be sure I'm making that up. We like Googled it and there's a lot of different interpretations of herons. So I'm just like, I'm going to pick the good ones and I'll say that it's those. Okay. What music did you walk down the aisle to? Um, so that was a big point of contention. So I'm obviously very big into music, as I'm sure you guys remember.

And, uh, I was like, it's just something instrumental, nice and slow. And I was going through like hundreds of instrumental covers of things. And I really wanted to go down to Rainbow Connection because I'm a huge Paul Williams fan. And I'm like, if I can walk down the audio, Paul Williams song, I'll be so happy. Uh, Spencer was like, I don't know. think so. Not to correct you, by the way, that song's actually by Kermit the Frog. Well, okay, well, you know, he had a little helpful fall on the writing side. We ended up with an acoustic instrumental of David Bowie's heroes, which is a little typical, but I was like, it's a good song,

and Spencer actually likes it. So I was like, okay, that's fine. That's fair. It's not one of the Celine Dion songs that he was going for. You did wonderful. And did you guys go on a honeymoon? Is there like anything going on after this or is it just you got married honeymoon is for the future honeymoon is for the future uh so what else have we missed over the course of the last year i mean really i wanted to call you and ask you about your mom how was your mom doing if we missed anything important um yes uh she's doing great she's doing great she she is uh she's going to be doing a movie in Ireland, which is really cool. So I might go visit. I've never been there before. I might go when she's shooting. So that'll be really cool. I mean, I talked to you guys a little bit earlier about our

story getting picked up by the CBC here, which was crazy. Right. What were the circumstances behind that? So I got a DM from a journalist whose name I'm going to pull up, but I believe it's Karsten Knox. Yeah, Karsten Knox. Really nice guy. Got a message from him because he heard the episode, and he was like, hey, we want to profile this story on CBC, which was like, huh, what? I called my mom, and I was like, uh, the news wants to talk to you? And she was like, what are you talking about? Because she kind of thought that this was, it was a pretty emotional thing going through

this whole thing with you guys for her. Like, overwhelmingly positive at the end of the day, like, you know, I had so many people in my family being like, you did such an amazing thing for your mom. and, you know, she cried, and we cried, and it was great. But so I was like, are you willing to go through this again on the news? And she was like, okay. And so we got interviewed for the news. It was only about a 15-minute segment, which was really cool.

But the main thing was they played her song on the radio. Wow, she's famous now. That was cool. So it got played on the radio in Nova Scotia. And because a lot of people listened to the CBC, Um, she had three people, including a neighbor, reach out and say, I've got a keyboard. Do you want my old keyboard? Uh, yeah.

So, uh, she got herself a keyboard and, uh, the playing part, playing piano has proven to be a little bit difficult. So that's been tough, but she told me recently, she's like, I'm writing lyrics. I've got, I keep writing things on little pads of paper wherever I can. So I don't know if there's going to be a full. other song again, but she's being creative, which is amazing. I'm very happy for her. So hopefully there'll be more from that. Writing lyrics is a big deal. And also, I would say that, like, having this part of your life be exposed in such a public way probably puts a lot of pressure on her. If a bunch of people, like, heard a song I wrote 40 years ago and were like,

and the context was, I gave up on songwriting, the pressure would be great. Like, I knew going into, it. Like, that was a concern I had. But also, like, I mean, I loved to the songs that we found. They were so good. So. To find out that, like, that the song that you wrote 40 years ago really is a banger, like, to the extent, you know, that it's just like, oh, shit, now I have this responsibility to write another one. And then it's the sophomore album conundrum of, like, fuck. And she's, and she's a different person now. That was, she's, yes. She, I mean, I mean, she's got a lot more life experience, so hopefully there's a lot more to write about. Yeah, I mean, one of my favorite things about the entire experience of us doing this was when I finally heard the song, and I was like, oh my God, oh my God, it's actually good.

I mean, that was like a big, that could have been like a very terrible end to the story. It could have been a situation where we got to the end and finally got the song, and it was just awful. But like, she's a great lyricist. She's a good singer. She's a good pianist. Like, it was really, like, we looked out there in the 11th hour. It was very nice to hear. I know.

I know. It was crazy. How often do you, when was the last time you saw her? Last time I saw her was at the wedding because, you know, she lives many, many moons away. But I'm going to see her over Christmas, so that's going to be great. Are you doing Christmas in Toronto or Nova Scotia? I'm going to do it in Nova Scotia. Yeah.

So I haven't actually been able to spend, no, that's not true. My mom came down here for Christmas once, but we haven't been able to spend real Christmas this together in quite a long time just because of my work schedule. But now I don't work over the holidays. So, yay. Yay. Oh, that's great. Did you get a new job?

Well, I quit the record store, yes, a while ago. So I'm not doing retail. I'm a gardener and I'm a landscaper. Our season actually ends. This is my last week. So I'll be semi jobless for a few months. So we'll see. We'll see what happens.

But that's a being a, I was a landscaper, I think when I was 20. And a lot of people do it earlier in life. I'm doing it later. Well, to be fair, Alex has done pretty much every job there is to do, and he's done them at very, you know, yeah. So this is, this was not a, I did it as a young man. It's like Alex's, this career just happens to be the thing that he settled on at the specific time in his life. I didn't start doing radio until I was 30. 30 was when I first got into it.

So I was, it was pretty late. And Alex, don't you think that, like, if you, uh, If you didn't find out that you were good at radio, you probably would have just, like, kept sampling things. Yes, I would have drummed out of every gig. But I was a landscaper, and then in the winter, it turned into a Christmas decor company. So they would put up Christmas lights for rich people. And it was the worst job. I was just freezing my ass off.

I was miserable. People would complain about how far apart the lights were. And so I loved landscaping. It's like you're outside. It's, uh, you get good exercise. It feels great. Like, I love it. Even on super hot days.

Christmas decor was like the polar opposite. Pun intended. It was the worst. Yeah, we don't do any, any snow maintenance, nothing. It's just like we close up shop for four months, um, which is, I mean, money wise, not the best, but it means like I'm totally unemployed from there. So I get some nice EI, hopefully. Um, we'll see.

I'm going to hopefully. spend this time doing pursuing other things that are fulfilling we'll see i i finished writing a screenplay something that i had always wanted to do congratulations i set my mind to it and i actually finished one and i'm working on number two already which is awesome will they ever get made probably not but hey i did it that was my big goal recently was to try and write one of those so i mean honestly keenan it's just like it's so nice to see you i'm so glad that you did that and that like you know it's like I don't know. I feel like the, I don't know if it felt this way for you, but for us, that episode that we made together was like really, it was so special to us. Alex, when I didn't get to be at the event, but when Alex left the event, he sent me a text message from his car where he was just, like, sobbing. And he said that it was really intense. He said it was like the most meaningful thing that he had done in his professional career.

And it's like, you know, we do these things. Oh, my God. And I'm telling you this because it's like, you know, we take on these things because we're like, you know, we're going to solve your problems. We're going to do something that like, you know, changes something in your life. But like your story actually sort of shifted, not sort of, certainly for Alex. And I really felt it too, although I didn't get to be there for the live experience. But like, it really shifted something in our lives and kind of proved to us with the show, like what it could be. like how, kind of how special it could be and what it could mean for us.

So I feel like we have a lot of thanks to you for, like, being game to really fucking roll with us and really co-produce. And, yeah, it was just, you know, it was like, it really was, like, a magical experience that couldn't have happened unless every single person involved wanted it to happen in the same way. Yes. Although my mom wanted it probably the least out of anyone. Yes, absolutely.

Absolutely. But she loves me, so she was willing to come along for the ride. The good mom. Good mom. Good mom. It did feel like the first episode of Hyperfixed in a way. Like it was the one where we were like, oh, this is what this show can be. Yeah.

Oh, my God. Wow. Part of what made this episode very fun, kind of stressful, but a very unique production experience, was that we were working with Keenan to make this happen. So he got to basically have the first-hand experience of a producer, rushing to get everything together in time. And Keenan tells me that it was pretty exhilarating. I had so much fun.

I was like pacing around that one day when I was getting the tapes from Rich. I spent the entire day just pacing around my living room like, okay, I got a text from them. Now I have to text them. Now I have to do this. And it was just like watching the pieces fall into place was like, oh my God. And it could have fallen apart at any fucking moment.

So I'm texting you as the organizers of the event are texting me. And they're like, hey, your assets were supposed to be in a week ago. And I'm like, yeah, I know. But we just completely changed what we were going to do. And I know that we haven't talked to you about it. But like, and they're like, can you get on the phone with us right now? That happened. It was just like, it was so scary.

Oh, my God. And they were like not happy with us. but once I explained to them what we were doing they were like actually that sounds pretty magical they were still upset that we didn't have the assets in but it was just like I think that it really felt like in a way every person who heard about what we were doing kind of became infected with it the funny thing about on air fest is I had never performed at it or been to it before and I didn't really know the vibe of what the presentations were like and when I got the call to participate, I was like, okay, this will be a great way to get the show some exposure.

But I didn't know what any other shows were going to be doing. So I just assumed everybody was going to be making elaborate audio projects until I got there. We got there and we put on this big production, like a very intense, intricate production that involved a lot of pieces of tape, so on and so forth. And I just sort of thought, like, hey, this is going to be all about life audio performance. And it was just all people, like, just chatting on stage. Like, we were the ones who put together the crazy thing.

And when we got there and we were like, this is what we want to do. We need you to fire the tape. We need to get this person on here. They were like, what? Yeah, we didn't know because we had never, Alex, you had never been to the event either, right? I had never been to on Air Fest before. Oh, my God. Yeah, I know.

That was so silly that, like, we, like, actually didn't do any research into what other people. So crazy. But, yeah, I mean, Keenan, it's just like, it's really good to see you. And I don't have any other questions for you. But I just, like, I wanted to thank you as much as anything for providing an occasion and for being such a good teammate in that whole thing. It was, like, really magical for us. Oh, that's so sweet. Well, thank you guys.

And as ever, if you're ever in the city, I'd love to get together. And if Megan's ever in New York City, I feel like at the very least owe her a beer. Yes. Yes. Or a wine, perhaps. She's in that era. In the meantime, Keenan, so good to see you. Thanks for checking it with us.

Yeah, thank you so much, Keenan. Yeah, you too. Thanks again to Keenan and, of course, Megan, for sharing their lives with us in such a public way. Before we get to the credits, I just wanted to play you, an original recording of Megan Banning performing the song Rooms from the early 1980s.

Smoked filled rooms and lonely afternoons Empty faces go in nowhere places Idle chatter as we gather at no name bars No introductions needed Because I've been here before nowhere once forgotten nowhere once forgotten well I'm ambling on

and it's all gone wrong because I'm missing you oh I'm missing you I can't complain it's been a gambling game. I'm just a few cards short. So wrap myself up in your memory. Just to get me through the rough spots, I'll lift my glass to survival. Meanwhile, I'll be missing. I'll be missing. you, oh, I'll be missing you, oh, I'll be missing you, oh, I'll be missing you. Smoked-filled rooms and lonely afternoons Empty faces go in nowhere places

Idle chatter as we gather at no name bars No introductions needed Because I've been here before Hyperfixed is produced and edited by Emma Cortland, Amory Yates, and Sarasophersukenic. It was engineered by Tony Williams. The music is by the mysterious breakmaster cylinder and me. You can get bonus episodes, access our Discord, and much more by becoming a premium hyperfixed member at hyperfixedpod.com slash join. It's the listeners who support the show that are really keeping us afloat.

so much for your support. Also, we have a bunch of new merch that you can buy. T-shirts, hats, mugs, sweatshirts. You can find it all at shop.hyperfixpod.com, and premium members get a 15% discount. Again, that is shop.com. Hyperfixed is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a network of independent, creator-owned, listener-supported podcasts. Discover Audio with Vision at Radiotopia.fm. Thanks so much for listening. And happy new. year.