Investigative true crime podcasts are all the rage these days. With beautiful scores, gory details, and neatly packaged scripts, podcasts like Dr. Death, Disgraceland, and The Clearing have been gaining listeners rapidly since they debuted. They are all beautifully made, but what does the podcasting process
look like? Is it just as pretty?
Los Angeles based theatre company Tin Can Bros. set out to answer these questions with their newest
project: The Wayward Guide for the Untrained Eye. Every Friday, fans will follow twins Artemis and Paul as they discover an abundance of secrets about a werewolf race, but things don’t end there. On Tuesdays, fans can actually see the twins on their quest and witness the hijinks that they get themselves into.
The Wayward Guide is a unique project for many reasons: the use of multiple platforms, the contrast in
the genres, and the use of crowdfunding. In 2017, the Tin Can Bros. launched the Kickstarter campaign for the project. They explained their love for podcasts like megahit Serial, their desire to work in a series, and their love of the game Ultimate Werewolf. Naturally, Corey Lubowich, Brain Rosenthal, and Joey Richter decided to combine all three.
The podcast will be serious, put together, and exciting; the series will be chaotic, comedic, and scrambled. The Tin Can Bros. have put together a project to appease fans of multiple platforms and genres, all while staying true to their wacky and larger than life aesthetic.
The Tin Can Bros. have been friends and collaborators since their days at the University of Michigan in the late 2000s. They are also a part of StarKid, the comedic theatre group that put together internet sensation A Very Potter Musical and The Guy Who Didn’t Like Musicals. Wayward Guide will be their first podcast and series, but they have a large number of live musicals and sketches already under their belt.
While the company is considered smaller (they have around 65 thousand subscribers on YouTube),
Wayward Guide seems to be their biggest project yet. The cast includes Carlos Valdes (CW’s The Flash),
Sean Astin (Lord of the Rings trilogy), and even Emmy award-winning actor Darren Criss. The project has been highly anticipated by fans for the past three years, and fans are already praising the hard work that went into the multifaceted project.
Fans are expressing their gratitude to the cast and crew of Wayward Guide for working so hard during the COVID-19 pandemic. One fan on Twitter even remarked how this could be the saving grace of 2020.
Whether you like comedy, horror, investigative podcasts, or you’re a huge StarKid fan (like me), Wayward Guide might just be your new favorite web series/podcast. The series will be posted on the Tin Can
Bros. YouTube channel and the podcast will be posted on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Sources: Tin Can Bros., StarKid
Hannah Gerber 
Kylie Smith 
Savana Dodd