After hitting a wall with his radio career, in September 2022, armed with a microphone, laptop and from his kids’ toy room, Jack Laurence began One Minute Remaining, a podcast where Jack speaks with US inmates about their convictions for a range of different serious crimes from arson, robbery, attempted murder and murder itself. Jack then looks at the case against them and allows the inmates to tell their accounts of the events that lead up to their incarceration until there’s one minute remaining.
He told Radioinfo at the opening party for the new Acast Sydney studio earlier this year:
“I spent 15 years in radio. I started at SEAFM on the Gold Coast, I worked in Sydney, Adelaide, Melbourne. I worked on the Hughesy and Kate Drive show for 5 years.
I spent a long time in radio, 15 years of my life. I was made redundant in Adelaide in 2016. So I ran around the traps… my last stint was at 2DayFM breakfast working on the Hughesy, Ed and Erin show as their anchor.
After about a year I said to my wife, I’m done, I can’t do this anymore, I think I’ve reached as far as radio is going to allow me to reach. So we moved back to the Gold Coast and I had no job.
There was actually a job going as the assistant content director at SEA FM and I stupidly took that job. Shouldn’t have taken it. I was there for maybe 6 or 8 months I was hating moving from being a content guy to a managerial role. It was a real eye opener… I said, maybe I’ll try podcasting…”
That pivot has led to now a six figure salary, six podcasts and tens of thousands of downloads per month. But this was a particular special milestone for the podcast that started it all, notching up its 10 millionth download this week.
It came at the same time as a personal milestone for Jack, who turns 40 on July 18th.
He said:
For me, it’s about working for myself and the freedom that comes with that. The freedom to be able to tell the stories that I want to tell.
“I spent my radio career, always asking permission…and, you have limitations, of course, with radio, versus podcasting. You don’t have limitations [with podcasting].
“I wanted to interview people with insane life stories. So I started the podcast where I speak to prisoners who are incarcerated in the United States… So it’s freedom for me to tell the stories I want to tell, the content that I want to produce. And freedom to be able to do things with my family, like pick up my kids from school or go and see them doing stuff and not have to go to a content director can I have the afternoon off.”