Tim is Executive Editor, Audio, at Radio New Zealand — this interview has been lightly edited for style and readability
Tim Watkin: I run the podcast team here at RNZ, New Zealand’s national broadcaster and a bunch of the weekly radio shows and our overall digital strategy.
Since about 2017, we have about 140 shows on the slate. Half of those, roughly, would be repurposed radio shows, but the rest are all podcast originals or various versions thereof - trying to make sure they are the glorious thing that is digital audio as opposed to just hacked up radio.
James Cridland: Now you’ve just launched a new show called Nark, and it’s all to do with the the murder of a prison inmate in 1985.
TW: It’s a 17-episode series - one of those true crime shows where you just think you couldn’t want for anything more. It is a murder in a prison - the first in Mt Eden, New Zealand’s biggest prison - of Darcy Te Hira in 1985. Obviously, the people who were witnesses or around at the time were all convicted criminals. So who do you believe?
The man who was ultimately convicted, not once but twice - and had his conviction quashed by the Governor General twice - was a guy called Ross Appelgren, who was a low-time burglar who was in prison at the time.
He went to his grave in 2013, insisting he was innocent. But his widow is going back to court to try and clear his name thirteen years after his death. It’s a fascinating case. Appelgren escaped prison at one point and went on the radio to insist on his innocence. He had a remarkable story, as has “the Nark”, who is the man who testified to seeing Appelgren commit the murder. And the question is whether we believe him or not.
JC: You say that Appelgren has been dead for some time. But his voice is on this new show - explaining some of the things that went on. You’ve clearly used AI for this: how?
TW: We’re careful to say he is not on it. This is AI, but it is not him. We’re not trying to be in any way deceptive. And so we’ve spent a bit of time explaining exactly what and why we did it.
What we had in the investigation was screeds of written evidence. He had written his memoirs before he died; there were transcripts from court cases, there were affidavits, there were print articles written about him. We had his voice, in written form, in great volumes: but we had very little audio of him.
Usually we’d use an actor - it would have been common practice, and was when we started working on the podcast two and a half years ago. This has been a very long investigation, and as we worked through it, it became clear that AI was giving us options that we didn’t have before. And Mike Wesley Smith, who’s the host and lead producer, came to us and said, What about using AI?
And our first question of many was: would his family, especially his widow, be okay with that? What would he think? We had those conversations. And Julie was very keen, she loved the idea. We got permission from her and his estate. We went through an AI working group here at RNZ to have the ethical discussions, and ultimately got to the place where we thought it was the right thing to do and would really enhance the podcast. And so we used some of the few radio interviews that he gave and taught an AI cloning voice cloning tool what his voice sounded like.
JC: This is the first time that AI has been used by RNZ?
TW: It is. It’s a very specific use, and that was part of our consideration as well. If part of journalism is giving voice to the voiceless, then it’s often to people who are the most vulnerable. And if you’ve been accused of murder, there is no greater stain on your reputation. We figured that Appelgren had a right to a voice and to make his case to clear his name.
I guess the bottom line, James, is how much more powerful it is to hear a simile of his voice pleading his own case. It just takes the connection with the audience to another level.
JC: You said something right at the beginning of this: “normally we would have used an actor”. AI seems a better idea, to me, to produce the real person’s voice reading his own words, rather than having an actor coming in and reading those words for him.
TW: How much more powerful, right? Again, it is a machine ultimately, but it was so moving for his family. And how much more powerful as a listener to actually hear the guy’s tone as he says his words.
We still use actors, and we still use an actor in conjunction with this AI voice. We fed the words we wanted from the memoir and the articles and so forth into the AI tool. And we used a New Zealand actor who had listened to Appelgren’s interviews to try and mimic his intonation and his pace, and also to get the Kiwi accent. And so it was a combination of that AI voice, but also the actor’s ability to mimic Ross.
JC: I think ElevenLabs calls this “parrot mode”. Which tool did you use? Are you able to say?
TW: Given you just mentioned them, yes, we used ElevenLabs.
It’s 17 episodes, and each episode is 35 to 65 minutes each. So there is a lot of audio. And this is the point, right? That there’s a lot of Ross Appelgren in there, a lot of him trying to tell his own story. An actor is great, but over that kind of duration, when a man’s trying to plead his innocence, it’s just that much more of a connection, I think, for the audience to hear him speak himself.
JC: Really interesting to hear about AI being used in this way. Nark is available wherever you get your podcasts, I’m assuming?
TW: It sure is. And it’s rolling out between now and the first week of December. Three episodes a week. And I tell you, it’s the best true crime story I’ve heard for a very long time.