Ben Lee and Ione Skye Are Bringing You Indie Rock Breakfast Radio
The husband-wife duo behind Weirder Together join TPA for a chat about their new newsletter.
Hey everyone. Parker here.
Today’s edition of You Know features Ben Lee and Ione Skye, the husband-wife duo behind the long-running Weirder Together podcast. The two of them have just started a newsletter on Substack, also called
. In today’s email, we’ll learn more about the podcast, newsletter, and, of course, where you know them from.As always, free subscribers will get the highlights of our conversation. Paid subscribers can listen to the audio in full at the bottom of the newsletter.
But first, here’s the part of the newsletter where I say The Present Age is reader-supported. Please consider subscribing to the free or paid versions. Thanks!
Let’s all learn a bit about Weirder Together with Ben Lee & Ione Skye.
On where you probably know them from:
Ione: Say Anything. Most people know me from Say Anything. The boombox scene from Say Anything.
[editor’s note: Ione is working on a memoir called Say Everything, which is due out in 2025, so be sure to keep an eye out for that. -PM]
Ben: For me, most people saw me support one of their favorite bands during the early 2000s. If you ever went to a Dashboard Confessional or a Ben Folds Five show, you probably saw me play.
On the inspiration behind Weirder Together:
Ben: Yeah, well, it's kind of been this growing container for our creativity and our community's creativity. We always have made stuff separately and together, so our marriage sort of became a creative collaboration from the beginning.
Ione: I would direct some videos of Ben's when the opportunity came, and Ben would help me produce some of my short films. And we started a variety show. We sang songs for our friends' short movies. We did the nights at Largo in LA, hosting nights. And when we lived in Australia for one year, we did that in Australia, and we named our nights "Weirder Together." And it became an umbrella for putting out singles, the podcast. Other people's podcasts, all this.
Ben: I think one of the things when you're in a creative partnership, that's also a romantic partnership, is that you take it for granted that you are working on this incredibly complex system of creativity. And I think we didn't quite realize until further in that it was really intriguing to people. So we just used the podcast as a way of like— we would have friends who come over and sit in this living room and cry or want advice. Have a jam. And we just wanted Weirder Together to be like a virtual container for that type of experience.
Ione: And as you often see, musicians love acting in movies, and movie people love music. So he often dated actresses. I've often dated musicians. I'm saying in the past, but I'm just saying that the movie-music thing can also be a great connection. And then we also love writing and writers. So there's a lot of that.
On how they prep for episodes:
Ben: We normally keep a few notes, or I do, in the week of things I want to remember to hit. For instance, we got this voice note yesterday from our friend Alexi Wasser, who's a director, and she was talking about the interview we did with Kelly Oxford. So we were like, “Oh, I want to play that on the next episode.” So, you know, we'll make little notes, but I just find that generally, if we're relaxed, we can never stop talking to each other. That's sort of our whole life. So it's kind of about just being relaxed and authentic, right?
Ione: Yeah, we just do the kind of going through what we've just, like, I don't know, going through what happened the past few days. And usually, it's a bit of a social calendar — sometimes we go through what we did socially, which is kind of fun. And then, inevitably, some of our marital stuff will come up, and it sort of seems to have a little bit of everything. But we jot notes down and we refer to them. But for me, I really just wing it.
Ben: We like to keep it light. I think that's one of the things that I feel is missing in my podcast listening. There's so much crime and deep analysis and, you know, all this kind of stuff, and even like celebrity interviews and hard-hitting clickbait stuff. I always think of it as like indie rock breakfast radio. It's meant to just be like this cozy, chill vibe between two people that you want to be connected with. We just try and foster a good atmosphere.
On why they started a newsletter on Substack:
I've had a mailing list for years. I used to stand at my merch table selling things and getting people's email addresses. So I have this mailing address [list] of 20,000 people or whatever. And I found it actually quite unengaging. I would send an email out once a month with some news or shows for sale. And at a certain point, I was looking at the open rates of it. And I was like, “I could happily trade this for a list, a quarter of the size if I felt these people were genuinely interested.” And also just the financials of running a company like ours, where we do so many passion projects— the idea of having some level of sustainable income to that just is really appealing.
We were looking at where we're going to do a Patreon. And the thing I liked about Substack was that you can service a free audience and then hyper-serve the paying audience. I like the idea that the emails have value to them whether or not you're a paid subscriber, but that they should have more value. To me, that's a really appealing business model.
And it's been really cool. I quit MailChimp, brought the whole thing over to Substack, and it's been really cool watching — every time I send out an email, there's a drop off of people that were on my MailChimp that are like, “For fuck's sake, this guy started sending me a lot of emails.” But then it grows beyond that with new Substack subscribers. So it's actually growing, but there's a culling of— separating the wheat from the chaff. Like, “Get those useless people out of there, anyway, and get people that want to be engaged.” So, for me, it's been really good.
A big thanks to Ben and Ione for taking the time to chat with me! Paid subscribers can listen to our entire conversation below!
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