Climbing on the Centurion Tank was one of the perks for youngsters visiting the Australian War Memorial in the 1980s, and for two Canberrans, it helped spark a lifelong interest in military tanks. Sharing that passion with a community from across the globe, the pair now co-host the Totally Tanked podcast.
Friends since high school, John Griffiths and Robert Dunne get together once a month for a couple of beers and a chat about tanks. While the subject of an armoured fighting vehicle may make for a niche podcast, it has created a loyal and spread-out fanbase.
“They’re interesting objects; for a significant number of people they are very exciting objects,” John says. “We have listeners from all corners of the world … from provinces in India that we never knew existed; the Finns are very keen on us – that has been a fun part of the journey.”
Each episode is designated to a particular tank from history or those that are in active service. Collecting their information from various articles, historical documents and YouTube videos, the pair set themselves apart in the military history world for their laid-back approach. Their accessible lessons have struck a chord with their audience.
“We’ve heard a few times that ‘we just like listening to you two have a bit of a yarn’ because we don’t take ourselves too seriously,” says Rob.
Explaining the what and why of the vehicles, John says that tanks fundamentally represent an endpoint to a lot of social, economic and political factors. If you don’t cover the whole scope of their history and purpose, then you sell their story short.
“Why they were built, how they were introduced, who made the decisions around them. We want to make sure those discussions are happening … There are a lot of reasons for tanks being out there – some good, some bad, but you need to be able to discuss both sides of it,” says Rob.
Appreciating that the military history community is comprised of both conservative and progressive points of view, they have found the shared love of tanks often stems from childhood. “The classic thing we find with our guests is it all comes down to being exposed to climbing them at about age 10,” smiles John.
Creating a podcast
John originally bought the podcasting setup to create a show with his partner, who ultimately didn’t love the process. He was deciding what to do with the equipment when a friend, Andrew Galan, suggested they start a podcast about tanks; local musician Luke McGrath created the intro and they were off.
Starting in 2019, they planned on doing historical studies of tanks. After three episodes, life got busy, and Andrew had to excuse himself, which is when Rob stepped in. At the same time, tanks across the world started seeing more action.
“Various conflicts started happening over the last four years with Azerbaijan and Armenia where suddenly we’re seeing modern tanks in combat again,” says Rob. “So, we do about an hour to a bit longer on the tank we’re talking about, then we will have 30 or 40 minutes talking about current events and things happening in tank battles.”
“We definitely plan [to discuss[ the Ukraine war but there’s a lot more happening and new tanks coming out,” adds John.
Originally aiming for a 30-minute run time, they soon found themselves at an hour, and it didn’t take long till they started to creep over that mark.
“We were starting to say at the end of it that we had been going for too long, we need to stop and we got furious emails saying we know how to use the pause button,” smiles John.
With no shortage of facts and banter, each episode is around two hours’ long. About the halfway mark, the pair take a moment to sip and review the evening’s beer choice, often trying to match the region the tank is from, which can be a touch tricky.
Engaging the community created is a big part of their vision for the podcast; each month they try to find someone to interview and put out teasers on their social media pages, such as ‘guess the tank’.
“It’s a little fun thing and the community likes it … We once had one of our listener’s 10-year-old son not just identify the completely blacked-out tank silhouette, [he] identified the name and model the exact tank the photo was from,” says John.
Creating community
With combat machines and ales, the majority of their fanbase is male, which they says is not intentional, it’s just that the content they cover seems to gain more interest from other men.
“According to Spotify, we only just nudge past having more women listeners than non-binary. There are definitely significant numbers of women who are interested in tanks and we’re for them,” says John.
Gaining a larger audience than they ever expected, they are currently tied for the most listened-to tank podcast with the one that is officially sponsored by the World of Tanks game. Setting out to teach listeners something new about the vehicles and a bit about how they came to be, the men ensure they bring some fun to each episode.
“Why didn’t French tanks have any radios? Australian tanks in World War II are absolutely wild and not a story that gets told cohesively anywhere in this country. We bought 1,000 tanks that we couldn’t use,” says John.
Listeners range from those who dedicated their lives to designing tanks, who often send emails to correct details, to political players in various countries, to people who just want to hear friends having a good time.
“It is connecting with people who are saying basically they might not have a lot else going on in their life and they just feel like they’re part of a small community that they can enjoy,” says Rob.
About to release their 50th episode, they estimate they are getting close to the halfway mark of tanks that they can cover. However, with a bit of creativity, the show will continue once all the tanks have been discussed.
“In a few years’ time if we run out of tanks, then we might start looking at specific tank battles, tank designers, there’s always new tank games as well and things like the tank museum in the UK have just started going back to their first episodes from seven years ago and doing them again,” smiles John.
Keep up to date with John and Robert on the Totally Tanked podcast; totallytanked.libsyn.com
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