Two Naval Officers and a civilian enthusiast analyse military and spy thrillers with humour and professional insight.

My name is Mike Dunbar, I'm a Lieutenant Commander in the Royal Navy (11 years), and I met Saanje Bjorkson - a Sub-Lt in the German Navy through work. Ruari O'Toole is my childhood friend of 25 years and has always been a keen enthusiast in military history and movies. One of the things we all have in common is a love for military, espionage and crime thriller films but we come from a deep specialist perspective. Before I was in the military. Our pod is aimed at anyone who likes a 70s-2010s thriller movie, or is interested in the military. You don't need to know the difference between a frigate or destroyer - just how to stream a movie!
 

I did stand-up comedy, and Ruari composes music - so we thought a podcast was a way to satisfy our creative impulses. I have listened to a lot of podcasts, they're very much a lifeline when you're at sea for weeks on end with few ways to pass the time. I noticed that a lot of military podcasts were very informative but not very funny, and I noticed a lot of movie podcasts lacked insider knowledge of what was being depicted. We thought we had a lot of value to add in a way which could inform the casual listener and fellow serviceman alike. We started the podcast in June '25 and we launched quickly, learning a lot in the process. After 7 episodes we transitioned from audio to video, and have been refining the editing and videography since.
 

We release every two-weeks on a Friday, and try to schedule far enough ahead to meet that consistently. We each invest a bit of funding from our day jobs to get it up and running. While we know about crowd-funding through subscription services, we only really want to explore that once we have a large enough following to justify it, and the spare capacity to create bonus content of a high quality. I'm grateful for an assignment which permits a lot of remote working - granting me time in the evenings to work on the podcast. Between editing software, some marketing services and equipment and hosting, we probably have invested around £500 ($700) so far.
 

We may be interested in sponsorship just to cover overhead costs, but as yet we have not made money from podcasting - we're in it because we're keen to fill a niche in the podcast scene and make something that we would want to listen to. I've found the main benefit from podcasting has been the joy of sharing a creative outlet with my two best friends, and finding time in our otherwise busy lives (between work and family) to spend time together, even if it is remotely! Another benefit is the gift of connecting with listeners and other podcasters, meeting new people and sharing this thing we're putting out with complete strangers.
 

Hardware wise, I record and mix on a MacBook Pro and use a Yeti Mic, and reasonably affordable webcam. We transitioned to using Riverside for recording and most of the editing - but some pickup work on Logic Pro X and DaVinci Resolve. Finding guests has been the somewhat nail-biting act of reaching out to creators we admire and flat-out inviting them on the show! In terms of preparation, we each sit and watch our movie of the week a couple times - I try to find articles and maybe some books about the cast/crew and the behind-the-scenes production of the movie. Then, I usually try to link the movie to some aspect of military life. It can be something pretty straight-forward such as the development of stealth fighters after watching "Firefox" with Clint Eastwood, or something more personal like the trevails of basic training seen in "An Officer and A Gentleman".
 

Our show is hosted on Spotify, and can be found on all major podcast providers including Apple, Podcast Addicts, Overcast etc. Currently our listeners are around 60% from Spotify, 12% Apple, and the remainder divided between other providers including Web Browser and Amazon. While we haven't invested in marketing as much as we could, the consistent thing we've noticed is strong social media presence and use of short form video content is our key driver for growth in subscriptions.
 

The one thing I've learned about podcasting since we began is that we didn't know what we didn't know! There's so much to learn and so many resources to learn from that it can be quite daunting. A lot of great advice is out there, and there can be a lot of pressure to do everything at once - whether that's invest in marketing, attempt advertising, look at subscription models and so on all while trying to do the most important thing: improve your content and try and say something new and relevant for your audience. I think we've tried to stick to the last one, and build the rest at a manageable pace. While you have to be careful which advice you follow, we've found resources such as Reddit have been useful, as have the blogs available on Spotify for Creators, Castbox and other similar sites.
 

Our Spotify site is: https://open.spotify.com/show/1172OCKcKBeke6QTQoJoyQ
The Show's Instagram is @ClearandPresentDudes, our mailbag email is clearandpresentdudes@gmail.com
Thanks for taking my submission, if there's any further questions please don't hesitate to reach out.
Yours aye,
Miek Dunbar Lt Cdr RN.