Sometimes it seems like everyone you know has their own podcast, but how many of those shows include princesses, playground fights, and dragons? The D.C.-born podcast “Flyest Fables,” which wrapped its first eight-episode season this month, recently made its way onto several end of the year lists of notable podcasts. It’s a lushly produced, carefully written, and thoughtfully performed throwback to bedtime storybooks.
“I wanted it to have that storybook feel, as though someone was sitting next to you and reading you this story,” says Morgan Givens, the show’s creator. (Disclosure: Givens is also producer at 1A, which is owned by DCist’s parent company WAMU.) “When I was growing up, I was fortunate enough to have someone who would sit down with me and read me a book. When they did it, they would do all of the voices. They would sound like themselves, but also like the character. That’s how my mom did it. That’s how my grandmother did it.”
Back in October, Givens launched the first episode of “Flyest Fables,” an interconnected fictional saga that begins with a bullied young boy named Antoine and a magical book he discovers. At first, it plays like a modern take on The Neverending Story, splitting its time between reality and the world of a special tome. Over the short series, the world expands beyond just Antoine’s life, following the book and its travels, and introducing new characters along the way.
“I want to tell these fantastical stories where young black and brown kids can picture themselves, see themselves, hear themselves,” says Givens, 32. “There is a reason we follow the book and not the person. It lends itself to be far more open and creative. I’m not stuck and bound to one person’s story.”
This freeform approach has helped Givens create a fictional space he hopes can expand beyond the podcast, into books and comics. While some creators behind fiction podcasts begin as dramatists or actors, Givens possesses no such theatrical background. He arrived to the world of radio from different beginnings.
Graduating from college near the tail end of the recession, Givens planned to become a police officer. His grandmother had spent her life on the force and was something of a legend in his hometown of Charlotte, North Carolina, so he didn’t want to stay there and work in her shadow. As a trans man, he sought a more inclusive home base, so Givens settled on D.C., one of the cities in America where you can’t get fired or lose housing for being transgender.
“I was curious, because I grew up around the police, but I also got the same messaging all black kids get about the police,” Givens says. “You’re always told these people are not your friend and my grandmother would tell me the same thing. I became really interested as to what happens when people put on that uniform that exacerbates some of the qualities of the worst parts of society’s ills, like racism, homophobia, transphobia, sexism. What happens to people?”
Givens says he never found the real answer, but being a black man on the other side of the thin blue line didn’t quite suit him. He left the force to work for a nonprofit that fought against sexual assault in the prison system, but even that didn’t scratch the itch he didn’t know he had. “I felt like I was doing good work but I didn’t feel like I was doing the work that I was supposed to be doing,” Givens says.
In 2015, he got into the world of onstage storytelling, performing for Story District (then called SpeakeasyDC) in their Out/Spoken show at the 9:30 Club.
“When I went up there and talked, people were leaning in to what I had to say,” Givens says. “I took note of the fact that it was possible to move a large crowd of people and sway them and make them consider things they might not have thought about before.”
This new interest in storytelling led Givens to an internship with WAMU’s 1A and, in 2018, a stint at the Transom Story Workshop, a nine-week course in Cape Cod where he says he was one of the only black people in attendance.
As he learned more about the technical side of producing radio and transitioned into using those skills as a full-time job, the “Flyest Fables” podcast became the vital outlet that drew his experiences and gifts together in a meaningful way. Through its sprawling narrative, he’s able to draw upon all his experiences to create characters and address themes. One of the characters for example, Marcus, is a homeless man, and his inclusion in the series comes from Givens’ background as a cop.
“Marcus came out of an encounter I had with a young woman when I was in the police department,” Givens says. “She was without stable housing and there wasn’t enough I could do for her. As I’ve gotten further away from it, I realized that I couldn’t personally save her, but we all could be doing more. What would that look like?”
Givens wants to create a place where young people can see themselves in the stories they love, but he’s targeting an even younger demographic than most young adult novels or online communities with the same goal.
“When I made this, I wanted to tell the stories that I wanted desperately when I was growing up,” Givens says. “I don’t want my nephew, who is three years old, to grow up with stories that aren’t speaking to him and who his friends are and what they look like. … I want to give them a piece of joy while sharing with everyone a world that should exist.”
