blog

Thom Dunn is a Boston-based writer, musician, and utterly terrible dancer. He is the singer/guitarist for the indie rock/power-pop the Roland High Life, as well as a staff writer for the New York Times’ Wirecutter and a regular contributor at BoingBoing.net. Thom enjoys Oxford commas, metaphysics, and romantic clichés (especially when they involve whiskey), and he firmly believes that Journey's "Don't Stop Believing" is the single greatest atrocity committed against mankind. He is a graduate of Clarion Writer's Workshop at UCSD ('13) & Emerson College ('08).

My new BADLANDS podcast about Robins Williams is now out everywhere!

I’ve been doing some freelance writing work lately for Double Elvis Productions, the company behind the popular true crime music podcast Disgraceland (which also just aired its 100th episode). The first of my scripts to go live is the ✨season finale✨ to the latest season of Badlands: Hollywoodland, which goes deep on the dark side of Robin Williams’ life, leading up to this tragically complicated death.

I’m really, really effing proud of the work I did on this one. It’s obviously a sensitive subject, and one that really affected me personally on a lot of levels, and I think I did a damn good job of handling it with care, without losing the delight and humanity of the story. Also, it was just a cool experience scripting within an established episode format, with a pre-existing structure and stuff.

You can check out the episode below, or on whatever podcast platform you prefer:

…Also did I mention that, right after my episode premiered, we shot to #1 (!!) on the Apple Podcast History charts?! I GOT A #1 HIT, BABY! (in the same sort of technicality way like how I sort-of kind-of have a Tony Award, but still)