The Marrow Deep podcast festival concluded on Sunday in the village hall at Crimbleshaw Ferry, with a closing panel titled "Being At This: A Conversation With Everyone Who Was Also At This."

The panel consisted of the festival's founder, Mr Dill Hartree, interviewing eleven attendees about their recollections of the festival's earlier panels, several of which the same attendees had been recorded watching for a panel about watching panels.

The festival opened on Saturday morning with forty-two registered podcasters and one couple who had believed the posters advertised a vegetable fair. By Saturday afternoon, every podcaster had interviewed every other podcaster, in pairs, in threesomes, and once as a single chain of nine people passing one microphone down a row of folding chairs.

The schedule

Mr Hartree said the difficulty had emerged early. The original programme included a panel on podcasting, a panel on the panel on podcasting, and a keynote addressed to the previous two panels. By Sunday lunchtime, the third row of panels had begun interviewing the first row about being interviewed, and a fourth row was assembled from whoever remained.

"We had a moment where we realised every voice at the festival had already been on every other voice's podcast," Mr Hartree said. "At that point the audience was the only material left. Fortunately, the audience had spent two days forming opinions about the material, so it was still material."

The final panel included a segment in which attendees described, on tape, the moment they had decided to clap. The applause following this segment was recorded by four separate microphones and will be released as a standalone episode about applause, with a follow-up episode in which the audience discusses hearing itself.

Ms Verity Klopp, who attended with her husband under the impression that the vegetable fair had been rescheduled, said the experience had changed her plans.

"We came for the marrows," she said. "But I've been on three recordings now, and I'm told I have a very listenable perspective on being somewhere by accident."

What happens next

Mr Hartree confirmed that the applause episode would be launched at a second festival next spring, to be held in a larger venue after the village hall's caretaker declined to host it again.

The programme is already drafted. It opens with a panel of this year's audience on the experience of being next year's audience, which Mr Hartree said solved the material problem before it could recur.

"Next year, nobody runs out of anything," he said. "We've pre-recorded the closing panel in advance, so all that remains for the festival itself is the discussion of it."

Eleven attendees have already registered as panellists for that discussion. Registration includes a microphone.