Podcast gets the word out about Middlesex Township
MIDDLESEX TWP — While the three creators of a podcast about living in Middlesex Township have the capability to reach people around the world, they actually aim their conversations at a specific audience: their own neighbors.
“The Middlesex Life” is available through multiple outlets, and its hosts, Peter Walker and Patty Gongaware, accompanied by producer and host, Scott Henwood, started the podcast to get residents of the township interested in what’s going on around them.
The podcast is a companion to the Middlesex Community Action group, which Walker formed after being part of the committee that put together the township’s most recent comprehensive plan. Because to him, the comprehensive plan only works if the people it affects put it into action.
“Comprehensive plans are advisory, not mandatory,” said Walker, who has lived in Middlesex Township since 2014. “I just think (the podcast is) great, and we just really want to make sure that other people know this, because if you don't know anything about your community, you can't feel invested in it. If you don't feel invested in it … you're not going to change anything.”
Since last August, the trio have published 25 episodes, each one featuring a different guest who lives or works in Middlesex Township, and some who are “Middlesex-adjacent,” as Henwood described. In that time, the show has garnered more than 90 followers, with 2,150 downloads on at least 870 unique devices.
And it all comes from Henwood’s studio garage in Middlesex Township, where the three hosts get together whenever they have a guest booked to record an episode. The interview is typically the main draw of each episode, but Walker usually speaks on some historical information about the township, and Gongaware brings events and botanical knowledge to the table, giving each broadcaster their chance to shine.
“We are just trying to inform people and make them aware,” Henwood said.
Walker said Middlesex Community Action was formed somewhat out of necessity, with its membership made up simply of people who want to have some influence on the future of Middlesex Township. As he learned while working on the comprehensive plan, which supervisors adopted in 2024, the township’s ordinances and codes are no match for the flood of development that has come to the region in recent years.
Because development of a rural township is “really difficult to undo.”
“Really we want to make sure that people are very thoughtful about the way development goes,” Walker said. “We did the comprehensive plan we asked, 'What do you want?' ‘We want to keep the rural nature of our township.’”
Walker said the group formed to “lobby and raise awareness about the need to check the ordinances and do a little research, look at what other townships have done.” The result is a good group of people, but a group that represents only a fraction of the township’s actual population. An avid podcast listener himself, Walker rallied with Gongaware and Henwood to create the outlet and a document of their township, in the hopes that people would get involved in the community action group through it.
And although the podcast has a goal relating to municipal government, the hosts operate on a “no politics, no religion, no trucks” rule, and keep their episodes focused on their guests. The message is the most important part, with Henwood commenting that they aim to unite longtime Middlesex Township residents with more recent transplants.
The hosts themselves are all transplants, with Gongaware having the longest history in Middlesex Township at 28 years of residence.
“The people who have been around forever, how do we make them know there are other people in this township that you may not meet or know,” Henwood said. “In many ways we want to be that bridge between those two groups and bring some awareness of what's here and who's here.”
Gongaware also said the podcast is not meant to illicit any major reactions, even from its guests, whom are there to talk about their own lives and experience rather than be interrogated.
“We've had artists and musicians, the director of the library in Mars. We did interview an outgoing supervisor,” Gongaware said. “We just want to spread information, help people run things.”
Henwood has been a professional sound engineer for years, and has the recording equipment necessary to make a podcast in a room above his home’s garage. The studio is just a small space with a table and chair for Henwood to produce from as well as seats for the hosts and guests complete with microphones to pick up the sound.
Henwood said the enlisting of guests for each episode has also happened organically, with each of the hosts having connections they invite on, and those connections helping to find further interesting people. The hosts usually get together to record on Mondays, but work flexibly with guests to make sure an interview with them fits their schedule.
After the interview, which typically runs about an hour but is edited down, the hosts schedule the recording to post. A new episode is posted every other Thursday.
The hosts each said that although they consider themselves pretty knowledgeable about Middlesex Township and its denizens, they have each learned a lot through talking to people and gathering subjects for interviews.
“There's a local blacksmith here. There used to be lots of blacksmiths, but he's the last one in the township, which I didn't know,” Walker said.
The trio plan to continue making the podcast until its listener numbers drop off, until it’s not fun anymore or until the hosts run out of ideas. After nearly a year of making the show, the hosts are still enjoying themselves in the creation process, and they have not run out of ideas, despite cutting it close at one point.
“We were nearly out and there's a young couple up the street from Patty, and they're starting a new wedding venue,” Walker said. “I do hand thrown pottery, and I was selling it somewhere; the lady beside me runs a lavender farm just a few miles up the road and she used to be a senior executive at an oil company before that.
“I love this, people do these you think boring jobs, and then they flip.”
When not recording the podcast, the three hosts can be found still involved in Middlesex Township happenings. They stay involved through Middlesex Community Action, Glade Run Lake Conservancy and the first ever Middlesex Community Day, where the podcast creators planned to have a booth.
“The Middlesex Life” is available on most major podcast platforms, Henwood said, but can also be found online at the Middlesex Community Action Facebook page.
