Since July of 2020, Greg Soden has been co-hosting Unscripted Moments: A Podcast About Propagandhi, which surpassed its 132nd interview as of the time I write this. Last month, Greg also released a companion book with transcribed interviews from the podcast and more. Greg kindly submitted himself to a Roll of the Dice interview. We rolled an EIGHT.
So for those unfamiliar, you are the creator of the “Unscripted Moments” Propagandhi podcast, which has really transformed in recent years into being the go-to exclusive podcast for the Canadian band. Can you break down the very first steps of the birth of this thing for us? The concept, your pilot episode, etc.
My cohost Keith and I met on Twitter in 2019-ish and we bonded over the fact he had the Failed States artwork as his social media banner. He was super into metal and we got to chatting. When I started listening to As You Were: A Podcast About Alkaline Trio, hosted by David Anthony and Tim Crisp, I wanted to know if there was one about Propagandhi. There wasn’t. I pitched it to Keith that episodes would be half an hour or so and we’d finish them all in 18-24 months. We agreed that if we were terrible at it after recording 1-2 episodes we wouldn’t release it. But it went really well and we had a blast doing it! Five years later and we’re still finishing the songs and Keith left the show a couple years ago, but we are managing to finish it all.
Let’s hear all about your book. Tell us everything!
The book began because I couldn’t stop thinking about how amazing the interviews have been over the last 5 years with past and present members of the band. Imagine your favorite band from the time you were in middle and high school and then being able to ask them about their lives for hours on end. It’s pretty surreal thinking back to when my friends and I were scouring Napster and Limewire for any tastes we could get of Today’s Empires, Tomorrow’s Ashes and then fast forward 20 years and I’m interviewing them many times.
The idea for transcribing the band interviews came to me and just wouldn’t get out of my head. I was constantly telling my girlfriend “I think it could be the length of a book.” So I did one transcription, put it into a Google Doc, left it alone, then did another one a few weeks later. Eventually I had edited over 117,000 words and it was 350 pages. There are interviews in the book with Chris Hannah, Jord Samolesky, John Samson Fellows, Todd Kowalski, David Guillas, and Sulynn Hago that range from talking about their early days, to their other musical projects, to building guitars, to doing ayahuasca. I love that it’s called Unscripted Moments because the interviews to me feel like normal conversations hanging out.
Throughout your episodes, you began to have the band members themselves as guests, please share with us one of the silliest or most unique pieces of Propagandhi LORE that you were given by the band or alum.
Some of it was emailed, too! Off the top of my head, Chris telling me about Jord recording the drums to “Stand Up and Be Counted” (a Venom cover) on electronic drums was a really funny one that I enjoyed.
Where were you in life when the band made their dramatic change with the release of Today’s Empires, Tomorrow’s Ashes? What were your very first impressions?
I was in high school. I was a junior or senior and the rumor mill among my little circle of Fat Wreck Chords-psychosis friends were talking about how they heard it was coming out pretty soon. So I kept my eyes peeled on Limewire and Napster and eventually “Bullshit Politicians,” “Albright Monument,” and “Back to the Motor League” appeared. Those were the first three songs from the record I heard and I immediately was obsessed with it. I think it’s still my second favorite Propagandhi record to this day. I was all-in, immediately. Empires to the present is my preferred Propagandhi sound. I am a Kowalski-era mega fan.
The podcast has fallen into a pretty fucking great formula, have you thought about what your plan is when you’ve covered every song and album in the discography? I know you have covered just about every little b-side or rare song.
We are NEARLY done as of October 2025. We are about to release “In Flagrante Delicto”’s episode from Victory Lap and then we will have every song from 1989-2024 completed on the podcast. We need to do the podcast title track, “Unscripted Moment” from Failed States, but we are very tired at this point. I’ve done 257 episodes but only covered about 130 songs. We did too many bonus episodes when I should have put my energy solely into doing the main episodes for the songs. But it happened the way it did. I lost a co-host, puttered around by myself for a year, and then got a new co-host in 2023.
When we finish “Unscripted Moment,” we will obviously turn our attention to At Peace. I despise reacting to music too quickly because I think Propagandhi’s slowness has rubbed off on me over the years. So by the time we get to making hour-plus long episodes about At Peace, the record will be a year old. We already have a cover song submitted for “No Longer Young,” so that will probably be our first episode from that record. I just can’t seem to “finish” this podcast.
Speaking of b-sides and rare songs… What is your number one favorite weird/rare song from the band?
“Pigs Will Pay” from the How to Clean a Couple O’ Things 7” is my favorite rare song from the band. Before I ever thought about it and made the podcast episode about it, it was honestly kind of a throwaway track for me, but the depth of the song intensified a lot for me when researching it.
The lyrics also have taken on a new form for me in adulthood. Take for example the following lines:
Morality enforcement based on the interests of a state / Coerced into concordance and threatened into place / It’s not just isolated incidents of cop-jocks kicking ass / It’s a fucking war machine / protecting the wealth of the employing class!
Think of how property damage is talked about in the news and how it is prioritized above pretty much anything else when things in society start to kick off. We don’t do much as a society to protect kids from getting shot in schools, but we sure get bent out of shape over property damage. The language of rioting and looting in relation to property and order is so predictable.
Also, the morality enforcement aspect is becoming frighteningly relevant as the US strips rights away from various marginalized populations at a rate that disgusts me to the point of being unable to coherently talk about, while those same morality enforcers claim specific sacred scriptures as their guiding principals. I have a really hard time following current events because of the glaring hypocrisies that seem to punch me in the face on a daily basis.
Honorable mention: “Oka Everywhere” because the back story of the standoff in the summer of 1990 in Quebec is absolutely incredible to learn about if you care about land rights, resistance, and colonialism.
I’m sure you have to answer this one a lot, can you rank all of Propagandhi’s official discography for us?
Gladly!
Note: I consider it too early to rank At Peace as of this writing in October 2025.
- Supporting Caste
- Today’s Empires Tomorrow’s Ashes
- Failed States
- Victory Lap
- Potemkin City Limits
- Less Talk More Rock
- Where Quantity is Job #1 (including the I’d Rather be Flag Burning 10”)
- How to Clean Everything
You’ve been hammering into your podcast project for long enough now that you’ve gotten to know a group of musicians that you looked up to significantly enough to consider somewhat close friends. I know the term “imposter syndrome” is a bit overused these days, but can you discuss the process of someone’s heros turning into their peers?
I don’t quite agree that the band and I have become “friends” or “peers” per se. There is a danger of parasocial relationships forming in projects like this that I’ve done my best to keep in mind over the years. The band are very kind to tolerate this project’s existence, but I also do my absolute best to not bombard them with my every thought and feeling or to email them for social reasons. Chris was always very purposeful about keeping a separation between himself and the project, not because he wasn’t interested in our friendship, but because he wanted us to have the creative freedom needed to be critical or not worried about disappointing “a friend,” if that makes sense.
Roll of the Dice is a short interview format with a variable amount of questions. A pair of dice is rolled and the total, between 2 and 12, is the amount of questions we can ask. All questions are given to the interviewee(s) at once, and no follow-ups are allowed. The interview may be lightly edited for content and clarity.
Host of “Who’s Zoomin’ Who?,” punk rock dad, OILER from the future, oh and my biggest fears are cold poo on my face when I’m sleeping, and spiders that walk on water. Jacket enthusiast, astrological sign.