St. Jude Inspire | Audio Stories
A place for us to gather
The video game Fallout is set in the aftermath of global nuclear annihilation, where a few people struggle to survive in Appalachia. From this virtual wasteland came a stunning real-world creation. Kenneth Vigue thought up a group of characters, found actors to portray them and produced the podcast “Chad: A Fallout 76 Story.” For its hundreds of thousands of listeners, the podcast brings solace and laughter, community, and a call to action on behalf of St. Jude.
When Kenneth Vigue began playing the video game Fallout 76, the look of it mesmerized him. It was a sandbox that encouraged telling your own stories. So he did.
At first, the stories he told were just for himself. But then he put them online and fellow Fallout fans clamored for more. The result is the podcast “Chad: A Fallout 76 Story.”
Two years after its first episode, “Chad” has hundreds of thousands of listeners and a large cast of voice actors, including employees of Bethesda Game Studios, which owns the Fallout franchise.
Through the success of the podcast, Ken felt the need to give back. Reaching out to streamers, creators and leaders in the Fallout community, he rallied them together in a campaign he calls Fallout For Hope. One of its beneficiaries is St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Ken’s goal this year is to raise $500,000 for St. Jude during a week in December, when hundreds of Fallout gamers stream around the world.
“The success of the podcast gave me the ability to have a platform to do something with, in a way that benefits others,” Ken said.
“It’s an easy ‘yes’ for people to feel good about.”
api.spreaker.com/v2/episodes/47625486/download.mp3