.png)
A selection of
Awards
Podcast
Podcast
Small Step, Giant Leap
Written By
Tray Epps
Play video
Logline
After discovering his great-grandfather Michael Collins’ secret journal, a skeptical astrophysicist teams up with a relentless podcaster to uncover the terrifying truth of Apollo 11 — Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin never made it back, and the thing that did has been living among us for fifty years
Format
Podcast
Genre
Drama
Comps
The Black Tape
Meets
Serial
With an element of
Homecoming’s cinematic audio world-building
the Story
For fifty years, the world has argued whether the moon landing was a hoax. That was the trick — the sleight of hand. The question was never if we went. The question was who came back. When astrophysicist Dr. Aris Thorne finds his great-grandfather Michael Collins’ hidden journal after his death, the entries reveal a terrifying truth: Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin didn’t survive Apollo 11. Something else did — and it’s been walking among us ever since. Partnered with Jules Cappa, a hungry young podcaster chasing her big break, Aris reluctantly dives into a labyrinth of government cover-ups, declassified files, and cryptic recordings from the mission. Their investigation uncovers more than a lie — it unravels history itself. The race to the moon wasn’t just about planting a flag. It was about contact. It was about retrieval. And Kennedy died knowing why. Small Step, Giant Leap is a faux true-crime documentary podcast turned audio thriller, weaving archival sound, tense interviews, and a chilling conspiracy that spans from the Cold War to the present.
No items found.
The "Story Behind the Story"
The moon landing is one of those universal events — a human triumph, a piece of collective memory. But collective memories are fragile. They’re built on trust. And what happens when that trust breaks? I wanted to tell a story that lives in the liminal space between fact and fiction, history and myth. As a lifelong fan of true-crime podcasts and conspiracy lore, I was fascinated by the idea of using the familiar structure of a documentary — the trust we place in a narrator, the intimacy of audio — and twisting it into a puzzle box that forces listeners to question not just what happened, but why we believe what we believe. This isn’t just sci-fi. It’s grief, legacy, paranoia, and the need to know the truth — even when the truth is unbearable.
No items found.
Key Themes
Small Step, Giant Leap is about the stories we choose to believe and the terrifying consequences when those stories unravel. It explores the tension between truth and myth, showing how history can be shaped as much by secrecy as by fact. Aris’s investigation becomes a meditation on legacy and inheritance — the burden of carrying a family secret powerful enough to rewrite human history. Isolation runs through the narrative, from Collins’ lonely orbit to Aris’s solitary search, highlighting the weight of knowing something others refuse to see. As paranoia sets in, the series asks who we can trust when every voice, every document, every recording might be a lie. Ultimately, it’s about the cost of curiosity — the danger and necessity of pulling a thread even when it could unravel everything we thought we knew.
No items found.
Project Status
No items found.
A selection of
The World
The world of Small Step, Giant Leap blends the familiar intimacy of true-crime podcasts with the eerie vastness of space. It moves between crackling NASA archives, redacted government files, and late-night recording sessions, where the hum of tape decks and the silence between breaths become as suspenseful as any lunar transmission. This is a world where history feels fragile, reality feels slippery, and the past bleeds into the present — a place where one voice, one tape, one secret can change everything we think we know.
No items found.
