The two voices in your headphones

Deck & Banter is exactly two people, one spare room, and an increasingly opinionated houseplant named Gerald.

Illustration of Zoe and Tom recording an episode at a round table with microphones and mugs of tea

Zoe Okafor-Bright

Co-host · Chief of Whimsy

Zoe spent six years designing board-game tutorials before deciding she'd rather talk about games than teach them. She judges every title by its first ninety seconds, holds the show record for The Laughing Stack (41 blocks, mentioned frequently), and believes any game without a silly hat option is leaving joy on the table.

Tom Radley

Co-host · Keeper of Spreadsheets

Tom is a recovering data analyst who cannot encounter a card game without building a tracking sheet. He provides the show's structure, its statistics, and most of its friendly disagreements. His ukulele has been formally banned from the studio since the Fool's Orbit incident of Episode 03.

How the show started

We met at a Canberra trivia night in 2023, on opposing teams, during a tiebreaker question about playing-card history. (Zoe's team won. Tom disputes the adjudication to this day.) The argument continued at the bar, narrowed from cards in general to jester-themed casual games in particular, and never really stopped. Eventually Tom's partner suggested — with love — that we "take it somewhere with microphones". So we did.

The first episode was recorded under a duvet for soundproofing. We've since upgraded to a spare room at 14 Lonsdale Street in Braddon, with actual foam panels and a door that mostly closes. Every second Tuesday we publish a new episode and its written verdict, which you'll find in the archive.

House rules

A few commitments we make to you, the listener and reader, before every recording:

Games with a joker, jester, harlequin or general fool anywhere near their theme get priority in the queue. Why jesters? Because the fool is the only character in the deck who's allowed to tell the truth — and because the bells are, frankly, delightful.