Absolute Unit: The Story Behind @TheMERL with Adam Koszary

On the 9th April last year, Adam Koszary from The Museum of English Rural Life in Reading, Berkshire was looking through the archives for something appropriate to post on Twitter to mark International Unicorn Day.

He had in mind a sheep or cow with a unicorn-like horn but nothing came up. Instead he found a picture of an enormous and proud looking Exmoor Horn aged ram and decided to post this:

look at this absolute unit.

The tweet went viral and the rest, as they say, is history. In this episode of Show This Thread, Adam explains exactly what happened next and how @TheMERL has built on the success of the ‘absolute unit’.

Show Notes

Adam Koszary’s official title is Programme Manager/Digital Lead for Museums Partnership Reading. He will soon be leaving the role and taking up a new position as Social Media Editor at the Royal Academy of Arts.

His personal Twitter is @AdamKoszary

Here are some of the other tweets/threads we mention in the episode:

A chicken. In trousers.
The library card issued to Merlin the bat who made his way into the museum’s archive storage.

Not only is Adam very good at social media, he is also very happy to share his wisdom and you should definitely visit his Medium page – here are a few highlights:

look at this absolute unit.
The story behind the post that started it all.

The Museum of English Rural Life has had a weird year
A great summary of the events that followed.

Swapping souls with Elon Musk
The latest headline grabbing incident to befall The MERL happened after this episode was recorded but Adam’s got it covered.

A huge thank you to Adam Koszary for agreeing to be my first guest on Show This Thread.

If you have enjoyed this episode please subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts so that you don’t miss one.

If you have any comments or questions – you can leave them on this post, or – e-mail me using podcast@robgillett.com

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