#86: On roadtrips we podcast?
Bello Collective Newsletter: May 8, 2019
Dear Bellos,
Summer is just around the corner, and for me that means I’m spending less time in my headphones. To be honest, my podcast queue becomes a little neglected.
Last summer, while on an hour-long drive, I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to introduce my dad and grandma to podcasts. I scrolled through my favorite shows, trying to find one that fit the circumstances of our shared listening, and settled on an episode of Planet Money.
After I explained a little more about what a podcast is (“It’s a radio program, but I don’t have to wait for it to come on the radio — I can listen whenever I want!”) and gave a setup for the story we were about to hear, my dad and grandma fell into an expectant silence.
I hit play.
A first, everyone in the car stared straight ahead, listening. Three minutes in, my grandma started digging around in her purse. Five minutes in, my dad leaned over to whisper something about directions. They tried so hard to be polite, but this kind of absorbed, communal listening felt uncomfortable for them: Why eschew conversation when you have two perfectly good people here to enjoy it with? Entertainment was for those times when you had nothing more to say.
I find that there are very few places where another person and I can select a podcast together and enjoy it in companionable silence. Even my partner and I have very little overlap in the Venn diagram of our listening habits. So, Bello, I’m here for your advice: have you managed to make podcast listening a social habit? If so, how?
Find me on Twitter and let me know your ways.
Ashley
1. I listened to Phantom Power: Sounds about Sound’s episode “Dead Air “— on unmoving air — and it moved me, a lot. I felt the claustrophobic stillness within the eye of a hurricane, as well as the complete brain shutdown of not being able to read silently after a traumatic event, all while moving myself around a noisy city. (Ma’ayan)
2. Two of my favorite women interviewing two more of my favorite women has become a trend on ZigZag. This season is taking a long, hard look at business culture, and community-driven startup founders Mara Zepeda and Jenn Brandel talk about the Zebra movement as an alternative to Silicon Valley’s “unicorn” companies. It had me yelling, “YES, THANK YOU!” every minute or two. (Ma’ayan)
3. The Deca Tapes! OH MY GOSH The Deca Tapes! I’ve been holding off on recommending this because each episode has gotten progressively better, so I waited until the narrative arc was complete. It’s a little bit of Clue (everyone has a role), a little bit of Agatha Christie (everyone involved is in a confined space and something happens), a little bit of confessional-style audio (everyone is trustworthy… or are they?). The reveals in each episode are fantastic. Set aside a few hours to listen in full. (Ma’ayan)
4. I have been waiting for Jeff Wright’s sequel to Trojan War: The Podcast since 2016. Now we have Odyssey: The Podcast. Jeff’s style is relatable, yet epic, enjoyable and well-researched — he truly is a master storyteller. (Calen)
5. The Explorer’s Podcast just finished an 8-part series on the Lewis and Clark Expedition. The host, Matt, gives a detailed and balanced account of the journey with a healthy dose of perspective. (Calen)
6. The Ways We Are is probably the most interesting find of the week: two mixed-race Canadian women talking about the power of names and how that defines who we are and how we interact with the world. The first two episodes are interviews with their mothers about how they got their names. (Calen)
7. BBC recently released a new fiction, Forest 404, along with talk episodes and soundscapes. I elected to just listen to the main story without the extras, and it was easy to be transported to this strange world absent of nature sounds. Some of the best sound design I have heard in a podcast. (Calen)
8. Phoning It In is an improvised comedy “phone-in” show, and it’s very funny. I particularly enjoyed Episode #31, which includes an interview with Rev. J. W. Peacemaker, Bounty Hunter and star of the reality show God’s Gonna Cut You Down (warning: U.S. listeners may need to ignore the hilariously terrible American accents!). (Conor)
9. When the Mueller report finally came out, I, like the rest of the Internet, watched a livestream of someone reading it out loud page by page by grueling page. It felt like a shared cultural moment for our democracy, trying to figure out what really happened. The livestream ended, but now we have something better: The Mueller Report, an audio dramatization that gives us the report as well as all of the side commentary going on in dear old Bob’s head. (Dana)
10 .The Documentary Podcast from BBC World Service published an episode piecing together the evidence of what happened at Grenfell Tower, a 24-story apartment building in London that burned down in January 2017, taking 72 lives with it. It uses interviews, emergency calls, and testimony to zero in on one floor, and then one flat — flat 113, where 8 people huddled together for safety and only 4 survived. (Dana)
11. I hesitate to recommend “The Body Genius” from The Truth only because you will then be stuck in the same hell of having to wait for the next episodes to come out. With a buff jock as a main character, it would be easy for the show to be full of simple jokes and cheap blows. Instead, you get a murder mystery with one of the more gruesome (yet hilarious and ironically satirical?) deaths I’ve heard of in a while, as well as a deep fondness for the meathead who needs to solve the crime. (Dana)
12. Has the hero’s journey worn out its welcome? That’s the question Eric Molinsky of Imaginary Worlds asks in “The Hero’s Journey Endgame.” As one guest puts it, this staple within sci-fi and fantasy storytelling “is a machine designed, intentionally or not, to make you a narcissist.” (Erik)
13. Working in a hospital is an act of distilling some of life’s most dramatic events into a single shift, day after day. To hear some of these stories, check out The Nocturnists, which is like The Moth if it focused on stories told by medical professionals. Start with “Enjoy Your Life,” which I found quite moving. (Erik)
The Bello Collective is a publication + newsletter about podcasts and the audio industry. Our goal is to bring together writers, journalists, and other voices who share a passion for the world of audio storytelling.
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