#90: The best podcasts of the week
Bello Collective Newsletter: July 3, 2019
Dear Bellos,
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the individual elements of my favorite podcasts, first zeroing in on the music or sound design (“Choir: GGGGGGG”), then thinking about the format (“Our show today in two acts — Act One…”), the way hosts interact with their listeners (“Hello Beautiful Nerd…”), and finally to the choices made around story editing.
After listening to podcasts for so long, it’s the story editing that still surprises me most. My ear is now trained to catch those rogue inhales or exhales at the end of statements — the ones that tell me an editor has replaced the statement that naturally came next with one from somewhere else in the conversation.
And that’s really where the fun begins. Call it a by-product of living through the drudge of reality TV, where effective editing could create a villain out of the 5th housemate, but these days I’m hyper aware of every editorial choice implied in the final product. Though for the most part we are taught to trust that our hosts and producers have used that cut to build an optimal and efficient narrative for us, I sometimes find myself wondering: What really came next? And what was left out?
A recent episode of Invisibilia showed how editorial perspective can completely change how we arrive at a final narrative. It is a reminder that having a reliable narrator means something (unless of course having an unreliable narrator is part of the fun).
The stakes of those editorial decisions have become more meaningful to me over time. When you understand each episode to be a series of choices — a political act of what to cut and what to keep, of character building and narrative arc, further amplified by sound and format — well, you become a much more critical (and in my opinion, interested) listener.
The downside? You can never really look at your podcasts as a simple distraction ever again.
I don’t mind.
xo,
Ashley
1. Bees! I love bees. Which is why I also love the well-explained, layered narratives of economics, agriculture, and the food industry in Bloomberg’s short-run series Business of Bees. (Ma’ayan)
2. In this age of innovation, I find myself constantly asking “Should This Exist?” … and so does VC investor and host of the show, Caterina Fake. Each episode looks at a new product and its proposition for the future, and talks to people about its benefits and its drawbacks. A thoughtful, critical listen. (Ma’ayan)
3. In 2009, The Telegraph broke a huge scandal about parliamentary wrongdoing. Ten years later, Expenses looks at some of the key characters in what it took to deliver story after story, day after day. (I recommend listening to all, in order, though “The Cartoonist” is my favorite episode.) (Ma’ayan)
4. Inhaled is a five-part series from the Chico Enterprise-Record looking at the impact of toxic smoke from urban wildfires. They explore the topic through the lens of last year’s wildfire in Camp Fire, California, but with an eye to the inevitable fires to come. (Calen)
5. The latest episode of Sidedoor, a podcast from the Smithsonian Institution, examined the early days of the video game industry bubble through the worst game ever made, ET, and the game system it was made for, Atari. (Calen)
6. As the list of extremely well-produced, rigorously researched daily news shows grows, it has become harder and harder to pick the one (because most people are realistically going to listen to just one, I’m assuming?). I’m currently listening to The Intelligence, from Economist Radio, and have been enjoying its wide-ranging focus and its blend of breaking news and more in-depth analysis. A definite contender. (Conor)
7. I have been doing my civic duty and listening to the Mueller Report Audio podcast. Though there is a lovely audiobook version by the Washington Post, this one is free, and pretty straightforward. (Lory)
8. I’ve also been listening to the latest from Louie Media: Injustices, a five-episode documentary in French that discusses sexism in the press, starting with the Ligue du Lol scandal on cyber-bullying that targeted female journalists all over France this past February. (Lory)
9. I’m a bit behind the trend on this one, but I recently marathon-listened to Running From Cops, the latest series from Missing Richard Simmons’s Dan Taberski. Running From Cops is a multi-faceted look at Cops, the longest-running reality show on TV. The podcast is basically a six-episode version of Ashley’s intro, investigating Cops’s ethics (or lack thereof). 10/10 would listen again. (Galen)
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.
Subscribe to the Bello Collective fortnightly newsletter for more stories, podcast recommendations, audio industry news, and more. Support our work and join our community by becoming a member.
