THE ATLANTIC
The Podcast Made From Inside Prison
“The brilliant series is a collaboration between the inmates Earlonne Woods and Antwan Williams and the prison volunteer Nigel Poor, and it is conceived, recorded, and produced from inside of San Quentin State Prison. The show addresses legislative issues through the personal narratives of inmates and highlights the universal experiences shared by those who are incarcerated and those who are not. ‘Everything that happens in prison happens on the outside,’ Poor told me. ‘We really wanted it to be an outside/inside production in every way.’”
BOSTON GLOBE
When Silicon Valley gets religion — and vice versa
“Most of today’s leading religious groups are defined by prophecies and holy texts that date back hundreds or thousands of years. But while 19th-century evolutionary science has challenged some denominations’ account of humanity’s origins, 21st-century technology may offer a more compatible vision of human destiny.“
BELLO COLLECTIVE
You think there’s no podcast criticism? Think again.
Podcasting was born of the indies, and so is the criticism about it.
On Air Fest looks outside the podcast world to highlight the artistry of audio.
Where Radiolab went wrong and what they can do next
CBC’s Sleepover Shows How to Greet Strangers With Empathy
In a world where too many fail to see their neighbors as human beings, one podcast shows how being vulnerable can bring us closer.
“Problems are just another word for life.”
An interview with Sook-Yin Lee, creator of the podcast Sleepover
NOVEL
I pitched and launched the interview series Tape Head, in which audio greats pick out the pieces that made them.
“I never knew with that show the line of what was real and what was fake, what was actual recorded conversations with his friends and what was staged. They're either very, very good actors, or it's real. And I have no idea.”
“This is a beautiful, timeless, transcendent, queer love story, and it begins in the most sonically intriguing way. I think we can forget that you don't have to begin with a hooky piece of tape or a hooky piece of writing. You can just start with a really compelling sound and use it to narrative ends.”
“There is no field recording that doesn’t have a human element. You've chosen that moment; you’ve chosen the time to start and stop the recording. The fact that the recording exists at all is down to human intervention. This piece is really explicit about that.”
TIMBER
To All the McElboys I’ve Loved Before
“The thesis [of the McElroy brothers’ how-to-podcast book] could be summarized in two sentences: make something you care about, and ‘act like a decent human being’ while you do it. The rest is gravy.”
FULL STOP
Johanne, Johanne - Lars Sidenius
“It is always, still, even in 2016, refreshing to see a sexually enthusiastic mother represented in fiction, and Johanne is certainly that. The flatness of the text messages, the straightforwardness of each statement, and the lack of description highlight these two aspects of her character, refusing to let them melt into the background of her life. But the coincidence of sexual enthusiasm and maternal affection alone does not make an interesting character. In fact, sexual mothers should by now be utterly mundane.”
“In terms of literary device, these pieces are ekphrastic, a word that means to describe a piece of art. Each poem — disguised as prose, several pages long, in paragraph form — takes a different artwork or artist as its starting point. But though these pieces are born of visual work, they don’t describe it. Description looks at but remains distant from. It’s more like they step into the work, weave themselves with it. These poems are not “about” the art any more than translation is “about” its original. I couldn’t tell you what the originals look like. But I can tell you how they feel.”
In which I live tweet while listening to the This American Life episode “129 Cars.”
In which I live tweet while listening to the first ever episode of the podcast The Daily 3.8 years after its release.
In which I live tweet while listening too Reply All’s episode “The Case of the Missing Hit.”
TWEET THREADS
Creator of the Twitter account Podcast Critics Exist, where I post podcast criticism past and present, in any format.