April 10 - 16, 2016

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RankPodcastEpisodeLowdown
1







The Memory Palace
Finishing Hold (#85)I've long admired "The Memory Palace," but each episode, however short, often seems to lose me somewhere along the way. This may be due to host Nate Dimeo's soft voice humming warmly with little in the way of verve. It could also be attributed to the scripted prose being rather rich in expository scene setting and low in traditional character driven story arcs. Whatever the reason, I've listened consistently for about a year despite never having been blown away by any one episode...until this week. The episode follows a man's journey from doctor to convicted murderer to, eventually, professional wrestler. The subject holds an inherent sense of drama, but ultimately Dimeo strung the narrative together in a way that allowed the story to blossom without meandering.
2










The New Yorker Radio Hour
Ballad of a Trump Fan (#25)I enjoy reading The New Yorker as much as any supposedly cultured person, but if we're being honest there's no chance I'd ever be able to keep up with it on a consistent basis. Thankfully there is a weekly podcast put out by the magazine that mirrors the subject matter of stories in the current issue. This week featured the latest installment in a series where composer Michael Friedman travels the country to interview voters and write songs using quotes for lyrics. The song features here is based on a Trump supporter in South Carolina, and it's genuinely moving. Jesse Eisenberg and his sister perform a brilliant comedy piece about the Little Mermaid that just cuts as incisively as anything I've ever read in the magazine. While the rich journalistic prose of top shelf writers isn't fully on display in the podcast, all the stories on this week's show clearly benefit from the addition of audio. It's not a replacement for the print edition, but for those of us who read at a glacial pace this is worthwhile.
3








Track Changes
Deep Inside Silicon Valley (#1)Most podcasts that cover the tech industry seem to be insider-y and/or too abundantly gleeful for the general population. "Track Changes," on the other hand, has an incredible amount of insight couched in a style that is both accessible and formal enough for my liking. The show comes from the New York tech design firm Postlight, and highlights things as specific as HTML and as broad as Silicon Valley. The discussion with Jon Lax, product director at Facebook, had one big takeaway for me: We live in an age where you have to decide which rich people run your life. This episode is admittedly the only one I've heard from the show, and so it's possible this could be an aberration in the greater scheme of my podcast listening. Nevertheless, this stuck out prominently for me and it deserves to be heard.

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