August 13 - 19, 2017
THE LIST
1. Futility Closet - "A Case of Mistaken Identity"
If you've got a sibling around your age, perhaps people have mixed up your names. Some people have trouble distinguishing between the names of two people of the same gender (i.e. calling your brother by your father's name). I have a female cousin named Erin, and it was always confusing when our families gathered together. These situations are easily laughed off, but what happens when a stranger projects their fears into a straw man that very much resembles you? Wrongful conviction stories are sadly quite prevalent, especially for those convicted before the ubiquity of DNA testing, but people are rarely unlucky enough to be falsely accused twice in one lifetime. Well, this edition of Futility Closet brings us the unbelievable tale of a man who suffered that very fate. Not only was our tragic hero engulfed in circumstances beyond his control, but this accidental injustice took place in a foreign land with an unfamiliar language. Recommended listening for anyone who is feeling sorry for themselves about something relatively trivial.
2. Radiolab - "Truth Trolls"
Shia LaBeouf will always be the bumbling-but-lovable Louis Stevens from the beloved Disney channel show Even Stevens. But these days, that name conjures up the image of an unhinged celebrity best known for wearing a paper bag on his head. In Radiolab's "Truth Trolls," LaBeouf surfaces as the center of a well-meaning campaign that fell prey to internet trolls. On first listen I found the episode pretty compelling and generally what I would expect from this stalwart podcast - solid story telling on a theme worthy of much rabbit-hole-falling. At it's heart the details are absurd: an actor known for his antics gets punked by a group of contrarians. Sure, the members of this group from notorious internet slum 4Chan mounted hateful rhetoric in service of their trolling. And yeah, I can see how someone might perceive the end of the episode as glorifying the actions of people spewing hate speech. But the central conceit of the episode is how the real world overlaps with the cyber world, which was aptly illustrated by the contents of the episode. Radiolab removed the episode after push back from listeners, who felt that it implied allegiance to a nasty ideology. I managed to find the episode posted in a YouTube video (linked above), and hopefully it's still up by the time you're reading this. Part of me thinks that the fact that this link was posted on August 12th and has yet to be removed is a sign that someone at Radiolab is standing behind the work. This was not hard to find and surely a low-level WNYC staffer could be tasked with patrolling the web for any links popping up after the removal. The episode itself didn't initially seem to imply approval for either LaBeouf's project or the 4Channers, but on second listen I noticed that there was a lot more errant giggling from the hosts than is the norm for Radiolab. This might be construed as finding the whole affair funny, and it's easy to see how something so strange could elicit laughter from sheer disbelief. Lacking resonant space for pondering has never been a critique for a show that is sometime over-contemplative, but this shortfall hardly merits a formal removal of audio from public consumption. Mostly, I would have loved to see a more well-reasoned response from Radiolab as opposed to a toothless apology.
3. Showcase from Radiotopia - "Ways of Hearing #2 - SPACE"
The excellent miniseries from Radiotopia's Showcase project marches on this week, with a meditation on how physical space interacts with sound. As was the case with episode 1, episode 2 evokes a rich environment crafted from sound that should be the gold standard for podcast producers. "SPACE" asks listeners to consider how technology (namely earbuds) has affected the experience of living in places with a rich din of background sound. The tidbit about sounds waffling in from an apartment window resonated a lot with me this week, as our new home sits within easy listening distance of both a train track and a fairly popular sidewalk. Even as my ears are constantly accompanied by the synthetic sounds of podcasts and music, there is a lot of the natural environment that seeps in and demands attention.
HONORABLE MENTION
Code Switch - "Who's Your Great-Great-Great-Great-Granddaddy?"
Revisionist History - "The Basement Tapes"
SOMETHING NEW
Audio dramas are making a comeback! Relegated to the annals of British radio for decades since the rise of television, telling fictional stories via sound seems to be gaining momentum as podcast listening steadily increases. In my mind the first truly successful iteration of this genre in the modern era manifested in GE and Panoply's collaboration on The Message. Gimlet Media's Homecoming broke new ground, boasting a star-studded cast and fleshing out a fictional world that is far more of a detective story than a sci-fi thriller (though season two is still in progress, so who knows what turn it might take!). The Unexplainable Disappearance of Mars Patel courtesy of Panoply aimed to capture the budding niche of podcasts for children, and was rewarded with a Peabody in 2016. Noted science fiction publisher Tor is trying to innovate the form with their newly-released show Steal The Stars, which will appear first as a podcast and then as both a novel and audiobook after all podcast episodes have dropped. The reason we're here today, however, is the second GE/Panoply pod-partnership: Life After.
First, let's tackle the big picture questions generated by the show. It tells the story of a near-future where a new social media site catalogs voice memos and eventually attempts to leverage this immense book of user content to solve a problem. Without giving too much away, suffice to say that this show aptly examines the boundaries of technology and it's limits in helping solve inherently complex human problems. Big credit goes to writer Mac Rogers (who wrote The Message and Steal The Stars), a playwright whose proclivity for crafting satisfying plot lines is as impressive as the realistic dialogue delivered by substantial characters. Unlike The Message, which leaned pretty heavily on the revelation of a big secret, Life After manages to balance the bigger mystery with interpersonal struggle. From a production standpoint, I really appreciated the audio cue created to connote a notification on the fictitious social media site. Every time it dinged I felt the familiar tinge of pleasure and annoyance that comes with such a sound in the real world. It was refreshing not to have any kind of intro to each installment, a move that totally makes sense. If some producer came on screen before each episode of a television show to thank sponsors, it would jostle viewers and interrupt the viewing experience before it begins. I don't typically mind ads on most shows, but it would be great if podcasters could figure out a way to keep ad copy out of fictional shows (and yes, I acknowledge this comparison to TV unfairly ignores the longstanding revenue structures not completely established in the podcasting world). The outro, however, greatly enhanced my appreciation of this series. It's simple - just the 3 second Panoply jingle - but it signaled the end of an episode and left me on the edge of my ears. Life After shows signs that this form may be in the early stages of a renaissance, a boon for audiences and aspiring playwrights everywhere.
Life After
Recommended for: Aspirational futurists, premium cable TV watchers that have inexplicably run out of audiovisual shows to consume.
Rating: Gotta Have It
1. Futility Closet - "A Case of Mistaken Identity"
If you've got a sibling around your age, perhaps people have mixed up your names. Some people have trouble distinguishing between the names of two people of the same gender (i.e. calling your brother by your father's name). I have a female cousin named Erin, and it was always confusing when our families gathered together. These situations are easily laughed off, but what happens when a stranger projects their fears into a straw man that very much resembles you? Wrongful conviction stories are sadly quite prevalent, especially for those convicted before the ubiquity of DNA testing, but people are rarely unlucky enough to be falsely accused twice in one lifetime. Well, this edition of Futility Closet brings us the unbelievable tale of a man who suffered that very fate. Not only was our tragic hero engulfed in circumstances beyond his control, but this accidental injustice took place in a foreign land with an unfamiliar language. Recommended listening for anyone who is feeling sorry for themselves about something relatively trivial.
2. Radiolab - "Truth Trolls"
Shia LaBeouf will always be the bumbling-but-lovable Louis Stevens from the beloved Disney channel show Even Stevens. But these days, that name conjures up the image of an unhinged celebrity best known for wearing a paper bag on his head. In Radiolab's "Truth Trolls," LaBeouf surfaces as the center of a well-meaning campaign that fell prey to internet trolls. On first listen I found the episode pretty compelling and generally what I would expect from this stalwart podcast - solid story telling on a theme worthy of much rabbit-hole-falling. At it's heart the details are absurd: an actor known for his antics gets punked by a group of contrarians. Sure, the members of this group from notorious internet slum 4Chan mounted hateful rhetoric in service of their trolling. And yeah, I can see how someone might perceive the end of the episode as glorifying the actions of people spewing hate speech. But the central conceit of the episode is how the real world overlaps with the cyber world, which was aptly illustrated by the contents of the episode. Radiolab removed the episode after push back from listeners, who felt that it implied allegiance to a nasty ideology. I managed to find the episode posted in a YouTube video (linked above), and hopefully it's still up by the time you're reading this. Part of me thinks that the fact that this link was posted on August 12th and has yet to be removed is a sign that someone at Radiolab is standing behind the work. This was not hard to find and surely a low-level WNYC staffer could be tasked with patrolling the web for any links popping up after the removal. The episode itself didn't initially seem to imply approval for either LaBeouf's project or the 4Channers, but on second listen I noticed that there was a lot more errant giggling from the hosts than is the norm for Radiolab. This might be construed as finding the whole affair funny, and it's easy to see how something so strange could elicit laughter from sheer disbelief. Lacking resonant space for pondering has never been a critique for a show that is sometime over-contemplative, but this shortfall hardly merits a formal removal of audio from public consumption. Mostly, I would have loved to see a more well-reasoned response from Radiolab as opposed to a toothless apology.
3. Showcase from Radiotopia - "Ways of Hearing #2 - SPACE"
The excellent miniseries from Radiotopia's Showcase project marches on this week, with a meditation on how physical space interacts with sound. As was the case with episode 1, episode 2 evokes a rich environment crafted from sound that should be the gold standard for podcast producers. "SPACE" asks listeners to consider how technology (namely earbuds) has affected the experience of living in places with a rich din of background sound. The tidbit about sounds waffling in from an apartment window resonated a lot with me this week, as our new home sits within easy listening distance of both a train track and a fairly popular sidewalk. Even as my ears are constantly accompanied by the synthetic sounds of podcasts and music, there is a lot of the natural environment that seeps in and demands attention.
HONORABLE MENTION
Code Switch - "Who's Your Great-Great-Great-Great-Granddaddy?"
Revisionist History - "The Basement Tapes"
SOMETHING NEW
Audio dramas are making a comeback! Relegated to the annals of British radio for decades since the rise of television, telling fictional stories via sound seems to be gaining momentum as podcast listening steadily increases. In my mind the first truly successful iteration of this genre in the modern era manifested in GE and Panoply's collaboration on The Message. Gimlet Media's Homecoming broke new ground, boasting a star-studded cast and fleshing out a fictional world that is far more of a detective story than a sci-fi thriller (though season two is still in progress, so who knows what turn it might take!). The Unexplainable Disappearance of Mars Patel courtesy of Panoply aimed to capture the budding niche of podcasts for children, and was rewarded with a Peabody in 2016. Noted science fiction publisher Tor is trying to innovate the form with their newly-released show Steal The Stars, which will appear first as a podcast and then as both a novel and audiobook after all podcast episodes have dropped. The reason we're here today, however, is the second GE/Panoply pod-partnership: Life After.
First, let's tackle the big picture questions generated by the show. It tells the story of a near-future where a new social media site catalogs voice memos and eventually attempts to leverage this immense book of user content to solve a problem. Without giving too much away, suffice to say that this show aptly examines the boundaries of technology and it's limits in helping solve inherently complex human problems. Big credit goes to writer Mac Rogers (who wrote The Message and Steal The Stars), a playwright whose proclivity for crafting satisfying plot lines is as impressive as the realistic dialogue delivered by substantial characters. Unlike The Message, which leaned pretty heavily on the revelation of a big secret, Life After manages to balance the bigger mystery with interpersonal struggle. From a production standpoint, I really appreciated the audio cue created to connote a notification on the fictitious social media site. Every time it dinged I felt the familiar tinge of pleasure and annoyance that comes with such a sound in the real world. It was refreshing not to have any kind of intro to each installment, a move that totally makes sense. If some producer came on screen before each episode of a television show to thank sponsors, it would jostle viewers and interrupt the viewing experience before it begins. I don't typically mind ads on most shows, but it would be great if podcasters could figure out a way to keep ad copy out of fictional shows (and yes, I acknowledge this comparison to TV unfairly ignores the longstanding revenue structures not completely established in the podcasting world). The outro, however, greatly enhanced my appreciation of this series. It's simple - just the 3 second Panoply jingle - but it signaled the end of an episode and left me on the edge of my ears. Life After shows signs that this form may be in the early stages of a renaissance, a boon for audiences and aspiring playwrights everywhere.
Life After
Recommended for: Aspirational futurists, premium cable TV watchers that have inexplicably run out of audiovisual shows to consume.
Rating: Gotta Have It
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