October 30, 2018

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THE LIST

This may be the most shocking episode of TAL I've ever encountered, due mostly to the access the podcast giant affords it's listeners to those present during the Parkland High School shooting earlier this year. The scope of the show is appropriately macro, dealing with methods of preventing school shootings or approaching families in the wake of these tragedies, but of course there is an overwhelming intimacy found interlaced between polarizing takes on gun control and arming teachers. Ira and co. keep the partisanship at bay (an admirable or troubling feature of much of the show's recent work, depending on your view) and the humanity of confusion and reckoning at the core of the episode make it one of the year's most compelling pieces. 

This impressive crime-tinged documentary brings a dujour issue into focus, exploring how the phenomenon of modern over-policing came to be. Not only does this two-parter dig up the innovative, well-intentioned iconoclast who birthed a system now running wildly outside the vision of it's founder, but it also connects two pictures of New York City across the decades. The marriage of historical audio and a narrative of NYPD bureaucracy in the present endow this story with a cautionary resonance for anyone installing a system with the potential to last far into the future.
Money may be the social construct most widely accepted as reality. An artist once took a pass at turning currency on its head with a mix of artistic expression and borderline fraud. That's just one thread that drives this insightful accounting of how we view this thing that pervades our lives on a daily basis.

Adopting a child can be a tricky thing for all parties involved, a self-evident truth for anyone who ponders the subject for even a passing moment. But this episode gave me a new appreciation for the nuanced approach adoptees and adopters take in integrating or spurning a child's birth culture. There are so many stories to be told surrounding this way of caring for children, and Code Switch expertly focuses on the voices of adoptees who feel torn between worlds.

HONORABLE MENTION

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