December 3, 2018

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It's a week without a longer review, and a week encapsulating a fortnight of listening. This intro note section may be the least relevant I've yet to write. Seriously just start the next bit already.
THE LIST

This strange documentary from Love and Radio breaks from their solo-narrative-culled-from-interview format but retains the show's trademark voyeurism. It's a coherently rambly mishmash centered on the city of Richmond, Virginia, and reminds me of a more produced version of the Reply All marathon call-in shows. Incredible. Maybe the most novel episode I've heard maybe all year.

I've made the claim before, but this might be peak 2018 TAL in all their politically-tinged glory. This episode balances quirky human interest piece and important political history at a time where human interest seems steeped in politics. The thesis that Newt Gingrich kind of created modern partisan politics is compelling, and has a deeply engaging quality that could make it fit to integrate in a high school civics curriculum.
Sports and media and masculinity and the fluidity of it all. This, the penultimate episode in the MEN series, uses sports-talker Jim Rome's duplicity as a lens to examine the state of gendered athletic criticism in American for the past 20 years or so.

Some athletes are forced out of a sport due to injury. Some lose their competitive edge and yield to a crop of younger, hungrier talent that will inevitably replace them. And then there is Rickey Henderson, who followed his desire to play baseball to the end of the earth...or at least to the ranks of non-MLB-affiliated-pro baseball in America. 

A narrative about the pitfalls of being seen as fat had me biting on every change in dispoistion, totally buying into an argument before ultimately being left not knowing what to think. Also, the crazy story behind cult hit song 'Louie Louie.'
It's not often that children are given an earnest spotlight in any medium, but 'The Juggernaut' breaks the mold. The orator in this episode features his two boys in a 21st century reckoning with gender identity amidst the tormenting rage of puberty and social order in middle school.

HONORABLE MENTION

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