The Pod Piper: February 16, 2021

THE LIST

1. Richard's Famous Food Podcast - "The Last Mojo"

RFFP has skewered conventions in podcasting (and food journalism, and just general culture) since episode one, but this episode takes it to the next level. Not only is it a fantastic sendup of both true crime and the inconsequential quest* narrative type that is popping up on a lot of pods, but also manages to be an effective iteration of both. Like, the story is really compelling even if the stakes are laughably low. 

2. Factually with Adam Conover - "Four Lost Cities with Annalee Newitz"

I tend to equate urban with modern, but it turns out that cities have been around for a long time. This episode features author Annalee Newitz on her new book about “lost” cities - really just metropolises that are no longer populated. I loved the idea of a city being an organism, one of humanity’s greatest achievements in collective action to build something at times wonderful and fairly illogical. It gave a new shine to the public sidewalks, sewer grates, roads, and library I walked on/past while listening.

3. Planet Money - "The Great Gatsby"

The classic F. Scott Fitzgerald novel is now in the public domain, so the PM team read the entire thing out loud. It's a great book and a really neat idea for a podcast episode. Chapters were divvied up between various producers, and each narrator’s style brought something unique that kept the (admittedly pretty short) book humming along. This tale of opulent tragedy retained the salience endowed to it by high school Aaron. It made me wonder about the modern-day Nick who is surely out there somewhere on Long Island.

4. Reply All - "The Test Kitchen, Chapter 1"

I’m not well-acquainted with Bon Appétit, and to be honest I hadn’t heard anything about a toxic/racist workplace reckoning the food publication faced last summer. Heck, apart from knowing several friends who are (were?) in love with the site and having some vague newsstand nostalgia for the titular font on the cover, I have no affiliation with the brand. It’s possible, then, that this story may not resonate with you the way it did with me. Regardless, I found the Sruthi Pinnamaneni-helmed reporting to be really mesmerizing. Chapter 2 has also dropped and there is at least one more installment on the way - now is a good time to get caught up and/or oriented for the first time.

5. Underunderstood - "Why Is This Sheriff Arresting Fire TV Sellers?"

On its face this story is not important - essentially a hokey Florida sheriff producing crime prevention theater for low level offenses. But it goes beyond that veneer and ventures deep into the nature of what constitutes a crime. It made me think about that whole letter of the law/spirit of the law dichotomy. Should people enforcing the law always default to the letter side of things, and leave the spirit of the law up to the interpretation of the people and their elected officials? I think that’s how the system is designed, but it seems like an awful heavy lift for the masses. Welcome to democracy I guess?

6. 99% Invisible - "Beneath the Skyway"

TIL that there are skyways that connect parts of Minneapolis like hamster tubes, and also that there is some surprising baggage that comes with physically partitioning off some residents from others. Actually, maybe it’s not surprising. At any rate it wasn’t on my radar. I now want to visit the twin cities even more and try to make sense of it all.

HONORABLE MENTION

Planet Money - "How Desi Invented Television"

Factually with Adam Conover- "Keeping Native Languages Alive with Anton Treuer"

This American Life - "The Empty Chair"

How To Citizen with Baratunde - "Prelude: Revolutionary Love is How to Citizen (with Valerie Kaur)"

*As I often do, I weighed in on this piece in my head but never committed it anywhere in writing.  The Reply All episode was good and I enjoyed listening to it, but I was not bowled over by it. I think it’s because the episode occupies a place between art and journalism. The stakes are so low that the seriousness of the production seems almost disconcerting. It was like a less cathartic version of Heavyweight (or indeed Mystery Show), despite having a payoff that is relatively bonkers in it’s completeness. Anyway...

SOMETHINGS NEW

Whistleblower
Tim Donaghy was just the tip of the iceberg of an NBA scandal that goes all the way to the top. Or so Whistleblower, the new podcast from Tenderfoot TV, would have you believe. I’m not saying the idea of corrupt officiating isn’t salient and, at times, even believable. But as they did with Atlanta Monster, the producers of this pod straddle the line between investigative journalism and schmaltzy production flourishes that call it all into question. Like, for instance, employing former Sopranos actor Michael Imperioli as a narrator for several segments of the show. Or placing a bet on an NBA game to demonstrate how gambling works. It’s reminiscent of VICE media - compelling work but usually with some amount of moral ambiguity. I listened to the whole series, and appreciated revisiting the mid-2000s NBA, but found myself wishing Michael Lewis had been conducting a special mini-series as a part of Against The Rules.

In Strange Woods
Musical podcasts have something extra to offer the world, especially in the last year when much of the theatergoing public has been relegated to live-streaming and missing out on the communal experience of being packed into a dark room with strangers and sitting quietly for a couple hours. In Strange Woods doesn’t ultimately live up to the sort of thing that will bring us together to revel in the magic of a shared experience, but it does do a lot of things well. It’s tongue-in-cheek with it’s framing of a first-person investigative narrative podcast, which was largely a non-issue but did make the transition to midroll ads a lot smoother. The score is contemporary with lots of rhythmic talking leading into traditional verse/chorus structure, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that several of the motifs stuck with me and popped to mind the days following an episode. The story was compelling enough, although the setting - winter in a snowblown rural community - was the most relatable bit of the whole thing. A perfect soundtrack for winter dog-walking.