Earlier this year, I started an occasional series of podcast reviews, featuring in the Weekend section of The Tribune in The Bahamas. You can find more about the Weekend here: http://www.tribune242.com/photos/galleries/sets/weekend/
I'm republishing them here on my blog and inviting readers to make their own recommendations for podcasts I must try - you point, I'll review. This particular review featured on January 23 - and I'll be adding others over the coming days.
THE fad of the moment ahead of
Christmas boiled down to one word: Serial.
Serial is a podcast that completely
gripped its listeners as they followed through the episode-by-episode
expose of a single true-story crime case. It revealed the story of
the murder of a Baltimore teenager and the trial and
not-necessarily-safe conviction of her ex-boyfriend for her killing.
The podcast – essentially a
radio-style documentary investigation available on serialpodcast.org
– captivated many throughout its 12 episodes, but once finished,
left more than a few wanting more podcasts yet not really sure what
to try. So here we provide a selection of some different podcasts and
different styles to try out.
This American Life
(http://www.thisamericanlife.org/)
The obvious place to start for those
gripped by Serial is This American Life – because this is the site
that Serial span out from. Around a million people a week download
and listen to This American Life, and the site serves as a good hub
for all kinds of different podcast-related material. Each episode has
a different theme, but the general guide is true stories about
everyday people. That's not always the case, and the success of
Serial is bringing a second season in the not-too-distant future.
Call Your Girlfriend
(http://www.blogtalkradio.com/callyourgirlfriend)
Everyday doesn't always work, and this
podcast didn't work for me. Call Your Girlfriend is essentially a
chat between two women who are good friends but separated by a
distance and whose topics hopscotch around their main interests. The
episode I listened in to bounced around from cultural identity,
through slavery reparations, passing by celebrity gossip on what's up
with the Kardashians and ending up with movie reviews of romcoms.
Listening to good friends talking is a mixed bag, they obviously
spark off one another but sometimes they have a shorthand way of
talking because they know the other person but don't make things
clear for their larger audience. Also, on occasion, I had to resist
gnawing off my own ears from some of the language used, such as how
they “appresh” (short for appreciate) or talk “posi”
(positively) about things. If you want gossipy chat, drop in, but
it's certainly not for everyone.
Thrilling Adventure Hour
(http://thrillingadventurehour.com/wordpress/comic-books/)
Mimicking the style of rip-roaring
1930s radio plays, the Thrilling Adventure Hour is a live show
performed in front of an audience in Hollywood. It's full of
far-from-serious tales of derring-do and derring-don't, littered with
camp humour and quick-witted sarcasm. They tackle alien invasions and
private eye investigations, musical singalongs and spooks and
spirits. You'll likely need an iTunes account to be able to download
the podcast, but it's free so diving in and giving it a try is as
easy as logging on and hitting the download button while you pour a
drink of the hard liquor the cast seem such fans of. In a similar
kind of vein, there's also Welcome To Nightvale
(welcometonightvale.com), though that is a slightly more spoofed,
paranoid version of The X-Files, part freak-out, part spaced-out.
Stuff You Should Know
(stuffyoushouldknow.com)
Stuff You Should Know revolves around
two laconic hosts, Josh and Chuck, talking about... well, stuff you
should know. For example, in their episode How Bars Work, they
meander through a brief history of booze in front of a live audience
who appear to be partaking in quite a lot of the substance in
question themselves. The facts they come up with are either
brilliantly true or just too good to check, such as how during
prohibition in Canada, you could get medical dispensation for alcohol
if you got a doctor to sign off on it and at one point one area of
Canada was so “unwell” that 10% of the population was deemed in
need of a good drink to get by. They also prowl through the creation
of various drinks, including the Bahama Mama, and the bizarre way in
which many watering holes developed over the years. All in all,
they're mellow company as a backdrop to your day.
STEPHEN HUNT
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