Recent Listenin's

Haven't posted on here in a long time, but I recently made a list of podcast episodes I enjoyed of late, so I thought I would post that here, at the very least to save it as a record for myself.

Death, Sex & Money, Brooklyn Left Me Broke 1

Death, Sex & Money, Brooklyn Left Me Broke 2

Death, Sex & Money, I Love You, But There's This Money Thing

Bullseye: Jon Ronson

Reply All: Exit & Return 1 (Very good, get it in the itunes store)

Reply All: Exit & Return 2

Reply All: Silence & Respect 

This is also an interview with Jon Ronson, this is about online public shaming. 

All the Slate DoubleX Podcasts

The Longest Shortest Time, Real Teens, Fake Babies store)

The Longest Shortest Time, Peeping Mom 

Fresh Air: Louis CK

Radiolab: Living Room

Dark and sad, but well done.

Philosophy Bites: The Simulation Argument

Recent Quality Listening

Interview with Sonali Deraniyagala about her experience surviving the 2004 tsunami and the loss of her family.

NPR story on the morning after pill and abortion. 

ER Cast had its annual rant-off. Even if you're not planning on putting in a central line or placing a nerve block anytime soon it's worth a listen.

Recent Favorites

David Folkenflik on the media coverage of the Newton massacre 

ERCast - Rob Orman with Andy Sloas on pediatric fever

Nerdist interview with comedian Maria Bamford

Alec Baldwin interviews Lena Dunham

Risk Podcast - Women on Men episode

Stuff on a Monday from NPR

Radiolab's statement on Jonah Lehrer - I sought this out after I heard an old Radiolab featuring Jonah Lehrer on the radio on WNYC this past weekend. Like a lot of commenters on this post, I hoped that Radiolab would do a more thoughtful examination of Jonah Lehrer's involvement. Considering his sizable contribution to the show I think a more comprehensive post was in order.

TV Writers Script Safe Sex 'Product Placement' by Neda Ulaby

Can We Learn To Forget Our Memories? by Alix Spiegel

Olympic Sound Design

The sound designer for the Olympic games, Dennis Baxter, describes on NPR how the events are miked, or in some cases, synced live to match the action. My personal favorite Olympic   event to hear is the balance beam in gymnastics (minus the commentary) with the rhythmic sounds of feet landing.

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Foot in the Door

NPR's Morning Edition offers a engaging nugget of behavioral psychology with an abbreviated overview of research into manipulation by Shankar Vedantam. The research he alludes to is outlined more specifically in the web story here.


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NPR's Dating Tips

I love how NPR's coverage of social issues or popular culture often makes young people sound like insects. Human female speaks to human male about ownership of human currency. This story by Jennifer Ludden takes a look at how student debt affects dating.
At the very least check out the amazing title of her story and the stock photo.

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Catching Up

  Under a crush of work and schoolwork I haven't had time to record my listening habits here lately. Now that I finally have a brief respite here's a rundown of some recent and not-so-recent notable stories:

Bullseye: Jesse Thorn interviews Moshe Kasher, author of Kasher in the Rye: The True Tale of a White Boy from Oakland Who Became a Drug Addict, Criminal, Mental Patient, and Then Turned 16

Radiolab Shorts: A War We Need
A friend is in school to be an ocean virologist and that seemed like a really random career until I heard this.


Radiolab Colors
 The first part of this episode includes a chorus hired to sing different combinations of wavelengths of light.

The Moth Podcast, Tom Herndon & Christine Blackburn: StorySLAM Favorites

The Moth Podcast, Jenny Allen: I Can’t Get It Out of My Mind

This American Life #465: What Happened At Dos Erres

Slate's XX Gabfest

JJGO Episode #203

I used to listen to Jordan Jesse Go pretty regularly in their early days but I haven't been a faithful listener in a long time. In a spate of boredom I looked through their recent catalog and found several great episodes, including Episode #203 with guest Maria Thayer. As Jesse alludes to in the introduction this episode stands out for being unusually monomaniacal, "We engage in what might be longest segment in Jordan Jesse Go History." Clocking in at almost two hours it eventually serves as workshop for Jesse to process a lot of his feelings about producing radio. An extended examination of whether or not to apply for a Peabody award becomes woven into a general conversation about The Sound of Young America, motivations for making art and Jesse's occasional doubts about what he's doing. Much of it is not really funny but I enjoyed it a lot more than many of their episodes. I found myself wishing Jesse could bring more of that honest sensibility to his Sound of Young America/Bullseye interviews. It was refreshing to hear him not trying to be funny. On The Sound of Young America he's steadily improved in his selection of interviewees and in his interview structure and I think he can get even better. I was left feeling that I've underestimated what the serious, less comedically driven Jesse Thorn can do. Funny that I heard it on his non-broadcast comedy podcast.

Un tagging

I rarely listen to Talk of the Nation but I ran across this recent episode about how Facebook tries to tackle unwanted or inappropriate photos and people tagged in them. Facebook engineer Arthuro Bejar talks about how the issue has evolved, the misunderstandings, the anxieties, and how Facebook is trying to influence how the disputes are resolved, even when they can't intervene. I found myself surprised to be reminded how little authority or control Facebook has or choses to have in some areas, which seems to contradict our associations between technology and authority, order, control and efficiency. I think in many ways users expect Facebook to operate like their other technology products, like their phones or software, that is, relatively bug free, with customer service, accountability and clear standards. But what is a desire to control how the program works and what is a desire to control other people and their behavior?



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The Lady Mini Figure

Strange little story from NPR about Lego's efforts to create toys for girls. Features expert Bradley Weiners' gravely voice.

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Tell and Cajole

So far, I'm enjoying Alec Baldwin's new show on WNYC, "Here's The Thing" because it still seems a bit rough around the edges. He sometimes struggles to stay on topic and clamors to get his own thoughts in, overstepping his guests.

Alec Baldwin's interview with Kris Kardashian Jenner almost, almost makes the Kardashian reality show sound like it's worth watching, but trust me, it's really not. In this interview the Kardashian matriarch comes across vastly more thoughtful and self-aware than she does on TV, and it makes me wonder to what extent the reality show flattens out the entire Kardashian family into a shallow, clumsily staged version of themselves.

Also, yes, in an off the cuff comment, Alec Baldwin does say that a future reality show might be "Keeping Up with The Klonopins." (An anti-seizure drug). I have no idea what that means.
 


PHOTO: Eva Rinaldi

Indoor Pollution

Lively and personal short report on air pollution in Beijing from NPR's Louisa Lim.

Link to story on npr.org



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The Sound of Young America is going to be renamed. I've always found the name endearing because it harkened back to Kids America which I grew up listening to, and because it's sort of long, but I'm looking forward to hearing what they come up with.

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A Few Recent and Not So Recent NPR Stories

Content Farms, by Zoe Chace

Are Vitamins and Supplements Necessary?, by Richard Knox

Hormones, Metabolism and Dieting, by Allison Aubry
Part of NPR's series on obesity.

Interview with Joan Didion about her book Blue Nights, by Susan Stamberg
I'd never heard her voice before. This book is on my list.

Why is College So Expensive? by Larry Abramson

Story on the Listeria Outbreak by Allison Aubry
I'm currently taking Microbiology so this caught my attention.

Recent Slate Political Gabfest Legalese

Emily Bazelon's discussions of current legal issues are my favorite part of the Slate Political Gabfest because she really gets at the sometimes abstruse legal questions that make the cases note-worthy. I've collected a few of those recent segments. The Slate Political Gabfest is also available free in itunes.

Online bullying and school.
Download MP3

Bans on violent video games.
 Download MP3

The class-action case against Walmart brought by women who claimed they were discriminated against.
Download MP3

Contracts for Safety

     I'm starting to delve into medical podcasts and this is one of the first episodes I've listened to. Dr. Rob Orman invites guests onto his show, ERCAST, to discuss topics in Emergency Medicine.
     Many of these episodes are labeled EXPLICIT in itunes, not because of strong language but because of gore (the C Diff episode carries a strong warning: "There are descriptions in this interview that may make you pass out or possibly vomit"). This episode is not gruesome but does contain sensitive topics relating to suicide. The focus is on assessing suicide risk in the emergency room. Originating from the perspective of clinicians makes for different language and different details than you'd get from public radio.

MP3 Download



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Recent New Yorker Fiction Podcasts

I recently listened to three terrific episodes of the New Yorker Fiction Podcast, each story very different from the next. Host Deborah Treisman ends up asking almost exactly the same questions in every episode, which gives the show an even perspective episode to episode.


Click on the links below to listen:
Thomas McGuane's "Cowboy"
There's something very funny about hearing Sam Lipsyte read in a cowboy dialect. He tries hard but he enunciates too perfectly, it sounds too correct to be real. To be fair, I'm not sure who could read this story aloud without sounding stilted.

Roberto Bolaño's "Gómez Palacio"
So mysterious to me, hope to read more of his stories.

John Cheever's "The Swimmer"
Anne Enright's reading brings so much to this story. Perfect for a hot day.

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WTF Podcast comes to Public Radio

Happy to see Marc Marone's caffeine-fueled pet project get picked up by Jesse Thorn & co to be distributed by PRI. Promos by Ira Glass (I guess public radio is a small world):

NPR: Young Catholic Nuns

This story discusses the growing number of young nuns at a Catholic convent in Tennessee. In addition to religious training the women are educated as teachers at St Aquinas College and then work in the schools associated with the congregation. What I found interesting about this report is that Barbara Bradley Hagerty, who regularly produces reports on religion for NPR, describes their role in the community as well as the specifics of how they orient themselves to questions of love and society. The way they talk about their love for Jesus using the language of person-to-person romance is definitely surprising to hear from young American women.
NPR page for the story


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