Serial is taking the internet by storm, and leading many new ears into the well-established realm of podcasts and radio programming. But where should those ears turn between weekly installments of the thrilling new true-crime drama? (There are no spoilers here.)
In case you haven't heard: Serial is a new weekly podcast, spun off from the acclaimed This American Life. Its creators aim to investigate and tell one non-fiction story, in detail, one episode at a time, over the course of several weeks. It's like a "serial" television show, but you know, on the
So far, eight episodes have been released, and the internet is absolutely abuzz about it. There are blogs, articles, think pieces, and yes, even podcasts about Serial. Did he really do it? Why didn't the attorney bring up this piece of evidence? What's the deal with Jay?
I won't waste time getting to the point: Serial is great. It's entertaining, it's engaging, it's stunningly produced. It hearkens back to an era when radio was a centerpiece in entertainment culture: it brought serial drama, breaking journalism, and cultural commentary to groups of people whose participation required their patience and their imagination. At the same time, Serial is unquestionably a twenty-first century phenomenon: the confluence of verbal storytelling, interactive visual evidence, and digital distribution could only occur in the aftermath of the blogging age, when multimedia presentation of information has become the standard rather than the rarity. All told, (fingers crossed!) it feels like Serial might be ushering in a new era of radio-style entertainment in the digital age, one in which listeners are once again encouraged to come together to listen to, revel in, and converse about stories that are heard and not seen.
Before I get to the actual purpose of this entry, I do want to be sure to underscore one detail: Serial is a work of nonfiction. It's a true story about real people and real events. I bring this up because much of the commentary and chatter I have heard and read on the show has appeared to lose sight of this fact. As we eagerly follow the story and try to sleuth out its details, we need to be sure that we don't forget that it already happened, and that it happened to a bunch of real people with real families in a real community. Forgetting this would be highly disrespectful to those people, a few of whom saw a family member kidnapped and murdered before she graduated from high school.
It would also be a disservice to the creators of the podcast, who have spent a remarkable amount of time investigating this story: doing background research, tracking down long-lost leads, traversing the locations of the events in the story, and lots more. This story wasn't just written up, this story was investigated and reported. Listening to and talking about the show like its Law & Order is the wrong way to go about it.
In short what I'm saying here is: listen to Serial. Become engrossed. Revel in the suspense. Sleuth out the details. But do so while keeping in mind the factual nature of its story, and the journalistic motivations of its creators. Otherwise, the strength and significance of this cool new thing will collapse. In other words, don't let Serial become a subject on my own podcast, the Nice Things Show. (Hey, have you listened to my podcast? You should do that.)
That's more of a soliloquy than you probably bargained for when you clicked on this post. The point is that Serial rocks and you should listen to it. You'd have to travel quite a distance across the internet to find someone who doesn't feel the same way about it (except for that one hipster Facebook friend you have, who has found a lame reason to justify their irrational hatred of this new piece of mainstream culture and won't stop making snide posts about it).
Here's the actual point of this post: I want to acknowledge that Serial has opened many people's eyes to the wonderful world of podcasting and radio. This is great news, because there is some phenomenal content being produced for ears rather than eyes right now. So for this brief moment, while podcasting and radio have some sliver of mainstream cultural relevancy (thanks to Serial), I want to share with you a short list of some of my favorite podcasts. Consider this my pitch for you to throw in the towel on that one TV show you've been watching forever but that really stopped being good several seasons ago, and to replace it with a fresh, crisp, tasty bit of aural entertainment.
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| "Aural entertainment." |
Here are my six favorite podcasts other than Serial, and other than the ones I host (which you obviously should listen to – hit the "Podcasts" tab on this blog when you're done here):
All Songs Considered
The gold standard of music podcasting, and one of the founding inspirations for Dead Wax. All Songs Considered is NPR's longstanding weekly overview of the latest and greatest coming out of the music world. Bob Boilen and Robin Hilton, who have been hosting the podcast for over a decade, will help you become the over-informed music elitist you've always wanted to be. Of course, if you're listening to or reading Dead Wax, you already knew that.
No Such Thing As A Fish
If you're a nerd, then you might have heard of the television show QI (which stands for "Quite Interesting"). It airs on BBC Two, but is published worldwide online and on many broadcast television channels. Over 100 full episodes are available on YouTube. It's hosted by Stephen Fry, and it's basically a panel style game show in which a rotating panel of comedians and smart people attempt to answer seemingly impossible questions. If interesting trivia is your bag, then you need to watch QI.
That's the background of No Such Thing As A Fish. Obviously for a show like QI to be successful, it needs a stellar team of researchers. The QI researchers are called "elves" (adorable), and a few of them host a weekly podcast in which they share and discuss their favorite and most remarkable facts that they've learned over the course of their week of research. Essentially, it's QI for your ears. Amazing.
DecodeDC
This is a podcast I recently came across, and it's excellent. It's a weekly analysis of the national political scene in the U.S. The episodes are short, often less than fifteen minutes long, and it's finely-produced. But don't be misled – brevity does not imply shallowness. DecodeDC offers some of the most interesting and complex analysis of American politics available in any medium. Each week usually features a guest who is an expert in some thing or another, and the field of their expertise forms the theme of the episode. If you're a politics/sociology-minded person, but don't have a great deal of time to invest in consuming media each week, this might be your golden ticket.
Political Junkie
Political Junkie used to be an NPR production. It held the title It's All Politics and it was co-hosted by Ken Rudin and Ron Elving. Rudin also kept a blog called "The Political Junkie" on NPR and ran a regular segment of the same title on the show Talk Of The Nation. Over the summer of 2013, NPR ended TOTN and let Rudin go in an overhaul of their programming. Several months later, Rudin was back on the air on WAMU in Washington D.C., and his blog was back online, under the "Political Junkie" name. Because it's now just Rudin without a cohost, the podcast doesn't bring quite the same degree of witty banter as it once did. But it's still one of the best places to get weekly political analysis, insight, and trivia. If you're a political junkie, well, you see where this is going…
State Of The Re:Union
State of the Re:Union's tagline reads "telling the story of America, one community at a time." It takes an in-depth look at communities around the U.S. and what binds them together. I know that doesn't necessarily sound like a particularly riveting mission statement, but riveting the show is (the first time I heard it, I was driving home at one in the morning, and when I got to my house, I stayed in the car for about twenty minutes to listen to the rest of the episode). In the twenty-first century, rare is the radio program/podcast with the power and aesthetic of a groundbreaking documentary film, and State Of The Re:Union is one of those rare few (Serial is too).
Professor Blastoff
I am trying to think of words to use to describe Professor Blastoff, and here's what I'm coming up with: off-beat, irreverent, meandering, nonsensical, hilarious. It is hosted by three comedians. One is Tig Notaro, a phenomenal comic and writer whose special LIVE (which is "live," as in "do you even LIVE here?" and not "live," as in "I feel aLIVE") sold over 100,000 copies in its first six weeks (and if you listen to it, you'll understand why). I have perhaps never laughed as hard as I did when I first watched her do her Taylor Dayne bit. Anyway, that's off topic. The other hosts are also really funny comedians: Kyle Dunnigan and David Huntsberger. Professor Blastoff is these three comics sitting in a room that they call "the hatch" and dicking around for an hour.
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