Podswollop
24 Apr 2008, 12pm
Alright, here’s another item about a well-established phenomenon that everyone has already commented the bejaysus out of, but I’ve decided it’s my turn so deal.
Back in the day, by the time Winer (is there anything Dave Winer doesn’t claim to have invented?) and Curry were at mortal combat over who came up with the podcast, the format already had so firmly applied that the time requirements and relatively laborious process of trying one out just to see if you like it were plainly unworthy of the effort. One morning, so it seemed, there it was: an ocean of audio to choose from, and any programmatic or communo-Darwinian attempts to filter out quality failed or dried up in no time. Sure, if you’re the sort of person who takes Lost seriously, you’re going to listen to a Lost podcast; to each his own cultural flags and lapel pins. But the stylistic arena of text and images is so exponentially more vast, and so much easier to negotiate a rewarding path through, it’s hard not to think of the format as broken, a dead end. Perhaps that’s why many come and go so quickly.
Tim Bray twat something which I think goes to a core problem with podcasts: they’re useless unless you’re driving, or cooking, or exercising, or doing anything at all other than thinking.
That said, and as eagerly as I concur with Maciej’s timeless of the early hype, it seems podcasts have to an extent matured, however little they’ve ‘revolutionised’ ‘blogging’. And the early awkwardnesses of delivery are clearly gone as well: consider the various excellent tools that iTunes offers to let you get to your music. Sorts, searches, ratings, playlists, smart folders: all good stuff, and I can’t think of much more you could do to make navigation easier, but despite having music absolutely ground into my DNA, I still gravitate more nowadays to podcasts. I realise this has more to do with their listen-once-then-delete nature versus the pleasures of hearing music again, but the way iTunes and iPods handle podcasts is just so much better: you know right away how recent something is and whether it’s been heard or not. Both will happily resume playing an item at the exact spot you paused it weeks before. And of course the process of passive subscription via XML feed is perfectly executed.
As to the qualities of maturity, here’s what I currently listen to:
The Daily Show’s John Oliver and standup Andy Zaltzmann bicker, snark, and bicker some more about the week’s news. Very funny and surprisingly rude considering it’s done under the imprimatur of the Times of London.
The best cultural round-table show in existence, I think. Every week the BBC’s Andrew Marr gathers together a group of people with something to plug, and forces them to comment on each other’s work. This can get uncomfortable. First thing I listen to when it shows up late Monday.
The BBC’s Friday afternoon movie show. Don’t care about the star interviews or the poets brought in to review the new releases, I just like Francine Stock’s voice.
No words needed, really.
Always good weekly wrapup of the week-nightly BBC arts and letters programme. Mark Lawson is a very sharp writer and broadcaster, but if there is such a thing as an English honky, his voice would be easily considered the definition thereof.
Those unfamiliar with Jonafan Woss’s TV talk shows and radio gig at BBC2 may recall him cavorting and picnicking with Ricky Gervais in the second series of Extras. Standard celebrity interviews and banter about his dogs, fascination with contemporary Japanese kitsch, usually worth a chuckle while, I don’t know, making lunch.
This is the only radio that I sometimes listen to streamed live. A vainglorious, tetchy, pompadoured skiffle musician with the balls to refer to himself as ‘Dr Kermode’ because he once completed a thesis on genre fiction bickers with the rather more sports-focused host about the week’s movies. Kermode is best when he goes off on a tear, the Da Vinci Code and Pirates of the Caribbean III rants being good examples easily found via a quick boo at them video sharing sites.
It kind of irks me that this flawlessly researched and always interesting show lets its political allegiances slip so often, whether I agree with them or not, but Terry Gross is easily the interviewer I most want to hear confront the creative and the powerful. And Gene Simmons. Less xsittinginforterrygross though, please.
The format never changes, Carl Kassell never gets the jokes, but it’s always hilarious, in that gentle, not-too-far, NPR way.
Even more politically slanted than Fresh Air, but always interesting and tenacious. Wish they’d change the theme music one of these decades.
With Kurt Andersen, the only Spy magazine founder who didn’t go on to embody everything that Spy magazine used to mock. Great piece recently about Will Self’s habit of getting into town from airports on foot.
For someone so relentlessly deft with language, the neologisms he’s been flinging about at stephenfry.com (‘blessays’,‘blisquisitions’,‘podgrams’) are downright cloth-eared, but no matter: the posts are great, the geekery is great, and the podcasts are just bliss, as intimate as good narrative radio, but notably, what, self-consciously unselfconscious? So much has been said about Fry’s ability to just talk, and here, in unedited and largely improvised sessions, he does just that.
(I was going to mention , but stopped subscribing to it because as much of a fan of Robert Krulwich I am, the mannered nature of the show’s production makes listening to it not unlike trying to read a good science book surrounded by kids on a playdate, and then there’s , but that one’s on a timeout for now, until we can have a wee bit less merkins and baby vomit.)
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