Category: Podcasts

The podcast episode to listen to learn more about North Korea

tl;dr — For a good introductory look at North Korean society, I recommend the first segment of the second episode of Vox Media’s new show Worldly. Find this episode by scrolling down to the Worldly section on the Vox.com Podcasts Page.

As the United States and North Korea “rattle sabers” at each other, as the chances of a U.S. preemptive strike against North Korea’s nuclear capabilities seem to grow, and as our news shows dwell more than ever before in my lifetime on the grim consequences of retaliation — the North leveling their neighbor South Korea’s capital of Seoul, and a terrible escalation to total war that would kill hundreds of thousands if not millions of civilians — you may be wondering how we got here.

I recommend listening to the second episode of a new show from Vox Media called Worldly. The episode is titled “Why North Korea is scary, comical, and horrifying — all at the same time”. You’ll get a sense of the Orwellian experience of being a North Korean citizen, the state’s brutal oppression, its leader’s Bond villain-like qualities, and a bit of the history between the state, its neighbors, and the U.S. There is far more to learn about the rogue nation than fits into 32 minutes, but this segment makes the best of that time to get you started.

(The episode’s second and final segment is devoted to Israel’s changing dynamics regarding which sect of Judaism influences policy, how the state treats women, and who it consider to be Jewish. It does just as well on this topic if you’re interested.)

On those merits, I give this specific episode 4 PODCATS (😺😺😺😺).

It’s a bit premature to judge a show overall when it’s only on its third episode, but so far Worldly only rates 3 PODCATS (😼😼😼). If they want to improve, Wordly’s co-hosts need to start sounding like they’re having fun.

Vox Media, better known for pioneering (the wonderful) “explainer journalism” through their Vox.com news property, started producing podcasts in October 2015 with The Weeds, a weekly wonkishly-detailed show generally looking at domestic policy issues. Their growing portfolio of podcasts includes The Ezra Klein Show (surprisingly good, a standout in the genre of “A smart person you like interviews a guest each week on whatever topic provided the guest is also smart”) and I Think You’re Interesting (I’ve yet to give this a listen, even though they’re 19 episodes in).

The Weeds is strong because its three co-hosts Ezra Klein, Sarah Kliff, and Matt Yglesias sound like they’re having a really good time. This is built from their great mutual respect and admiration for each other’s work, plus their high comfort level from being colleagues for years. They crack jokes that send each other into genuine laughter, give each other a hard time, and often enjoying being sarcastic, moody, and fatalistic together — all without ever detracting from the quality of information they put out. On the contrary, they make discussions of important but dry topics fun to stick around through. That is getting it right.

Worldly’s co-hosts are there yet, probably because the show is so new. Yochi Dreazen, Jennifer Williams, and Zack Beauchamp seem like they’re still getting to know each other, and still establishing themselves. I find myself oddly bored even while learning from their discussions, which is unusual and unpleasant, and a very bad thing for a show in the bountiful market of podcasts.

I’ll bet some of Worldly’s hosts may feel imposter syndrome (which is unwarranted), and I expect that this will all get better with time as they get into a groove. After all, the first episode of The Weeds was titled “Ezra, Matt, and Sarah try to podcast”.

But, I’m just as concerned that this dryer sensibility may be due to structural factors that won’t change. The Crooked Media network’s foreign policy show has a similar flaw: Whereas Crooked’s flagship Pod Save America is three guys clearly having a really time together while analyzing domestic news, its foreign-focused Pod Save The World is far more serious, to its detriment.

It might be that there is something about the kinds of people drawn to foreign policy that leads to this dry tone. Or, it might be that flagship shows benefit from first-out-of-the-gate energy, or from founder energy. (Klein and Yglesias are Vox co-founders, and Kliff is a Vox Senior Editor.) I think this is more likely, and if so, the producers of Worldly and Pod Save the World should both consider how to overcome that.

Despite its dryness, Wordly is already on my listen-to-each-episode list. I’m interested in foreign policy, and it’s the best foreign policy-focused current events news analysis podcast I’m aware of. If I were grading on the curve with its peers, it would rate far better than 3 PODCATS.

(Pod Save America and Pod Save the World have other flaws that I intend to review in the future; Into the Weeds and Worldly are both far better.)

As of this post, Vox.com’s page dedicated to Worldly’s episode notes is incomplete. (Get yer act together, Ezra and crew!) You can find this episode from the Vox.com Podcasts Page, instead.

Or, you know, find it “wherever you get your podcasts”.

Worldly: 3 PODCATS (😼😼😼)

 

This post is part of the thread: Podcast Reviews – an ongoing story on this site. View the thread timeline for more context on this post.

PODCATS

Siskle and Ebert had two thumbs. Sound Opinions have Buy It, Try It, Trash It. Rotten Tomatoes invented percentages.

Podcasts need our own system.

Introducing the Podcast Ordinal Designation Cat Appraisal Tier Standard (PODCATS):

🙀
😾😾
😼😼😼
😺😺😺😺
😻😻😻😻😻

This can be applied to single episodes or entire shows.

I give The Heart 😻😻😻😻😻 PODCATS.

Using this? Let me know.

The best podcast you won’t tell your friends about

Rating: 😻😻😻😻😻 PODCATS

I’m not the first to observe that podcasting is an especially intimate medium. Rich gentle voices recorded close to a microphone sound confessional and personal. Listening through headphones is not only personal by definition, it also exploits your auditory perception to locate the source of the sound in the middle of your head. Call it the Rule of Intimacy.

What makes The Heart rank among the very best podcasts is how it builds upon that intimacy.

Recommending The Heart feels a bit like recommending a vibrator.

Each edition opens with the host’s quiet, syncopated introduction, usually set to the show’s understated theme, a simple yet energetic bass riff with a heartbeat’s casual, steady rhythm.

“From PRX’s Radiotopia… Welcome… to The Heart. I’m Kaitlin Prest.”

Kaitlin intones playful, sensuous delight into each. careful. word, evoking pillow talk… like she’s tickling your ear with a whisper and is about to lick chocolate off your neck.

The Heart describes itself as “an audio art project about intimacy and humanity… comprised of a community of badass writers, radio makers and artists who make personal documentary work about their bodies and their loves.”

It is a show that invites you into its producers bedrooms, not to titillate you, but to empathize with and liberate you by sharing everything with you, a fellow sexual creature.

The Heart grew out of an earlier project called Audio Smut, of which (I think all) the back episodes are still available in The Heart’s feed. Audio Smut celebrated the variety of human sexual experiences and delighted in flipping the bird at all manner of puritanism and prudery.

It succeeded at subverting the very idea of obscenity by rushing into obscene spaces — the intersection of sex and scatalogy, for example — and throwing shameless audio parties there.

Audio Smut wasn’t afraid to be pornographic. (It would be fun to listen to back episodes and calculate its ratio of recorded orgasms-per-episode.) But it rose to the status of art and stayed there by presenting sexuality as a bigger part of our lives than we acknowledge, full of joy, confusion, banality, pain, and trauma. All of it.

Audio Smut evolved into The Heart and joined Radiotopia in 2014, a perfect fit for the network’s brand of top-shelf sound design, creative format, and immersive listening.

Just like the earlier project, The Heart centers non-binary gender, non-traditional relationships, sex positivity, and queer experience. What changed was its scope and ambitions. It would have been difficult for Audio Smut to continue much longer without repeating itself (which it never did, excluding reruns in-between seasons).

The Heart lives in the house that Audio Smut painted. Having established a sex positive world for listeners, the producers were able to start taking that for granted, and explore next-level questions and stories in new depth. It turned down the “yay for all things sex!”, began to tackle issues, and added more editorial voice.

A few seasons ago they focused on producer Mitra Kaboli and Kaitlin’s relationship. That culminated in an event where they were (maybe?) married, teasing listeners a bit with whether this was real, or metaphor. Is that your business? Does it matter? Well, no… but your curiosity is understandable. You the listener have been invited into relationship with these people.

More recently The Heart has featured episodes looking at sex and disabilities, a mini-series on feminine-presenting heterosexual-acting men, a series called “Ghost” examining what lingers when a love dies, and the haunting “Silent Evidence” series documenting a woman’s investigation into childhood abuse.

I suppose every episode of this show ever deserves a trigger warning for something, but these next three paragraphs certainly do for grey areas of sexual assault.

As I write this, The Heart is in the middle a mini-series called “No”. It documents the messy evolution of Kaitlin’s power to say “no” throughout her life. Its dramatic reenactments are as effective as they are brutal, retracing Kaitlin’s real life experiences with men who… let’s say pushed her limits.

It is remarkable, even heroic how Kaitlin avoid applying value-laden language to these men and events. Withholding her judgement is a masterstroke, leaving you the listener with unresolved tension and some intense emotions to work through.

And I don’t know whether this was intended or if I’m projecting here, but the nuance and depth to this mini-series are a righteous rebuke of our culture’s disfunction in this political moment, with our Rapist in Chief.

“No” deserves awards for how astonishingly honest and unafraid it is to force you to deal with this stuff. (That The Heart can still astonish me with its honesty at all is itself astonishing.)

The show’s discourse is light years beyond mainstream conversations about sex and gender. It has received some critical acclaim and enjoys some popularity, but the world would be better of if it had a wider audience. Too many people miss out on the pure pleasure of listening to these episodes, not to mention personal growth from encountering its ideas. It presents true and varied experiences that simply aren’t represented elsewhere, proof positive of the value of diverse voices. (It would be impossible for cisgendered straight men to make this show.)

Reviews on iTunes criticize The Heart for self-obsession. True, its producers often indulge in their own experiences, but they’ve never repeated themselves, and frequently feature others. Having a main cast of characters is a device that builds the show’s intimacy.

Others find fault with the sound design, which often features voices “too quiet to hear”, presumably over road noise during a listener’s commute. That’s laughable for a concept that revolves around the bedroom. The Heart requires the time, attention, and quiet moments you would devote to a new lover. And probably better quality headphones.

Still others complain the host is too “self-important”. I can think of a few reasons why someone might decide this: If sex isn’t important to them, if they’re against sexual liberation for women and queers, if they are themselves repressed, if they reflexively find art that explores ego pretentious, and/or if they don’t actually value every individual’s universe of experiences.

Those listeners aren’t likely to agree with me on much.

This isn’t a show to speed through. It isn’t for multitasking. It rejects your emotional distance. It invites you.

Be willing to be vulnerable, and The Heart will seduce you.

No other podcast with this kind of subject matter commands my respect to this degree, save fellow Radiotopia show Love+Radio, which is far less focused on sex, but similarly unafraid to probe strange, delicate places, and the hilarious, wonderful call-in show The Savage Lovecast, which I also recommend.

No other show is high art, at the pinnacle of the medium, and an erotic experience just to listen to. Only The Heart.

This post is part of the thread: Podcast Reviews – an ongoing story on this site. View the thread timeline for more context on this post.