Saturday, February 23, 2013
Vital stats: Format: reading/exegesis/celebration of one sentence to one paragraph of James Joyce’s Ulysses Episode duration: 5m-25m Frequency: weekly If you described the medium of podcasting to an aspirational American of sixty years ago — the kind with a complete shelf of Mortimer Adler-approved Great Books of the Western World, purchased whole — they’d imagine […]
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Monday, February 11, 2013
Vital stats: Format: poor and/or freakish writing found on the internet, then read aloud Episode duration: ~1h, plus the occasional special short Frequency: weekly, in theory The internet offers more of a chance than we’ve ever had to engage with the written word and with others who share our interests. As much fruit as this […]
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Vital stats: Format: moderated conversations between an author and an audience Episode duration: ~30m (except when Douglas Adams comes on Frequency: monthly Despite having grown up in America, I’ve cultivated an overwhelmingly British, or at least British Empire, roster of favorite writers: Anthony Lane, Geoff Dyer, Pico Iyer, Clive James, Ian Buruma, Jan Morris — […]
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Saturday, January 12, 2013
Vital stats: Format: independently produced documentaries, mostly from Los Angeles and the U.K. Episode duration: ~30m Frequency: weekly It’s not easy to title a show, granted, but avoiding fiction strikes me as a mark of no particular distinction in public radio. Indeed, in more judgmental moments I pin the blame for the creative malaise afflicting […]
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Sunday, December 30, 2012
Vital stats: Format: on-location segments all over the world about “the people and ideas shaping our urban lives” Episode duration: ~50m Frequency: weekly I know very few people without a conflicted relationship to Monocle magazine. My own began some five years ago, when I happened upon an early issue on a Barnes & Noble rack. […]
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Sunday, December 16, 2012
Vital stats: Format: Danny Baker, his co-host, his callers, and a bunch of (mostly British) celebrities talk football — but mostly go on tangents therefrom Episode duration: ~1h30m Frequency: erratic “Because all of the subjects are British, there are qualities that leap out for an American viewer,” Roger Ebert once wrote about Michael Apted’s Up documentaries. “One is […]
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Saturday, December 1, 2012
Vital stats: Format: Kevin Smith interviews the makers of films he likes Episode duration: 50m-2h30m Frequency: erratic Finally, someone has given Richard Kelly a chance to explain himself. Actually, wait a second — he had a chance to explain himself, back on the Donnie Darko DVD commentary track. Or at least he had a chance […]
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Saturday, November 17, 2012
Vital stats: Format: actors, musicians, and intellectuals interviewed — by Alec Baldwin! Episode duration: 20m-1h Frequency: 2-3 per month Here’s the Thing [RSS] [iTunes] is an interview show hosted by Alec Baldwin. Perhaps your curiosity requires no more detail than that. I wonder how much more detail the development of the program itself required. One […]
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Vital stats: Format: interviews about ideas, science, rationality, and senses of place Episode duration: 25m-1h30m Frequency: sometimes weekly, sometimes biweekly Little Atoms [RSS] [iTunes] used to describe itself as a conversation about “conspiracy theories, cosmology, religion, the new age, human rights, and the state of the left.” Surely you can sense where that list hits a […]
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Vital stats: Format: the bits of interviews you weren’t meant to hear Episode duration: 5m-11m Frequency: weekly “For journalists of all stripes, we are helping them realize the untapped potential of their work as dynamic, fresh content in a new, rapidly changing multimedia world.” You’ll easily find this lightly tortured phrase on the about page […]
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