{"id":1133,"date":"2012-11-17T18:18:46","date_gmt":"2012-11-18T02:18:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=1133"},"modified":"2012-11-17T18:18:46","modified_gmt":"2012-11-18T02:18:46","slug":"podthoughts-heres-the-thing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=1133","title":{"rendered":"Podthoughts: Here&#8217;s the Thing"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><center><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/media.wnyc.org\/media\/photologue\/photos\/heres-the-thing-podcast-logo.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" \/><\/center><\/p>\n<p><strong>Vital stats:<\/strong><br \/>\nFormat: actors, musicians, and intellectuals interviewed \u2014 by Alec Baldwin!<br \/>\nEpisode duration: 20m-1h<br \/>\nFrequency: 2-3 per month<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wnyc.org\/shows\/heresthething\/\"><em>Here\u2019s the Thing<\/em><\/a> [<a href=\"http:\/\/www.wnyc.org\/feeds\/shows\/heresthething\">RSS<\/a>] [<a href=\"https:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/heres-the-thing\/id472939437\">iTunes<\/a>] 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 easily imagines Alec Baldwin casually mentioning how he\u2019d damn sure like to host one of those smart public radio shows, then a higher-up over at WNYC immediately giving the notion a pre-emptive green light. A prominent, name- and voice-recognizable middle-aged political liberal with a wide range of celebrity buddies (whoa, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wnyc.org\/shows\/heresthething\/2012\/jun\/18\/\">David Letterman<\/a>?) a non-famous host would struggle to land? Add it up, and Baldwin almost slots <em>too<\/em> well into the existing machinery of American public radio.<\/p>\n<p>Then again, one just as easily imagines a troubled gestation. Public radio, already a mildly anxious field, has fallen into the thrall of a lot of ideas about its relationship to the terminally anxious field of greater journalism. The industry has long provided refuge to many a program director who would dismiss the concept of an Alec Baldwin interview show out of hand as frivolous, unserious, insufficiently informational. I fear <em>Here\u2019s the Thing<\/em>, despite its relative chastity of form, therefore qualifies as one of those Bold Experiments in Public Radio\u2122. Somehow, the view of the show a comfortable no-brainer and that of the show as a brow-furrowing risk seem equally plausible. By the same token, Baldwin himself comes off as, simultaneously, an impressively thoughtful, curious accidental interviewer <em>and<\/em> a Hollywood actor \u201cdicking around\u201d between jobs.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Read the whole thing <a href=\"http:\/\/www.maximumfun.org\/2012\/11\/17\/podthoughts-colin-marshall-heres-thing\">at Maximum Fun<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Vital stats: Format: actors, musicians, and intellectuals interviewed \u2014 by Alec Baldwin! Episode duration: 20m-1h Frequency: 2-3 per month Here\u2019s 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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-podthoughts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1133"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1133\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1135,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1133\/revisions\/1135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}