{"id":1897,"date":"2013-10-20T10:37:24","date_gmt":"2013-10-20T17:37:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=1897"},"modified":"2013-10-20T10:37:24","modified_gmt":"2013-10-20T17:37:24","slug":"podthoughts-follow-your-ears","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=1897","title":{"rendered":"Podthoughts: Follow Your Ears"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/center><\/p>\n

Vital stats:<\/strong>
\nFormat: various segments, mostly interviews, on subjects like guns, cycles, rebels, and unemployment
\nEpisode duration: ~1h
\nFrequency: monthly<\/p>\n

Nearly a decade into the medium\u2019s existence, quitting one\u2019s first podcast and starting a second continues to produce intriguing results. It did for Caleb Bacon, whose\u00a0The Gentlemen\u2019s Club<\/em><\/a>\u00a0gave way to\u00a0Man School<\/em><\/a>. I like to think it did for yours truly, whose\u00a0The Marketplace of Ideas<\/em>\u00a0gave way\u00a0Notebook on Cities and Culture<\/em><\/a>. And it seems to have for Edward Champion, a man even earlier into the podcast game, first known for\u00a0The Bat Segundo Show<\/em><\/a>. When he decided to put an end to that cultural interview program, he didn\u2019t wait long to bounce back with\u00a0Follow Your Ears<\/em><\/a>, a podcast dealing not with individual guests, but with concepts:\u00a0guns<\/a>,cycles<\/a>,\u00a0aid<\/a>,\u00a0rebels<\/a>,\u00a0bullies<\/a>,\u00a0unemployment<\/a>. (I\u2019d have done\u00a0lawyers, then guns, then money<\/a>, but only out of personal preference.) Each of these episodes comprises not just an interview, but several different segments around the day\u2019s theme. It reminded me, even when first I heard of it, of certain topical\u00a0This American Life<\/em>\u00a0episodes, which appear whenever that show decides to ask questions about large-scale problems of war, politics, health, finance, what have you.<\/p>\n

Despite having always done a solid job with those sorts of topics,\u00a0This American Life<\/em>\u00a0never struck me as fully suited to that territory. (I found myself tuning in least often \u2014 or tuning out most often \u2014 in the stretch when they might as well have titled the show\u00a0This American Foreign Policy<\/em>.) Perhaps\u00a0Follow Your Ears<\/em>, seemingly born out of such an investigative nature, might offer a less awkward integration of forum, if you will, and substance. But\u00a0This American Life<\/em>\u00a0operates, as I\u2019ve heard major public radio programs tend to, with a staff and an office and legitimacy and everything. From what I can tell, Champion runs\u00a0Follow Your Ears<\/em>\u00a0pretty much the way he ran\u00a0Bat Segundo<\/em>, as a one-man show. A tall order indeed, but you\u2019ve got to respect the willing acceptance of that challenge, especially in podcasting. If I had to name one consistent source of disappointment during this five-and-a-half-year-long-and-almost-over tour of Podthinking duty, I\u2019d point my finger straight at podcasters\u2019 tendency to avoid challenge: to talk to people they already know, to talk about things they already know about, to fall into forms already familiar \u2014 to hang their proverbial pictures wherever they happen find the nails.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read the whole thing at Maximum Fun<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vital stats: Format: various segments, mostly interviews, on subjects like guns, cycles, rebels, and unemployment Episode duration: ~1h Frequency: monthly Nearly a decade into the medium\u2019s existence, quitting one\u2019s first podcast and starting a second continues to produce intriguing results. It did for Caleb Bacon, whose\u00a0The Gentlemen\u2019s Club\u00a0gave way to\u00a0Man School. I like to think […]<\/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-1897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-podthoughts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1897","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=1897"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1897\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1898,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1897\/revisions\/1898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}