Podcasts of the Week Ending May 4th

30 for 30 Podcasts :: Ahead Of Their Time: Long Ball Soccer

This story tells of how Charles Reep used statistical analysis to create a new style of playing soccer, and doomed English football to mediocrity for a generation, because the math was off.

WBUR News :: Do Prosecutors Have Too Much Power?

Laws in the 80s and 90s that took away discretionary power from judges inadvertently gave those powers to prosecutors instead, and now America’s criminal justice system is not operating in the fair and just manner it should.  Author Emily Bazelon and Suffolk County District Attorney Rachael Rollins talk about the problems of overly powerful prosecutors and possible reforms.

BackStory :: Red in the Stars and Stripes

Comrades, socialism has a long and illustrious history in the United States.  Did you know that Milwaukee had a socialist mayor all through the 1950s?  I’m pretty sure it didn’t get mention on Happy Days.

99% Invisible :: Uptown Squirrel

Squirrels are so commonplace among urban fauna that most people give them very little thought.  But in the 19th century, squirrels were considered exotic and weren’t found in urban parks at all.  This episode explores how that changed and why it’s important to investigate scientifically the squirrel populations in places like New York’s Central Park today.

---

Running tally of Podcast of the Week appearances:

• Afropop Worldwide – 1
• The Anthropocene Reviewed – 1
• BackStory – 2
• Best of the Left– 1
• Code Switch – 2
• Decoder Ring  – 1
• Fresh Air – 4
• Hidden Brain – 2
• Hit Parade – 1
• Household Name – 1
• Hub History – 1
• Memory Palace – 2
• More or Less – 1
• More Perfect – 2
• 99% Invisible – 8
• The New Yorker Radio Hour – 1
• On the Media – 2
• Planet Money – 1
• Planet Money: The Indicator – 1
• Re:Sound – 1
• Radiolab  – 1
• Radio Boston – 2
• 60 Second Science – 1
• Smithsonian Sidedoor – 2
• 30 for 30 Podcasts – 1
• This American Life – 1
• Throughline – 4
• To the Best of Our Knowledge – 1
• Tomorrow Society – 1
• The Truth – 2
• Twenty Thousand Hertz  – 2
• The War on Cars – 1
• WBUR News – 4
• We Need Some Milk – 1
• What Next – 1

Podcasts of the Week Ending December 2

The Story Collider :: The Bats and the Bees

A reluctant field researcher finds purpose in showing drunk 17-year-olds how to tag bats with microchips, and a bee researcher who is allergic to bees.  Science!

Radiolab :: Stereothreat

Research into the effects of negative stereotypes and the difficulty of replicating that research.

Hit Parade :: The Queen of Disco Edition

Things I learned about Boston’s own Donna Summer: 1. she got her start in the Munich production of Hair where she became fluent in German, 2. she wrote or co-wrote most of her songs, 3. she and her producers basically invented electronic dance music, and 4. she continued to have club hits into the 2010s.

Afropop Worldwide :: A Brief History of Funk

A brief but beautiful story of funk with many funky classics and interviews with Bobby Byrd and George Clinton.

Slow Burn: A Podcast About Watergate

A new podcast that tells the story of the Watergate scandal with an as-it’s-happening approach focusing on long-forgotten key players in the scandal.

30 for 30 Podcasts :: The Lights of Wrigleyville

The story of the contentious battle between theChicago Cubs and their residential neighbors to install lights in Wrigley Field in the 1980s.

More Perfect :: Mr. Graham and the Reasonable Man

The story of a legal case that underlies our current crises in policing in America, and the legal fiction of the “Reasonable Man.”