Podcasts of the Week Ending April 3

Fresh Air :: The High Stakes Of Amazon’s ‘One-Click America’

The vote to unionize an Amazon warehouse in Alabama and what that means for labor in America.

Planet Money ::  Socialism 101

A primer on a widely misunderstood economic theory.

Radio Boston ::  New Study Supports Suffolk DA Rollins’ Focus More On Serious, Violent Crimes

Rachael Rollins ran for and was elected as Suffolk County District Attorney promising not to prosecute many nonviolent offenses and focus on more serious crimes.  Newly released data is proving her approach to be correct.

Radiolab :: What Up, Holmes?

Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes originated a metaphor for free speech as “the marketplace of ideas,” but is there a better way to conceptualize freedom of speech?

This Day in Esoteric Political History :: Three Mile Meltdown

A partial nuclear meltdown at a nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania was apparently not as bad as it is always made out to be.

Throughline :: Our Own People

The story of a social justice activist I’ve never heard of before, Yuri Kochiyama. A Japanese-American woman who fought for Asian American equality, Kochiyama allied herself with numerous liberation movements. She was friends was Malcolm X and held him as he died.

What Next :: Can a Highway Be Racist?

There’s a long history in the United States of working class BIPOC communities being leveled to build and enlarge highways.  The freeway revolt against this practice continues in Houston.

Running Tally of Podcast of the Week Awards for 2021

• Afropop Worldwide – 1
• AirSpace – 1
• Best of the Left – 1
• The Brattle Film Podcast – 1
• Code Switch – 2
• Consider This – 1
• Fresh Air – 1
• Futility Closet – 1
• Have You Heard? – 2
• Hub History – 2
• Judas and the Black Messiah – Entire series
• LeVar Burton Reads – 1
• Lost Massachusetts – 1
• The Moth – 1
• The Memory Palace – 1
• 99% Invisible – 2
• Politically Re-Active – 2
• Planet Money – 2
• Radio Boston – 2
• Radiolab – 2
• Reparations: The Big Payback – 1
• Scientific American – 1
• Seizing Freedom – 2
• Sidedoor – 1
• Strong Songs – 1
• This American Life  – 2
• This Day in Esoteric Political History – 1
• Throughline – 5
• Twenty Thousand Hertz – 2
• Up First – 1
• The War on Cars – 1
• What Next – 1

Podcasts of the Week Ending November 7

60-Second Science :: Science Sound (E)scapes

Three podcasts provide soundscapes of the Amazon: Amazon Pink River Dolphins, American Frog Choruses at Night, Head Banging and Howling in the Amazon.

99% Invisible :: The Lost Cities of Geo

A podcast near and dear to my heart because it is about web archiving, particularly the effort to save the first great iteration of the world wide web: Geocities.

Futility Closet :: Peace Pilgrim

The life and mission of a woman who dedicated her life to walking across the continent sharing her message of peace

RUNNING TALLY OF PODCAST OF THE WEEK APPEARANCES

• AirSpace – 1
• Afropop Worldwide – 3
• All Songs Considered – 3
• And Nothing Less – Entire series
• The Anthropocene Reviewed – 1
• BackStory – 4
• Brattle Film Podcast – 2
• Best of the Left – 2
• Coronavirus Daily/Consider This – 5
• Code Switch – 5
• Decoder Ring – 5
• Fresh Air – 9
• Futility Closet – 4
• Have You Heard – 3
• Here & Now – 1
• Hidden Brain – 3
• Hit Parade – 4
• Hub History – 1
• The Last Archive – 4
• LeVar Burton Reads – 1
• Memory Palace – 4
• More Than Enough – 4
• Mortified – 1
• The Moth – 1
• Nice White Parents – entire series
• 99% Invisible – 11
• 60-Second Science – 7
• Planet Money – 7
• The Politics of Everything – 2
• Radio Boston – 3
• Radiolab – 8
• Retro Disney World – 1
• Risk! – 1
• Science Talk – 2
• Smithsonian Sidedoor – 4
• Snap Judgment – 1
• Sound Opinions – 1
• The Thirty20Eight – 2
• This American Life – 2
• This Day in Esoteric Public History – 1
• Throughline – 12
• The Tomorrow Society – 1
• The Truth – 1
• Twenty Thousand Hertz – 8
• The War on Cars – 1
• Wedway Radio – 1
• What Next – 12

TV Review: Fleabag (2019)

Title: Fleabag
Release Dates: 2019
Season: 1
Number of Episodes: 6
Summary/Review:

The second season of Fleabag is even better than the first. These tightly scripted and plotted episodes tell a story of human fraility and resilience that is full of laughs and heartbreaks.  The series begins a year after the first series and Fleabag has been ostracized by her family in the interim due to her actions in the first series.  But the show begins with the family reunited for Dad and Godmother’s engagement dinner. Claire is still with Martin, but commuting regularly to Finland for her new job there.  A sixth guest at the table is the priest who will preside over the wedding.  Christened on social media as “Hot Priest” and portrayd by the excellent Andrew Scott, he has a lot of similarity to Fleabag, including the tendency to say inappropriate things out loud and drinking too much, but the good qualities as well.  The main focus of the series is the friendship and the illicit romance between that grows between Flebag and Hot Priest.  But the show also delves further into Fleabag’s trauma over the deaths of her mother and her best friend, Boo, as well as her efforts to repair the relationship with her surviving family.  It’s an excellent, bawdy comedy that somehow also delves right into the heart of humanity and relationships.

Podcasts of the Week Ending February 24

Twenty Thousand Hertz :: Emergency Alert System

I’ve always had an fascination for those tests of the Emergency Broadcast System. I taped one off the radio as a kid, I actually did them as a college radio DJ, and about 20 years ago I heard one that was NOT a test (warning for intense thunderstorms, which was both a relief and a bit underwhelming).  Here is the story behind how they work.

Planet Money :: The Blue Pallet

Pallets are ubiquitous, overlooked, and seemingly hard to improve.  This is the story of how CHEP pallets revolutionized the industry.  My wife writes about pallets and her enthusiasm is infectious, so I loved this story.

The Nation – Start Making Sense :: It’s Time to Break Up Amazon

Reporting on the dangers of Amazon’s monopoly powers, as well as how mandatory non-compete agreements have helped corporations keep low-wage workers from getting better jobs.

Slate’s Hit Parade :: The Year Rap Music Broke

1986 is a significant year in rap music history, mainly due to RUN-DMC’s crossover hit “Walk this Way” which inadvertently helped revive the fortunes of the rock band Aerosmith (I was one of the kids who knew RUN-DMC well, but never heard of Aerosmith before their collaboration).  Chris Molanphy tells the story of Def Jam Recordings, founded by Rick Rubin and Russell Simmons, and how in 1986 they unleashed not only RUN-DMC’s hit album Raising Hell, but also Radio by one of rap’s first solo acts with wide appeal, LL Cool J, and Licensed to Ill by the bratty white kids the Beastie Boys.  Molanphy doesn’t end the story in 1986 though, but follows the ongoing careers of all four acts.

 

TV Review: American Experience: Into the Amazon (2018)

Title: Into the Amazon
Release Date: 9 January 2018
Director: John Maggio
Production Company: An ARK media and John Maggio Productions film for American Experience.
Summary/Review:

The American Experience documentary tells the story of the 1913-14 expedition to explore Brazil’s remote River of Doubt accompanied by former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt and his son Kermit Roosevelt.  I’m familiar with the story from reading Candace Millard’s River of Doubt, so I was eager to see the documentary;s approach to the history.

It’s a well-produced but unimaginative take on the history documentary format with talking heads, archival photos shown with the “Ken Burns effect” (and curiously also making the figures in the photos appear 3-D against the background), and film of actors recreating the expedition in the Amazon.  Another curious decision is to have the recreations in black & white, matching them with the archival footage, but denying the audience a glimpse of the vibrant colors of the rainforest that the men on the this journey would’ve seen.

I was slightly disappointed, but I expect if you were completely unfamiliar with this historical event that this documentary would be a good introduction.

Rating: **1/2

Book Review: River of Doubt by Candice Millard

Author: Candice Millard
Title: River of Doubt
Narrator: Paul Michael
Publication Info: Books on Tape (2005)
Summary/Review:

The River of Doubt, or Rio da Dúvida, was the actual, dramatic name of a river in Brazil’s Amazon region that is now called the Roosevelt River.  Fresh off his failed attempt to return to the Presidency as the Progressive “Bull Moose” Party candidate, Theodore Roosevelt conducted a scientific expedition for the American Museum of Natural History to explore this remote river in 1913-14.   Brazil’s greatest explorer Cândido Rondon joined Roosevelt as  leader and were accompanied as Roosevelt’s son Kermit, a naturalist, and 15 porters.  This book describes the adventure along the river that was plagued by waterfalls and rapids that required frequent portages, disease, loss of food and supplies, and the threat of the indigenous peoples, the Cinta Larga, tracking the expedition.  One member of the party drowned, one was murdered, and the murderer was abandoned by the party in the jungle.  Roosevelt himself suffered injuries and illness that brought him close to death and expressed the wish to be left behind.  It’s a harrowing story that despite happening in modern times seems to be from a more distant era.

Rating: ***1/2