I have no interest in podcasts in general, but have become hooked on Book Riot‘s, and now feel better prepared to sound knowledgeable about current literary things, not just Robertson Davies. Check it out! Also, now that I’m exploring the world of podcasts, what do you recommend?
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Zadie Smith, on losing her father: the most perfect piece of writing.
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“sheryl is inspirational! I missed zumba for this and happy I did!”
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Is MasterChef Junior good? I know I’ll get hooked either way, so I’m not starting it unless it’s really good.
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The goblins will take their vengeance, in time.
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A poem Jon Cotner wrote and recorded…while jogging through Prospect Park. All poems are now to include corgis.
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The most beautiful abandoned places in the world that aren’t Silent Hill.
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Classic literature in Vine form, brought to you by Burt’s Bees.
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I have one of their little spit kits ready to send back because I’m very gullible and self-absorbed.
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Beyond the baby blues.
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“Why is he blood soaked and trembling?”
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The world’s most beautiful libraries.
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Tags: feminism, link roundup, the internet
MasterChef Junior is…disturbing. I watched my first episode on Friday night. First, the kids are VERY good at being chefs (they made and decorated layer cakes, and I wanted to cry because they all looked better than anything I could ever do). The judges are kind and encouraging, which is sweet. But the kids are HORRIBLE actors, and you can tell when they’re reciting lines that some production assistant fed them (“I didn’t come here to make friends” THEN STFU AND MAKE A CAKE, KID). It’s very transparent and sad.
Also, a 12-year old girl made a “bad” cake and said “I hope I never have to make a cake again for the rest of my life.” HOW SAD IS THAT.
To be fair, that 12-year-old was the same one that started the cake challenge by talking about how much she hates cakes and never eats them, wasn’t she?
I am liking MasterChef Junior, but it is really odd to see kids between 8-13 doing things in a kitchen that professional chefs have trouble doing (they’ve done Beef Wellingtons fairly recently), especially when you think about what you think you would have been able to do personally at that age in a kitchen. My parents didn’t shy from letting me help out when I could, but there is no way I would have been so adept in a kitchen as to make some of these things at even twice those kids’ ages. I just wonder what their home life is like, to be able to make these fancy Michelin-star restaurant level dishes at the age of eight.
It’s like regular MasterChef in that there are challenges and mystery boxes, but it is a great deal NOT like regular MasterChef, because you don’t get any of that nonsense the adults pull on each other. There isn’t any eyerolling and cattiness, and any “competitive” dialogue feels like it was fed to the kids. Watching them in the actual kitchen situations they’re all about high fiving each other and giving each other hugs and being super supportive. It’s refreshing to watch, and also makes the show about 500 times more tearjerky than it probably would be otherwise. Also, they kick the kids off two at a time so the season is going to be shorter.
Oh god that PPD article! So much sadness and rage (always rage) for that woman. What a total failure of the postpartum health care system. I’m pretty mad at her husband too (oh, you say you’d like to kill yourself and our baby? Let’s try acupuncture!), although I’m sure he didn’t get enough instruction on warning signs and treatment for PPD.
Also, FORMULA IS NOT DIET COKE, and saying so (not her, whoever the fuck put that idea in her head) does nothing but put moms and babies at risk. I didn’t breastfeed, because fuck you, and I promise my kid wasn’t slowly poisoned.
Any breastfeeding nazi puts it in your head that formula is Diet Coke. Although I think that’s nice because to me it was put in my head that formula was Mountain Dew. I both breastfed and used formula, and I will cuntpunt any woman who gives me shit for it.
and I really want to dick punch her husband. Don’t go to the mental hospital! Kill yourself at home!
What a fuckstick.
Also, apparently I really want to do violence to genitals this morning thanks to this article.
That PPD article was so intense that I’m a little bit off now. Mamas, you guys are champs.
I will personally set on fire anyone I see or hear equating formula to anything that is not breastmilk. BRING IT, FUCKERS.
That husband. “Stay home!” Dude, I was at that point in PPD where I looked into how to check myself in, and you know, my husband actually supported me in my decisions and my experience, and I think that’s how I made it through. But did I check to see how long I was allowed to leave a baby at the fire station? Yes. The only thing that kept me out of checking in was that my insurance needed a doctor to back me up and my doctor took one look at me and told me to try Zoloft and Atavan for a week and see how I felt. Oh god, magical zoloft. We knew PPD was a possibility based on my personal and family history of depression and bipolar disorder, but holy shit, I was not prepared for PPD. Depression, isolation, a colicky child. Just thinking abotu it makes me cry
Podcasts! They’re my favorites. I listen to them when I cook and when I am walking to and from work/everywhere so I have a few favorites: Comedy Bang! Bang! (mock-interviews with characters; improv-ish absurdity), How Did This Get Made (dissecting bad movies), You Made it Weird (if you can handle Pete Holmes’ piercing laugh, he is a very gentle/good-natured soul), Who Charted? (Kulap and Howard have the best rapport), Mental Illness Happy Hour (when I’m in a place to handle it emotionally).
These are the podcasts responsible for me creepily chuckling while walking down the street alone.
I frequently laugh at The History of England podcast. The host is just SO DELIGHTFULLY English, and he’ll do things like say that William the Conqueror was “not a happy bunny.”
My high school English teacher used to use the verb “toodled” to describe invasions/historical migrations — I distinctly remember her saying William “toodled over to England” (I think Ghenghis Khan was a toodler as well.)
These are all excellent comedy recommendations. I will add Put Your Hands Together, which is actual standup in podcast form (very rare, it’s usually just comedians talking and not performing).
Radiolab is my all time #1 podcast.
There’s a new show called Sawbones about “misguided medical history” with a doctor and her husband that I’m into. The content is fun and interesting and the hosts are delightful. I especially enjoyed the birth control episode.
Re: Sawbones: Are you kidding me? I am ON IT. Thanks for the tip!
Podcasts: In Our Time for Melvyn Bragg getting impatient with academics who can’t summarize the Mamluk dynasty or gnosticism pithily enough; How Was Your Week for Julie Klausner being hilarious and honest (and for the cat anecdotes); KRCW’s Bookworm for Michael Silverblatt’s gloriously close close-readings and sloooow way of phrasing questions to authors; This American Life for obvious reasons.
DID YOU NOTICE how Melvyn Bragg used to interrupt women far more often than he did men, and then clearly someone had a word, and now he almost always lets the female guests complete their sentences? It’s super heartening.
PODCASTS!
Every Friday morning I wake up a little happier because I get to listen to the Slate Political Gabfest. It’s politics that I love very much.
Also good: This American Life (new on Mondays) and The Moth (I have no idea when it is new).
I occasionally listen to The Nerdist. Apparently Chris Hardwick is famous? He’s awfully egotistical on the show, but I have super enjoyed their interviews with Lily Tomlin, Nick Offerman (because he giggles hilariously in real life), and George R.R. Martin- among many others.
I still always think of Chris Hardwick as the guy from Singled Out. As far as interviews go, I prefer Marc Maron’s WTF.
I listen to the Nerdist if he’s interviewing someone I like. If someone wanted to start out, I’d say start with Jon Hamm, Tom Hanks, Nick Offerman, Zach Galifianakis… anyone who’s been in the comedy scene is always good, and I also really loved the Josh Homme one.
Nick Offerman might have the best giggle ever.
I think those Utah dudes should be sentenced to blow on the rocks for 200 million years until they’re back where they started.
Like, why do we even HAVE the myth of Sisyphus, if we’re not going to employ it when it’s so clearly called for?
How Did This Get Made and How Stuff Works! I forget about both of them sometimes and then I remember and I get to listen to like a million things of them.
I have taken that abandoned Polish train depot as my new spirit animal.
Also, Book Riot’s has quickly become one of my favorite podcasts. Also on that list: NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour (my weekly 48 minutes of delight), The Dead Author’s Podcast (Paul F Tompkins as H G Wells interviewing other dead authors he’s time-traveled to the present – Emily Dickinson was the first and is my most beloved, but they’re all fun), Radiolab (for when I’m feeling science-y and/or want to listen to a podcast w/ the family), Extra Hot Great (current tv-oriented quick wits and great rapport)
Also How Was Your Week w/ Julie Klausner, The Moth, and TAL, as others have mentioned.
I was just about to recommend Dead Authors, and then double-checked to make sure someone else hadn’t, and here you are! I loved the Ayn Rand episode as well (and speaking of John Hodgman, Judge John Hodgman is pretty excellent – people call in with debates like whether one of them should learn to drive stick & argue their case, and after much Hodgmanian rambling, he rules on behalf of one or the other).
My regular podcast fixes are Welcome to Night Vale (the summer reading program episode in particular) and Savage Love; I used to be a regular for This American Life, but at some point I developed a mild xylophone allergy and put the show on hold. Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me is my innocuous background listening for hacking out treadmiles when the weather’s bad outside. The Nerdist, as mentioned above, varies by guest, but Chris Kluwe and Misha Collins both put in phenomenally entertaining episodes. I haven’t yet found a historycast that really works for me; Stuff You Should Know is too informal, and Hardcore History too bombastic.
Sadly, one of my favorite podcasts, Some Guy Reads Shakespeare’s Sonnets, is no longer in production. Some Guy, who was anonymous because he was analyzing poetry as part of an alternative sentence for getting in a bar brawl, and who rocked a heavy NYC accent, went through about the first 40 or 50 of the sonnets and broke down each one: a complete read, then a line-by-line discussion of vocabulary and imagery and the sonnet’s place in the cycle, and then a full reread. He giggled at the dirty bits. It was strangely endearing and very educational; he read a lot of criticism about each poem and talked about historical background material to give context to various metaphors.
WTNV and Nerdist are it. I don’t understand why we don’t have more WTNV fangirling over here, it’s so delightfully odd and smart. (I was at Geek Girl Con this weekend and I saw at least four WTNV cosplays and squealed like a dingus each time.)
I think the flailing over WTNV may have put some people off, and/or there are other places where fandom flourishes and so there’s less need for it here. I got hooked about two weeks before it blew up the iTunes charts (yeah, I liked Cecil before throat spiders were COOL, MAN), but I have a lot of smart, horror-loving, public radio-supporting friends who have yet to be convinced and who look somewhat askance at the general enthusiasm. This is especially tragic when we are waiting for the bus in the rain.
You were at Geek Girl Con? I was at Geek Girl Con! (I mean, I guess given what I know about the audience for this blog, I shouldn’t be surprised). I got a picture with Tasha Yar!
May I humbly suggest Backstory? The hosts only discuss American history, but listening to the three of them discuss how a given issue was handled in the 18th, 19th, and 20th Centuries is worth it. Also, it’s surprisingly racially sensitive: I recommend “Monumental Disagreements” for the story of how slaves were represented in Civil War memorials, and “Been There, Done That” for the sociology of historical reenactments (seriously, why do people want to pretend to be Confederate soldiers?!?). “Committed: Marriage in America” is pretty frank about the history of matrimony too…
Extra Hot Great is a fantastic tv-focused pop culture podcast. Great crew, super funny, and it makes me feel less ashamed for loving tv because the hosts all love tv so much thye’ve made a living watching/writing about it. Pop Culture Happy Hour, from NPR, is similar, though isn’t tv-focused.
And for anyone interested in British monarchy – Rex Factor is a lot of fun. Each episode is devoted to one king/queen (in chronological order), and the two hosts give a history of the monarch and evaluate them on a number of different, X-Factor-y, criteria (“Battle-y-ness” is one category).
Is this the appropriate place to brag that Zadie Smith is coming to speak at my university? Because she is. And I am ridiculously excited to go hear her. Love love love Zadie Smith! Bookmarking that article for later.
I was lucky enough to attend one of her readings for NW in New York last year. Wonderful experience. For more of her work check out her essays for The New Yorker.
Read the Zadie Smith essay and the PPD article and I kind of want to go have a good cry now.
ps: did The Toast dot net just turn into WordPress for anyone else? I had to make a WordPress account to get into the normal comment system.
IntenseDebate has wordpress connectivity. I couldn’t log in to my intensedebate account and had to use my wordpress log in, so I expect intensedebate is having some issues.
I’m going to hijack and say MALLORY I saw you last night at Rainbow Rowell’s booksigning and I recognized you from the mini horse pictures! I wanted to go up to you and say hi but then I got nervous and I didn’t, but you are so pretty and I like your coat and you are great and so is Rainbow.
Hi! Oh, I wish you had come up to say hello! Figwiggin was there and we all said hello to each other. ALSO I made a joke about Eleanor and Park being a cover for Rainbow’s deeply held 9/11 trutherism and one of her sweet normal fans was very confused and I felt terrible.
Not terrible enough not to say it, obviously, but still. There’s a time and a place for turning it off.
I was so focused on staying in line and getting my books signed that I think you left before I did (I was way in the back). Also I wasn’t even sure what to say, “hello I saw your picture with mini horses and I enjoy your internet website”?) Maybe next time I see you around I will just accost you and say hello, so watch out for that.
Book Riot is a great listen but if you want to take it up a notch in the irreverence scale try Literary Disco. Laugh out loud funny uncensored opinions on books and the world. The best.
Slate does great podcasts for everything not bookish- Political and Cultural Gabfests and Double XX.
Yes! Just a few days ago I was thinking I wanted podcast recommendations from The Toast. Here are mine:
Design Matters with Debbie Millman: These interviews with designers are an absolute treat. I know nothing about design but I find most of the episodes absolutely riveting. This series doesn’t just make my commute bearable, it makes it enjoyable! Can’t recommend it highly enough. Bonus: Debbie Millman’s sexy voice.
Put Your Hands Together: For longer drives. Live recording of the Put Your Hands Together stand-up show at the UCB in LA. Each episode has its ups and downs depending on the kind of comedy you like. Overall very enjoyable. Bonus: Cameron Esposito’s sexy voice.
My favorite podcast is Snap Judgment. Think interesting stories built around a theme (a la This American Life), with a funny sassy host, good music, and creative presentation.
Also love How Stuff Works, Stuff You Missed in History Class, and The Dinner Party!
Lean In bugs the shit out of me.
And this bit from the PPD piece: “It was so difficult to get anyone to understand when I said I wanted to live but I couldn’t bear to be in my body one more second, that I felt like I was being tortured.” I have felt something similar to this at various times lately (as I recently summed it up for my partner, “I don’t want to kill myself, I just wish I was dead”). The possibility of PPD is one thing that scares the hell out of me at the prospect of having kids someday (soonish). Like a part of me just KNOWS that it is likely to send me down a shame/hate/depression spiral of sadness. And it’s terrifying.
Did you click on the links for stories from other women of color? It led to a whole website about PPD which I may have, er, bookmarked just in case I ever have children.
Definitely filed that one away for later.
I was impressed with the honesty of the piece, and parts of it brought back some seriously unhappy memories (“None of my friends who were mothers had ever mentioned that they had been so tired they felt like dialing 911” encapsulates a 3-month period in my life more than any other words ever have). Even people who don’t have PPD are usually unpleasantly shocked by how different new parenthood is from their expectations. It’s probably largely unintentional, but when you’re pregnant everyone is SO HAPPY for you that you just know that when the baby is born it’s going to be better than every Christmas morning you ever had, right? We really need more people to be honest about what parenthood is actually like even without PPD, both in the first few months and the following 18 years. Unfortunately recent trends (i.e. Facebook) are going in the exact opposite direction.
There is such a difference between being suicidal and wishing you were dead, and I wish people who haven’t felt that way would understand the difference. It’s one of the most painful explaining things ever, for which there really aren’t words for explaining anyway.
Oh! Oh! The Bugle! John Oliver and Andy Zaltzman do a satirical news podcast, somewhat similar in style to The Daily Show, but with more puns and cricket.
I’ll second (third or fourth) the recs for In Our Time with Melvyn Bragg, The Bugle, Pop Culture Happy Hour, Welcome to Night Vale, The Moth, and Extra Hot Great (this one has been over for some time but the shorts are still worth checking out).
Others:
The Memory Palace – little anecdotes from history told in a delightfully literary way
99% Invisible – architecture, design, urban studies. If you’ve ever wondered why certain buildings seem immediately foreboding or why things you use look the way they do, then this is the podcast for you.
Studio 360 – covers high and low culture. Very well produced. I especially recommend their “American Icons” series, which is a series of in-depth episodes about Monticello, Superman, “Dixie”, Native Son, etc.
The History of Rome and Revolutions – the former covers pretty much the entire history of Rome and is informative as well as surprisingly entertaining. The latter is a new series by the same dude.
Risk! – A longer, much raunchier version of The Moth
Extra Hot Great has rebooted the podcast! It’s all TV now (because of their new site – previously.tv – I presume) instead of TV + movies, but that’s no bad thing.
The Goblin Valley vandals make me so upset. I’ve gone there countless times and it’s such a cool place. Those are really fragile formations and once they’re gone, they aren’t coming back. Especially when the dudes are trying to claim they did it out of worry and that they felt bad about “having” to do it–yukking it up and high-fiving on camera say otherwise. There was a disturbing article earlier this summer about how there has been an increase in vandalism at national parks/monuments in the past few years, possibly due to social media (and people being the worst). http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/05/us/as-vandals-t…
Love the Cotner poem! My corgi would no more fall asleep while eating than she would get up on her back paws and start singing “Misty,” but I appreciate the sentiment.
Corgi haiku:
Running feinting bark
Must get frisbee must get ball
Dinner time? Yes, please!
DID YOU NOTICE how Melvyn Bragg used to interrupt women far more often than he did men, and then clearly someone had a word, and now he almost always lets the female guests complete their sentences? It's super heartening.
I favour conversation-style podcasts over one-person-talking ones, which tend to send me to sleep. Ones that haven’t been mentioned yet and I think should:
Longform: interviewing people about their longform journalism! it’s a bit NY media inside baseball but, idk, it’s very welcoming so i can listen to it and imagine i am in the cognoscenti of people who write well about stuff. (the current episode doesn’t feel to me like a good one to start on – it is an interview with gay talese and i’m sorry but i don’t care about gay talese, you can’t make me – but e.g. the mac mclelland, the edith zimmerman, the cord jefferson, the natasha vargas-cooper interviews are all fascinating)
Black Girls Talking: the sound quality is fairly awful but I don’t care because it creates this sense of being on some sort of international group phone call with your amazing friends who are funnier than you are. Everyone who does this is the best! I have to listen to this while on my own (long walks work well) because it makes me laugh and also generally make facial expressions.
Guardian Science Weekly: science news!!! science news for everyone.
I favour conversation-style podcasts over one-person-talking ones, which tend to send me to sleep. Ones that haven't been mentioned yet and I think should:
Longform: interviewing people about their longform journalism! it's a bit NY media inside baseball but, idk, it's very welcoming so i can listen to it and imagine i am in the cognoscenti of people who write well about stuff. (the current episode doesn't feel to me like a good one to start on – it is an interview with gay talese and i'm sorry but i don't care about gay talese, you can't make me – but e.g. the mac mclelland, the edith zimmerman, the cord jefferson, the natasha vargas-cooper interviews are all fascinating)
Black Girls Talking: the sound quality is fairly awful but I don't care because it creates this sense of being on some sort of international group phone call with your amazing friends who are funnier than you are. Everyone who does this is the best! I have to listen to this while on my own (long walks work well) because it makes me laugh and also generally make facial expressions.
Guardian Science Weekly: science news!!! science news for everyone.
Lots of good podcasts have already been mentioned, but I also love The Thrilling Adventure Hour. It’s based on on the concept of serialized radio dramas, but it’s actually performed live, then the audio is posted ast he podcast. Also, the segments are comedy, not drama. Sparks Nevada: Marshal on Mars is the most heavily serialized, while Beyond Belief and all the other segments are easier to just drop in at any point.
Paget Brewster and Marc Evan Jackson are my favorites of their core cast. Their delivery usually has me laughing the most. Also, Paget Brewster’s laugh is really adorable and makes me happy. Then they have tons of guests, usually actors and/or comedians like Nathan Fillion, Patton Oswalt, John Hodgeman, etc.
One day, should I ever visit Los Angeles, I will go see the live performance. The podcast is great, but I get the feeling I’m loosing some of the humour from the actor’s body language and gestures.
I love a lot of the podcasts mentioned here – Welcome to Night Vale, RadioLab, How Did This Get Made, the Slate Culture Gabfest.
I also like: Yo, is this racist?, DBSA Romance Fiction Podcast (I don’t read a lot of romance but I love this podcast anyway), and I sometimes listen to The Podcast History of Our World – with the caveat that while it’s entertaining, it’s also too simplified and the guy doing it has an apparent religious bias, as in, he tells the story of Moses from the bible as if it’s history.
With all these recommendations for Welcome To Night Vale, I’m going to have to check it out. Thanks!
Does anyone else have the problem of becoming annoyed with the chat of podcast hosts? Apparently I like my podcasts pithy and scripted. WTNV is great, and I also love Podcastle and Escape Pod–short stories make great podcasts. I just tested out The Memory Palace thanks to the recommendation above, and I have a new favorite! Any more recs for non-blathering podcasts?