Byte-sized

November 11, 2018 | cgkinnett

Recently, I saw a listicle recommending the best one season binge-worthy series across several streaming platforms and I thought that this would be a great idea for podcasts too! So today we’re going to go through a couple of one season shows that span several genres. In the article Alternate Reality Podcasts, we covered several immersive storytelling/narrative podcasts whose production values were pretty stellar. Rabbits, The Message, TANIS, these have all been out for a couple of years now (and scale way above one season where TANIS is concerned) so what is new out there for our byte-sized attention spans? Lots!

Where to begin?

Let us start with horror. There are three podcasts I have in mind for this genre and they are all very different. First, we dive back into Halloween. Not just the holiday, but the phenomenon of the movie itself and the ethos created by the villain Mike Myers. The podcast is called Halloween Unmasked (The Ringer) and is hosted by Amy Nicholson. Listeners can tell right from the first few seconds of the first episode that Nicholson is a massive fan of John Carpenter’s work and her enthusiasm is unable to be missed. At some point within the first episode, I checked the playback speed because she was speaking so fast, it was set at regular, she was just speaking with such enthusiasm that she almost couldn’t keep up with herself. Once you get past that, this series is chock-full of interesting movie history that every film buff should have an awareness of. From tiny production details that make you smile upon rewatching the original to psychoanalysis of what someone who witnesses trauma goes through, this podcast will have you binge listening instantly – and if you’re really brave, you’ll listen to it at night while walking through your neighbourhood alone. My favorite episodes are three (the psychoanalysis one) and four (covering the Final Girl trend now seen in every horror film).

Next up is The Horror of Dolores Roach (Gimlet). Sounds promising, right? Horror is right there in the title. Man are you right! This tale is disgusting and disturbing on all the right levels. Imagine a modern day, politically correct, Sweeny Todd, whose main character is a woman of color who has just gotten out of jail after a long sentence. Dolores’ integration back into society does not keep her as “above board” as she wants. With a stellar voice cast that includes Daphne Rubin-Vega and Bobby Cannavale, we are taken through a gentrification allegory unlike any I’ve heard so far. The character development that occurs in the eight-episode run arches rapidly but is very well done and their morality is called into question as some pretty creepy decisions get made, causing the level of crazy to elevate quickly. Cannavale’s character welcomes Dolores into his home as soon as she shows back up in the neighbourhood and you have that feeling of “this guy is being a little tooooo nice.” It doesn’t take long for both Dolores and the listener to question where his motives lie. While the timeline of events feels a bit hasty at times, it makes you pause to think, how far would you go for love?

One more terror-ific cast to check out is Dr. Death (Wonderly) which chronicles the career and lawsuits of one Dr. Robert Henderson who is – or rather was- a spinal surgeon in Dallas, TX up until just a couple of years ago. This man was obstinately determined to continue in surgical pursuits even after several patients had become paralyzed after they let him operate on them. The show focuses on the mistakes and oversights which occurred right before and right after one of his colleagues finally calls him out on his malpractice. There are human, medical, and legal aspects to this show and each of them is as compelling as the last. How could someone have such disregard for those who trusted him, how had it never happened before, and what is going to happen to the communication and legal standards between major institutions like hospitals and the transparency they sometimes lack? Henderson’s case is ongoing and journalist Laura Beil is still reporting and creating up to date episodes, keeping the public informed as to the proceedings. Listening to this show provokes so many questions.

Now let’s take a total left turn: art history! Last Seen (WBUR and NPR) is produced in part by the Boston Globe and covers one of the most infamous art heists ever. With eight episodes out at the time of typing this and more to come, listening to Last Seen takes you into the world of art which is not always as accessible as a podcast might be. In 1990, the Isabella Stewart Gardener Museum was burgled in the wee hours of a mid-March morning. In a scene straight from a movie, the thieves disguised themselves as policemen to gain entry to the museum and then proceeded to tie up the guards and cut from the frames $200 million worth of art. There have been zero arrests and zero recoveries in this case and the agents at the FBI who have been working on the case for almost 30 years now have stated that they believe the original perpetrators to be deceased. But the mystery still remains as to where the paintings are and what has really happened in the intervening decades. You don’t have to be a fan of capital “a” Art or a well-versed historian to be interested in this mystery. There is plenty of intrigue to be had in these captivating episodes.

I will be the first to admit that I listen to far too much political content via podcasts. At one point this summer I stopped and counted what my weekly episode intake was and it was over 12! That’s too many. At a certain point, Rachel Maddow and the fellas at Crooked Media all come back to the same points. Underdog (Beto vs Cruz) (Texas Monthly), however, is not a nightly update on what our current disastrous state is. Instead, we get a close examination of a race which captivated the country: that of the Senate race between Beto O’Rourke and Ted Cruz. This podcast, produced by Texas Monthly, goes on the road with the underdog of the race, Democratic Congressman O’Rourke and examines how his campaign was run and what was so different about the momentum felt this year as opposed to years past. Texas has been deep red for almost 30 years and even high profile candidates like Wendy Davis have fallen short of beginning the shift to purple or blue. It is really nice to listen to something that is in the political sphere without having people yelling at you about national catastrophes and instead focus on the smaller, more personal aspects of a campaign. Despite the fact that the election is over, I would still encourage people to listen to this show. There is an excitement felt through the speakers and while hope is present, so is reality. The last episode in the season is a follow-up the day after election day. You can hear the heartbreak but you can also hear the determination. Refer to Presidential for further political listening that has nothing to do with the current political state.

Lastly, to tie it back to the first recommendation, Amy Nicholson and Paul Scheer have been going through AFI’s top 100 films of all time in the podcast Unspooled (Earwolf). After watching each movie, the two talk about what it is that makes each title qualified to be on this list. You can listen in order of episode or skip around to titles that you are more familiar with because each episode is self-contained. Yes, as the list goes on they begin to make connections between the films and the qualities they exhibit in getting on the list, but I don’t think that would diminish your listening experience.

No matter what your interest, there are so many great podcasts out there. With binge listening in mind for a lot of these, there is so much content to lose yourself in. Your ears will thank you.

Alternate Reality Podcasts

January 30, 2018 | cgkinnett

My love of podcasts boarders on obsessed. There’s endless amount of hours of interviews, news, comedy, and on and on to keep you entertained and informed on pretty much any subject you can think up. Podcasts, for those of you who do not know, are essentially talk radio on demand and this isn’t my first mention of them here (check out my article on Presidential). Every morning I walk my dog and listen to Rachael Maddow and First Up and when I am closing up shop at my job, I listen to any of the many shows produced by Crooked Media, more news. I also have go-to’s for interview and information shows in Star Talk Live and The Nerdist. These shows and many others have become so integrated in my days that in the rare occasion that I’ve listened to all the new shows in my queue, I feel off. I learn from these shows and I’ve found comfort in the voices of the hosts. Sometimes I will have them on just running in the background, only half listening. Maybe I’m cooking or cleaning…never when I’m writing though, that would be difficult! Sometimes however there are ones that are not able to be half listened to but instead need to be carefully paid attention to.

Alternate reality podcasts suck me in like nothing else.

In October of 1938 Americans across the country broke into a panic as Orson Welles and a company of actors and musicians live read the science fiction radio drama The War of the Worlds. The broadcast reached millions of homes over the airwaves the night before Halloween proclaiming that aliens had touched down and there was an attack underway. For its first twenty minutes the CBS broadcast was uninterrupted and performed straight. There were no commercial breaks and the style of the play was that of news bulletins being reported live. In a day of no rewind, if you did not hear the introduction and disclaimer of the drama right before it started, you had no way of knowing whether or not this was real or a play. CBS was flooded with phone calls of people freaking out trying to figure out what was going on. Finally, the program broke for a commercial and the introduction was made again. The next day Orson Welles was torn apart by newspapers and was claimed to have purposefully caused a panic.

I love this story so much. There is admiration to be had for Welles in his and the other actors performances and the realistic nature of their broadcast. Bravo to them. There is a laugh to be had in retrospect at the population for having believed so frantically that there were aliens touched down in their country. There were riots and evacuations. That a radio broadcast inspired so much real fear in people far and wide is amazing to me! I’ve read accounts of 100+ people fleeing a midwest town and climbing into the mountains for refuge.

Now, imagine that happening in the present. Experiencing and listening to something so real, so convincing, that you’re not sure whether you should Google it or not to see if it really happened. While we can Google, there will be no panic. There will however be gushing, gushing about how flipping amazing alternate reality podcasts are. In this post I’ll mention three that I’ve listened to recently that had me walking around with earbuds in for hours straight. The Message, Lif-e.Af/ter, and Rabbits all average at ten episodes each, ranging from 45 minutes to an hour and a half.

The Message is the first season in Panoply’s anthology of alternate realities and was the first one I listened to in this genre. I enjoyed it so much that I’ve actually listened to it all the way through several times. Nicky Tomlain is out narrator and the host of her own podcast entitled CryptoCast; very meta. We begin the broadcast as Nicky seeks clearance to shadow a team of cryptologists who work at the Cipher Center for Communication. The team allows her to do this and Nicky starts right at the same time that the team is given an assignment from the government to decode something referred to only as “the message” which was first intercepted in WWII and has yet to be cracked. We learn very quickly that there are mysterious circumstances shrouding this code and the people who have worked to break it over the years. As the team begins working on this task, Nicky takes us from person to person on the team to get a better look at what each of them bring to the table. For example, Mod is a hacker (although they ask Nicky not to use that term) and is able to go places in computer land where no one else is able to reach. Tamara is a cultural historian and goes through history, mythology, and culture to find references or patterns that could relate to whatever topic the team is looking in to. While there are several other characters, there is not a character list anywhere and Wikipedia only has three or four people mentioned. Which brings me to my next point on this podcast. Reality or fiction?

When you do a search on the characters, the ones that pop up have full bios (born, school, where grew up, etc.) as though they were real people. When you search Cipher Center for Communication a company called Cipher Communications Corp is produced in the results. Small things like this make you wonder, is this a real thing that is trying to be covered up or am I going crazy? The events that transpire over the course of the cast would most certainly have made news BUT the government is involved so how do we know it isn’t just something that is being covered up?! The production of the show is really good, complete with full voice cast and all the ambient background life noises one would hear if someone was walking around recording everything as Nicky does.

As we go along on this journey with Nicky and the team, trying to uncover what this message really means, we become front seat passengers to the behind the scenes workings of this [usually] top secret facility. This fly on the wall approach to storytelling gives us all access to the happenings around our narrator.

The same is true for Lif-e.Af/ter which is the second season in the anthology*. We are this time within the offices of the FBI and are privy to the story of one Ross Barnes. Eight months ago Ross’ wife Charlie was killed and he is still very heavily entrenched in his grief. In this world, there is a social media platform called Voice Tree that allows users to record minute long audio clips on the company motto that voice gives you more connection than other forms of media. To cope with his grief, or maybe to feed it, Ross listens endlessly to Charlie’s Voice Tree posts. He becomes obsessed to the point where it is effecting his performance at work and his relationships with his friends. One day as Ross is listening to his favorite curated posts, the whole profile disappears. He freaks out of course and shortly after he has a panic attack/meltdown, the profile reappears. Now, however, there is something new. The profile is speaking directly to him and not in one minute clips either. This raises the very Black Mirror question of are our digital selves different and separate from our physical selves (very similar to S4:E1)? Does a person have to have a body to exist? To begin with, Ross thinks he is going crazy. The Charlie voice doesn’t speak to anyone else so he has no way of proving definitively that he is not just making this up in his head; that he hasn’t broken with reality. As the story progresses, the voice of Charlie is interrupted occasionally by the voice of Sasha who is somehow behind all of this. With Sasha’s appearance comes a sinister twist to the tale and prompts the moral wrongness of exploiting someone’s grief.

While the first season of Panoply’s drama had a more War of the Worlds vibe, Lif-e.Af/ter takes a departure from that and feels much more Black Mirror-esque. The questioning of morals and the integration of not too far off future tech makes for another seemingly real story. The exploration of human emotion and what makes us us is very interesting in this season. We get to know Charlie only through the makeup of her digital self. This makes you wonder, how different from the physical human Charlie is this digital one? When Ross starts feeling uneasy about this point in particular, he asks digital Charlie about a trip that they had taken which Charlie hadn’t mentioned in any of her Voice Tree posts. Because the digital version has nothing to draw from, she/it is unable to answer the questions Ross asks. This leads him to realize the difference between the two. From this show, you begin to question, as you do when watching Black Mirror, what is ethical in regards to our future as humans and the evolution of technology in our lives.

The last show I’ll dive in to is the one I have listened to most recently. Actually, I started this post within an hour of having finished listening. Rabbits is produced by the Public Radio Alliance which has quite a few of these immersive alternate reality shows. Again we are brought along by a narrator who is making a podcast while we are listening to a podcast. Carly Parker’s best friend Yumiko has gone missing under very bizarre circumstances. It is quickly determined that the police are brushing this off as a youth rebelling against her strict Asian parents and that they are not too overly concerned. Carly however is not convinced of this and it isn’t too long into her own investigation that weird clues begin to pop up. Within this world, Carly works for the Public Radio Alliance and her bosses suggest that she create this podcast for real time evidence of her findings and also to provide a trail of bread crumbs should anything happen to Carly along the way.

It turns out that Rabbits is a super secret real life game in which players from around the world solve riddles, puzzles, and collect clues in the hopes of becoming the champion of the current round. The modern iteration of the game is in it’s ninth round and is simply referred to as Nine. Evidence shows that One began sometime pre-WWII and that there were rounds played before them but that there is no way of proving it. Carly puts clues together and slowly realizes that Yumiko was playing Nine and that she was really deep in. Over the course of her investigation, Carly meets other players and goes on wild goose chases (or down rabbit holes, if you will) to connect one clue to another.

As with the other shows, there is a full voice cast in this one and background noises as well. The production of this one is so good that the other day I was walking and listening and I had to take out my earbuds to figure out if it had just started raining or if it was just something I was hearing within the show. While the pacing of the dialogue is sometimes uncomfortably slow and awkward, the premise is so good that you’re able to set that aside and still become engrossed. And just like the endings of the other two, Rabbits leaves you with a weird “what if” feeling that doesn’t leave you for a couple days. While The Message has feelings of War of the Worlds and Lif-e.Af/ter has thematic ties to Black Mirror, Rabbits takes that techy “what if” and also throws in The Ring and The Matrix to further blow your mind.

These weird after effect feelings are an aspect of the genre that I admire deeply. To have such an impact on the audience that they are questioning their reality ties directly back to the first drama from the War of the Worlds broadcast. There are definitely more than just these three shows in this genre but they are great points of entry for immersing yourself in a world of questions and uncertainties. I highly recommend losing yourself in these alternate realities.**

*When searching for The Message you have to search Lif-e.Af/ter as the title changes with the season. They are all listed together as one show but with different seasons.

**Not mentioned here is the podcast TANIS which I began listening to immediately after Rabbits. It is produced by the same team (Pacific Northwest Stories) and is Really good. Do yourself a favor and add this one to your “to listen” list as well!

SXSW Film

March 14, 2017March 16, 2017 | cgkinnett

sxsw

Hello lovelies! This past Friday (3/10/17) saw the start of SXSW Film and thanks to my wonderful boo thang, I got a badge! Quite the splendiferous and exciting thing! In case you are unfamiliar, South by SouthWest (never spelled out like that) is a festival that encompasses beaucoup amounts of areas. In addition to Film, there is Music, Interactive, and Gaming and they are all all kinds of fun. Being the film nerd that I am, getting to go to all of these screenings and premieres has been so fun. I am extremely grateful. So, all that being said, what follows was my weekend!

Friday was opening night and the new Ryan Gosling/Rooney Mara movie Song to Song. I got off work at 5 and rushed to pick up my badge ($8 for parking that lasted 3 minutes btw) and over to the Paramount (if you’re ever in Austin for anything, you should go check out the Paramount. Austinite tip: bring a jacket no matter the season!!!). By the time I walked to the end of the line I had gone five blocks. I asked a volunteer where she thought the cutoff in the line was going to be…I was one block and a courtyard behind who she projected. (I later found out she was pretty spot on.) So I left with a plan: go get dinner and come back for Alien.

This time I arrived two hours early and sat in line with a couple of reporters from Brazil; the publication they work for is Omelete, check it out! So we chatted for a while and ended up sitting together to watch the film. That is one thing that I have really loved about this whole experience; getting to sit in line and chat with strangers and then share a really cool experience with them right then and there. So we get in and sit down and out comes Ridley Scott, Catherine Waterston, Danny McBride, and Michael Fassbender. They Q&A for a bit and goof around and then like 15 minutes worth of clips were shown! It looks pretty similar to Prometheus stylistically. There’s some creepy stuff (sorry for using such a vague word, terrible, I know). For starters, this is a colonizing mission so everyone is spoused up making for some stressful situations no doubt. There was also this cool “commercial” for your very own David (if all robots looked like Fassbender, would you be okay with robots? Hmmmm). Afterwards, the original was shown. I left about half way through to get some sleep in prep for Saturday.

Bright and early the next morning, I arrived at the Austin Convention Center and was number two in line for American Gods. While Neil Gaiman wasn’t there himself, he did record a message to introduce the first episode. While I have read other titles of his, American Gods is not among them. It was really cool to watch it right after he set it up for us. The episode was an hour and some change and did a great job setting up this world in which we are going to see gods, old and new, and how they are existing and still meddling in society today. Ian McShane and Ricky Whittle do a great job at leading the story and the whole cast is just phenomenal. After hearing the writers and producers talk I think that fans of the book and new fans as well will find this to be a really well told story. Plus Gaiman is doing some of the writing!

While waiting in line for this one I sat with this wonderful woman Patty. I know not her last name nor if I am spelling her first right. What I do know is that sitting in line with her and all the others I met this weekend allowed me to learn not only about where these strangers came from but also other things that they experienced at the festival that I had not. For instance, Patty told me about this panel she went to that was about the new frontier of law in space. How cool is that?!

After this, I made my way back to the Paramount and got in line for Small Town Crime. A real shoot ’em up movie, Small Town Crime features John Hawkes, Octavia Spencer, and Anthony Anderson. Billed as a thriller, Hawkes stars as an alcoholic former officer who got kicked off the force for reasons you’ll have to find out on your own. He finds an almost dead woman on the side of the road and what happens from there, as he tries to help police find those responsible. It was a really great movie with a nice steady pace and a great storyline. However, it seems to sway in tone pretty frequently. Regardless, I would recommend checking it out. The only downside of the experience had nothing to do with the movie…it was pouring the whole time I stood in line for this one and so my jeans were soaked up to the knees. SOOOOOO COLD!!!

Finally, I rushed over to 6th Street for a tapping of the Comedy Bang Bang podcast. This was another line where I spoke and sat with a franger (like that? I just made it up. Friend and Stranger). She taught English abroad which is a fantasy of mine! Getting to hear all about her two years in rural Japan was fascinating. The podcast was good and Bob Odenkirk was among the guests but ultimately it ended up being five guys, one girl, and all white. Wasn’t too impressed or stoked about this…considering where we were, it wouldn’t have been hard to get a more diverse panel of comedic guests. But whatever.

My last day to report on was Sunday. I realized at the end of the day I had made it into a documentary themed day. This time I was accompanied by my friend and line buddy Amanda. Fist up: Muppet Guys Talking which took us into an informal setting with five of the originals swapping stories about Jim Henson and talking about all their different voices. My favorite part came during the Q&A with all of them afterwards (hosted by Robert Rodriguez) when they each talked about how they workshopped their characters together. Hearing the origins of Miss Piggy and Gonzo, just to name a couple, was just beyond cool.

The lettuce of the day was a documentary shown at the Ritz about this man who chose to be homeless. I have very mixed opinions about this one and was really glad that I saw it with a friend so as to discuss it afterwards. The first act of the doc introduced us to Dylan who is an attractive 20something white male. He gets money and food and nice conversations when he approaches people. He is ungrateful occasionally. He does goes about his life not answering to anyone or having any real responsibilities. It is interesting how he is initially presented to us. Why choose this life? Why do this when there are people that really don’t have any other choice but to be homeless? Then in the second act, we meet his father and learn that there is a bit more to the story. Dylan is an alcoholic and was once addicted to hard drugs, on top of this he suffers from schizophrenia. He was kicked out of his house as a teen and began his life crossing the country and going on what was portrayed as adventures. Living a life that does not seem at all typical of the average homeless story. He would get invited into people’s homes and receive rides to places. I can’t help but wonder what his travels would have been like if he looked differently. It was a tale that unraveled in an interesting way and still has me thinking about it today.

Last: the piece de resistance! Bill Nye the Science Guy!!!!!!! I waited in line for this one for three hours and was proudly number one. This period of time allowed me to take a nap and prepare myself not to fall asleep in what I knew was going to be a really good piece. Bill Nye: Science Guy is a documentary which focuses on global warming and what Bill has been up to for the last few years in fighting climate deniers and creationist goons. It was an insightful piece which showed the behind the scenes Bill; the man who is worried about the health of his brother and sister who share a genetic disease of which Bill shows no signs. We see his frustration at the Ark Project which shows dinosaurs and humans existing together. But we also see his need for notoriety and that sense of not wanting it to ever disappear. All of these pieces of his life come together for a really interesting watch. The audience questions which he took after were so heartwarming. Almost every person started their question with a thanks to Bill for getting them into science and helping them learn and understand. No matter what you say about the man, his passion for science and educating the minds of the future makes him one hell of a human.

All of that happened over the course of two days and three nights! I was understandably exhausted Monday night. There are a lot of really cool events happening during the work day during the work week so I’m not sure what all I will get to see throughout the next couple of days. Saturday however is the premiere of Life and you best believe I will be trying to see Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively in person!

The moral of all of this is: talk to strangers, remember a jacket, and always leave time in your schedule for waiting in line.

Presidential – The Washington Post

February 21, 2017 | cgkinnett

Hello there, y’all! Happy President’s Day or happy two-days-early-birthday to President George Washington! On this happy day while Congress has been given the week “off” I encourage you to take a look at the presidency in a different light. The Washington Post, beacon of truth that it has been through the decades, has a new(ish) podcast out which is really rather enjoyable! I’ve never talked about a podcast on this here blog but, much like with audiobooks, if you’re ingesting words, it counts. Like books and movies, they are a way to escape reality for a moment.

Presidential goes episode by episode through each president’s tenure in office while looking at various aspects of the make-up of these men. What discerning character trait did John Adams have that allowed him to follow after Washington stepped away from office? Who is overlooked and why? The introduction of the “campaign”. These episodes are chalk full of little tidbits that you didn’t know about the Founding Fathers, the presidents during the Era of Good Feelings, and up through the present. Our host Lillian Cunningham is a reporter at TWP and her guests are people like the keepers of the keys at the Library of Congress, Pulitzer Prize winning historians, and Bob Woodward. There is a running question throughout the series where Lillian asks the historian on what it would be like to go on a blind date with the episode’s gentleman. Pieces like this really humanize these people some of whom lived over two hundred years ago.

I am currently on Andrew Johnson, president number 17 and I cannot get enough of these stories that are retold and relayed by these historians. Letters, diaries, and papers are all provided as sources for the information you learn in these episodes. For instance, AJ here was piss drunk at Lincoln’s inauguration and gave a really embarrassing speech…weeks later he was sworn in after Lincoln was assassinated. John Quincy Adams was the first son of a former president to hold the office and was also the only man to hold elected office after leaving the presidency. He went back to Congress and worked hard to fight slavery. In fact (this is one of my favorite recountings so far) there was a motion to make the word “slavery” illegal on the floor as it was becoming too much of a hot button issue in 1836. JQA went and got himself in trouble on purpose by saying the word. Now, as per the rules, he had a chance to defend himself of this action and he took advantage of this, his time to speak, and ran with it for TWO WEEKS talking about the injustices of slavery. This in and of itself is amazing and then as the story comes to an end and the episode is winding down we learn something else: who was a first term Representative at that same time but Abraham Lincoln. Bits like this make that whole thing so intricate and fascinating.

It really is amazing how far we’ve come in this country considering our government was put together by ideas proposed by men who didn’t really know what they were doing. George Washington espoused the belief that he was not fit to run the country and was firmly and vociferously of the mind that he had no idea what he was doing. We have been led by these men who have differed vastly in their ideals, these men who supported and encouraged the guidance of others, and whose legacies set examples for history. Our country has had its ups and downs (and there have certainly been a lot of both) and it is incredibly important to know where we’ve come from. How did we get from one to 44? How did we get to where we are now? This is monumentally important…to put it in presidential terms.

So whether you just listen to Obama and Kennedy or if you listen to them all in order, Presidential should definitely be on your radar.

…and so should this picture…