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…

This month in literature…

November 7, 2016November 7, 2016 | cgkinnett

weekend-is-all-booked

Well hello there. I haven’t seen you in a while….totally my fault. Man, the past month has been crazy. To further interrupt the regular rotation of posts I’d like to tell you all about the amazing time I have had in the literary world over the past five weeks.

To kick off the month of October, the Texas Teen Book Festival was held. The day long celebration of the YA genre hosted 35 authors on the Saint Edward’s University campus. As I was volunteering, my day started just before 7 am putting up parking signs and helping to make sure school bus traffic went smoothly. Mindy Kaling’s book signing was the first event of the day which was to begin at 8:30 am. When I arrived (before the sun) there was already a crazy line waiting filled with so many amazing fans. Working book signings is one of my favorite things to do because the people are always excited to see these authors. YA fans are so appreciative of the authors in this genre and vise versa. Each author is so willing to converse with readers and makes sure that their experience in those two minutes is genuine. They have the rotation of these lines down to a science and know how many signatures they can do in x amount of time. It’s amazing. Another reason that this festival is fun is because of the games! Authors play trivia games, have races and contests. In addition to the panels that are held, many of them gather in the university’s gym and by the time you leave your stomach and face hurt from laughing so hard for so long. The Texas Teen Book Festival has been in operation and in a state of growth and evolution since 2009. The TTBF “fosters a community effort to celebrate and promote reading and writing by connecting teens to local and award-winning authors, whose writing spans across genres and interest level.” It is a wonderful experience to witness this first hand. While working a signing this year I overheard a conversation with Kirkus Prize nominee Traci Chee (The Reader) and a young reader who was probably in 7th or 8th grade. She told Chee that she wanted to be a writer and asked her very earnest and well put questions. How she flushed out characters. How to create a foil. This conversation went on for probably 20 minutes or so altogether. When another fan would walk up, the girl would move to the side and then come back and continue inquiring. Seeing this exchange made me so happy and that is the whole goal of such a festival: to inspire young minds and encourage them to keep reading, keep asking questions, and keep imagining.

The next big event: the Kirkus Prize. To read the full list of nominees and articles about each, visit the Kirkus Reviews website. When I was a young reader of about 10 or 12 I fell in love with this series that was about princesses and dragons. I have since forgotten (much to my annoyance) the name of the series and instead remember that the Kirkus review that was on the back of the book had been high praise. From that book on I didn’t buy a book unless it had a review from Kirkus. Imagine, then, how amazingly, stupendously, wonderfully awesome it is that I now work for Kirkus and speak with independent authors and small presses all day every day. Being part of the team who put together the ceremony for the Kirkus Prize was an experience almost beyond words. The ceremony was held in downtown Austin, Tx with a view of the skyline and a view of the river. Six authors in fiction, six in non-fiction, and six in youth literature (YA, middle grade, and picture books) were nominated for outstanding work in their genre. Making my way in and around the crowd, I spoke with several of the nominees and people within the industry that I have admired for so long. When I found myself in the presence of Jason Reynolds (who later in the evening won the award for YA) I totally fangirled on him. I was able to speak to him about his process, his upcoming projects, and about how great his work is. Again I witnessed the wonderful generosity of authors who want to talk about books just as much as you or I. The Kirkus Prize is the largest monetary prize in the literary world and as the first award of the season, it tends to set a precedent for nominations for awards that follow. The prize is $50,000 to each winning author and is awarded to the title that the judges feel displays exceptional merit.

The following evening was the 21st annual Literary Gala which is hosted by the Texas Book Festival. The gala serves as a fundraiser and is the driving factor in keeping the large festival free and open to the public. This was the first time I had been to anything that was coined black tie. Attending the gala this year was an amazing personal accomplishment for me as it was at this exact function the year prior that I met my future boss and started my path to Kirkus. Last year I interned for the festival and was on the outside for the whole gala. This year I was sitting at the Kirkus table and got to wear a fancy dress, eat an delicious three course meal, and listen to some pretty great speeches. One of my favorite aspects of the festival is the Reading Rock Stars program which goes into underprivileged schools in South Texas. They schedule author talks at these schools, bringing in authors and illustrators to talk to kids about what it means to them to be able to write/draw for them and how they too can do it! Each child receives a book of their own to keep and a lot of the time it is the first time that they are given a brand new book of their very own. To hear this program talked about at length during the gala was heart warming and inspiring. First Lady Laura Bush started the festival in 1995 and it has grown exponentially each year in both author and public attendance.

This month has been hectic and stressful and rewarding. It has been long and involved multitasking on a whole different level. And it was so worth it. Never before have I felt so satisfied with myself. I have worked hard for many years now to become part of this world and now that I am, I can’t imagine being anywhere else.

Thank you for reading my ramblings and for visiting my site. Next week we will return to our regularly scheduled programming.