Podcasts

The Devil's Music with Pleasant Gehman (her chat with Belinda Carlisle was far more interesting than the Go-Gos documentary

― Elvis Telecom, Tuesday, December 22, 2020 5:31 AM

Seconding this rec - also the recent episodes with John Doe and Kid Congo Powers worth a listen. The conversations tend to drift to "partying" instead of music per se, but Gehman is exactly the kind of veteran scenester who you would want to hear chatting with these figures. She's been there, done that etc. (Approx every other episode is about the occult instead of music).

A friend recently recommended the Murder Ballads podcast, which I guess does a deep dive into specific songs (like Stagger Lee).

they're like two oscar presenters doing a smug scripted routine with each other. awful

I think a lot of hosts are the worst thing about podcasts. Always so smug, always in the way of the story, always pushing the inane babble to the fore when it should be background.

Yes, there is really a problem with the pro podcaster voices, there are maybe 3 or 4 common types and all are annoying in different ways, cannot understand why they insist on putting them on, guess they think inane banter is what people want to hear, no need to shift tone when doing the adverts either, but it really does ruin so many podcasts for me.

take it from a caster, good hosting is hard

oh I know, I am one too

What happened to the Trap Set? Been a while since any new episodes.

It's like morning DJs. Literally the last thing I want to hear in the morning is inane banter on the radio.

I do like it when they don't take the ads seriously, or at least struggle with them.

I think what we find annoying about these hosts is what a lot of their listeners find endearing

it can be a bit like small talk at work. it is painful for me, but other people seem to live for it.

Cocaine and Rhinestones, that was great stuff

i blew through this in the early days of covid. really enjoyed it, even if large doses of Coe's voice/ cadence could be a lot. really appreciated his enthusiasm and personal lens that often had very little to do with his 'lineage'. hope there will be more.

like i never thought i could really be invested in The Judds but by the end of that ep i was feeling it

Louder Than a Riot--an NPR podcast about Hip Hop and mass incarceration--was pretty good. Followed the Bobby Shmurda and Mac (from No Limit) cases.

My friend suspects Coe (who had said the entire second season was going to be just George Jones) might have had some kind of a breakdown. I don't know if that's based on personal knowledge or not.

https://www.savingcountrymusic.com/what-happened-to-tyler-mahan-coe-of-cocaine-rhinestones/

oof that’s a bummer.

Last i knew he was working on an entire season devoted to George Jones - if that is true then i will happily wait for that!

He still has a thousand Patreon subs - a case study in inertia.

I enjoy Reply All and I think Alex's voice is fine. But as I've probably said upthread, PJ talks way too fast, barely articulates his consonants, and is an inveterate up-talker, which makes me crazy.

Any serious broadcaster shouldn't be uptalking to such a degree, it makes you sound like you don't trust the words you're saying.

But, omfg the new guy, his voice actually is almost completely unlistenable, I'm sure his journalism skills are great but how did anyone *ever* think he'd make a good broadcaster with a voice like that?

Fwiw, I have no problem with the voices of the reply all hosts. I feel the episode about the mystery song is very entertaining even if the whole dramatic arc/search seems a bit fabricated, a bit Rube Goldberg.

I have not listened to the 1980 podcast, but I did see Hanif give a memorable poetry feature a year or two back. He’s a good writer and the crowd energy/atmosphere was way more intense then I expected.

It's crazy that the so not gonna happen episode is now iconic

Forgot to mention episode 22 last month! But episode 23 is live...

https://www.megaphonic.fm/bythebywater/23

Last week I got an email from Sruthi about Reply All’s Test Kitchen series. I had been avoiding listening but once I did I felt gaslit. The truth is RA and specifically PJ and Sruthi contributed to a near identical toxic dynamic at Gimlet. This will be a longer thread, apologies.

— Eric Eddings (@eeddings) February 16, 2021

re: PJ

Tough listen because the main host has a voice like a Daniel Clowes character (mouth-breath-y, slack jaw, excessive saliva?)... not to mention the Arnold Horschack machine-gun laugh.

It's a voice that made me pine for Starly Kine's if you can believe that.

― Jersey Al (Albert R. Broccoli), Sunday, October 16, 2016 3:45 PM (four years ago)

I've occasionally wondered if he might be a PoS in real life, aside from his near-unlistenably manic uptalking and unforgivable (for a broadcaster) absence of spoken clarity and diction.

That thread is pretty inside baseball for someone that knows what Reply All is yet has only heard one episode (guess which one!?). Can someone sum it up?

yeah this is all kinda mystifying to me?

reply all has a series now on bon appetit and the racist and toxic workplace that ba is/was. a black person who worked at gimlet media is pointing out that basically it's exactly how they describe ba in the podcast series

Gimlet workers unionized in 2019 partly because of issues with diversity (and representation after Gimlet sold itself to Spotify for $230 million)

PJ and Sruthi out

That escalated quickly

I guess it's getting overlooked that one of the Invisibilia hosts accused someone who works on Radiolab of sexually harassing her at a work event

Vogt certainly isn't making excuses, which is a nice change from the way these things usually go. I have to say that as far as toxic workplace blowups go, this one feels pretty minor. They didn't support a union drive and also they were aloof from the rest of the Gimlet crowd — not great behavior, but also sort of what you'd expect from the franchise players? Reply All is the main reason Gimlet exists in the first place. I don't really think this is on par with Bon Appetit or other such examples. Seems more like normal office politics to me.

in a vacuum, sure. the hypocrisy is the real killer here.

Yeah, that obviously pushed a lot of buttons.

I only just discovered Reply All possibly from a comment in a thread here. But I thought this food biz mini series was a 4 parter with a specific host before a return to usual set up. Is that a cover up for a rearrangement or something?

Enjoying it so far. Must listen back through some of the older episodes.

Just listened to a couple of the Al Franken podcasts too. Sounds pretty rational so hope I'm not missing anything.

Still listening to a load of others including MSNBC stuff cos it's easier than dlding video. Pod Save stuff. Daily Beans and the new offshoot with Andrew Torrez Cleanup On Aisle 45. Torrez's weekly legal show Opening Arguments and Serious Inquiries Only.
Plus less frequently broadcast things like All Killa No Filla where 2 Northern working class girls talk about daily life and foibles and then serial killers. Your Queer Story which is amusing if you can take the hosts which I guess is part and parcel of the package. I don't like their bigging up Leo Varadker though since I could really do with him disappearing altogether.
Myths Baby where a Canadian feminist talks about Greek Myths and the surrounding patriarchy.
This Podcast Will Kill You where 2 medically trained women talk about the history of specific diseases. They come up with a fitting cocktail for each one.
The Vaginas Museum which seems to be back with some new podcasts after laying off for a lot of the lockdown.
99% which is about design issues and tends to be really good.
America Dissected which is about American medical issues.
My Momma Told Me humorous broadcast about black conspiracy theories.
Yo,Is this Racist humorous addressing issues pertaining to discrimination, white privilege and fun things.
Worst Year Ever which is an alternative news based show.
Lexicon Valley about the evolution of language and Broadway show songs.
Moby Dick Energy where a feminist comedian goes through the Melville book frequently exploring the Queer undercurrents.
Still working through the History Of The English language which has been fascinating.

And several others I may come back to.

https://www.vulture.com/amp/2021/02/reply-all-hosts-step-down-test-kitchen.html

They're now saying that the Bon Appétit 4-parter was already intended to be Sruthi's exit piece before she moved on to other things, but now the other two episodes are in limbo and the other things Sruthi's moving on to may or may not be with Gimlet. And PJ Vogt is not just taking a break, he's gone.

As an early listener to The Nod, I wasn't surprised by anything in Eric Eddings' twitter thread, because he and Brittany Luse both have sort of danced around the raw deal they got from Gimlet ever since they parted ways with the company, but neither had ever been as forthcoming as this.

Sad Reply All as we knew it is over, because I legit enjoyed that podcast for a long time, but it's hard to imagine it ever working as well with different hosts or with Alex and someone/anyone else.

Gimlet does host two of my favorite science-adjacent shows (Science Vs. and Every Little Thing), but they've always seemed like the NBC of the podcast world. No guiding identity, quick to cancel/cut loose shows. Maybe a reorganization will be beneficial, maybe not.

a few months ago they announced that Emmanuel Dzotsi from Serial season 3 was a new co-host on Reply All, but he doesn't seem to have been included in the show much since then

lol fuck Spotify Podcasts

There's not been much of note episode-wise in the last year of Reply All and it seems that these days their pods all start the same way, with lots of pauses/sighing and morose talk about how shitty the world is, it's kinda enervating to listen to.

I don't dig Dzotsi's voice either, so I'm glad he's not been on much.

I did enjoy the side series where PJ was forced to watch horror movies, but yeah. They've mostly been off the schedule in the last year.

I’m not surprised there is a dark side to Reply All’s unbearable smugness

Good pod re: conspiracy theory culture and Qanon

https://conspirituality.net/wellness/how-to-talk-about-conspiracy-theories-w-anna-merlan/

A journalist, a cult researcher, and a philosophical skeptic
Oh no

New episode! We're talking wizards.

https://www.megaphonic.fm/bythebywater/24

Nice segue! I just listened to the Magic episode, so Wizards will follow on nicely.

Timing!

A new one called What the FUP? trying to correct popular misconceptions about science that keep cropping up in tabloid level press and sci fi films etc and seem to have been fully taken onboard by significant amounts of the population.
Its on the 2nd actual episode after an introductory episode and the 2 presenters were on Serious Inquiries Only this week talking about the film What The BLEEP Do We know and some serious misinformation the film was spreading concerning quantum physics and human will.
I've just heard taht Serious Inquiries show and the introductory episode but it sounds great so far

I guess Cocaine & Rhinestones is indeed gearing up again. This is an epic profile:

https://www.gq.com/story/tyler-mahan-coe-country-music-profile