Podcast Review - Oct 2018

27 Oct 2018 podcasts · podcasts-review

Note: The only series on this blog is still the 100 days of writing I did last year. I keep starting series and never writing the second post in that series. I really do hope this one is different. Specially because I want to keep track of the great podcasts that I listen to over the years. In fact, just to ensure that I get this done, I am adding this to my calendar. It’s a monthly 2 day event (from 27th-29th). I am repeating it for the next 1 year, we will see how I do then.

I have been listening to a lot more podcasts lately (Courtesy: 30 minute commute to work and random walks around the streets of Tokyo). And I have actually heard a lot more great content that I can believe! It has just been one great episode after another. Seriously. I am not even kidding. I started listening to the serious Ezra Klein Show at a point where I had run out of Daily (NYT) episodes. The Daily (NYT) has a huge list of episodes that I absolutely loved! Here are a few episodes that I highly recommend:

• The Daily - The War Inside the Catholic Church

  This is the epic fight between the people who like the current pope (for his progressive policies) and a faction inside the church that doesn’t. While the sexual harassment revelations last month shook the church from the inside, this small faction activated and started working against the Pope in this moment when he is the most vulnerable. Of course, this reduces the value of the Church as an institution, but always remember Mitchell Garabedian’s line from Spotlight (2015): “The church thinks in centuries, Mr. Rezendes. Do you think you have the resources to take them on?” Remembering this line as I heard this podcast and realized what was going on, really sent chills down my spine. (It was also about 18 degrees celsius that day)

• The Daily - Lost in the Storm, Parts 1 and 2

  The heart-breaking story of a family stuck in the middle of a natural disaster without the right help from the government and local institutions. This was absolutely first-class reporting, done from as objective a point-of-view as one can be expected to have when covering a story like this. Michael Barbaro and Annie Brown: kudos :applause:

• The Daily - How the Opiod crisis started

  As mind boggling as it is, the opiod crisis was started by a couple of people who wanted to make a lot of money quickly. YES. It’s not something that just happened. They made the drug; they sent the medical reps across the US to convince and coerce doctors into prescribing these medicines; That’s how the Opiod crisis started. This episode gave me a really deep look into how much of our lives is controlled by Big Pharma.

• The Daily - Roe v. Wade, Parts 1 and 2

  Again, a landmark issue in politics. These two episodes track the life and troubles of Jane Roe, the iconic woman who chose to remain anonymous while trying to get an abortion. She isn’t clear about what she wants, she flipped, she changed her point of view. “In the end, she was’t claimed by either side” - this might just be the saddest way her story ended. (Interesting even if you are not interested in the politics of this issue)

• The Daily - How Trump Really Got Rich 5/5

  What can I even say? I was left gaping at a blank white wall at the end of this episode. Everything was explained extremely well; and yet, I ended up with just one question: How did they think this up?

• The Daily - What Migrants Are Fleeing

  This connects to another Ezra Klein Show episode that I have heard recently. I won’t recommend that episode because the discussion was incoherent and didn’t lead anywhere. Ezra Klein himself had some really good quotes in the show and that was probably the best part of the episode. I might just pick the quotes I liked and post them on Twitter (will update the thread here if I do that).

  Anyway, to understand immigration, it’s important to understand what’s going on in their home countries that makes them go to a new country where they don’t know anyone. What does it take to force you to leave everything you know and are familiar with, to go to a new country, without any kind of plan?

  P.S. You should skip this one if you don’t follow this so closely.

• The Truth - The Off Season series - Parts 1 through 4 5/5

  It’s like a movie, even though it’s only sound, it’s like a movie. An amazing story, told through a gripping 4-part narrative with amazing sound effects (one of the sound effects is the sound of an egg being broken and poured into a bowl for making an omelette. YEAH.)

• The Ezra Klein Show - Why online politics gets so extreme so fast 5/5

  The YouTube algorithm has only one goal: to keep users on the site. If it figures out that the only way to reliably keep people from leaving is to show them something beyond the edge, something edgier than what they are used to, it will do that. The problem with edges is that stories involving them generally end with someone falling down a cliff.

• The Ezra Klein Show - Jay Rosen is pessimistic about the media. So am I.

  Another essential episode for understanding what the current state of the media is. Especially, to people who have been in it for a while (Ezra Klein has been a journalist for 15 years). His and Rosen’s take on this issue are radical and they come at it from a few different angles. It’s not all sunshine and roses. In fact, it’s very dark and gloomy at 12 noon. On the brighter side, Rosen and Klein discuss the reasons for this darkness pointedly and lucidly. No fancy words here: just the plain, old truth told in simple English.

That’s it for entry 1 of this series. (Maybe the only way to keep a series up is to not call them “series”-es in the first place. WAIT, WHAT?)