Podcast Roundup Week #15

This week I listened to 37 episodes. 

Source: https://themoth.org/stories/all-at-sea

The Funniest:
The thing that made me laugh the hardest all week long was Tim FitzHigham's story "All At Sea" on The Moth. The Moth is a storytelling podcast (I wrote about it here and find my description still stands) where people get up in front of large audiences and retell stories that match a particular theme.  I think it's telling that the blog post I linked to is from 2013 and five years later, I'm still regularly listening to this podcast.

Anyway, in this particular episode, this guy gets it into his head to sail in the English Channel in a bathtub. At one point, the English government has to grant the tub ship status so that the French will allow these shenanigans and when FitzHigham says "I have never been so proud to be a British citizen," it almost made me wish I were a British citizen.  He's a great storyteller with a great story to tell and it really made me happy that there are people who go off on wild tears and sometimes those crazy ideas become reality.

On the Fence:

The podcast 18 Days looks at the disappearance of an 8-year-old girl in the DC area named Relisha Rudd.  It's an interesting (but oh so sad) case, especially since she wasn't reported missing for eighteen days. It's a new podcast and as I type this there are only two episodes out and it's super interesting because the reporting digs deep into the places Rudd would have been and the people she would have been with, but so far that eighteen days is more of a teaser than something explained. Why did it take so long to report? Was the mother involved in her disappearance? Was the mother scared of law enforcement? Why didn't the school notice she was gone?  Maybe we'll get there.

But.

The real reason I'm on the fence is because the reporter says "as a mother" over and over and repeatedly asks people if they are parents. This drives me crazy. I can't understand how strange it is that she was gone for over two weeks because I'm not a parent?! That's crazy talk. Any PERSON can understand how tragic this situation is; you don't have to be a parent to understand.  Argh. If this continues, I will not listen to the entire thing.

Broken Record Recommendations:
Good old reliable Planet Money has a recent podcast called "Worst. Tariffs. Ever." that is just a nice encapsulation of why current economic policy from the current presidential administration is terrible and we have proof from history that it is terrible.  I know about Smoot-Hawley tariffs because I'ma big nerd, but if you haven't heard of them, give this a listen. And then maybe tweet a link to the leader of the free world.

Also, just like I said last week, this season of Breakdown is riveting. This guy, Tex McIver, is on trial for shooting his wife Diane. Was it an accident or was it on purpose? It's an absurd tale and an absurd trial. The people testifying are strange caricatures of what I imagine white people in the south are like and to hear these caricatures come to life is...tragic. Poor Diane.