January 2020 Podcast Roundup

Mostly through the podcast Doughboys, I had heard about Hollywood writers firing their agents and talking about going on strike in 2019, but I didn't really understand the details or what was really going on. I tend to not really follow much of political news in the world of celebrities, mostly because it ticks me off*, but the episode of Planet Money called "The Writers Revolt" explained to me exactly what was at stake in this negotiations between the writers, the agencies, and the studios. Highly recommended.

There was also a recent episode of Planet Money called "BILLBOARDS" that was all about...billboards. Like everyone else who drives a car in North America, I see a lot of billboards, but I never thought about the ins and outs of the business of billboards. From how many people see a billboard and how they measure that (creepy data technology!) to how billboards are purchased to how they are put up to how they are hard to take down, this episode covered it all in less than 30 minutes.  It was oddly fascinating, which is what I think the best of Planet Money episodes are. 

I listened to OTHER podcasts besides Planet Money this month, including Planet Money's offshoot, The Indicator, which offers economic stories of ten minutes or fewer every day. "Can You Name Five Fine Artists That Are Women?" (UGH! WHO! The pronoun should be who! Artists are people!) is an episode about how the value of art by women is so much less than men, which is something I think I should have known, but didn't. Because it's devalued, not a lot is shown in art galleries. This podcast explores this topic. (BTW, Georgia O'Keeffe, Frida Kahlo, and I'm out. How about you?)

Speaking of things I'm unknowingly ignorant about, let's consider the world of Korean pop music, affectionately known as K-Pop the world over. I'm aware of K-Pop and have heard Psy and his weird Gangnam Style "song."  However, I was absolutely unaware of some of the more controversial aspects of K-Pop.

Enter Front Burner, which in less than half an hour, filled me in on the scandals of the K-Pop machine in recent months in its episode "K-Pop's Promise and Peril." The host, Jayme Poisson, takes on my exact level of knowledge as the interview progresses and asked exactly the questions I would want to ask.  If you are a K-Pop aficionado, this would probably be too basic for you, but if the names BTS and Blackpink are mysterious to you, this might catch you up, too.

Code Switch and Death Sex + Money put out a collaborative duo of podcasts all about friendship and race. I listened to the DSM podcast "Between Friends" episode first. This is not the first time I've been made aware that my social network is almost entirely one race (white) and it's both a product of geography (the county where I live was more than 96% white according to the most recent census data) and a product of my work environment (most of my co-workers are white).  It's also pretty crappy. It's also not the first time I've realized that I hate talking about race with my friends who are non-white because it always seems so fraught, even if that's what they want to talk about. But it is the first time I've had to confront these issues with people who are also questioning their own realities in a courageous way.

The "Ask Code Switch: What About Your Friends?" episode from Code Switch linked a lot of these issues to housing.  If I ever get to teach a class on race and politics again**, I might start the first day of class with clips from this episode. It touches on so many big issues that I like to talk about and links ideas of class, race, housing, and education.

These episodes were powerful and so honest. I found them gripping and intensely uncomfortable to listen to.  Hard listens, but important ones.

Witness History is a podcast that interviews people who were at major turning points in history.  I don't listen to every episode, but the episode "How the Dodo Died Out" made me so sad.  The dodo was a flightless bird that evolved from some pigeons that flew off course and landed on an island in the Indian Ocean.  As the island of Mauritius was discovered by Europeans, dodos were attacked by the mammals the sailors brought to the previously isolated island (rats, cats, monkeys, etc.) and were killed to be eaten by the sailors themselves. And so the dodo died. So sad.

The Moth is a storytelling podcast. The stories are hit and miss for me, but in a recent episode, Reyna Grande tells a story about meeting a young immigrant in an airport and how it changed her life.

There are a lot of terrible things going on in the world and that story was a reminder to me for why we keep fighting against the push of the tidal wave of cynicism and sadness that assaults us when we check the news. 

*Consider the unabashed hero worship of Kobe Bryant that has been in the news since his death. So many people have told me that I shouldn't speak ill of the dead, so I guess I won't post anything new, but I will link to my previously written statements about what a piece of shit rapist he was.

**The university where I teach has to make $12 million dollars in permanent cuts in the next year and a half. I am not teaching a class this semester and strongly suspect that my position may be one of those permanent cuts.