nialla42, posts by tag: podcasts - LiveJournal

I find recommendations for interesting podcasts all the time, and it often takes a while for me to actually listen to "new to me" titles. I'm not quite sure when I added this to my podcast app, but I finally listened to the first season today and it was first released in 2019.

Apparently only the first season and the first episode of season two were available outside of Spotify, which is annoying because I like having everything in one place. I think it wraps up with season three in 2020, but I'm not certain on that point. There's also talk of a Netflix animated adaptation in the works.

It's a cute fairy tale story about two princes (duh), one from the East and the other from West, who find themselves allies as they are drawn into the woods overtaking their realms. In one sense, it's a relatively standard tale, other than the queer angle. It's sweet and that not only hit the spot but was really nice to see with queer characters.

Another plus is Shohreh Aghdashloo (Chrisjen Avasarala, The Expanse) voices one of the prince's mothers. She's got an amazing unique voice, and it works really well in an audio adaptation.

You can listen via Spotify, but if you'd like to sample, the first season is also on YouTube. It's not animated (yet) but easy to listen to if you don't already have Spotify set up. It also is listen in the Gimlet Kids channel, which is nice to see. It's queer, but absolutely clean so far. No language and nothing more than a kiss and declarations of love so far. The fantasy elements could be scary for younger kids, but I think this would be fine for tween and up.

My local(ish) PBS radio station has a program that covers a wide range of topics, but one last week caught my ear, even though I didn't get to hear it all at the time. Thankfully, it's available as a podcast, and you can listen to think's How Science Skeptics Created Doubt. It's an interview with Sean B. Carroll, Distinguished University Professor of Biology at the University of Maryland and vice president for science education at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, about his article The Denialist Playbook.

The tl;dr from the article is the playbook:

1. Doubt the Science


2. Question Scientists’ Motives and Integrity


3. Magnify Disagreements among Scientists and Cite Gadflies as Authorities


4. Exaggerate Potential Harm


5. Appeal to Personal Freedom


6. Reject Whatever Would Repudiate A Key Philosophy

He goes into more detail in the article, and goes into a bit more detail on a couple of them in the interview. The one that originally caught my attention is a lot of chiropracters were vocal against the polio vaccine when it first came out. It basically boiled down to vaccines went against the foundation of chiropractic -- all disease originates in the spine -- and the fact they were making bank on treating people affected by polio.

My #1 way to analyze anti-whatever stuff is to ask who benefits (usually in money, but not always) from making a claim like this? Chiropractors didn't want to lose their income, or admit their founding principle was bunk. The whole "MMR vaccine causes autism!!11!" claim? Originated from Andrew Wakefield's bogus paper, but he had patented an alternate vaccine before he wrote the paper. Seems pretty obvious he was aiming to scare people away from the current vaccine, so he could roll around in the cash earned with his version. Didn't work out that way, but he's still rolling in the cash earned by antivax folks treating him like a martyr to the cause.

Not exactly Happy Christmas reading/listening, but I haven't had a chance to listen to the entire podcast or read the article until today. On a related note, a friend of mine who works in a VA hospital has received his COVID-19 vaccine. He's promised to report back on whether or not he mutates into a mythological creature.

I've mentioned the 99PI podcast several times in my LJ. It covers stuff that I never thought would be so interesting; the little details that make things work (or not). So when a book was announced, I got a copy for the library, and just finished it this past weekend.

In design, it reminds me a bit of a textbook, and I'm curious to see if it's used in future college courses related to design elements. It's collected into chapters, then subdivided into smaller bits on a topic. Quite a few I recognized from the podcast, but I'm not sure if all of them are repurposed. It's been produced for a decade, so I can't remember them all, and I don't think I've even listened to them all.

I used to read similar books pre-Internet. Quick entries that you can read yet put down when needed that were educational and interesting. I think my only complaint is one I've seen in a few other reviews, and that's a lack of photos. When they do a podcast, there's also an article version done with pictures and video to illustrate it, but in the book, there's minimal illustration, and it's done in b&w with splashes of yellow, reflecting the cover design. For example, there were cases when there were mentions of a particular building design that had issues, and while some I was familar with, such as the "walkie-talkie", many weren't familiar. So when I read about a building that's referred to as "The Dalek", I've got to check it out, and since this was in print, I'd have to stop to look up a picture on my phone. A mention of high visibility markings as used in the UK and other parts of the world is rendered in a black and white drawing, and what's the point in that?

I imagine people who haven't listened to the podcast and read the multimedia versions online will be even more baffled by the lack of photographs. Don't get me wrong, I like the illustration style, but there are just some cases where it doesn't get the concept across and it needed more in some sections. Ironic for a book about design.

If you've been on for a long time, you remember GeoCities. 99% Invisible just did a podcast (and there's an article version at the link) about GeoCities and one of the projects designed to save the data as Yahoo! closed it down.

Enjoy the flashback!

Serial has a new podcast, Nice White Parents, which starts as a look at one school that was primarily black and brown students that suddenly received a huge influx of white students. It then starts going into the history of school (de)segregation. I haven't listened to all of it yet, but even though it's set in NYC, I can relate to it, not in the sense of white vs. non-white, but "new" vs. "old".

In the first episode, you have wealthy white parents move in and essentially hijack the school to suit their children's needs. They're used to doing big fundraisers, far beyond the couple of thousand the PTA raises in a year, and created a "shadow PTA" that's raising money for a program the white parents want for their kids, but not listening to the rest of the parents about basic needs in the classroom being addressed.

I've seen something similar happen over and over, but more along the lines of people from larger cities moving into our "charming small town", then trying to remake it in the image of the place they left behind. I think in a lot of cases they were the small fish in the big pond, and suddenly felt like they were a big fish in a small pond. Not all of them were wealthy or even white, but the majority were. It was mainly a superiority complex of knowing better than the ignorant small town folk, not taking into account that most of us have lived or worked in the various larger towns around us.

The whole season dropped at the same time, so you can binge if you're interested.

This Land: "An 1839 assassination of a Cherokee leader and a 1999 murder case – two crimes nearly two centuries apart provide the backbone to an upcoming 2019 Supreme Court decision that will determine the fate of five tribes and nearly half the land in Oklahoma."

This one delves into broken promises made by the US government to tribes, and as a result there's an argument to be made that half the land in Oklahoma is still legally tribal lands. This has gone all the way to the Supreme Court this year and (slight spoiler) they took the unusual step of scheduling it to be reargued next term. There's snippets of the State of Oklahoma's arguments, which basically down to "OMG what will happen to white folk if their property ends up on Indian land?" The answer? Nothing really will change. In some cases, native tribes are already serving as law enforcement and health care providers to local non-natives because local governments can't or won't pay for it. It's just such appalling caucasity to assume they're going to be treated poorly considering that's what they did to the people in question.

I knew a bit about the issues they're talking about. I live very close to both Chickasaw and Choctaw lands, so I'm interested in this sort of thing. What I didn't know about is how tribes were given allotments of land to fulfill a treaty promise, but the land was nowhere near where they lived. This was on purpose, because then it made it easier for white settlers to then exert squatter's rights because the land owner wasn't there to protect it. This is still going on too, as one woman interviewed talked about finding out her land was being taken away by a public notice that's required for squatters to have full legal rights back in the late 1990s.

Confronting O.J. Simpson: Hosted by Kim Goldman, brother of Ron Goldman, she gets to ask questions that were never answered to her satisfaction in court. There's also talk about some information that wasn't introduced in the criminal trial, but was in the civil trial, in which Simpson was found guilty. Would that evidence have changed the criminal trial, and why wasn't it presented? She talks to investigators, prosecutors, and even jury members to get their POV of the case, then and now. Some have changed their minds, others have not.

Bear Brook: "Two barrels. Four bodies. And the decades-long mystery that led to a serial killer."

This case is one that creeped me out on a multitude of issues. Mainly because in 1985 they found a sealed barrel out in the woods with two bodies in it, yet didn't find another one with two more bodies until 2000. All victims were killed at the same time, sometime between 1978 and 1981, and the barrels were only about 100 yards (~91 meters) from each other. If they missed the second barrel for that long, what else did they miss? This case is "mostly" solved now, with DNA identifying three of the four victims, as well as their killer, but there's so much more to it. There's a lot of "I did not see that coming" stuff.

What Trump Can Teach Us About ConLaw: I've recommended this one before, but during this time of impeachment hearings, I'm recommending it again. They're taking Trump's public statments, including his Twitter rants, and knocking each "argument" down and explaining why it's wrong. The most recent one focused on the "confrontation clause" and why it doesn't apply, because (a) it's not a trial yet, and (b) impeachment is not a criminal trial anyway.

I've mention The Allusionist podcast before, but there's a specific episode some of you might be interested in. It's about "Polari", which was basically a secret code language in the UK used by queer people. Its heyday was in the 1950s, and the podcast talks about how it began, diverged due to different influences, and eventually made its way into the mainstream. I was kind of surprised how much of it I use as an American, when this was UK-specific and centered in London, but I have watched a lot of British TV all my life, and there's also a bit of Yiddish mixed in, which has a history in my mom's family.

The Queen: Those of you of a certain age may remember Ronald Reagan's talk of a "welfare queen", and how that stereotype still influences how some people view people on welfare today, especially black women. The link is to a Slate article about it, the 4-episode podcast (plus two bonus excerpts), and the upcoming book of the same title. Many of the claims about her fraud were overblown, while other crimes weren't covered because they didn't blow the racist dogwhistle for Reagan's base about welfare cheats. Burglary, child neglect, kidnapping, and possibly even murder, all overlooked. She was a woman the public, and even law enforcement, knew very little about, after the initial "welfare queen" infamy faded into a stereotype.

Running from Cops: The COPS "reality" TV show has been on the air for 30 years (!), influencing how the public views law enforcement as under siege by drug dealers and gangs. As someone who was around when the show first started, you can thank Ronald Reagan (again) for the uptick in the "War on Drugs" rhetoric that's woven into the show's origins and continued focus on drug arrests despite that not being as big a percentage in reality.

This 6-episode podcast delves into the history of the show, how it gets made, and how much control the police departments involved have over the final product. There's also a lot of talk about a newer show, Live PD, which is in a similar vein. While the producers of COPS claim that people sign a form to appear on TV, as one person puts it, there's nothing voluntary when you're in handcuffs. Several people who have been on the show claim they were told they're signing a "release form" and they're under the impression that means release from police custody, not a release to air their story on TV. The producers of Live PD don't even make that claim. They don't care if you sign a form, and they will air pre-recorded segments (of course it's not all live) featuring people who have since been found not guilty or release on bond over a minor charge.

People have been fired over being on one of the shows, even if the crime itself wasn't that big. There's a bonus episode on this, with one guy losing his job over a bit that was aired to be "funny", but at worst he just had some marijuana for personal use and was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He wasn't fired for that, but because as the police questioned him, he told them where he worked, that bit wasn't bleeped out, so that was the end of a decent paying construction job and he was also kicked out of the place he'd been staying.

What was really fascinating to me was they found the "holy grail" of reality TV -- raw footage of a segment -- and compared it to how it was presented on TV to how it happened in the real world. Even knowing how much of this stuff is ginned up for ratings, I was still shocked by how blatant it was.

99% Invisible has a podcast about social infrastructure, featuring libraries, called Palaces for the People. Which is also the title of a book by Eric Klinenberg, Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life. I recommend listening to the podcast for full effect, but you can also read a summary of it at the first link.

"Social infrastructure is the glue that binds communities together, and it is just as real as the infrastructure for water, power, or communications, although it’s often harder to see. But Eric Klinenberg says that when we invest in social infrastructures such as libraries, parks, or schools, we reap all kinds of benefits. We become more likely to interact with people around us, and connected to the broader public. If we neglect social infrastructure, we tend to grow more isolated, which can have serious consequences."

I've had this limited series sitting on my DVR for a bit, and tried to watch it this weekend. As is usual with "based on a true story" adaptations, I found myself drawn to the real story much more than the fictionalized version.  The source is "One Day She'll Darken: The Mysterious Beginnings of Fauna Hodel" by Fauna Hodel, and her daughters are doing a podcast, "Root of Evil: The True Story of the Hodel Family and the Black Dahlia", which is sponsored by TNT, the same network that did the limited series.

Behind the scenes we have Patty Jenkins directing and in front of the camera we have Chris Pine, so I had high hopes. Unfortunately, Pine's character of a disgraced reporter is completely fabricated and seems to be focused on more than the fascinating (and so very twisted) tale of the Hodels. I gave up about halfway though, as so much focus was on the invented male character and a lot of the stuff I knew about the case itself was being glossed over, or reinvented for TV consumption. The podcast stays with the facts (or at least what we think are the facts), as crazy as they are.

Fauna's mother, Tamar, was 15 years old and gave her up for adoption, and according to her, put down her baby's father as "unknown negro" so it would go to a black or mixed race family. Given the name Patricia Ann Greenwade by her adoptive mother, she grew up not knowing her birth name or that she was actually white instead of mixed race. When she starts digging into her past, she discovers the horrific past of her family.

Tamar claims she was molested by her father, George Hodel, a prominent doctor, beginning at age 14. Her father was married several times, both legally and not, sometimes with marriages overlapping, not to mention multiple affairs, and orgies at his home that Tamar claims she was forced to participate in. She later says she didn't really understand that what was happening to her was wrong until later in life. It's easy to jump to the conclusion that Fauna was a product of incest (and I think the series did make that claim), and although Tamar said she was pregnant by her father once (he got her an illegal abortion), she says he was not Fauna's father. Tamar did run away after the abortion, and when the police found her and she told him the sordid story, her father was put on trial for incest. He was acquited, and many think he paid off people, or simply had the influence to make it go away. He happened to be a doctor specializing in venereal diseases, which could lead to a lot of blackmail material.

Dr. Hodel was suspected of murdering his secretary in 1945, because she was on the verge of spilling info about his financial and medical fraud, as well as doing illegal abortions. In 1947, Elizabeth Short, aka "The Black Dahlia" was murdered in a horrifying way, which also happens to mimic the Surrealist art that Hodel was heavily into. Hodel was a suspect after his trial for incest in 1949, in which Tamar claimed he did it. They bugged his house, and he made this statement at one point, "Supposin' I did kill the Black Dahlia. They can't prove it now. They can't talk to my secretary anymore because she's dead. They thought there was something fishy. Anyway, now they may have figured it out. Killed her. Maybe I did kill my secretary."

No charges were ever filed, but after his death, his son Steve, a retired LAPD detective, started investigating his supposed crimes to clear his name. He now believes his father was guilty of all the crimes associated with him, and perhaps even more. He's written several books about it, which makes one wonder how much is belief in his father's guilt, and how much is a cash grab. He's also participating in the podcast being done by his great-nieces.

I'm just "hitting the highlights" with this, there's so much more involved in the story. The Black Dahlia case is one of the biggest unsolved crimes ever, and this offshoot into a family entwined with the case gives some insight into the "how and why" the murder may have been committed. I think I was hoping more for a "true crime" type of series, and "I Am The Night" is more a noir-flavored examination of a young woman's search for her true identity, and a disgraced reporter who wants to prove Dr. Hodel is a killer.

I was going to do this before New Years Day, but migraines had other ideas for my productivity. Here's a few podcast recommendations, some I may have mentioned before in passing, some I haven't even finished yet (or they're still ongoing), with a mix of drama and non-fiction. You can see my list from early 2017 here.

2 Dope Queens: Phoebe Robinson and Jessica Williams (from The Daily Show) host a comedy variety show, featuring female comedians, comedians of color, LGBT comedians, and combinations thereof. This one is done, and they did a comedy special on HBO of the same name in early 2018.

Buried: The Gone Gold podcast (see below) did a "Christmas Special" letting other true crime podcast hosts talk about what crime got them interested in true crime, and this one was among them. I was absolutely floored, because I listen the the PBS radio station that produced it, and the crime(s) it's researching are in the area. The focus is on the disappearance of Carey Mae Parker in 1991, and the discovery nearly two decades later that police never launched an investigation. It's a bit rough, with episodes released as the investigation goes on, which means some information is repeated, but it's still fascinating. Lots of small town rumors about what happened to her, who did it, if there was a cover up and why. If you want to hear what my Texas Twang sounds like if I let it go on high power, this is as close as you'll get.

The Churn: An official podcast for The Expanse series, which was on SyFy and will soon (please be soon) move over to Amazon Video for its fourth season. Curious to see if the podcast will continue, since it was done by SyFy Wire. Features creators Ty Franck and Daniel Abraham, plus co-hosts who split into the "have/haven't read the books" camps, but they're careful not to totally spoil the books if you haven't read them, but will talk about how some things have been changed to make a better story on the screen. A lot of the cast and crew also guest star on the show, and I have to say it only confirms for me that Cas Anvar is a treasure, and a one-man cheerleading squad for the show and its fans.

Dead Air: I haven't started this one yet, but what caught my attention is one of the creators is Rachel Caine, who is a SFF writer who also writes suspense novels now. Also local to my area. It's about a true crime obsessive who starts a radio show investigating a murder long believed to have been solved already, and gets entangled in her own story.

Gone Cold: Texas true crime podcast. While they start with some rather infamous Texas crimes from the 1970s -- Carla Walker and The February Murders (which may be related) -- they do some episodes later on that are more recent and haven't received much media attention because it's not a missing/dead white woman.

Imaginary Worlds: About SFF topics, including fandom stuff. I don't listen to all of them, because in a lot of cases I'm not familiar with the source material they're talking about, but they've done some good episodes on classic and modern SFF.

Kaleidotrope: Just found this one about a week ago, and inhaled all 9 episodes that make up the first season. It's a queer romcom "set on a slightly magical college campus and playing around with romance tropes, particularly fanfiction tropes." The first season focused on Drew and Harrison, college radio co-hosts-turned-accidental-advice-givers, so it's in the form of a radio show that frequently goes off the rails. Highlights include Drew's "Wot?!" reaction as things spin out of control.

The Penumbra: I can't believe I haven't mentioned this one before; I think it was on my list but I hadn't listed last time I did a compilation. This one originally intended to be an anthology series, but is now primarily focused on two stories: Juno Steel and Tales of the Second Citadel. The former features the character of the same name, a noir-ish private detective on Mars, while the latter is a fantasy series with an order of knights fighting monsters, but some learn what they know about monsters may not be reality. Both shows are hella queer, because a lot of the folks making the shows are hella queer.

Showcase: This one is literally a mixed bag. It's designed to be an anthology of shorter podcasts. The one that caught my interest was The Polybious Conspiracy, about an 80s urban legend about a mysterious arcade game alleged to have been in the Pacific Northwest in a government sponsored version of The Last Starfighter. It's a a hybrid documentary/fictional story about how urban legends take hold and become "real", especially with the internet to provide "proof".

What Trump Can Teach Us About Con Law: Roman Mars of 99% Invisible and a Constitutional law professor go over the implications of Trump's tweets, statements, etc. in relation to establlished ConLaw. There's also a lot of discussion about how a lot of ConLaw was established, whether it was in the Constitution, Amendments, case law, etc. Surprisingly interesting, especially considering how much of ConLaw is essentially theoretical, since no one has pushed the boundaries so frequently before. The show is not necessarily pro or anti-Trump, it's more focused on the law than the personality, Mars makes no bones about where he stands.