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So it's not all mixed in with the This American Life content, use this space to love in about these two loveable dorks and their podcast of wonder.
So, favourite episodes? I still think about their symmetry podcast every day when I brush my hair. Everyone I know is so tired of me starting conversations with ''I heard this amazing thing on Radiolab!...''
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Oh, and the Mutant Rights short! Unbelievable.
They have a great tumblr, also. Definitely worth a look.
LOVE!
Yes, the symmetry episode was great. Detective Stories is another favourite. And Lost & Found. That one made me cry.
i'm not as good at remembering favourite episode themes as i thought i was, but - musical language - words - lucy
your tumblr link is broked, sonian. here - tumblr.
Good call Sonian.
The latest one Colours is pretty good - particularly the last story in that ep about Gladstone and Homer. Fascinating.
I had posted the Robert Johnson one in the other thread, but I'll link through again [here].
Escape was also great. I'm a fairly recent listener so I've checked them out from about the start of this year.
I started listening early last year and after about three episodes I downloaded everything iTunes has to offer from them. Super impressed by them offering such a huge number of old episodes through iTunes, makes obsession with them very easy.
Oh! I loved the Famous Tumours episode too. I'm a uni tutor and tell my microbiology students every year about the HeLa cell line and the controversy about it. Amazing story.
Oh yeah, that was a good one. I had read Rebecca Skloot's book ''The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks'' before I heard that podcast, so was already familiar with it. sonian - you should read it if you haven't already.
the first time i listened to radiolab i thought robert krulwich was william shatner. true story
This is funny sonian, I was just thinking today that I'd start a Radiolab thread! As it's rocked my world the past week, and I too have been regaling my partner with a daily update of what I've been listening to. Haven't listened to many yet but Loops and Killer Empathy were both great.
Out of recent ones, I thought 'Guts' was quite interesting.
I've listened on and off over the last couple of years, but have only just started having a commute to work, so more time for podcasts.
Definitely what got me into radiolab was 'Musical Language' ... And wow, just looking at the archive and seeing shows I haven't yet listened to ...
'Loops' was pretty great too
Ahh yeah, I forgot about Guts. It's actually hard to find one I haven't enjoyed listening too.
Fantastic.
the tumblr is the best!
Listened to most of Patient Zero episode today. Had heard the Typhoid Mary story a million times already (it's been on Stuff You Should Know) but the tracking of HIV back to 1908 was super interesting and exceptionally well told.
Just listened to perfect symmetry and parasites in the last week....both awesome. Parasites' hookworm stories were fascinating.
took me a few episodes to get into the presentation format but enjoying it a lot now - i nearly stopped listening to the Colours one but glad I stuck with it to learn about the colour Blue!
Tenzenmen - I had the same problem initially. All the weird noise and phase shifting initially annoyed me, but once you get hooked by the story.
Ooh, new episode up! It's the oddest thing, I find just about every woman on this show to have the sexiest voice… never particularly had a thing for American accents, maybe it's the subset of youngish, geeky women that's doing it for me. Even when they're just reading those sponsor messages down a phone line.
Oh and also, pity they don't put music credits up on the site. The comments on there are begging for this but it's not happening. Maybe there's something about not having to pay royalties if they only play a small bit of a piece and don't name it? Annoying, there was a stunning bit of gamelan in the Escape! episode I'd love to track down.
Ocelotl - The music and sound effects often intrigue me. I think I read somewhere that Jad studied electronic music production at college, so I had just assumed that he created all those extra elements.
Not the electronic/production effects, I get that they're custom-made for the show. There are actual musical interludes in there as well quite often.
If I could Skype through to read the credits for a show, I could die a happy woman. Have seen call-outs for it on their FB a couple of times, but always missed the deadlines.
i kinda of assumed jad was responsible for all the bits and pieces too. i know the team behind locally produced paper radio whip up their own compositions for a pretty large portion of the music on the show.
lol @ the afterlife/david eagleman remix at the start of the remix episode.
musical language has got me interested in checking out more stravinsky - the stravinsky riot would be a great band name!
Tenzemen - that is a great episode. And a great band name that I am now stealing. I've go the myspace registered and everything.
Jonah Lehrer who does stuff for radiolab got busted.
just listening the Stochasticity episode - awesome stuff!
Fantastic piece by Jad about the origins of Radiolab, amongst other things. Kind of reads like a Radiolab show itself, complete with audio clips. Love the Protools screenshot showing just four minutes of a show.
Unfortunately that is a sight all too familiar to me.
it's classic taught-yourself protools. and also it's classic pro-tools as a content creation device. the lack of preparation is obvious but you can't really tell where it's going to end up. i haven't read the article but interesting that the show is basically improvised in the edit suite.
Been going through the old ones - the ep 'falling' is great.
80 more and i'll be caught up too!
there are 200,000 SPECIES of parasitic wasps! who knew!?
Me, although I'm not one of them.
tenzenmen - that parasites you listening to? That is one of the best.
yep! glad i'm not a cockroach!
latest episode is out. i'm half way through and fairly conflicted about how they dealt with the second story within the podcast. felt stupidly insensitive.
anyone else listened yet? feel like i need to engage in a dialogue 'bout this shit.
i'm still about 50 episodes away from the latest...
Yes. That. As I was listening I thought something was very wrong too. It's a shame they can waste so much time talking about two old photographs, while here's an actual person that was in a war zone telling you first hand account of what happened and you dig at holes in their story to support your ironic twist about the chemical weapons. Whether they were killed by a toxic aerosol or starved and poisoned or just plain shot from planes overhead, the guy deserved at the very least to be properly heard out, let alone have his story further investigated and collaborated by other witnesses. But no, you had to focus on the chemicals angle. And the nasty badgering.
Did you see the plane? There were many planes all the time. Did you see the specific plane before villagers started dying? If a plane flies over you don't stand there and stare at it, you run. So you didn't see the exact plane? -Some fucked up lawyer badgering there.
Maybe we should give them credit for admitting they didn't reach a satisfactory conclusion to their story and still presented us this in-a-way unfinished work because it's important enough that it needed to be heard. But yeah, their approach in the interview just really upset me too. Fuck.
I haven't listened to this one yet, but I presume that's the one Jad and Rob are apologising for on their latest blog.
yep.
here's a comment from the husband of the interpreter, who was also the interviewee's niece.
Oh wow, it's just looking worse and worse!
Scared to listen to the latest episode now. After the Jonah Lehrer thing a few weeks back I felt like Radiolab had been a little bit tarnished by that, purely via association, and now this...
I usually find this podcast utterly unlistenable, but after all the talk of this latest episode I decided to give it another go.
I still find the format hideous and annoying, but I wasn't offended by that story. I think it was a bold step for them to even play it, considering how it made them look. And they admitted as much at the end. I don't really see how you could be offended by it. Surely you can see that their original standpoint was a valid one... They seemed to just get caught up in the science of it and forgot or ignored the emotional, human aspect, at least until the end of the interview.
Ha, I'm the same definitely, I don't want my idols to crumble!
dude, you don't have to listen to them in order!
You do if you're listening for the hosts' sexual tension story arc.
I did initially, but it eventually got me under it's spells. I used to hate all the tech audio wizardry that they put into the production, but I got over it.
My overall opinion of this podcast still switches back and forth erratically. That's even before this latest, er, stuff-up?
this is why so many people found it offensive, me included. i need to listen to it again to clarify my thoughts/feelings, but initially i found it insensetive and bordering on exploitative. just bewildered that kruwlich could interview a witness and survivor of genocide and show so little empathy or compassion.
From what I've read on the site, as I haven't listened to it yet, they added an extra bit in after lots of listeners contacted them.
the comments seem 50/50 about this episode. sounds like perhaps it could've been handled better. not heard myself yet tho
It was handled dreadfully. But it comes off as completely emotionally detached and lacking in empathy rather than exploitative. If they had backed off after both the interviewee and the interpreter got audibly uncomfortable/upset it would've been kinda okay, but they just kept on needling. And the post-interview justification directly after was bullshit as well, although I understand their point in the context of the topic of the podcast.
Rest of the podcast was great as usual though.
Krulwich has put up a blog post about the way he conducted this interview.
My take is that the result is a fascinating piece of radio about the nature of truth, but also a good lesson in the dangers of the tunnel-visioned pursuit of universal truths. The interviewer and interviewee placed very different meanings on the disputed ''fact'', it's odd that Krulwich didn't understand the emotional impact of what he was doing, but in the end I think it's good that they hung it all out in the open - mistakes, regrets and all.
but did they? i guess it took some type of courage to air the more upsetting parts of the i/v, warts and all, but the interpreter's husband didn't seem particularly impressed at how the editing process framed the interviewee's recount. that in itself could be construed as mistruth, and wasn't addressed by krulwich's apology, though i was still glad to read it.
intrigued by the idea of how the post-interview production meetings may have played out and whether there was any further correspondence with the interviewee.
And this show is so much about the construction of a layered, post-production reality. They present exactly what they want the show/segment to mean.
Talking good podcasts, I've been listening to Cognitive Dissonance quite a bit lately.
It's pretty offensive in many ways (particularly to Christians), but I find quite funny. They abhor Mitt Romney.
This video was referenced in one the latest eps of Radiolab - specifically Bliss.
Video on how radiolab is made - quite interesting for radio production nerds.