PODCASTS — LISTEN AT YOUR LEISURE

Wolverine: The Long Night www.wolverinepodcast.com Given that we are all kidults these days, bear with me here and do not leap to dismiss the idea of a podcast tracing the story of Logan, better know to Marvel fans as mutant-hero Wolverine.

The Long Night is a joint Marvel-Stitcher effort, voiced by Richard Armitage as the gravelly-sounding Wolverine, and Celia Keenan-Bolger and Ato Essandoh as Agents Pierce and Marshall. And, as this kind of stuff goes, it’s good. The plot is gripping — a string of mysterious deaths in Burns, Alaska, brings Special Agents Sally Pierce and Tad Marshall, in to investigate; naturally, they soon find there’s more going on than meets the eye — and the delivery is compelling. On a recent listen, a pre-teen Marvel obsessive, his equally Marvel-obsessed dad, two reasonably indifferent siblings and I, were all equally happy. This is basically

Listen With Mother (with claws…) for a new generation. Right now, this is Stitcher Premium only, although it goes on wider release later in the year, and there’s a free month’s trial. This American Life: Five Women www.thisamericanlife.org/640/five-women This bills itself as “a different kind of #MeToo story” and follows five women who all worked for the same man, and each experience troubling encounters with him. However, rather than focus simply on their experiences with this man, the podcast goes deeper into the background of who each of them was before they entered that workplace, and how their personal histories shaped the various ways in which they dealt with his harassment.

The different backgrounds, characters and approaches of these women, told in seven ‘acts’, are what provide the complexity to what is a multi-layered story, one that ends up being far from simple.