What’s new to listen to
George Fenwick rounds up what we’re tuning into in the world of music and podcasts.
Conversations With People Who Hate Me
Dylan Marron, pictured above, is probably best known as the voice of Carlos in Welcome to Night Vale but in this brilliant podcast he meets with people who have targeted him with vitriolic online abuse. It’s a classy and surprisingly heartwarming show that removes the facelessness of online abuse and unspools some of the reasons why people feel entitled to say things online that could get you arrested in person. The show has been running for a while now and has expanded beyond just Marron’s experience, with him often now mediating conversations between trolls and their targets, often with notable people, but also with Regular Joes (a recent episode has him guiding a conversation between a vaccine sceptic and a doctor). It kicked off a new season in February and Marron is preparing to release his new book, based on the show, in which he delves into the lessons he has learnt from engaging with trolls directly.
Fiasco: The Aids Crisis
Slow Burn rewrote the rulebook on how to explore history through audio and the co-creators have returned with this new season of Fiasco that takes listeners back to the Aids epidemic in the US. Hosted by journalist Leon Neyfakh, previous seasons of Fiasco have looked at the Bush v Gore legal battle and the 2012 Benghazi attack, while this fifth season takes listeners back to the early 1980s when predominantly gay men were being struck by a strange new disease that alarmed doctors and scientists. The podcast mainly looks at these early years of the epidemic, when a diagnosis was a death sentence and activists faced barrier after barrier trying to get the public and legislators to care. With a number of richly insightful interviews with activists who were on the frontline of the battle to raise awareness about the epidemic – which was largely ignored by the US government for years – this season provides a thought-provoking and devastating window into an epidemic that was worsened by neglect and prejudice.
Twenty Thousand Hertz
Podcasts about sound are always a treat: the impeccable production of shows such as Song Exploder and Hanging Out With Audiophiles, both of which focus on music production, have long made them stand out from the pack as the best podcasts for sound nerds. Twenty Thousand Hertz is another brilliant example, taking a wider look at some of the most interesting and recognisable sounds from around the world and tracing them back to their origins. One of their latest episodes, Mind The Gap, is a real treat for the transport nerds among us: who are the voices behind some of the most famous transit systems in the world? They’re voices that millions of people hear every day, and yet almost no one knows who these people are. This episode speaks to New York subway announcer Charlie Pellett and London Tube announcer Elinor Hamilton about what it means to be such an iconic voice in people’s daily routine – and their answers are as lovely and strange as you’d expect. (For some local trivia, unless my info is out of date, I believe Auckland’s trains are still voiced by actor Fasitua Amosa, pictured above.)