Podcasts... from Havana syndrome to cultural studies
“You know how it is,” said Fiona Sturges in the FT. “You wait ages for a podcast on Havana syndrome, the mysterious phenomenon that left scores of US diplomats in Cuba with neurological problems, and then two come along at once.” The Sound: Mystery of Havana Syndrome is a “terrific” eight-parter from Nicky Woolf, the British journalist behind Finding Q, an excellent podcast about the QAnon conspiracy theorists. This one tells a similarly “knotty” story – of espionage and geopolitical strife, with elements of conspiracy theory. Woolf speaks to neurologists, political analysts and sound experts, and uses “chilling sound effects” to convey the experiences of those affected by the strange high-pitched noises. The second one, Havana Syndrome, is the work of journalists Jon Lee Anderson and Adam Entous, who began their investigations for an article in The New Yorker in 2018. “While their series doesn’t have the lyricism and stylishness of Woolf’s, it is no less gripping and authoritative.”
Podcasts are enjoying a “golden age” of big budgets and soaring production values, said James Marriott in The Times. But when I feel in need of a fix of “proper old-school podcasting”, I turn to Weird Studies, which started in 2018 but which has “the spirit of an older era”. Hosted by the American academic Prof Phil Ford and the Canadian writer J.F. Martel, it is an “unclassifiable” show that ranges freely over social criticism, music, literature and pop culture. Listening to Ford and Martel is “like bumping into two of your inspirational professors who are slightly stoned at the end of a party”. They are “somewhat pretentious”, but also enthusiastic and delightfully erudite. “For a flavour of something different, older, less produced, less filtered, it’s unbeatable.”
Stopping to Notice – a series of “short, surround-sound” podcasts hosted by the writer and actor Miranda Keeling – is a “sensual” treat, said Miranda Sawyer in The Observer. Keeling’s voice is welcoming and her eye acute as we join her on short walks – some rural, some urban – in which she offers “fleeting observations” about the world around her, like meditations in miniature. “It’s wonderful stuff.” Even more sensual was a recent BBC Radio 4 documentary, A Kiss, in which the poet Rachel Long “exquisitely explored that most intimate of acts” in conversation with three other poets: Fleur Adcock, Richard Scott and Caroline Bird. The programme included “gorgeous” poems by Adcock and Bird. But it was a lengthy ode by Scott, a “description of kissing a statue, that truly thrilled. Sexy, unexpected, a bit ridiculous, a bit risky – like all the best kisses.”
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