What podcasts are you listening to?

[LoathedVermin72]

Ugh, the Danny Boyle WTF is another tough listen so far. He seems like a nice guy, but I can't stand listening to people thoughtlessly fellating shitty movies in an unchallenged vacuum, which is all they've done so far.

[The Argonaut]

lol@ "That's me, calling the Taliban."

[epilogue]

lol@ "That's me, calling the Taliban."

I'm so happy this show is back.

[EJ]

Surprise, motherfuckers: Serial is back.

listened to it this morning, its off to a good start

[Simple Torture]

The first episode of Serial SE02 was good, or at least intriguing enough that I think it will be sustainable and fascinating for a whole season. I had heard the rumor that it was going to cover the Bergdahl case, I thought it would be weird that they'd spend a whole season focusing on a subject that they probably couldn't talk to (due to the pending case)--so hearing his actual voice on the podcast was a pretty crazy development. Can't wait for next week!

[epilogue]

I know! How lucky that they have Mark Boal's interview tapes. I kinda love that he's working with them on this. Very cool.

[Simple Torture]

It's very ambitious. There was so much great reporting last year, but a lot of the material they were working with was publicly available (court records, news reports, etc.), at least when it comes to the foundation of the case. This year, they'll be digging into military secrets and classified shit, I'm sure. Cool stuff.

[epilogue]

I'm kinda blown away by the Serial backlash. I guess I shouldn't be. That's the world we live in now. But man! People are hating on this thing hard.

[tragabigzanda]

Whenever there's active promotion on the part of somebody else, whenever I see somebody all dolled up for a fancy photograph and someone's handing out flyers or whenever there's active promotion for something like that, as an imposition on my day, I hate all those people and I want them to fail. I have a visceral reaction to advertising and promotion. There's just something about salesmanship that grates on me on a very base level and I react very negatively towards it. I want those people to suffer and I want their enterprises to fail.

[epilogue]

I'm kinda blown away by the Serial backlash. I guess I shouldn't be. That's the world we live in now. But man! People are hating on this thing hard.

Really? Where? How so?

A lot of it is me over hearing people around the city. But I've also seen several articles that are really glib about the show and super condescending. And many also mention how sort of pointless this season's topic is given how much press this story has already received.

I was interested to learn that this was not the original topic planned for Season 2, but the investigation they originally planned is taking longer than expected and will now be the topic of Season 3. So this is, not a placeholder per se, but a sort of bonus season because the original S2 content was taking so long. Kinda cool.

[The Argonaut]

I don't think it's fair to say this has been getting a lot of coverage. Yes, it was in the news. But we have not heard Bowe Bergdahl in his own words to this point, at least not to this degree. And we certainly haven't gotten 12 hours of this kind of in-depth, semi-story-driven, style of coverage. Those people are silly.

[epilogue]

Team Argo!

[epilogue]

And I think it's fantastic because I had no knowledge of this story until Serial. I vaguely remember Bowe coming home and people being super pissed at what Obama gave up to get him back. But after that, I knew nothing about this story until last Thursday.

[Norah]

I haven't started season 2 yet.

I do however feel like you walk a fine line when doing story-styled, narrative driven journalism. The way you present it can be emotionally manipulative and drive the audience to feel a certain way about the subject, instead of just being fact driven and allowing the audience to draw their own conclusions, emotional or otherwise.

Not to say there isn't a role in humanizing subjects that are covered in the news. A lot of the time we lose sight of the fact that the people we're talking about are actual human beings with a wide, complicated set of motivations and feelings. But you don't want to allow you to cloud you're judgment simply because you feel for the guy.

[epilogue]

Sure.

But S1 did a great job and look how split people were about Adnan as a person and as a criminal. Sarah knows what's she's doing. She's also started laying out a blueprint for this season in the first episode and I think what you're saying will be addressed and as unbiased as it can be given what Serial is.

[Norah]

sure, I was critiquing the format in general, not specifically the work on serial

[epilogue]

sure, I was critiquing the format in general, not specifically the work on serial

I gotcha. And I think your criticisms are on point.

[tragabigzanda]

Whenever there's active promotion on the part of somebody else, whenever I see somebody all dolled up for a fancy photograph and someone's handing out flyers or whenever there's active promotion for something like that, as an imposition on my day, I hate all those people and I want them to fail. I have a visceral reaction to advertising and promotion. There's just something about salesmanship that grates on me on a very base level and I react very negatively towards it. I want those people to suffer and I want their enterprises to fail.

[Norah]

This is all intriguing. I have the same reservations about S2 as T,D and Chud have mentioned above, but I'm also interested in tuning in based on the strength of S1.

Re: Chud's concenrs with narrative-driven journalism, I agree that it's a slippery slope. On the one hand, you have something like The Thin Blue Line that deftly illustrated the inconsistencies with that case; and then you have something like The Jinx which, while super enthralling television, definitely felt manipulative with the way it presented the facts to the public.

I will admit that I'm not a big Sarah Koenig fan. It has nothing to do with her journalistic choices, but rather her on-air persona, that of the persistently inquisitive, cutely curious investigator. It's annoying to me for the same reason that Ira Glass is (sorry Chud). Give me the feisty control of Tom Ashbrook, or the gentle prodding of Terry Gross, any day. But Koenig and Glass have this style that is sort "Aren't I interesting for being so curious?" that grates on me after a while.

I actually agree with you about Koenig's style. I don't think it bothers me as much with Glass because he's not really doing journalism. He's essentially just a story teller.

Ashbrook is fantastic though. Ditto with Terry Gross.

[Norah]

I'm also curious what turned2black thinks about Koenig and this style of journalism.