(This was written by our intern Samantha Aquino)
Radio gaga seems passé–shock-jock tactics and 90-second factoid sound bites no longer cut it in a novelty-hungry world. A fantastical renaissance approaches as digital streaming rises up to overthrow good ol’ broadcast media. While it is liberating to be able to curate your own content and queue up precisely what you want to hear, freedom always comes with a catch–what do you listen to when you’re sick of self-regulated programming? When you want to discover something new and exciting, where do you go to escape the noise?
Goodbye, radio; goodbye, Spotify-filtered playlists. Here comes your newest aural fixation: the podcast, herald of cutting-edge, thoughtful matter. Characteristically intimate as an art form and tailor-fit for the modern lifestyle, where time is scarce and stimulus is high in demand, podcasts bridge the virtual gap between author-reader & creator-consumer relationships–this is spoken literature. It’s new-school cool. Intelligent, innovative, and snappy, the podcasting scene has carved a niche for itself as a cult media phenomenon.
The whole appeal of podcasts perhaps stems from our nature as social creatures—further enabled by the power of the internet—the comfort of which lies in the familiarity of human voices accompanying us on the cyclical daily grind. Some suggestions for podcast consumption: Listen on the morning journeys to and from school. Listen while working on plates. Listen whenever you’re performing arduous menial tasks. There are thousands of programs to choose from on iTunes and Spotify.
Information overload? Never fear, beat curator. We’ve done the work for you—here are four of our freshest podcast picks:
Grownups Read Things They Wrote as Kids
With belly laughs abound, Canadian podcast Grownups Read Things They Wrote as Kids (or GRTTWaK) has a pretty on-the-tin premise: during live, recorded open-mic shows, participants bring along scraps of childhood writing to read aloud. You’ll listen to 34 year olds narrate from a 4 year old’s perspective, faulty grammar withstanding, and it is as glorious as it sounds. Though mostly silly and cringe-worthy, GRTTWaK can be achingly poignant and unexpectedly honest in its portrayals of youthful virtue.
Tune in when: you want to skip, hop, and cartwheel down memory lane
Benjamin Walker’s Theory of Everything
“You are listening to Benjamen Walker’s Theory of Everything,” a French-accented woman begins every episode, introducing this eclectic podcast about, well, everything. Mass surveillance! The word ‘pretentious’! Paris in the year 2100! Host Benjamin Walker talks about it all within his own bizarre, almost musical storytelling style, embodying the conspiratorial and offbeat zeitgeist our Black Mirror generation. An enthusiasm for observational zigzagging and revolutionary investigative journalism drives this show.
Tune in when: you want to feel like you’re in on a huge, juicy secret
Monocle 24: Culture with Robert Bound
Legendary international affairs magazine Monocle has a smorgasbord of brilliantly-done radio programs to enjoy (mini-recommendation: The Foreign Desk is flawless as a neutral global news examiner), but Culture with Robert Bound stands out as the most obviously relevant to us arts & culture-obsessed Millennials. Industry professionals discuss books, film, and music, revisiting influential media, and acting effectively as recommendation generators. Should art be political? How do you run an independent cinema? What is indie? Young creatives, take note: you’ll want to be listening intently for new and compelling ideas.
Tune in when: you need a dose of artistic invigoration
Philosophize This!
Yes, a podcast about philosophy sounds highfalutin and stuffy, but Philosophize This!’s one-man-machine Stephen West is anything but. West does not walk us through every major philosophical concept so much as he shoves us into the thick of it, cannonballing into the deep, somehow breathing life into thousand-year-old, pedantic literature. He manages to mine into the best bits of complex philosophies, breaking them down with a personable verve (not unlike your favorite college professor), friendly and infectious. It’s not edge-ucation; Mr. West is unabashedly nerdy and the show is generally wholesome, but his brand of charm and optimism makes Philosophize This! a fundamentally, irrefutably wonderful gem of a show.
Tune in when: you want to know more than you did yesterday (the show’s catchphrase!)
