Podcast of the Week: Slate's The Gist with Mike Pesca

Follow Friday is a Twitter thing but I'm going to try something new: recommending a podcast each week in the hope that more people I know will start listening to podcasts ... and in turn, discover cool ones and recommend them to me.

Podcasting, as I blogged about last spring when I was at the Transom Story Workshop, is a thing now. And getting bigger, according to these recent stories in the Washington Post and Fast Company. There are a couple reasons for this. One, smartphones mean you can basically use podcasts to turn your phone into a transistor radio ... with custom content. Two, the This American Life generation is coming of age and doing all kinds of interesting things. But podcasting is not limited to public radio. Publications of all kinds, print and web, produce podcasts. So do individuals, like comedians, and scholars in nearly every field.

So podcasts ... there has to be one for everyone out there and for some of us there are more than we could possibly listen to. My first weekly recommendation is a relative newbie by a public radio veteran: Slate's The Gist with Mike Pesca. This is a relatively simple concept -- a half-hour talk show, with interviews. It's all on Pesca and fortunately he's really good, the ideal media interlocutor from my point of view. Generation X and proud of it. Liberal but not righteous. Regular guy enough to be into sports but wonky enough to take politics and public affairs seriously. In other words, I'm happy to listen to him for half an hour a day and I'm either enlightened or entertained or at best, both.

Give it a listen. If it's not for you, my apologies. I'll have another recommendation next Friday.

If you don't know how to listen to a podcast, the easiest way is to subscribe on your smartphone's podcast app. If you don't play that way, you can subscribe via iTunes. Give it a try! It's free! Or, you could watch this charming youtube video from the King of All Audio, Ira Glass: 

The impressive old ladies of Cape Cod

While I was in Cape Cod learning how to make radio at Transom, I produced two pieces. My final project started out being about the local candlepin bowling alley, but became a story about one bowler -- the inimitable 94-year-old Nellie Kenyon. You can listen to it here.

The first story, produced as an assignment for WCAI's Creative Life series, was about the Provincetown Public Press, a project of the awe-inspiring-especially-for-its-size Provincetown Public Library. Reporting that story, I met one of their authors, Marilyn Colburn, who was really nice -- and turned out to be the friend and neighbor of several of my Key West friends. Small world, many connections between outposts. Here's that story.

Here's a take-home lesson I didn't expect: Older folks might want to consider staying up north for the winter. Because the Cape seems to be full of energetic, intelligent people in their 80s and 90s. My classmate Alison Byrne produced a great piece about the senior center's poetry group and Falmouth's 99-year-old poet laureate -- I'll link to it as soon as it airs. I'm starting to think I should make Cape Cod my retirement plan. Meanwhile, my journey home starts this evening -- I'm taking the Silver Meteor train from DC to Miami. Once I get home, get unpacked and get geared up, I'll be making more radio. So keep an ear on this space.

What I'm up to. And my classmates, too!

Normally, I wouldn't just make a blog post that simply links to another blog post. Because that's what Facebook and Twitter are for, right? But since I'm all about the radio at the moment, I thought I'd provide this link. And this excellent photo, which is our class photo (we had to top or at least match the previous class, which had arranged a Last Supper kind of deal). Anyway, here's what we have to say about what we've learned in the workshop, so far. A lot of it is very helpful for writing in general, radio writing in particular, and how to approach storytelling. As you can see, we were all very impressed with Nancy Updike, one of the founding producers of This American Life, who came and spent a class with us.

If you're at all interested in radio storytelling and how it works, I encourage you to check out other features on Transom. The site includes stories about/interviews with great radio producers, as well as just plain great radio stories. Check it out. And if you can't just up and leave your life and loved ones to hang out in Woods Hole (applications for the fall workshop are now open!), check out the online offerings.

Old print dog starts learning new radio tricks

I feel like I've crossed some kind of Rubicon by spending more time over the last three weeks listening than reading. It makes perfect sense since those three weeks have been spent in an immersive radio school -- which for an old print person with extremely limited radio experience like myself feels a bit like entering Radio Grad School without having taken Radio 101.

Fortunately, the instructors and fellow students are as nice, smart, helpful and encouraging as could be.

Sometime in the last week between a presentation by a talented podcaster named Jonathan Groubert (whose podcast is called The State We're In) and grilling a talented classmate half my age who doesn't own an actual radio, I think I finally Got It about podcasts and how radio reaches people now. I am familiar with podcasts -- I used to laboriously download the BBC Newspod and NPR Books podcast to my computer via iTunes, then transfer them to an iPod, then listen while folding laundry or whatever. But that's a pain in the ass and I got out of the habit. I have occasionally downloaded episodes of This American Life or On the Media to my phone and listened there. But mostly, in a pretty old-fashioned, analog kind of way, I get my radio from the radio.

It turns out nobody, or at least nobody under the age of 30, does this anymore.* And that podcasting, now around for 10 years, is hitting its stride in a really interesting way. I had been thinking of podcasts as a way to catch up to radio shows that you missed, or that are not carried on your local station. They are that, but there are also smart, creative people out there making podcasts that aren't carried on many stations, or any stations at all. And you can get them .. for free! On your phone!

If you have a smartphone, you probably have a built-in podcast app. There are also lots of apps out there that make it even easier (Talented Classmate Half My Age recommended one called Downcast, which seems to be well worth the $2.99).**

So what I have been listening to? Of course This American Life, because how can you not? And I subscribed to some old favorites like On the Media, Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me and a bunch of podcasts from the BBC and KCRW.

But I'm most excited about the ones that are new to me. Start at Radiotopia which gathers seven really cool podcasts -- my favorite is 99% Invisible but they are all good. It's not all new stuff either; Fugitive Waves is work from the archives of the Kitchen Sisters and Radio Diaries has the work of producer Joe Richman. These are people whose stories are used as "texts" in radio grad school -- with the added benefit that they are a pleasure to listen to. You learn stuff and you're engaged/entertained.

You know what else I found out? John Oliver has a podcast! It's called The Bugle and it's done with Andy Zaltzman and it's very funny, especially if you're an aficionado of Anglo-American humor/satiric political commentary. Since I haven't talked anyone into handing over their HBO Go password to me yet, I was excited to learn I could get some free Oliver on a weekly basis. Another comedy podcast I haven't listened to yet is WTF with Marc Maron -- and classmates whose judgment I trust say it's great.

There are tons more and I won't list them all. But if you're curious, leave a comment and I'll try to find a recommendation in your area of interest.

And since this is supposed to be a book blog, I'll make a reading recommendation. I finally broke down during a trip into Falmouth this week and went into the really nice Eight Cousins bookstore. I bought a copy of The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry. It was a quick read and exactly what I needed. And it's set in these parts -- on fictional Alice Island, which doesn't exist in real life but which you reach via ferry from Hyannis.

The titular A.J. Fikry is a cranky widower who owns a bookstore on Alice Island. His life is changed entirely when a 2-year-old girl is left in the bookstore aisle. Blurbs and jacket copy recommend it for readers who liked The Art of Racing in the Rain and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society -- books I always felt I should have read when I was working at the library but avoided because I'm allergic to sentimental, uplifting stuff. But this book (A.J. Fikry) manages to be sweet while avoiding the saccharine. And it is suffused with a love of books and reading and writing. So I recommend it, though probably not to my more skeptical reading friends, or those looking for something with sharper edges.

* It's not just people under 30! Turns out this group also includes ... Ira Glass, the godfather of the public radio revolution (wait that's a bad metaphor -- the Fidel Castro of the Radio Revolution? The Leon Trotsky of the radio revolution?). Anyway here's what he said in response to a reader question in the Guardian:

When do you listen to the radio?

In the morning, when I shave. And really, not for very long. I don't hear the radio that much. I don't own a radio. I listen to everything through apps, or on my iPhone. And then I download the shows I like. Shows like Fresh Air,Radiolab, Snap Judgement, all those shows.

** TCHMA and I had a funny moment yesterday in class when we realized we were both thinking about the story of the guys behind the @Horse_ebooks Twitter feed (and more projects that may or may not constitute Internet performance art). I read the story in The New Yorker. He heard it on TLDR, the On The Media spinoff podcast. The title stands for Too Long Didn't Read -- in other words, it's the anti-New Yorker. We then raced to see which outlet had it first. Turns out Susan Orlean broke the story on the New Yorker's blog. I think.

Radio, radio

Hey did you hear? Diana Nyad set a world record Monday, swimming from Cuba to Key West, unassisted, achieving at age 64 a goal she first attempted in 1978.

If you heard it on NPR you might have heard it from me. No, really! For a couple of months now my house has been custodian of an Edirol, a nice little professional recording device a couple steps up from your average digital voice recorder, thanks to the good folks at WLRN. Who woke up Monday morning like everybody else on the planet to realize Holy sh*t, she's still swimming! She might actually make it this time! And started scrambling for coverage.

Which in this case meant me. And suddenly I was not only WLRN's reporter on the scene, I was NPR's reporter on the scene. Holy sh*t is right. Not only are my reporting muscles woefully out of shape but I am terrified of relying on technology and in radio, you can't take notes by hand. I haven't played seriously in years and suddenly they call me for the Show?

Fortunately technology has improved an awful lot since the days of acoustic coupler uploads and crappy hand-me-down Toshiba laptops that required reloading the software EVERY TIME YOU TURNED IT ON so I mostly concentrated on making sure the recorder was really recording, that the levels weren't blasting beyond fixability and that I wasn't running down my cellphone battery. As Nyad reached the beach and the crowd got out of hand, I mostly concentrated on not dropping the recorder or my cellphone while simulatenously trying to record and photograph the arrival. I didn't drop either, though most of what I recorded and photographed were the shoulders and backs of the heads of all the people shoving to try to get their own cellphone pictures and videos of Nyad.

Later, when she was on a gurney hooked up to an IV, I joined the scrum around here and did manage to capture a little audio of her, which you can hear in my piece for WLRN. See that guy in the blue button down shirt? That's Kerry Sanders from NBC. See that hand just to Sanders' left, holding out a recorder? That's me! And I managed to restrain myself from elbowing Sanders in the gut, even though I have been waiting for just such an opportunity since about 1997. I think he was still with the NBC affiliate in Miami then and I was with the Herald. We were both covering a University of Miami scientist's work on coral spawning off Key Largo. We were in a small boat. It was kind of a rough night. The boat stayed in the same place for a long time. I am prone to seasickness. By the time we were actually in the water, I was puking in my snorkel. I do not recommend this experience. We finally got back on the boat. We were ready to get underway. Then Sanders decided he just had to have one more shot of himself jumping into the water. This required his cameraman to suit back up in all his scuba gear and get the camera's water housing all back together. Then Sanders had to suit back up in all his scuba gear. And jump into the water again. Which he'd already done, on camera.

In the meantime, I was dry heaving over the side of the boat with one thing going through my head: I hate TV.

Being on the big NPR, talking with Siegel, was kind of terrifying -- so terrifying that I actually don't really remember it and I haven't been able to bring myself to listen to it yet. But I'm told it sounded OK and that Siegel even managed to pronounce Klingener. I returned to my real life the next day, checking in moldy library books and giving out coupons for Internet access. But it was kind of fun to return, just for an afternoon, to that mix of terror and adrenaline rush of finding yourself on a big story with way less preparation than you'd like and little idea what you're doing -- and you go ahead and do it anyway.