May 10th, 2008, 6 Comments »
Last September, CBC Radio launched two new technology shows: Search Engine and Spark. I forget how I first heard about them, but I subscribed to both podcasts from their first episode.
Search Engine is a show about the cultural and politics of the web (they need a copyable blurb on their home page and in iTunes). The most recent episode featured stories on the hacker convention Defcon, gaming the CIA’s website and a rapping Hungarian YouTube star.
Here’s the spiel on Spark:
Spark is a weekly audio blog of smart and unexpected trendwatching. It’s not just technology for gearheads, it’s about the way technology affects our lives, and the world around us.
What’s a Spark story? Wikis in the workplace, Guitar Hero in your living room, or why the new trend in design is the trailer park.
So they cover similar territory, but Spark is less concerned with the Web than Search Engine. Spark has a stickier tag line, because I can remember it: “Tech trends and fresh ideas”.
It’s been educational to watch both shows’ evolution over the past year or so. My impressions:
- They’ve taken somewhat different approaches in story development and presentation. Spark seems much more crowd-sourced, while Search Engine has a more traditional structure. I don’t know how successful it’s been (I’d be curious to hear about their objectives and measures of success) Spark has a wiki for developing show ideas. Additionally, host Nora Young regularly cites comments from the show’s blog. They’re usually insightful enough to merit inclusion (I tend to loathe traditional man-on-the-street commentary).
- Both hosts seem very well-informed, and (while I’m layman in this) are excellent presenters. Search Engine host Jesse Brown has a more informal style–he seems to be palling around with a lot of his guests. This mostly works, and reflects the DIY culture he documents. I do get a bit tired of the geeky indignation Brown seems to have for a lot of his tech stories. I get that every day in the blogosphere (including this site) and at tech conferences, so I don’t want to hear it from the CBC. Because of this, Search Engine sometimes feels more like commentary than reportage.
- I like both shows, but given the choice, I listen to Spark first. Why? Because the topics are fresher (see the tagline) to me. 80% of Spark stories are new to me. I’ve already heard about 80% of Search Engine’s stories. That’s not a criticism of Search Engine–it’s a reflection of the kind of information I consume.
Clearly the CBC made emerging technology and the web a priority last year, and I applaud the results. Keep up the good work.
This is barely related, but I note that these CBC sites have a wacky URL structure. For example, the about page for Spark is http://www.cbc.ca/spark/index.html?copy-about. Maybe it’s a symptom of an older CMS?
6 Comments »
February 1st, 2008, 7 Comments »
This Canadian only recently discovered “This American Life”, a weekly hour-long radio show produced by Chicago Public Radio (and available via podcast). I’d always felt that I got enough American life from the media–who needs more?
Then a few months ago I listened to episode #339, Break-up, and got kind of hooked.
With more than 300 episodes to choose from, I wanted to go back and listen to the cream of the crop. I spent some time perusing a bunch of sources and assembled a list of the web’s favourite episodes of the show. Basically, every time somebody mentioned that they liked an episode, I marked down a vote for it. In all, I gathered a list of 129 episodes which received at least one vote.
A List in 19 Acts
These 19 episodes got at least five votes, though the first four received considerably more than that. I gather they’re considered classics.
Links go to individual episodes, where you can listen via streaming MP3 or buy for 95 American cents. All descriptions are excerpted from the “This American Life” website.
- House on Loon Lake - Our entire show this week is one long story, sort of a real-life Hardy Boys mystery.
- Superpowers - We answer the following questions about superpowers: Can superheroes be real people? (No.) Can real people become superheroes? (Maybe.) And which is better: flight or invisibility? (Depends who you ask.)
- First Day - Stories of the first day on the job, the first day in a relationship, the first day in school.
- Fiasco! - Stories of when things go wrong. Really wrong. When you leave the normal realm of human error, fumble, mishap and mistake and enter the territory of really huge breakdowns.
- My Experimental Phase - Three stories about people who decide to try out a new life — the kind of life their parents never wanted for them.
- Godless America - At a time when House Majority Leader Tom Delay calls for enacting a “Biblical world view” in government, when Christians are asserting their ideals in the selection of judges, in public school science classes and elsewhere, This American Life spends an hour trying to remember why anyone liked the separation of church and state in the first place.
- Music Lessons - What’s frustrating about music lessons, what’s miraculous about them, and what they actually teach us.
- Notes on Camp - Stories of summer camp. People who love camp say that non-camp people simply don’t understand what’s so amazing about camp.
- Who’s Canadian - Notes and stories about the Canadians among us.
- 20 Acts in 60 Minutes - Instead of the regular “each week we choose a theme, and bring you three or four stories on that theme” business, this week we throw all that away and bring you twenty stories — yes, twenty — in sixty minutes.
- 24 Hours at The Golden Apple - The This American Life producers document one day in a Chicago diner called The Golden Apple, starting at 5 a.m. and going until 5 a.m. the next morning.
- 81 Words - The story of how the American Psychiatric Association decided in 1973 that homosexuality was no longer a mental illness.
- Act V - We devote this entire episode to one story: over the course of six months, reporter and TAL contributor Jack Hitt followed a group of inmates at a high-security prison as they rehearsed and staged a production of the last act—Act V—of Hamlet.
- Conventions - What happens when people with one common interest gather in monstrous, flourescent-lit halls for the weekend? Sometimes they drive each other crazy, sometimes they fall in love.
- Recordings for Someone - All the stories in this week’s show center on personal recordings that one person made for just one other person.
- The Middle of Nowhere - Stories from faraway, hard-to-get-to places, where all rules are off, nefarious things happen because no one’s looking, and there’s no one to appeal to.
- Testosterone - tories of people getting more testosterone and coming to regret it. And of people losing it and coming to appreciate life without it. The pros and cons of the hormone of desire.
- Sinatra - Stories, tributes, and attempts to understand the Chairman of the Board.
- Cruelty of Children - Stories about kids being mean to each other.
The list skews slightly toward more recent episodes, but not too badly. Incidentally, if somebody wants to submit this to MetaFilter, I’d appreciate it. It’s not kosher for me to do so, but I know many Mefi readers are also TAL lovers, and I used a couple of MeFi threads as two of my sources.
After the jump, you’ll find the other 109 episodes which received anywhere from one to four votes, in alphabetical order. I didn’t link to their show pages, because that would be a major pain. Just do a quick search on TAL’s website.
Read more…
7 Comments »
December 14th, 2007, 6 Comments »
There are lots of things to hate about the U.S. electoral system. However, the Americans do one thing right: they get real characters as candidates. I mean, the Democrats are going to choose a woman or a African-American (er, Halfrican-American?) as their presidential candidate! How cool is that? And the Republican side is full of nutty dudes like Giuliani (who kind of reminds me of Gollum) and Mormon Mitt Romney.
Canadian politics feels so staid by comparison. Hello, Frozen Nation! Which French-Canadian middle-aged white guy will we elect as Custodian in Chief this year? I’m not sure why that is, but I wish our elections had a little more attitude and a lot more diversity.
To learn about the election (and that nutty American electoral system), I’ve started listening to the Slate Political Gabfest podcast. It’s chock full of over-educated liberal elitists, but I’m nearly all those things, so I don’t mind (plus, I’ve developed a bit of a crush on Emily Bazelon).
The Slate podcast is a well-moderated round table conversation among professional writers and pundits. It covers a lot of ground, but it’s fairly compelling and continues to inform my limited knowledge of American politics.
I would, however, like to find an analogous podcast for the Republican side of the election. Ideally, it should be professional, well-moderated and the level of required knowledge should be, at best, intermediate. Similarly, I’d like to find a Canadian political podcast that meets those requirements.
Does anybody have recommendations for equivalents to the Gabfest?
6 Comments »
December 10th, 2007, 16 Comments »
I was just listening to one of Slate’s excellent podcasts, and it opened with a new promo for Land Rovers. The voice-over actor has a British accent which sounds a little peculiar to me. I wouldn’t definitely say it’s fake, because my ear isn’t good enough, but it sounds a little odd.
Give it a listen:
Does that sound legit to my British readers? Or anybody else who has an ear for accents?
16 Comments »
October 29th, 2007, 6 Comments »
Stuart McLean is Canada’s Garrison Keilor. His main gig is The Vinyl Cafe, an hour-long variety show on the CBC. These shows are anchored by McLean’s “Dave and Morley” stories–tales of a fictional Toronto family which feel a bit like “For Better or Worse” on the radio.
It’d be easy to dismiss McLean’s schtick as sappy, family-friendly entertainment, but I think what he does is quite tricky. He manages to tell richly-detailed, funny, charming stories about the mundane details of our lives. And he does it without resorting to a lot of comedic tricks–it’s all there in the strength of his writing and delivery. And his delivery is great–he’s a very natural storyteller and humourist.
I wouldn’t want to listen to him every day, but once a week would be quite enjoyable. And now I can, because the CBC just started podcasting the Dave and Morley story portion of The Vinyl Cafe broadcast. I’m subscribed.
UPDATE: Jody’s comment reminded me of something I meant to mention. I suspect McLean makes good money out of his Vinyl Cafe books and recordings, so it surprised me to see his material on iTunes for free. I suspect he conceives of it as a promotional strategy for expanding his audience. After all, the people listening to this podcast probably aren’t the same people who regularly buy his books and CDs.
6 Comments »
July 16th, 2007, 1 Comment »
I did a lot of housework this weekend, and thus caught up on a bunch of podcasts. I’m quite enjoying the CBC’s cultural magazine show, Q. They have this weekly web correspondent who reports on fun stuff from the Web. I’d heard of everything else he talked about with the exception of What Jeff Killed was new to me.
Welcome to What Jeff Killed, your authoritative source for news and information about Jeff The Giant Orange Cat and his favorite pastime: killing things.
DISCLAIMER: This Web site contains disgusting/disturbing images, has no value whatsoever, and due to its content should not be viewed by anyone. Read the full disclaimer.
Yeah, Jeff kills some big things. Some of those photos are particularly visceral.
I don’t think that web guy has his schtick quite sorted out. He sang the praises of Battle at Kruger, and even mentioned the 6.7 million people who’d seen it. He also mentioned ye olde Dramatic Chipmunk. Isn’t his job to find stuff on the web that people haven’t seen?
1 Comment »
