Episode 98: Pandemic Podcast LIstens Part 2

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As I mentioned in the last episode, I’m going to use this episode to feature more of my quarantine listens. For the field of podcasting as a whole, it’s been a bit of a wild ride. Podcast mics sold out pretty quickly, but with no commutes, listening numbers dipped a bit for many of the larger shows. Meanwhile, the indie community just kept going. It wasn’t like we weren’t used to the delicate balance that is content creation under difficult circumstances, and we all understand when setbacks happen and adjustments to schedules need to be made. For the most part, it just is what it is. 

But for me, I’ve been listening to more shows than I was pre-pandemic. Because I now have the luxury of working from home, I don’t have to have the same spatial awareness that I did when I was in the office. Sure, I have to keep the cat chaos to a manageable level, but eventually, they nap. And also, it’s my home, so I don’t need headphones. I can just play things aloud, which does help. A lot.

Anyway, let me share with you more of the shows I’ve been listening to during this pandemic. Marketing in the podcast world can be hard, so we’ve got to help each other out a bit.

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Hi. It’s M. Welcome to Episode 98.

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Now, this podcast has been mostly about fiction across various mediums. And that makes sense if you know me because that’s the sort of material I’m most drawn to. But ‘one does not live on bread alone’ as the saying goes, which is saying I might be appropriating at an inopportune time. In fact, there’s sort of irony to my usage here. That saying is meant to remind an adherent to a religion that they can’t just maintain their physical body and think everything is fine. They also need to tend to spiritual matters. And the irony, for me, is that fiction is what I think of as nourishment for my soul. But I still need the more physical sustenance of nonfiction.

And yet, entering nonfiction spaces as an adult can be intimidating. In some spaces--be they books, movies, or podcasts--whether explicit or not, there is an assumption of prior knowledge or expertise that I and many others might not have. Or at least, we can’t confidently say that we have it. That space, in theory, should offer it to us, but we don’t feel confident enough to ask. 

Let me check my privilege at the door. Because despite being a product of the public education system, I was a product of a branch of that system that was properly funded, and it made all the difference. But at the same time, it also happened to be the branch that was obsessed with testing and test scores, deeming them the only true metric of education despite how impractical it all was. I can’t remember most of what was on any of the CollegeBoard’s Advanced Placement exams I took. I can really only remember the questions I failed epically. And despite the future this has gotten me, there’s still some regret there. Maybe it’s a ‘the grass is greener on the other side’ sort of situation, but I would have loved for a more tangible understanding of what was happening around me. With that, it would certainly be easier for me to enter into certain spaces: the very spaces that were meant to give me the more substantial and abstract knowledge that wasn’t prioritized in school. 

For that, enter podcasting, specifically Just the Zoo of Us and Oh No! Lit Class. And here I should point out that Just the Zoo of Us is family friendly whereas Oh No! Lit Class is more appropriate for the found family of other adults you accumulated after you leave school and end up trauma bonding with those around you. What, I’m not speaking from experience or anything like that. Anyway, both of these podcasts are education or at least educational-adjacent when the entertainment factor slightly gets off kilter. But what they end up doing is correcting the proverbial record of sorts. They give you information about animals or literature respectively that you weren’t able to get in school.  Or were able to retain. 

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Both of these shows are entertaining. In their own ways because I cannot stress enough that these shows have two different audiences in mind. But all the same, entertainment is important because it can hold your attention in a way that certain universities lecturers or high school teachers weren’t able to do. But at the same time, there is information packed in there: information that can be somewhat dense or offered up in a more lighthearted or flippant fashion. And it’s information that--in another life or another school system--I might have had better access to. But I didn’t. In terms of literature, I’ve got a better than nothing grip, but for zoology, I had a lot of preconceived notions, which was worse than nothing, frankly. 

I’ve found, though, that these shows and others like them are havens for me. They stand as spaces where I or any audience member am not expected to know. No one is there to prove that I do or don’t. And because these shows aren’t behind a paywall and are just generally open to anyone--like people who can’t be expected or can’t expect themselves to have all the answers--there can’t be an assumption of prior knowledge. In fact, Just the Zoo of Us twists this by often assuming that its audience may have bad intel. 

And that’s a pretty important point because it is hard being wrong on the internet. There’s a lot of embarrassment, yes, but that embarrassment stems from being corrected in a public space. With shows like this, there’s an alternative. You listen. Maybe verify what you hear depending on the context. And learn. All without anyone knowing how wrong you were. The stakes are low. But the result is worth a lot.

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But okay, back to my soul food, as it were: audio fiction. Well, fiction in general. But audio fiction reaches new heights constantly as creatives are free to be creative without a person in a well-tailored suit there to tell them ‘no.’

On that note, Death by Dying has been a newfound love of mine that probably couldn’t exist in a conventional space. It follows the Obituary Writer--and yeah… that’s pretty much his name, so there’s that--as he goes in search of content for the obituaries he needs to write for Crestfall’s newspaper. Now that seems like a straightforward task, but there have been a lot of mysterious deaths. And no, you can’t even attribute some of them to the man-eating cats that the Obituary Writer definitely doesn’t have. No siree. His cats do not eat people at all. 

Yeah, you can tell it’s quite a ride. But more than being a ride, it’s a podcast that is crafted with love and care. All the details are considered and mesh together. And the showrunner Evan Gulock promises that Season 2 is going to be even more of that love and attention. 

Death by Dying is a great example of what fiction storytelling could be. It’s not just a story with an interesting idea. It does have an innovative nature interwoven in, yes, but more than that, it’s a story Evan Gulock was able to pour himself into without reservation. Despite the premise and nature of the story, there’s an authenticity to it that you don’t often see. 

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At the risk of sounding snobby or elitist, authenticity is important but often lost in the production of fiction. Now, I’m not saying that a story has to be a recitation of facts or a completely accurate encapsulation of a reality. That’s going to get more into nonfiction territory than fiction, depending on the execution. What I mean is, there’s a vision the storyteller created or forged in their own mind. There are motivations, intentions, and purposes behind each decision and design. Those things can be tweaked by others, even improved upon to make the final product more of what it was meant to be. 

However, alterations and suggestions aren’t always made with this in mind as the final destination. Often, particularly in more corportized space, they’re made according to some focus group or some sort of profit-driven trend in mind. And hey, I enjoy these movies too, right? Like superhero movies got compared to amusement parks a while back to distinguish them--scornfully--from high art. But I like amusement parks. I like roller coasters. But that’s not the only thing I need in my life. That would get exhausting very quickly, and the problem is that I can only find roller coasters, you know? The world is great at showing me the various roller coasters that are out there, but sometimes, I want something else. I’m thirsty for something else. Which is probably why I wanted to get through Death by Dying so quickly. While it was an emotional roller coaster, it was a very different sort of ride than what I’m used to.

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There’s some emotional resonance to Death by Dying, but on the other end of things, there’s this podcast called The One Stars that I really think you should listen to. In it, our host Negative Nancy and her only friend Chatbot bring us the best, (quote) "Fictional One Star Reviews from all across the Multiverse." (end quote) They are also in space just as an added cherry on top of the audio fiction Sundae. Ha, that could have been a pun… almost. Maybe?

Either way, there’s still something profound in this podcast. In this case, the fictional reviews aren’t just shouts into the proverbial void about a specific business or incident. There’s plenty of that, but as an audience, we do see a glimpse of the reviewer and the reviewer’s world underneath, which is something we often forget about. We think of reviews in terms of what they can do for us. Like, what insights they can give us about this business and the experience of engaging in commerce there. Or there might be a joke I can laugh at and potentially repeat at parties. We think about a lot of social interactions in these terms, i.e. what can they do for us, but at the end of the day, there’s more to the other person than that one moment. The same is true of these reviews. There’s a person making each and every review; they weren’t made by a random AI. They were made by a person with a potentially slanted perspective, and their review is a somewhat distant glimpse into that inner world. This show gives us pretty entertaining and interesting examples of this phenomenon. 

But if you don’t want to get into the philosophy of it, it’s still an enjoyable show. It’s a fun audio comedy. And I don’t always need philosophy. Sometimes, I just need things I like to be out there for me to discover and enjoy. Which is exactly what The One Stars podcast gave me.

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This has been a production of Miscellany Media Studios with music licensed from the Sounds like an Earful music supply. Thanks for listening! Find more information about our shows at miscellanymedia.online or follow us on Twitter @miscellanymedia for updates on current and future projects.

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