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Listening notes/October 20, 2019

Two weeks is all it took to break my run (if one can even call it that). I do have an excuse but then, isn’t that always the case? But seriously. A commitment is a commitment, right? So perhaps I should just call this an “occasional round up” of what I’ve been listening to, and let myself off the hook for (possibly) disappointing the two-and-a-half regular readers of this blog. 

What stood out for me over the past couple of weeks of listening? 

The 1619 podcast hosted by New York Times journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones came to an emotional end after an enlightening 6 weeks, and I’ve written about that here. In the final episode, Hannah-Jones takes us back to that shore, where the waves still lap, where those first Africans set foot on a land that would mark and be marked by them forever. It was a neat bookending to a story that really has no neat boundaries, like stories of every migration, forced or otherwise, written into the waters and lands of our planet.

Almost every news outlet that does a podcast does a fair measure of explainers—that brave new journalistic format that is a perfect pill for our confusing age. Vox Media has Today Explained while The Guardian has Today in Focus. The BBC is putting together a new Brexit podcast to help us all try and understand the Big British Pullout. But a staple for me is the Indian Express’ 3 Things which is getting better by the day. Last week two episodes, on October 14and 17, “unpacked” the Ayodhya dispute. In the first, veteran journalist Seema Chisti, who covered the journalists who covered the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992 described the events that led up to and followed the event, while legal corresponded Apurva Vishwanath explained what was happening in the courts. This was followed a couple of days later with a view of how the event continues to shape the lives of those who live in the city of Ayodhya. The even-handed and lucid explanations should make even the most clueless among us a little wiser.

I finally listened to an interview show that’s been on the edges of my consciousness for a while now, and that I’ve been avoiding simply because anything that tries to cash in on the aroma of my wake-up beverage gets a bit of a cold shoulder. But The Filter Coffeepodcast with Karthik Nagarajan (on IVM) could not be tuned out any more, except that I caught it in its downtime and ended up listening to a couple of “best of” episodes. I’m going to hold my judgment on this one until I listen to a few more, but there is promise, for sure. At first listen, the conversations seem unhurried and informative, and the host seems to have done his homework sufficiently to draw out the guest in intelligent directions.

Speaking of conversation shows, when I saw that Malcolm Gladwell was on the Ezra Klein show(again) talking about his new book (as always, among other things), I had to add it to my playlist. Running well over an hour, the exchange is a delight, with Gladwell speaking about how he forages for ideas for his own podcast, Revisionist History, to the theme of his book, “Talking to Strangers”.

And just this morning I ran into a curious show in that inescapable genre: true crime. Launched in 2014, the show tells the stories of people who have “done wrong, been wronged, or gotten caught somewhere in the middle”. Could describe any of us, right? I’ve added it to my Commute for the coming week. So more on that later.

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