Historic Mexican Recipes Are Now Available as Free Digital Cookbooks: Get Started With Dessert

in Food & Drink | July 30th, 2020

There are too many com­pet­ing sto­ries to tell about the pan­dem­ic for any one to take the spot­light for long, which makes com­ing to terms with the moment espe­cial­ly chal­leng­ing. Every­thing seems in upheaval—especially in parts of the world where ram­pant cor­rup­tion, inep­ti­tude, and author­i­tar­i­an abuse have wors­ened and pro­longed an already bad sit­u­a­tion. But if there’s a lens that might be wide enough to take it all in, I’d wager it’s the sto­ry of food, from man­u­fac­ture, to sup­ply chains, to the table.

The abil­i­ty to dine out serves as a barom­e­ter of social health. Restau­rants are essen­tial to nor­mal­cy and neigh­bor­hood coher­ence, as well as hubs of local com­merce. They now strug­gle to adapt or close their doors. Food ser­vice staff rep­re­sent some of the most pre­car­i­ous of work­ers. Mean­while, every­one has to eat. “Some of the world’s best restau­rants have gone from fine din­ing to curb­side pick­ups,” writes Rico Tor­res, Chef and Co-own­er of Mixtli. “At home, a renewed sense of self-reliance has led to a resur­gence of the home cook.”

Some, ama­teurs and pro­fes­sion­als both, have returned their skills to the com­mu­ni­ty, cook­ing for pro­tes­tors on the streets, for exam­ple. Oth­ers have turned a new­found pas­sion for cook­ing on their fam­i­lies. What­ev­er the case, they are all doing impor­tant work, not only by feed­ing hun­gry bel­lies but by engag­ing with and trans­form­ing culi­nary tra­di­tions. Despite its essen­tial ephemer­al­i­ty, food pre­serves mem­o­ry, through the most mem­o­ry-inten­sive of our sens­es, and through recipes passed down for gen­er­a­tions.

Recipe col­lec­tions are also sites of cul­tur­al exchange and con­flict. Such has been the case in the long strug­gle to define the essence of authen­tic Mex­i­can food. You can learn more about that argu­ment in our pre­vi­ous post on a col­lec­tion of tra­di­tion­al (and some not-so-tra­di­tion­al) Mex­i­can cook­books which are being dig­i­tized and put online by researchers at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas San Anto­nio (UTSA). Their col­lec­tion of over 2,000 titles dates from 1789 to the present and rep­re­sents a vast repos­i­to­ry of knowl­edge for schol­ars of Mex­i­can cui­sine.

But let’s be hon­est, what most of us want, and need, is a good meal. It just so hap­pens, as chefs now serv­ing curb­side will tell you, that the best cook­ing (and bak­ing) learns from the cook­ing of the past. In obser­vance of the times we live in, the UTSA Libraries Spe­cial Col­lec­tions has curat­ed many of the his­toric Mex­i­can recipes in their col­lec­tion as what they call “a series of mini-cook­books” titled “Rec­etas: Cocin­dan­do en los Tiem­pos del Coro­n­avirus.”

These recipes, now being made avail­able as e‑cookbooks, have been tran­scribed and trans­lat­ed from hand­writ­ten man­u­scripts by archivists who are pas­sion­ate about this food. Per­haps in hon­or of Lau­ra Esquivel’s Like Water for Choco­late—whose nov­el “paints a nar­ra­tive of fam­i­ly and tra­di­tion using Mexico’s deep con­nec­tion to cuisine”—the col­lec­tion has “saved the best for first” and begun with the dessert cook­book. They’ll con­tin­ue the reverse order with Vol­ume 2, main cours­es, and Vol­ume 3, appe­tiz­ers & drinks.

Endorsed by Chef Tor­res, the first mini-cook­book mod­ern­izes and trans­lates the orig­i­nal Span­ish into Eng­lish, and is avail­able in pdf or epub. It does not mod­ern­ize more tra­di­tion­al ways of cook­ing. As the Pref­ace points out, “many of the man­u­script cook­books of the ear­ly 19th cen­tu­ry assume read­ers to be expe­ri­enced cooks.” (It was not an occu­pa­tion under­tak­en light­ly.) As such, the recipes are “often light on details” like ingre­di­ent lists and step-by-step instruc­tions. As Atlas Obscu­ra notes, the recipe above for “ ‘Petra’s cook­ies’ calls for “‘one cup not quite full of milk.’ ”

“We encour­age you to view these instruc­tions as oppor­tu­ni­ties to acquire an intu­itive feel for your food,” the archive writes. It’s good to learn new habits. What­ev­er else it is now—community ser­vice, chore, an exer­cise in self-reliance, self-improve­ment, or stress relief—cooking is also cre­at­ing new ways of remem­ber­ing and con­nect­ing across new dis­tances of time and space, work­ing with the raw mate­ri­als we have at hand. Down­load the first Vol­ume of the UTSA cook­book series, Postres: Guardan­do Lo Mejor Para el Prin­ci­pio, here and look for more “Cook­ing in the Time of Coro­n­avirus” recipes com­ing soon.

via Atlas Obscu­ra

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Archive of Hand­writ­ten Tra­di­tion­al Mex­i­can Cook­books Is Now Online

An Archive of 3,000 Vin­tage Cook­books Lets You Trav­el Back Through Culi­nary Time

82 Vin­tage Cook­books, Free to Down­load, Offer a Fas­ci­nat­ing Illus­trat­ed Look at Culi­nary and Cul­tur­al His­to­ry

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Banksy Strikes Again in London & Urges Everyone to Wear Masks

in Art | July 16th, 2020

The per­son who may or may not be Banksy is at it again, this time sten­cil­ing up a Lon­don Under­ground car­riage with his famil­iar rat char­ac­ters. Rats know a thing or two about spread­ing dis­ease but this time they are here to insist that the pub­lic wear a mask. (Ear­li­er in April they appeared in the artist’s own bath­room.)

As post­ed on Banksy’s social media feeds on Tues­day we can see the artist get kit­ted up like one of the Underground’s “deep cleaners”—-a pro­tec­tive face mask, gog­gles, blue gloves, white Tyvek body­suit, and orange safe­ty vest—and enter a car­riage with an exter­mi­na­tor’s spray can­is­ter filled with light blue paint. He also has some of his sten­cils ready to go. “If you don’t mask, you don’t get” reads the video’s cap­tion.

Cur­rent­ly all pas­sen­gers must wear masks on the Lon­don Under­ground, and over the last month Trans­port for Lon­don has report­ed a 90% com­pli­ance rate (take note, Amer­i­ca!). Work­ers have been san­i­tiz­ing sta­tions and trains more, and even installing UV light tech­nol­o­gy to bat­tle the virus.

Banksy’s rats are shown using masks as para­chutes, car­ry­ing bot­tles of hand san­i­tiz­er, and along one wall sneez­ing par­ti­cles across the win­dow, paint­ed using the can­is­ter spray noz­zle. Ban­sky tags the back wall with his name, urges a pas­sen­ger to stay back while he works, and then gets off at a stop. He’s left one final mes­sage: “I get lock­down” (paint­ed on a sta­tion wall) “but I get up again” (on the clos­ing doors). The line is a nod to Chumbawumba’s inescapable 1997 anthem “Tubthump­ing.”

Banksy might be a rebel­lious street artist, but he’s not an idiot: wear­ing masks is imper­a­tive.

The art­work didn’t last long, as Trans­port of Lon­don has strict poli­cies against graf­fi­ti. So few pas­sen­gers even got to expe­ri­ence the art before it was scrubbed by work­ers, long before any­body would have iden­ti­fied it as a Banksy work.

“When we saw the video, we start­ed to look into it and spoke to the clean­ers,” a Lon­don Trans­port source told the New York Post. “It start­ed to emerge that they had noticed some sort of ‘rat thing’ a few days ago and cleaned it off, as they should. It rather changes the aspect for any­one seek­ing to go down the route of accus­ing us of cul­tur­al van­dal­ism.”

The Post even sug­gest­ed that the car­riage could have been removed and then sold as a com­plete art work in itself and raised mon­ey for char­i­ty. (They quote an art bro­ker who val­ues it at $7.5 mil­lion. But where would you hang it? In your pri­vate air­plane hang­er?)

Any­way, like a lot of Banksy work, it appeared, it was doc­u­ment­ed, and it was gone. Trans­port of Lon­don did men­tion that they were open to Banksy cre­at­ing some­thing else at a “suit­able loca­tion,” but then again, that’s not how the artist rolls. Just keep your eyes open, folks, and look out for rats.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Behind the Banksy Stunt: An In-Depth Break­down of the Artist’s Self-Shred­ding Paint­ing

Banksy Strikes Again in Venice

Banksy Paints a Grim Hol­i­day Mur­al: Season’s Greet­ings to All

The Genius of Har­ry Beck’s 1933 Lon­don Tube Map–and How It Rev­o­lu­tion­ized Sub­way Map Design Every­where

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

A Free Stanford Course on How to Teach Online: Designed for Middle & High School Teachers (July 13 — 17)

in Education, Online Courses | July 10th, 2020

This fall, many teach­ers (across the coun­try and the world) will be asked to teach online–something most teach­ers have nev­er done before. To assist with that tran­si­tion, the Stan­ford Online High School and Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies have teamed up to offer a free online course called Teach­ing Your Class Online: The Essen­tials. Taught by vet­er­an instruc­tors at Stan­ford Online High School (OHS), this course “will help mid­dle and high school instruc­tors move from gen­er­al con­cepts for teach­ing online to the prac­ti­cal details of adapt­ing your class for your stu­dents.” The course is free and runs from 1–3 pm Cal­i­for­nia time, July 13 — 17. You can sign up here.

For any­one inter­est­ed, Stan­ford will also offer addi­tion­al cours­es that give teach­ers the chance to prac­tice teach­ing their mate­r­i­al online and get feed­back from Stan­ford Online High School instruc­tors. Offered from July 20 — July 24, those cours­es cost $95. Click to this page, and scroll down to enroll.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1,500 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

How Schools Can Start Teach­ing Online in a Short Peri­od of Time: Free Tuto­ri­als from the Stan­ford Online High School

“I Will Sur­vive,” the Coro­n­avirus Ver­sion for Teach­ers Going Online

Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #49 Considers Conspiracy Theories as Pop

in Podcasts, Politics, Pretty Much Pop | June 24th, 2020

Ex-philoso­pher Al Bak­er works at the UK-based Log­i­cal­ly, a com­pa­ny that fights mis­in­for­ma­tion.

He joins your hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt to try to answer such ques­tions as: What’s the appeal of con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries? How sim­i­lar is being con­sumed them to being a die-hard fan of some pop cul­ture prop­er­ty? What’s the rela­tion between per­ni­cious con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries and fun spec­u­la­tion (like, maybe Elvis is alive)? Is there a harm­less way to engage in con­spir­a­cy the­o­riz­ing as a hob­by? Is some­thing still a con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry in the pejo­ra­tive sense if it turns out to be true?

We touch on echo cham­bers, the role of irony and humor in spread­ing these the­o­ries, how both oppo­nents and pro­po­nents claim to be skep­tics, Dan Brown Nov­els, Tom Han­ks, the Mel Gib­son film Con­spir­a­cy The­o­ry, and doc­u­men­taries like Behind the Curve (about Flat Earth­ers) and The Fam­i­ly.

For expert opin­ions on the psy­chol­o­gy of con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries, try The Con­ver­sa­tion’s Antill Pod­cast, which had a whole series on this top­ic. For even more pod­cast action, try FiveThir­tyEight, BBC’s The Why Fac­tor pod­cast, Skep­toid, and The Infi­nite Mon­key Cage.

Here are some more arti­cles:

• “Why We Should Not Treat All Con­spir­a­cy The­o­ries the Same” by Jaron Haram­bam
• “We’re Keep­ing A Run­ning List Of Hoax­es And Mis­lead­ing Posts About The Nation­wide Police Bru­tal­i­ty Protests” by Jane Lytvyneko and Craig Sil­ver­man
• “The Great­est Celebri­ty Con­spir­a­cy The­o­ries of All Time” by Matt Miller
• “My Father, the QAnon Con­spir­a­cy The­o­rist” by Reed Ryley Grable
• “COVID-19 and the Turn to Mag­i­cal Think­ing” by Hugh Guster­son
• A new pod­cast called Wind of Change claims that the CIA wrote the Scor­pi­ons song by that name.

If you enjoy this, try Pret­ty Much Pop #14 on UFOs. The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life episodes referred to in this dis­cus­sion are #96 on Oppen­heimer and the Rhetoric of Sci­ence Advis­ers and #82 on Karl Pop­per.

Learn more at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.

When Punk & Reggae Fans Launched the “Rock Against Racism” Movement and Pushed Back Against Britain’s Racist Right (1976)

in Music, Politics | June 17th, 2020

The UK of the late-70s was, in many unfor­tu­nate respects, like the UK (and US) of today, with far-right attacks against West Indi­an and Asian immi­grants becom­ing rou­tine, along with increased aggres­sion from the police. Enoch Powell’s inflam­ma­to­ry 1968 “Rivers of Blood” speech (denounced in the papers as a naked “appeal to racial hatred) ener­gized the far-right Nation­al Front. Nazi punks and skin­heads began vio­lent cam­paigns in the mid-70s. A very hot sum­mer in 1976 saw a riot at the Not­ting­ham Car­ni­val, when police attacked the West Indi­an fes­ti­val. Car­ni­val-goers fought back, includ­ing the Clash’s Joe Strum­mer and Paul Simenon, who describe the events below.

Strum­mer was inspired to pen “White Riot,” a call to arms for white punks against the police and far right, and the band moved increas­ing­ly toward reg­gae, includ­ing a cov­er of Junior Murvin’s “Police & Thieves.”

Into this boil­ing caul­dron stepped Eric Clap­ton to drunk­en­ly declare his sup­port for Pow­ell onstage in Birm­ing­ham and repeat­ed­ly chant the Nation­al Front slo­gan “keep Britain white!” In out­raged response, pho­tog­ra­ph­er and for­mer Clap­ton fan Red Saun­ders and oth­ers found­ed Rock Against Racism, pub­lish­ing a let­ter in the NME to recruit peo­ple to join the cause. The short note addressed Clap­ton’s glar­ing hypocrisy direct­ly: “Come on Eric… Own up. Half your music is black. You’re rock music’s biggest colonist.”

The let­ter artic­u­lat­ed the dis­gust felt by thou­sands around the coun­try. Paul Fur­ness, work­ing as a med­ical records clerk in Leeds at the time, found the anti-racist dec­la­ra­tion “pos­i­tive” and “life affirm­ing,” as he says in the short film at the top. He helped orga­nize the first Rock Against Racism car­ni­val in 1978 and was amazed “that there were thou­sands and thou­sands and thou­sands of peo­ple descend­ing on Lon­don. The excite­ment of it, just this real­iza­tion…. That you can change things, that you can could actu­al­ly make a dif­fer­ence.”

Cre­at­ed with the Anti-Nazi League, the April 1978 Rock Against Racism Car­ni­val in London’s Vic­to­ria Park was the moment “punk became a pop­ulist move­ment to be reck­oned with,” writes Ian Fort­nam at Clas­sic Rock. (Learn more in the doc­u­men­tary above.) “Nev­er before had so many peo­ple been mobi­lized for that sort of cause,” head­lin­er Tom Robin­son remem­bers. “It was our Wood­stock.” The Clash were there—you can hear their per­for­mance just above. It was, writes Fort­nam, “their finest hour”:

The Clash were on fire, feed­ing off of an ecsta­t­ic audi­ence and pre­mier­ing as yet unrecord­ed mate­r­i­al (even­tu­al­ly released on Give ‘Em Enough Rope the fol­low­ing Novem­ber) like Tom­my Gun and The Last Gang In Town. The show was a rev­e­la­tion.

The Rock Against Racism Car­ni­val brought togeth­er punk and reg­gae bands, and fans of both, start­ing a tra­di­tion of mul­ti-racial line­ups at RAR con­certs into the 80s that fea­tured X‑Ray Specs, the Ruts, the Slits, Gen­er­a­tion X, Elvis Costel­lo, Steel Pulse, Aswad, and Misty in Roots, among many oth­ers. “When you saw a band like ours jam­ming with Tom Robin­son or Elvis Costel­lo,” says singer Poko of Misty in Roots, who played more RAR shows than any oth­er band, “it showed that if you love music we can all live togeth­er.”

That mes­sage res­onat­ed through­out the coun­try and the sound sys­tems of the streets. At the first Car­ni­val, Fort­nam writes, “pha­lanx­es of police held back counter-demon­strat­ing skin­heads” while an esti­mat­ed 80,000 peo­ple marched through the streets chant­i­ng “Black and white unite and fight, smash the Nation­al Front.” Rock Against Racism became a mas­sive move­ment that did cre­ate uni­ty and pushed back suc­cess­ful­ly against far-right attacks. But it wasn’t only about the pol­i­tics, as pho­tog­ra­ph­er Syd Shel­ton recalls below. It was also a fight for what British punk would become—the music of fas­cism and the far right or a syn­the­sis of sounds and rhythms from the for­mer Empire and its for­mer colonies.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“Stay Free: The Sto­ry of the Clash” Nar­rat­ed by Pub­lic Enemy’s Chuck D: A New 8‑Episode Pod­cast

Lon­don Call­ing: A New Muse­um Exhi­bi­tion Cel­e­brates The Clash’s Icon­ic Album

The Clash Play Their Final Show (San Bernardi­no, 1983)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

The Bird Library: A Library Built Especially for Our Fine Feathered Friends

in Libraries, Nature | June 16th, 2020

“The two things I love most are nov­els and birds,” said Jonathan Franzen in a Guardian pro­file not long ago. “They’re both in trou­ble, and I want to advo­cate for both of them.” Chances are that even that famous­ly inter­net-averse nov­el­ist-turned-bird­watch­er would enjoy the online attrac­tion called The Bird Library, “where the need to feed meets the need to read.” Its live Youtube stream shows the goings-on of a tiny library built espe­cial­ly for our feath­ered friends. “Perched in a back­yard in the city of Char­lottesville,” writes Atlas Obscu­ra’s Claire Voon, “it is the pas­sion project of librar­i­an Rebec­ca Flow­ers and wood­work­er Kevin Cwali­na, who brought togeth­er their skills and inter­ests to show­case the lives of their back­yard birds.”

Recent vis­i­tors, Voon adds, “have includ­ed a strik­ing rose-breast­ed gros­beak, a car­di­nal that looks like it’s vap­ing, and a trio of mourn­ing doves seem­ing­ly caught in a seri­ous meet­ing.” The Bird Library’s web site offers an archive of images cap­tur­ing the insti­tu­tion’s wee reg­u­lars, all accom­pa­nied by enliven­ing cap­tions. (“Why did the bird go to the library?” “He was look­ing for book­worms.”)

Just as year-round bird­watch­ing brings plea­sures dis­tinct from more casu­al ver­sions of the pur­suit, year-round view­ing of The Bird Library makes for a deep­er appre­ci­a­tion not just of the vari­ety of species rep­re­sent­ed among its patrons — the cre­ators have count­ed 20 so far — but for the sea­son­al changes in the space’s decor, espe­cial­ly around Christ­mas­time.

As long­time view­ers know, this isn’t the orig­i­nal Bird Library. “In late 2018 we demol­ished the old Bird Library and start­ed design and devel­op­ment of a new and improved Bird Library 2.0! Com­plete with a large con­crete base for increased capac­i­ty and a big­ger cir­cu­la­tion desk capa­ble of feed­ing all our guests all day long.” Just as libraries for humans need occa­sion­al ren­o­va­tion, so, it seems, do libraries for birds — a con­cept that could soon expand out­side Vir­ginia. “Cwali­na hopes to even­tu­al­ly pub­lish an open-access plan for a sim­i­lar bird library, so that oth­er bird­ers can build their own ver­sions,” reports Voon. And a bird-lov­ing 21st-cen­tu­ry Andrew Carnegie steps for­ward to ensure their archi­tec­tur­al respectabil­i­ty, might we sug­gest going with mod­ernism?

via Atlas Obscu­ra

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mod­ernist Bird­hous­es Inspired by Bauhaus, Frank Lloyd Wright and Joseph Eich­ler

Free Enter­tain­ment for Cats and Dogs: Videos of Birds, Squir­rels & Oth­er Thrills

Down­load 435 High Res­o­lu­tion Images from John J. Audubon’s The Birds of Amer­i­ca

Explore an Inter­ac­tive Ver­sion of The Wall of Birds, a 2,500 Square-Foot Mur­al That Doc­u­ments the Evo­lu­tion of Birds Over 375 Mil­lion Years

RIP Todd Bol, Founder of the Lit­tle Free Library Move­ment: He Leaves Behind 75,000 Small Libraries That Pro­mote Read­ing World­wide

McDonald’s Opens a Tiny Restau­rant — and It’s Only for Bees

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

Revisiting The Wire During 2020’s Black Lives Matter Movement

in Current Affairs, Television | June 12th, 2020

George Floyd’s mur­der while under arrest for alleged­ly pass­ing a coun­ter­feit bill of small denom­i­na­tion sparked mas­sive world­wide demon­stra­tions against police bru­tal­i­ty and in sup­port of Black Lives Mat­ter.

It also led to the abrupt can­cel­la­tion of television’s recent hit, Live PD, and its longest-run­ning real­i­ty show, Cops.

As Aman­da Hess recent­ly observed in The New York Times, pub­lic opin­ion has turned on any show that pro­motes an image of police offi­cers as uni­ver­sal­ly decent forces for good, “lov­able goof­balls,” or anti-heroes whose rough edges make a play for view­ers’ alle­giance by sug­gest­ing the char­ac­ters are real­is­ti­cal­ly flawed and thus, relat­able:

The “good cop” trope is a stan­dard of both police pro­ce­du­rals and real-life police tac­tics, and now crowd­sourced video of the protests has giv­en cops a new stage for per­form­ing the role. In recent days, sup­pos­ed­ly uplift­ing images of the police have spread wild­ly across the inter­net, com­pet­ing for views with evi­dence of cops beat­ing, gassing and arrest­ing pro­test­ers. In Hous­ton, an offi­cer con­soled a young black girl at a ral­ly: “We’re here to pro­tect you, OK?” he told her, envelop­ing her in a hug. “You can protest, you can par­ty, you can do what­ev­er you want. Just don’t break noth­ing.” In Nashville, the police tweet­ed a pho­to of cops kneel­ing next to a black boy with a “Black Lives Mat­ter” sign, smil­ing from behind their riot hel­mets. And in Atlanta, a line of Nation­al Guard sol­diers did the Macare­na. On the final rump shake, a black rifle slung over one soldier’s back swung to the beat.

These images show cops engag­ing in a kind of pan­tomime of protest, mim­ic­k­ing the ges­tures of the demon­stra­tors until their mes­sages are dilut­ed beyond recog­ni­tion. They reframe protests against racist police vio­lence into a bland, non­spe­cif­ic goal of sol­i­dar­i­ty. These moments are meant to rep­re­sent the shared human­i­ty between offi­cers and pro­test­ers, but cops already rank among the most human­ized groups in Amer­i­ca; the same can­not be said for the black Amer­i­cans who live in fear of them. Cops can dance, they can hug, they can kneel on the ground, but their indi­vid­ual acts of kind­ness can no longer obscure the vio­lence of a sys­tem. The good-cop act is wear­ing thin.

Accord­ing to Hol­ly­wood Reporter crit­ic Inkoo Kang, almost any por­tray­al of cops on TV right now ran­kles, even one that was laud­ed for its real­is­tic por­tray­al of cor­rup­tion and abuse on the force, HBO’s crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed The Wire—Barack Obama’s avowed favorite.

Kang writes:

In the first sea­son of The Wire, just about every on-the-ground cop par­tic­i­pates in police bru­tal­i­ty — often as a kind of pro­fes­sion­al pre­rog­a­tive. Their vio­lence is meant to add dark­er streaks to the char­ac­ters’ oth­er­wise hero­ic gloss, but it also has the effect of nor­mal­iz­ing police bru­tal­i­ty as a part, even a perk, of the job.

Her com­ments touched a nerve with actor Wen­dell Pierce, whose char­ac­ter was based on a Bal­ti­more homi­cide detec­tive, Oscar Requer, who achieved his posi­tion at a time when black offi­cers rou­tine­ly faced racial harass­ment from with­in the force. Pierce pub­lished his response on Twit­ter:

How can any­one watch “The Wire” and the dys­func­tion of the police & the war on drugs and say that we were depict­ed as hero­ic. We demon­strat­ed moral ambi­gu­i­ties and the pathol­o­gy that leads to the abus­es. Maybe you were react­ing to how good peo­ple can be cor­rupt­ed to do bad things.

If The Wire did any­thing right, it depict­ed the human­i­ty of the Black lives so eas­i­ly pro­filed by police and the destruc­tion of them by the so-called war on drugs; a delib­er­ate pol­i­cy of mass incar­cer­a­tion to sus­tain a wealth dis­par­i­ty in Amer­i­ca that thrives keep­ing an under­class.

The Wire, if any­thing, was the canary-in-the-mine that fore­casts the insti­tu­tion­al moral morass of pol­i­tics and polic­ing that lead us to the protests of today. “The big­ger the lie, the more they believe” was a line of mine that is so salient and pro­found in today’s cli­mate.

“The Wire” is a deep dive study of the con­tribut­ing vari­ables that feed the vio­lence in our cul­ture: in the streets and at the hand of police. Clas­sism, racism, destruc­tion of pub­lic edu­ca­tion, and moral ambi­gu­i­ty in our lead­er­ship all feed this par­a­digm of Amer­i­can decline.

I know I sound defen­sive and I prob­a­bly am, The Wire is per­son­al for me. The Wire is also Art. The role of Art is to ignite the pub­lic dis­course. Art is where we come togeth­er as a com­mu­ni­ty to con­front who we are as a soci­ety, decide what our val­ues are, and then act on them.

The cri­tique here is that tele­vi­sion seems to fol­low behind the cur­rent events of the day. I would ask that you con­sid­er that maybe The Wire was a pre­cur­sor to the dis­cus­sion that is manda­to­ry now. It was an indi­ca­tor, a warn­ing light, of the implo­sion we are feel­ing today.

At a time when the world is called upon to lis­ten care­ful­ly to what black peo­ple are say­ing, and much of the world has shown them­selves ready to do so, Pierce’s words car­ry extra weight.

His asser­tion that the show, which ran from 2002 to 2008, accu­rate­ly depict­ed a sys­tem so rot­ten that col­lapse was inevitable, is echoed in inter­view clips with cre­ator and one-time police reporter, David Simon, above.

The video essay was put togeth­er by aspi­rant screen­writer Nehemi­ah T. Jor­dan whose Behind the Cur­tain series aims to pro­vide insights on how cel­e­brat­ed scripts for both the big and small screens—Fight Club, Uncut Gems, The Sopra­nos, Break­ing Bad—come by their aes­thet­ic qual­i­ty.

Simon’s ambi­tion for The Wire was that it truth­ful­ly con­vey what he had observed as a reporter, as well as the lives of the peo­ple he inter­act­ed with—both Bal­ti­more cops and those they most­ly failed to serve.

In a 2015 White House con­ver­sa­tion with then-Pres­i­dent Oba­ma, Simon remarks that an empha­sis on drug-relat­ed offens­es led to an epi­dem­ic of pre­sump­tive police work, and a decline in “com­pe­tent retroac­tive inves­ti­ga­tion of felonies.” A dis­pro­por­tion­ate num­ber of young black and Lati­no men were incar­cer­at­ed dur­ing this time, and upon their release, their felony his­to­ries meant that few of them were able to secure mean­ing­ful employ­ment. America’s prob­lems were com­pound­ed.

Whether or not you are moved to watch, or rewatch The Wire, we hearti­ly rec­om­mend Where We Go from Here, a recent New York Dai­ly News op-ed by actor Michael K. Williams, who played fan favorite Omar Lit­tle, and whose real life coun­ter­part Simon dis­cuss­es with Omar-fan Oba­ma.

New York native Williams, who has worked to end mass juve­nile incar­cer­a­tion, foment col­lab­o­ra­tion between police and at-risk youth and serves as an ambas­sador for The Inno­cent Project, pos­sess­es a deep under­stand­ing of the New York Police Department’s struc­ture, chain of com­mand, and day to day work­ings. Stat­ing that tan­gi­ble action is need­ed to “shift police cul­ture” and “trans­form the rela­tion­ships between law enforce­ment and com­mu­ni­ties of col­or,” he makes a case for six con­crete reforms:

1. Over­haul Comp­Stat, the NYPD’s crime track­ing mech­a­nism.
2. Elim­i­nate plain­clothes units.
3. Cre­ate an inde­pen­dent body to inves­ti­gate “use of force” inci­dents at the time they occur.
4. Reimag­ine the duties of civil­ians with­in the depart­ment tasked with com­mu­ni­ty-build­ing.
5. Imple­ment ongo­ing trau­ma-cen­tered train­ing, edu­ca­tion and activ­i­ties for offi­cers, exec­u­tives and the com­mu­ni­ties they serve.
6. Make racial jus­tice a core com­po­nent of NYPD train­ing and edu­ca­tion.

Read Michael  K. William’s Op-Ed here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Art­ful, Ani­mat­ed Trib­ute to The Wire, Cre­at­ed by a Fan of the Crit­i­cal­ly-Acclaimed TV Series

The Wire Breaks Down The Great Gats­by, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Clas­sic Crit­i­cism of Amer­i­ca (NSFW)

The Wire as Great Vic­to­ri­an Nov­el

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Spike Lee Debuts the Short Film “3 Brothers”: A Remake of Do the Right Thing for Our Dark Times

in Current Affairs, Film | June 3rd, 2020

When beloved actor Bill Nunn died in Sep­tem­ber of 2016, two months before the elec­tion, his pass­ing felt prophet­ic of more bad things to come. Best known as the boom­box-tot­ing, ulti­mate Pub­lic Ene­my fan Radio Raheem in Spike Lee’s 1989 film Do the Right Thing, Nunn’s char­ac­ter is mur­dered by a gang of cops, who put him in a choke­hold and suf­fo­cate him. At the time, Raheem’s death was a fic­tion­al restate­ment of what had come before, as Lee explains above in the 30th anniver­sary com­men­tary on the film.

“I’m renam­ing this ‘Anato­my of a Mur­der,’” he says, explain­ing how he based the scene of Raheem’s death on the 1983 killing of graf­fi­ti artist Michael Stew­art, who was stran­gled by 11 NYC tran­sit offi­cers. “The things that are hap­pen­ing in this film,” he says, “are still rel­e­vant today.” Lee then ref­er­ences the death of Eric Gar­ner, killed in exact­ly the same way as Raheem. Now we have seen the mur­der of George Floyd, asphyx­i­at­ed with a knee to the neck. These on-cam­era killings are trau­mat­ic, but Lee has not shied away from the pow­er of doc­u­men­tary images.

He reclaimed his place as a big-bud­get inter­preter of Amer­i­can racism with Black­kKlans­man, a fic­tion­al­ized film that ends with extreme­ly hard-to-watch (espe­cial­ly for those who were there) real footage of the mur­der of anti-racist activist Heather Hey­er in Char­lottesville. Lee faced a good deal of crit­i­cism over the use of this video, but he has again tak­en real-life footage of racial­ly-moti­vat­ed killings, this time by the police, and cut them togeth­er with fic­tion, edit­ing togeth­er the death of Raheem with the deaths of Gar­ner and Floyd.

3 Broth­ers-Radio Raheem, Eric Gar­ner And George Floyd. pic.twitter.com/EB0cXQELzE

— Spike Lee (@SpikeLeeJoint) June 1, 2020

Call­ing the short “3 Broth­ers,” he opens with the ques­tion, “Will His­to­ry Stop Repeat­ing Itself?” Lee Debuted the film on the CNN spe­cial “I Can’t Breathe: Black Men Liv­ing & Dying in Amer­i­ca.” The cumu­la­tive effects of his­to­ry are crit­i­cal to under­stand­ing the moment we are in, he says. The rage and protest on streets around the world are not a reac­tion to a sin­gle event—they are a con­fronta­tion with hun­dreds of years of vio­lent con­trol over black bod­ies, a state of affairs always includ­ing mur­der with impuni­ty. “The attack on black bod­ies has been here from the get-go,” Lee says.

Lee’s short is hard to watch, and I don’t blame any­one who nev­er wants to see this footage again (I don’t). The mur­ders of indi­vid­ual, unarmed black men by groups of offi­cers take on an eerie monot­o­ny in their same­ness over time. “The killings caught on cam­era,” writes his­to­ri­an Robert Greene II, “offer a dis­turb­ing reminder of the numer­ous pho­tographs of lynch­ings dis­persed through­out the nation in the ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry. Some were cat­a­logued by the NAACP and dis­played as exam­ples of Amer­i­can bru­tal­i­ty and bar­barism. Oth­ers, how­ev­er, were fea­tured on post­cards and sent to white Amer­i­cans through­out the coun­try, small trin­kets of white ter­ror.”

This chill­ing his­to­ry gives rise to an under­stand­able ambiva­lence about shar­ing videos of police killings. Are these evi­dence of bar­barous injus­tice or racist snuff films run­ning on an end­less loop? As in the lynch­ing pho­tographs, it depends on the audi­ence and the con­text in which the videos are shown. But when Spike Lee made Do the Right Thing—pre-Rod­ney King and cell phone cameras—hardly any­one out­side of heav­i­ly policed black neigh­bor­hoods wit­nessed first­hand the kind of bru­tal­i­ty that is now so depress­ing­ly famil­iar in our news­feeds.

The death of Radio Raheem was shock­ing to audi­ences, as it was dev­as­tat­ing to the char­ac­ters and remains, for those who grew up with the film, a mov­ing cin­e­mat­ic touch­stone of the time. It is tru­ly heart­break­ing and enrag­ing that such scenes have become com­mon cur­ren­cy on social media, instead of his­toric exam­ples of the bru­tal­i­ty of the past—a sto­ry, as one per­son wrote of the 1968 police killing of poet Hen­ry Dumas, of “gen­er­a­tions of lost poten­tial.”

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Spike Lee Shares His NYU Teach­ing List of 87 Essen­tial Films Every Aspir­ing Direc­tor Should See

How Spike Lee Got His First Big Break: From She’s Got­ta Have It to That Icon­ic Air Jor­dan Ad

Spike Lee Directs, “Wake Up,” a Five-Minute Cam­paign Film for Bernie Sanders

Gil Scott-Heron Spells Out Why “The Rev­o­lu­tion Will Not Be Tele­vised”

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

What Is a “Casual Game?” Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #46 Talks to Nick Fortugno, Creator of “Diner Dash”

in Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Video Games | June 3rd, 2020

Famed game design­er Nick joins your hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt to con­sid­er fun­da­men­tal ques­tions about the activ­i­ty of gam­ing (Nick calls games “arbi­trary lim­its on mean­ing­less goals”) and what con­sti­tutes a casu­al game: Is it one that’s easy (maybe not easy to win, but at least you don’t die), one meant to be played in short bursts, or maybe one with a cer­tain kind of art style, or just about any game that runs on a phone? Nick­’s most famous cre­ation is the casu­al Din­er Dash, which can be very stress­ful. Vast­ly dif­fer­ent games from very hard but very short action games and very involved but sooth­ing strat­e­gy games get lumped under this one label.

Our con­ver­sa­tion touch­es on every­thing from cross­words to Super Meat Boy, plus the rela­tion between psy­chol­o­gy and game design, whether casu­al games real­ly play less than hard­core gamers, the stig­ma of an activ­i­ty that was for mar­ket­ing rea­sons at one point brand­ed as being just for ado­les­cent boys, and even heuris­tics for beat­ing slot machines.

Some sources we looked at include:

• Wikipedia on casu­al games
• “Casu­al Games, Time Man­age­ment, and the Work of Affect” by Aubrey Anable
•  “Hyper Casu­al Game: Mobile Gaming’s Newest Genre” by Mati­ja Hanicar
•  “The Rise of Casu­al Gam­ing” by Niraj Chok­shi
• “Pop­cap: The 10 Secrets of Casu­al Game Design” by Kei­th Stu­art
• “Gam­ing Con­ceptz: Casu­al Games for Casu­al Play­ers” by Vince Vad­er
• Casu­al Game Insid­er Mag­a­zine

Just so you don’t have to write them down, our rec­om­men­da­tions at the end were:

• Nick: Can­dy Box!, Dicey Dun­geons, Code­names, Super Hexa­gon
• Eri­ca: A Fish­er­man’s Tale
• Bri­an: Two Dots
• Mark: Feed­ing Fren­zy (which is dif­fer­ent from Insani­quar­i­um where fish poop coins that Nick I think is refer­ring to)

You can fol­low Nick @nickfortugno.

Learn more at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.

Stream 15 Audio Drama Podcasts & Get Through COVID-19: Features Rami Malek, Catherine Keener, Tim Robbins & More

in Audio Books, Podcasts | May 25th, 2020

At my home now, we con­stant­ly tell sto­ries: to dis­tract, soothe, entertain—telling and retelling, col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly author­ing over meals, lis­ten­ing to a ton of sto­ry pod­casts. These activ­i­ties took up a good part of the day before all hell broke loose and schools shut down. Now they guide us from morn­ing to night as we try to imag­ine oth­er worlds, bet­ter worlds, than the one we’re liv­ing in at present. We are paint­ing on the walls of our cave, so to speak, with brave and fear­ful images, while out­side, con­fu­sion sets in.

Lest any­one think this is kid stuff, it most assured­ly is not. Nar­ra­tive coher­ence seems par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant for healthy human func­tion­ing. We may grow to appre­ci­ate greater lev­els of com­plex­i­ty and moral ambi­gu­i­ty, it’s true. But the desire to expe­ri­ence real­i­ty as some­thing with arcs, rather than errat­ic and dis­turb­ing non-sequiturs, remains strong. Exper­i­men­tal fic­tion proves so unset­tling because it defies accept­able notions of cause and con­se­quence.

From the tales told by plague-dis­placed aris­to­crats in Boccaccio’s Decameron to the radio dra­mas that enter­tained fam­i­lies shel­ter­ing in place dur­ing the Blitz to our own pod­cast-sat­u­rat­ed coro­n­avirus media land­scape…. Sto­ries told well and often have a heal­ing effect on the dis­tressed psy­ches of those trapped in world-his­tor­i­cal dra­mas. “While sto­ries might not pro­tect you from a virus,” writes Andre Spicer at New States­man, “they can pro­tect you from the ill feel­ings which epi­demics gen­er­ate.”

In addi­tion to advice offered through­out history—by many of Boccaccio’s con­tem­po­raries, for exam­ple, who urged sto­ry and song to lift plague-weary spirits—“dozens of stud­ies” by psy­chol­o­gists have shown “the impact sto­ry­telling has on our health.” Telling and hear­ing sto­ries gives us lan­guage we may lack to describe expe­ri­ence. We can com­mu­ni­cate and ana­lyze painful emo­tions through metaphors and char­ac­ter­i­za­tion, rather than too-per­son­al con­fes­sion. We can expe­ri­ence a sense of kin­ship with those who have felt sim­i­lar­ly.

Per­haps this last func­tion is most impor­tant in the midst of cat­a­stro­phes that iso­late peo­ple from each oth­er. As real­i­ty refus­es to con­form to a sense of appro­pri­ate scope, as car­toon­ish vil­lains destroy all pro­por­tion and prob­a­bil­i­ty, empa­thy fatigue can start to set in. Through the art of sto­ry­telling, we might learn we don’t have to share oth­er peo­ple’s back­grounds, beliefs, and inter­ests to under­stand their moti­va­tions and care about what hap­pens to them.

We can also learn to start small, with just a few peo­ple, instead of the whole world. Short fic­tion brings unthink­able abstractions—the death tolls in wars and plagues—to a man­age­able emo­tion­al scale. Rather than show­ing us how we might defeat, avoid, or escape invis­i­ble antag­o­nists like viral pan­demics, sto­ries illus­trate how peo­ple can behave well or bad­ly in extreme, inhu­man cir­cum­stances.

Below, find a series of audio dra­mas, both fic­tion and non, in pod­cast form—many fea­tur­ing celebri­ty voic­es, includ­ing Rami Malek, Cather­ine Keen­er, Tim Rob­bins & more—to help you in your jour­ney through our nar­ra­tive­ly exhaust­ing times. Par­ents and care­givers like­ly already find them­selves immersed in sto­ries much of the day. Yet adults, whether they’re rais­ing kids or not, need sto­ry­time too—maybe espe­cial­ly when the sto­ries we believed about the world stop mak­ing sense.

Alice Isn’t Dead — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — A truck dri­ver search­es across Amer­i­ca for the wife she had long assumed was dead. In the course of her search, she will encounter not-quite-human ser­i­al mur­der­ers, towns lit­er­al­ly lost in time, and a con­spir­a­cy that goes way beyond one miss­ing woman.

Black­out — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Acad­e­my Award win­ner Rami Malek stars in this apoc­a­lyp­tic thriller as a small-town radio DJ fight­ing to pro­tect his fam­i­ly and com­mu­ni­ty after the pow­er grid goes down nation­wide, upend­ing mod­ern civ­i­liza­tion.

LifeAfter/The Mes­sage — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — The Mes­sage and its sequel, LifeAfter, take lis­ten­ers on jour­neys to the lim­its of tech­nol­o­gy. n The Mes­sage, an alien trans­mis­sion from decades ago becomes an urgent puz­zle with life or death con­se­quences. In LifeAfter, Ross, a low lev­el employ­ee at the FBI, spends his days con­vers­ing online with his wife Char­lie – who died eight months ago. But the tech­nol­o­gy behind this dig­i­tal res­ur­rec­tion leads Ross down a dan­ger­ous path that threat­ens his job, his own life, and maybe even the world. Win­ner of the Cannes Gold Lion.

Home­com­ing — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Home­com­ing cen­ters on a case­work­er at an exper­i­men­tal facil­i­ty, her ambi­tious super­vi­sor, and a sol­dier eager to rejoin civil­ian life — pre­sent­ed in an enig­mat­ic col­lage of tele­phone calls, ther­a­py ses­sions, and over­heard con­ver­sa­tions. Star­ring Cather­ine Keen­er, Oscar Isaac, David Schwim­mer, David Cross, Amy Sedaris, Michael Cera, Mer­cedes Ruehl, Alia Shawkat, Chris Geth­ard, and Spike Jonze.

Lime­town — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — The premise: Ten years ago, over three hun­dred men, women and chil­dren dis­ap­peared from a small town in Ten­nessee, nev­er to be heard from again. In this pod­cast, Amer­i­can Pub­lic Radio reporter Lia Had­dock asks the ques­tion once more, “What hap­pened to the peo­ple of Lime­town?”

Moth­er­hack­er — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — The plot: Bridget’s life is a series of dropped calls. With a gift for gab, an ex-hus­band in rehab, and down to her last dol­lar, Bridget’s life takes a des­per­ate turn when she starts vish­ing over the phone for a shady iden­ti­ty theft ring in order to sup­port her fam­i­ly.

Pas­sen­ger List — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — Atlantic Flight 702 has dis­ap­peared mid-flight between Lon­don and New York with 256 pas­sen­gers on board. Kaitlin Le (Kel­ly Marie Tran), a col­lege stu­dent whose twin broth­er van­ished with the flight, is deter­mined to uncov­er the truth.

San­dra — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — Co-stars Kris­ten Wiig, Alia Shawkat, and Ethan Hawke. Here’s the plot: Helen’s always dreamed of ditch­ing her home­town, so when she lands a job at the com­pa­ny that makes San­dra, every­one’s favorite A.I., she fig­ures it’s the next-best thing. But work­ing behind the cur­tain isn’t quite the escape from real­i­ty that Helen expect­ed.

The Angel of Vine — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — A present day jour­nal­ist uncov­ers the audio tapes of a 1950s pri­vate eye who cracked the great­est unsolved mur­der mys­tery Hol­ly­wood has ever known… and didn’t tell a soul. Star­ring Joe Man­ganiel­lo, Alfred Moli­na, Con­stance Zim­mer, Alan Tudyk, Camil­la Lud­ding­ton, and more.

The Bright Ses­sions — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — A sci­ence fic­tion pod­cast that fol­lows a group of ther­a­py patients. But these are not your typ­i­cal patients — each has a unique super­nat­ur­al abil­i­ty. The show doc­u­ments their strug­gles and dis­cov­er­ies as well as the moti­va­tions of their mys­te­ri­ous ther­a­pist, Dr. Bright.

The Orbit­ing Human Cir­cus — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Dis­cov­er a won­drous­ly sur­re­al world of mag­ic, music, and mys­tery. This immer­sive, cin­e­mat­ic audio spec­ta­cle fol­lows the adven­tures of a lone­ly, stage-struck jan­i­tor who is drawn into the larg­er-than-life uni­verse of the Orbit­ing Human Cir­cus, a fan­tas­ti­cal, wild­ly pop­u­lar radio show broad­cast from the top of the Eif­fel Tow­er. WNYC Stu­dios presents a spe­cial director’s cut of this joy­ous, mov­ing break from real­i­ty. Star­ring John Cameron Mitchell, Julian Koster, Tim Rob­bins, Drew Callan­der, Susan­nah Flood, and fea­tur­ing Mandy Patinkin and Char­lie Day.

The Truth — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — The Truth makes movies for your ears. They’re short sto­ries that are some­times dark, some­times fun­ny, and always intrigu­ing. Every sto­ry is dif­fer­ent, but they all take you to unex­pect­ed places using only sound. If you’re new, some good start­ing places are: Sil­vi­a’s Blood, That’s Democ­ra­cy, Moon Graf­fi­ti, Tape Delay, or what­ev­er’s most recent. Lis­ten­ing with head­phones is encour­aged!

The Walk — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — “Dystopi­an thriller, The Walk, is a tale of mis­tak­en iden­ti­ty, ter­ror­ism, and a life-or-death mis­sion to walk across Scot­land. But the for­mat of this sto­ry is — unusu­al. The Walk is an immer­sive fic­tion pod­cast, and the cre­ators want you to lis­ten to it while walk­ing. It begins with a ter­ror­ist attack at a train sta­tion; you are the pro­tag­o­nist, known only as Walk­er, and the police think you’re a mem­ber of a shad­owy ter­ror group called The Burn.” “Author Nao­mi Alder­man, whose lat­est nov­el was a best­seller called The Pow­er, is the cre­ator of The Walk.”

We’re Alive — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — An award-win­ing audio dra­ma, orig­i­nal­ly released in pod­cast form. Its sto­ry fol­lows a large group of sur­vivors of a zom­bie apoc­a­lypse in down­town Los Ange­les, Cal­i­for­nia.

Wolf 359 — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — A sci­ence fic­tion pod­cast cre­at­ed by Gabriel Urbina. Fol­low­ing in the tra­di­tion of Gold­en Age radio dra­mas, Wolf 359 tells the sto­ry of a dys­func­tion­al space sta­tion crew orbit­ing the star Wolf 359 on a deep space sur­vey mis­sion.

These pod­casts can be found in the new col­lec­tion, The 150 Best Pod­casts to Enrich Your Mind.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pan­dem­ic Lit­er­a­ture: A Meta-List of the Books You Should Read in Coro­n­avirus Quar­an­tine

How Can Boccaccio’s 14th Cen­tu­ry Decameron Help Us Live Through COVID-19?

1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness