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.

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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

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The 150 Best Podcasts to Enrich Your Mind

in | May 24th, 2020

Feed your brain with great pod­casts on art, music, his­to­ry, phi­los­o­phy, plus cap­ti­vat­ing true and imag­ined sto­ries. This is a soft launch of a new page. If we’re miss­ing impor­tant pod­casts, please let us know here.

Art, Design & Fashion

99 Per­cent Invis­i­ble — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — RSS — Design is every­where in our lives, per­haps most impor­tant­ly in the places where we’ve just stopped notic­ing. 99% Invis­i­ble is a week­ly explo­ration of the process and pow­er of design and archi­tec­ture. From award win­ning pro­duc­er Roman Mars.

A His­to­ry of the World in 100 Objects — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — This pod­cast uses the British Muse­um’s col­lec­tion to tell an epic his­to­ry of human­i­ty span­ning over two mil­lion years. This 100-part series is nar­rat­ed by Neil Mac­Gre­gor, Direc­tor of the British Muse­um, and was orig­i­nal­ly broad­cast on BBC Radio 4.

Arti­cles of Inter­est — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — A show about what we wear. It’s a six-part series from 99% Invis­i­ble, look­ing at cloth­ing.

ArtCu­ri­ous — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — Think art his­to­ry is bor­ing? Think again. It’s weird, fun­ny, mys­te­ri­ous, enthralling, and lib­er­at­ing. Join us as we cov­er the strangest sto­ries in art. Is the Mona Lisa fake? Did Van Gogh actu­al­ly kill him­self? And why were the Impres­sion­ists so great?

Art Detec­tive — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Under­stand­ing art allows us to under­stand his­to­ry: to pin it with images, and pep­per it with the faces, col­ors, dra­ma and expres­sion of its time. This series is designed to give bite-sized insights into the world of Art His­to­ry, bring­ing one image to life across 20 min­utes through dis­cus­sion with experts.

Art His­to­ry for All — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — From art lovers to art haters to art-is-just-okay-ers, Art His­to­ry for All aims to get all kinds of peo­ple think­ing about art and what it means to them. Each episode, Allyson Healey tack­les a sin­gle work of art and its his­to­ry and larg­er sig­nif­i­cance, always ask­ing the ques­tion: so what? Art His­to­ry for All takes you beyond the art his­tor­i­cal canon and helps you find the way in which art speaks to you (even if it’s nev­er spo­ken to you before).

Design Mat­ters — Apple — Google — Web Site —  Host­ed by Deb­bie Mill­man, Design Mat­ters is the world’s first pod­cast about design and an inquiry into the broad­er world of cre­ative cul­ture through wide-rang­ing con­ver­sa­tions with design­ers, writ­ers, artists, cura­tors, musi­cians, and oth­er lumi­nar­ies of con­tem­po­rary thought.

Dressed: The His­to­ry of Fash­ion — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — With over 7 bil­lion peo­ple in the world, we all have one thing in com­mon. Every day we all get dressed. Join Dressed as they explore the social and cul­tur­al his­to­ries behind the who, what, when of why we wear.

Last Seen — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — RSS —  It remains the most valu­able — and con­found­ing — art heist in his­to­ry: 13 art­works stolen from Boston’s Isabel­la Stew­art Gard­ner Muse­um. Twen­ty-eight years lat­er, not a sin­gle piece in a haul worth half a bil­lion dol­lars has sur­faced. The art, and the thieves who made off with it, remain at large. With first-ever inter­views, unprece­dent­ed access, and more than a year of inves­tiga­tive report­ing, “Last Seen” takes us into the biggest unsolved art heist in his­to­ry. A joint pro­duc­tion from WBUR and The Boston Globe. Read more here.

Raw Mate­r­i­al — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — RSS — Raw Mate­r­i­al is an arts and cul­ture pod­cast from the San Fran­cis­co Muse­um of Mod­ern Art (SFMOMA). Each sea­son focus­es on a dif­fer­ent top­ic, fea­tur­ing voic­es of artists work­ing in all media and explor­ing the inspi­ra­tion and sto­ries behind mod­ern and con­tem­po­rary art.

Record­ing Artists — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — What was it like to be a woman mak­ing art as the fem­i­nist and civ­il rights move­ments were trans­form­ing Amer­i­can soci­ety? In this first sea­son of Record­ing Artists, from the Get­ty, this pod­cast uses archival inter­views to explore the lives of six women artists—Alice Neel, Lee Kras­ner, Betye Saar, Helen Franken­thaler, Yoko Ono, and Eva Hesse. Read more here.

The Lone­ly Palette — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — The Lone­ly Palette returns art his­to­ry to the mass­es, one paint­ing at a time. Each episode, host Tamar Avishai picks a paint­ing du jour, inter­views unsus­pect­ing muse­um vis­i­tors in front of it, and then dives deeply into the object, the move­ment, the social con­text, and any­thing and every­thing else that will make it as neat to you as it is to her.

The Mod­ern Art Notes Pod­cast — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — RSS — A week­ly, hour-long inter­view pro­gram fea­tur­ing artists, his­to­ri­ans, authors, cura­tors and con­ser­va­tors. Pulitzer Prize-win­ning art crit­ic Sebas­t­ian Smee called The MAN Pod­cast “one of the great archives of the art of our time.”

Audio Dramas

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.

Ask­ing for It — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — A queer con­tem­po­rary take of the Goldilocks tale: about love, music, and break­ing the cycle of abuse. Goldie escapes a chaot­ic child­hood only to go from a part­ner who starves her of love to a part­ner who near­ly drowns her in it, before learn­ing to be just right on her own. From CBC Pod­casts and Mer­maid Palace.

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.

Wel­come to Night Vale — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — Twice-month­ly com­mu­ni­ty updates for the small desert town of Night Vale, where every con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry is true. Turn on your radio and hide. Nev­er lis­tened before? It’s an ongo­ing radio show. Start with the cur­rent episode, and you’ll catch on in no time.

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.

Audio Reads: Fiction & Non-Fiction

LeVar Bur­ton Reads — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — The best short fic­tion, hand­picked by the best voice in pod­cast­ing. In every episode, host LeVar Bur­ton (Roots, Read­ing Rain­bow, Star Trek) invites you to take a break from your dai­ly life, and dive into a great sto­ry. LeVar’s nar­ra­tion blends with gor­geous sound­scapes to bring sto­ries by Neil Gaiman, Haru­ki Muraka­mi, Octavia But­ler, Ray Brad­bury and more to life. So, if you’re ready, let’s take a deep breath.

New York­er Fic­tion Pod­cast — Apple — Web Site — This pod­cast fea­tures read­ings of clas­sic fic­tion pub­lished in The New York­er.

Select­ed Shorts — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — RSS — Great actors read great fic­tion in front of a live audi­ence.

Books & Language

A Way with Words — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — A fun and fun­ny radio show and pod­cast about lan­guage. Co-hosts Martha Bar­nette and Grant Bar­rett talk with callers from around the world about lin­guis­tics, slang, new words, jokes, rid­dles, word games, gram­mar, old say­ings, word ori­gins, region­al dialects, fam­i­ly expres­sions, books, lit­er­a­ture, folk­lore, and speak­ing and writ­ing well.

Lex­i­con Val­ley - Apple — Spo­ti­fy — RSS — A show about lan­guage, from pet peeves, syn­tax, and ety­mol­o­gy to neu­rolin­guis­tics and the death of lan­guages. Host­ed by lin­guist John McWhort­er.

Lit­er­a­ture and His­to­ry — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — A pod­cast cov­er­ing Anglo­phone lit­er­a­ture and its roots, from ancient times to the present! Each episode cov­ers an influ­en­tial work of world lit­er­a­ture, fea­tur­ing sum­maries of the texts, his­tor­i­cal analy­sis of the cul­tures that pro­duced them, and some orig­i­nal music and goofi­ness thrown in to keep you enter­tained.

The Allu­sion­ist — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — The Allu­sion­ist scratch­es the sur­face of why we say the things we say. Eng­lish is a big messy mutt of a lan­guage, formed by mil­i­tary inva­sion after mil­i­tary inva­sion, plus count­less tiny idio­syn­crat­ic deci­sions made by its users along the way. The Allu­sion­ist is the lat­est from award-win­ning host Helen Zaltz­man. Based in Lon­don, UK.

The His­to­ry of Eng­lish Pod­cast — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — A chrono­log­i­cal his­to­ry of the Eng­lish lan­guage exam­ined through the lens of his­tor­i­cal events that shaped the devel­op­ment and spread of the lan­guage from the Eurasian steppe to the entire world.

The Pen­guin Pod­cast — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — The Pen­guin Pod­cast fea­tures con­ver­sa­tions with some our of lead­ing authors and cre­ative thinkers, as we seek to under­stand how they write and where their ideas come from. Guests bring to the inter­view a hand­ful of objects that have inspired their work. Recent guests include Noam Chom­sky, Paul McCart­ney, William Gib­son, Arund­hati Roy and more.

Ideas

Against the Rules with Michael Lewis — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site —  Jour­nal­ist and best­selling author Michael Lewis (Liar’s Pok­er, Mon­ey­ball) takes a sear­ing look at what’s hap­pened to fair­ness. It feels like there’s less of it every day—whether it comes to lend­ing prac­tices, col­lege admis­sions, pro­fes­sion­al sports, or psy­cho­log­i­cal well-being. Who are the peo­ple try­ing to lev­el the play­ing field, and are they mak­ing an impact? Lewis inter­views ref­er­ees (Sea­son 1) and coach­es (Sea­son 2) from many walks of life, bring­ing his trade­mark insight and wry humor to their sto­ries of (in)equality today.

Akim­bo — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Akim­bo is an ancient word, from the bend in the riv­er or the bend in an archer’s bow. It’s become a sym­bol for strength, a pos­ture of pos­si­bil­i­ty, the idea that when we stand tall, arms bent, look­ing right at it, we can make a dif­fer­ence. Seth God­in’s Akim­bo is a pod­cast about our cul­ture and about how we can change it. About see­ing what’s hap­pen­ing and choos­ing to do some­thing. The cul­ture is real, but it can be changed. You can bend it.

Ben­ja­men Walk­er’s The­o­ry of Every­thing — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — The­o­ry of Every­thing plunges lis­ten­ers into a whirl of jour­nal­ism, fic­tion, art, inter­views, and the occa­sion­al explod­ing pipe dream. Host Ben­ja­men Walk­er con­nects the dots in a hyper-con­nect­ed world, fea­tur­ing con­ver­sa­tions with philoso­phers, friends, and the occa­sion­al too-good-to-be-real guest.

Com­plex­i­ty — Apple — Google — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — RSS — Far-reach­ing con­ver­sa­tions with a world­wide net­work of sci­en­tists and math­e­mati­cians, philoso­phers and artists devel­op­ing new frame­works to explain our uni­verse’s deep­est mys­ter­ies. Cre­at­ed by the San­ta Fe Insti­tute.

Enti­tled Opin­ions — Apple — Google — Web Site — Enti­tled Opin­ions is a lit­er­ary talk show on Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty Radio, KZSU, in which Pro­fes­sor Robert Har­ri­son inter­views guests about issues that range from lit­er­a­ture and phi­los­o­phy to pol­i­tics and sports. Read more here.

Flash For­ward — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — RSS — A show about pos­si­ble (and not so pos­si­ble) future sce­nar­ios. What would the war­ran­ty on a sex robot look like? How would diplo­ma­cy work if we couldn’t lie? Host­ed and pro­duced by award win­ning sci­ence jour­nal­ist Rose Eveleth, each episode com­bines audio dra­ma and jour­nal­ism to go deep on poten­tial tomor­rows, and uncov­ers what those futures might real­ly be like.

Freako­nom­ics Radio — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — RSS — Dis­cov­er the hid­den side of every­thing with Stephen J. Dub­n­er, co-author of the Freako­nom­ics books. Each week, Freako­nom­ics Radio tells you things you always thought you knew (but didn’t) and things you nev­er thought you want­ed to know (but do) — from the eco­nom­ics of sleep to how to become great at just about any­thing. Dub­n­er speaks with Nobel lau­re­ates and provo­ca­teurs, intel­lec­tu­als and entre­pre­neurs, and var­i­ous oth­er under­achiev­ers.

Fresh Air — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — RSS — Fresh Air from WHYY, the Peabody Award-win­ning week­day mag­a­zine of con­tem­po­rary arts and issues, is one of pub­lic radio’s most pop­u­lar pro­grams. Host­ed by Ter­ry Gross, the show fea­tures inti­mate con­ver­sa­tions with today’s biggest lumi­nar­ies.

Here’s the Thing — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — Alec Bald­win takes lis­ten­ers into the lives of artists, pol­i­cy mak­ers and per­form­ers. Alec side­steps the pre­dictable by going inside the dress­ing rooms, apart­ments, and offices of peo­ple we want to under­stand bet­ter: Ira Glass, Pat­ti Smith, David Brooks, Roz Chast, Chris Rock and oth­ers.

Hid­den Brain — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — RSS — NPR’s Shankar Vedan­tam uses sci­ence and sto­ry­telling to reveal the uncon­scious pat­terns that dri­ve human behav­ior, shape our choic­es and direct our rela­tion­ships.

Imag­i­nary Worlds — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — Sound­Cloud — A bi-week­ly pod­cast about sci­ence fic­tion and oth­er fan­ta­sy gen­res. Host Eric Molin­sky talks with nov­el­ists, screen­writ­ers, com­ic book artists, film­mak­ers, and game design­ers about their craft of cre­at­ing fic­tion­al worlds. The show also looks at the fan expe­ri­ence, explor­ing what makes us sus­pend our dis­be­lief, and what hap­pens when that spell is bro­ken.

In Our Time - Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — In Our Time is a live BBC radio dis­cus­sion series explor­ing the his­to­ry of ideas, pre­sent­ed by Melvyn Bragg since Octo­ber 1998. It is one of BBC Radio 4’s most suc­cess­ful dis­cus­sion pro­grams, acknowl­edged to have “trans­formed the land­scape for seri­ous ideas at peak lis­ten­ing time.’” Read more here.

Intel­li­gence Squared — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — The world’s lead­ing forum for debate and intel­li­gent dis­cus­sion. Live and online we take you to the heart of the issues that mat­ter, in the com­pa­ny of some of the world’s sharpest minds and most excit­ing ora­tors.

Long­form — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — Inter­views with writ­ers, jour­nal­ists, film­mak­ers, and pod­cast­ers about how they do their work. Host­ed by Aaron Lam­mer, Max Lin­sky, and Evan Ratliff.

Mak­ing Sense Pod­cast — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — Join Sam Harris—neuroscientist, philoso­pher, and best-sell­ing author—as he explores some of the most impor­tant ques­tions about the human mind, soci­ety, and cur­rent events.

On Being — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — Ground­break­ing Peabody Award-win­ning con­ver­sa­tion about the big ques­tions of mean­ing — spir­i­tu­al inquiry, sci­ence, social heal­ing, and the arts. Each week a new dis­cov­ery about the immen­si­ty of our lives. Host­ed by Krista Tip­pett.

Revi­sion­ist His­to­ry — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — RSS — Mal­colm Glad­well’s jour­ney through the over­looked and the mis­un­der­stood. Every episode re-exam­ines some­thing from the past—an event, a per­son, an idea, even a song—and asks whether we got it right the first time.

Radi­o­lab — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — RSS — A two-time Peabody Award-win­ner, Radi­o­lab is an inves­ti­ga­tion told through sounds and sto­ries, and cen­tered around one big idea. In the Radi­o­lab world, infor­ma­tion sounds like music and sci­ence and cul­ture col­lide. Host­ed by Jad Abum­rad and Robert Krul­wich, the show is designed for lis­ten­ers who demand skep­ti­cism, but appre­ci­ate won­der.

Sean Car­rol­l’s Mind­scape — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — RSS — Ever want­ed to know how music affects your brain, what quan­tum mechan­ics real­ly is, or how black holes work? Do you won­der why you get emo­tion­al each time you see a cer­tain movie, or how on earth video games are designed? Then you’ve come to the right place. Each week, Sean Car­roll will host con­ver­sa­tions with some of the most inter­est­ing thinkers in the world. From neu­ro­sci­en­tists and engi­neers to authors and tele­vi­sion pro­duc­ers, Sean and his guests talk about the biggest ideas in sci­ence, phi­los­o­phy, cul­ture and much more.

Solv­able — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — RSS —  Solv­able show­cas­es the world’s most inno­v­a­tive thinkers and their pro­posed solu­tions to the world’s most daunt­ing prob­lems. The inter­views, con­duct­ed by jour­nal­ists like Mal­colm Glad­well and Jacob Weis­berg, will launch a dia­logue that both acknowl­edges the com­plex­i­ty of the issues while inspir­ing hope that the prob­lems are, in fact, solv­able

TED Radio Hour — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — TED Radio Hour inves­ti­gates the biggest ques­tions of our time with the help of the world’s great­est thinkers. Can we pre­serve our human­i­ty in the dig­i­tal age? Where does cre­ativ­i­ty come from? And what’s the secret to liv­ing longer? In each episode, host Manoush Zomoro­di explores a big idea through a series of TED Talks and orig­i­nal inter­views, inspir­ing us to learn more about the world, our com­mu­ni­ties, and most impor­tant­ly, our­selves.

The Joy of X — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — Host­ed by Steven Stro­gatz, The Joy of X pod­cast opens a win­dow into the inner worlds of top-tier sci­en­tists and math­e­mati­cians while shin­ing light on uni­ver­sal themes like cre­ativ­i­ty, col­lab­o­ra­tion or nav­i­gat­ing pro­fes­sion­al chal­lenges.

The New York­er Radio Hour — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site —  David Rem­nick is joined by The New Yorker’s award-win­ning writ­ers, edi­tors and artists to present a week­ly mix of pro­files, sto­ry­telling, and insight­ful con­ver­sa­tions about the issues that mat­ter.

The Wild — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — Chris Mor­gan takes lis­ten­ers around the world to Italy, Ger­many and his own back­yard of the Pacif­ic North­west to explore the beau­ty and won­der of the out­doors and its inhab­i­tants. From beavers to wolves to griz­zly bears we expe­ri­ence up close the resilient pow­er of nature and our rela­tion­ship with it.

WTF — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — RSS — Marc Maron wel­comes come­di­ans, actors, direc­tors, writ­ers, authors, musi­cians and folks from all walks of life to his home for amaz­ing­ly reveal­ing con­ver­sa­tions. Mar­c’s prob­ing, com­pre­hen­sive inter­view style allows guests to express them­selves in ways lis­ten­ers have nev­er heard.

History

1619 — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — In August of 1619, a ship car­ry­ing more than 20 enslaved Africans arrived in the Eng­lish colony of Vir­ginia. Amer­i­ca was not yet Amer­i­ca, but this was the moment it began. No aspect of the coun­try that would be formed here has been untouched by the 250 years of slav­ery that fol­lowed. On the 400th anniver­sary of this fate­ful moment, it is time to tell the sto­ry.

Back­Sto­ry — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — There’s the his­to­ry you had to learn, and the his­to­ry you want to learn — that’s where Back­Sto­ry comes in. Each week Back­Sto­ry takes a top­ic that peo­ple are talk­ing about and explores it through the lens of Amer­i­can his­to­ry. Through sto­ries, inter­views, and con­ver­sa­tions with our lis­ten­ers, Back­Sto­ry makes his­to­ry engag­ing and fun. Based at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia, it’s cre­at­ed by U.S. his­to­ri­ans Ed Ayers, Bri­an Balogh, Nathan Con­nol­ly and Joanne Free­man.

Hope, Through His­to­ry — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Host­ed by Pulitzer Prize win­ning his­to­ri­an Jon Meacham, this pod­cast explores some of the most his­toric and try­ing times in Amer­i­can his­to­ry, and how this nation dealt with these moments, the impact of these moments and how we came through these moments a uni­fied nation. Sea­son One takes a look at crit­i­cal moments around the 1918 Flu Pan­dem­ic, the Great Depres­sion, World War II, the polio epi­dem­ic and the Cuban Mis­sile Cri­sis.

Rev­o­lu­tions — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — RSS —  A week­ly pod­cast explor­ing great polit­i­cal rev­o­lu­tions. It’s cre­at­ed by the New York Times best sell­ing author Mike Dun­can.

The Dol­lop — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — RSS — Come­di­ans Dave Antho­ny and Gareth Reynolds pick a sub­ject from his­to­ry and exam­ine it.

The His­to­ry of Byzan­tium — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — RSS — A pod­cast telling the sto­ry of the Roman (Byzan­tine) Empire from 476 AD to 1453.

The His­to­ry of Rome — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — 192 episodes trac­ing the his­to­ry of the Roman Empire, begin­ning with Aeneas’s arrival in Italy and end­ing with the exile of Romu­lus Augus­tu­lus, last Emper­or of the West­ern Roman Empire. Now com­plete!

The Bow­ery Boys — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — RSS — New York City his­to­ry is Amer­i­ca’s his­to­ry. It’s the home­town of the world, and most peo­ple know the city’s famil­iar land­marks, build­ings and streets. Why not look a lit­tle clos­er and have fun while doing it? Now has 300+ episodes.

The Last Archive — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — A pod­cast about his­to­ry and epis­te­mol­o­gy by New York­er con­trib­u­tor and Har­vard his­to­ri­an Jill Lep­ore. It’s​ is a show about the his­to­ry of truth, and the his­tor­i­cal con­text for our cur­rent fake news, post-truth moment. It’s a show about how we know what we know, and why it seems, these days, as if we don’t know any­thing at all any­more.

This Day in Eso­teric Polit­i­cal His­to­ry — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — From a glob­al pan­dem­ic upend­ing soci­ety to an espe­cial­ly intense U.S. pres­i­den­tial elec­tion cycle, we’re liv­ing in an unprece­dent­ed time. Maybe. In this show, Jody Avir­gan, polit­i­cal his­to­ri­an Nicole Hem­mer, and spe­cial guests res­cue sto­ries from the entire­ty of U.S. polit­i­cal his­to­ry to map our jour­ney through this era. Each episode takes one moment, big or small, from that day in the past and explores how it might inform our present –– and it does so in under ten min­utes.

Through­line — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — RSS — The past is nev­er past. Every head­line has a his­to­ry. Join NPR’s Through­line every week as they go back in time to under­stand the present. These are sto­ries you can feel and sounds you can see from the moments that shaped our world.

Unciv­il — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — Amer­i­ca is divid­ed, and it always has been. We’re going back to the moment when that split turned into war. This is Unciv­il: Gim­let Medi­a’s new his­to­ry pod­cast, host­ed by jour­nal­ists Jack Hitt and Chen­jerai Kumanyi­ka. We ran­sack the offi­cial ver­sion of the Civ­il War, and take on the his­to­ry you grew up with. We bring you untold sto­ries about covert oper­a­tions, cor­rup­tion, resis­tance, mutiny, coun­ter­feit­ing, ante­bel­lum drones, and so much more. And we con­nect these for­got­ten strug­gles to the polit­i­cal bat­tle­field we’re liv­ing on right now.

You’re Dead To Me — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — From the BBC. The his­to­ry pod­cast for peo­ple who don’t like his­to­ry… and those who do. Greg Jen­ner brings togeth­er the best names in com­e­dy and his­to­ry to learn and laugh about the past.

Music, TV & Film

All Songs Con­sid­ered - Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — Hosts/nerds Bob Boilen and Robin Hilton are your friend­ly music bud­dies with the week’s best new music dis­cov­er­ies, includ­ing con­ver­sa­tions with emerg­ing artists, icons and more. Hear songs that can com­plete­ly change your day, with humor, heart and (some­times) a whole lot of noise. Direc­tions for use: Morn­ing com­mute, the gym, or alone time. (If rash per­sists, dis­con­tin­ue use.)

Bro­ken Record — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — Bro­ken Record is host­ed by pro­duc­er Rick Rubin, the writer Mal­colm Glad­well, and New York Times for­mer edi­tor Bruce Head­lam. It fea­tures musi­cians you love talk­ing about their life, inspi­ra­tion, and craft.

Hit Parade — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — What makes a song a smash? Tal­ent? Luck? Tim­ing? All that—and more. Chris Molan­phy, pop-chart ana­lyst and author of Slate’s “Why Is This Song No. 1?” series, tells tales from a half-cen­tu­ry of chart his­to­ry. Through sto­ry­telling, triv­ia and song snip­pets, Chris dis­sects how that song you love—or hate—dominated the air­waves, made its way to the top of the charts and shaped your mem­o­ries for­ev­er.

Mogul - Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site- An engag­ing show about hip hop’s most icon­ic moments, told by the peo­ple who lived them.

Naked­ly Exam­ined Music — Apple — Web Site — Why do musi­cians cre­ate what they do? Why do they cre­ate in that par­tic­u­lar way? Mark Lin­sen­may­er (aka song­writer Mark Lint, and host of The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life) talks to song­writ­ers and com­posers about spe­cif­ic record­ings, which are played in full. They cov­er lyric mean­ings, writ­ing and record­ing tech­niques, arrange­ments, band dynam­ics, the sto­ries behind the songs, and even music the­o­ry.

Office Ladies — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — The Office co-stars and best friends, Jen­na Fis­ch­er and Angela Kin­sey, are doing the ulti­mate The Office re-watch pod­cast for you. Each week Jen­na and Angela will break down an episode of The Office and give exclu­sive behind-the-scenes sto­ries that only two peo­ple who were there, can tell you.

Pop Cul­ture Hap­py Hour — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — RSS — A fun and free­wheel­ing chat about the lat­est movies, tele­vi­sion, books, and music.

Pret­ty Much Pop — Apple — Web Site — RSS — A philoso­pher, an actor/musician, and a sci-fi writer (often with enter­tain­ment indus­try guests) talk about media and how we con­sume it: TV, film, music, nov­els, games, comics, com­e­dy, the­ater, pod­casts, online video, and more. Most of what (oth­er) peo­ple like is pret­ty weird when you think about it, so think­ing about it is what they do.

Set­tling the Score — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — Join Jon and Andy as they explore the world of film music, one score at a time. Each episode is an in-depth dis­cus­sion of a clas­sic film score: what makes it tick, how it serves the movie, and whether it’s, you know, any good. It’s a free­wheel­ing, opin­ion­at­ed con­ver­sa­tion with an ana­lyt­i­cal bent, rich­ly illus­trat­ed with musi­cal exam­ples. No exper­tise required.

Slash Film — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — In the Slash­film­cast, hard­core geeks David Chen, Devin­dra Hardawar, and Jeff Can­na­ta debate, pon­tif­i­cate, and delve into the lat­est films, TV shows, and oth­er enter­tain­ment-relat­ed items from the past week. Week­ly guests include every­day blog­gers, web­mas­ter lumi­nar­ies, film direc­tors, and movie stars from all walks of life

Soda­jerk­er on Song­writ­ing — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — A pro­gram devot­ed to the art and craft of song­writ­ing. The show, cre­at­ed and host­ed by the UK song­writ­ing team Soda­jerk­er, fea­tures inter­views with some of the most suc­cess­ful song­writ­ers and musi­cians in the world.

Song Exploder — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — RSS — A pod­cast where musi­cians take apart their songs, and piece by piece, tell the sto­ry of how they were made.

Sound Opin­ions — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — RSS — The world’s only rock and roll talk show, host­ed by Jim DeRo­gatis and Greg Kot.

Sound­track­ing with Edith Bow­man — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — In a unique week­ly pod­cast, Edith Bow­man sits down with a vari­ety of film direc­tors, actors, pro­duc­ers and com­posers to talk about the music that inspired them and how they use music in their films, from their cur­rent release to key moments in their career.

Stay Free: The Sto­ry of the Clash — Spo­ti­fy — The rise and fall of the punk band, The Clash, nar­rat­ed by Pub­lic Enemy’s Chuck D. Read more here.

Switched on Pop — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — RSS — A Vox pod­cast that reveals the secret for­mu­las that make pop songs so infec­tious. Every Tues­day, musi­col­o­gist Nate Sloan and song­writer Char­lie Hard­ing pull back the cur­tain on how pop hits work their mag­ic. You’ll fall in love with songs you didn’t even know you liked.

Talk­ing Sopra­nos — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — Sopra­nos co-stars Michael Impe­ri­oli and Steve Schirri­pa host the defin­i­tive Sopra­nos re-watch pod­cast. Michael and Steve fol­low the Sopra­nos series episode by episode giv­ing fans all the inside info, behind the scenes sto­ries and lit­tle-known facts that could only come from some­one on the inside.

‘The Wire: Way Down in the Hole’ — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Jemele Hill and Van Lath­an recap, break­down, and ana­lyze every episode of the icon­ic HBO hit series, The Wire, start­ing from the begin­ning with sea­son one.

Philosophy

Hi-Phi Nation - Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google Play — Web Site — A phi­los­o­phy pod­cast that turns sto­ries into ideas. It begins with a sto­ry, from ordi­nary life, law, sci­ence, or cul­ture, and then trans­forms it into an exam­i­na­tion of philo­soph­i­cal ideas. The show is cre­at­ed by Bar­ry Lam, a PhD in phi­los­o­phy at Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty, and Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor of Phi­los­o­phy at Vas­sar Col­lege. Read more here.

His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps — Apple – Spo­ti­fy — RSS Feed — Peter Adam­son, Pro­fes­sor of Phi­los­o­phy at King’s Col­lege Lon­don, takes lis­ten­ers through the his­to­ry of phi­los­o­phy, “with­out any gaps.” The series looks at the ideas, lives and his­tor­i­cal con­text of the major philoso­phers as well as the less­er-known fig­ures of the tra­di­tion. With more than 300+ episodes, it cov­ers both west­ern and east­ern tra­di­tions. Read more here.

In Our Time: Phi­los­o­phy — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Down­loads — The sto­ried BBC show cov­ers every­thing from Altru­ism to Wittgen­stein, philoso­phers, the­o­ries and key themes.

Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life - Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — Phi­los­o­phy, philoso­phers and philo­soph­i­cal texts. This pod­cast fea­tures an infor­mal round­table dis­cus­sion, with each episode loose­ly focused on a short read­ing that intro­duces at least one “big” philo­soph­i­cal ques­tion, con­cern, or idea. Recent episodes have focused on Niet­zsche, Sartre and Aldous Hux­ley, and fea­tured Fran­cis Fukuya­ma as a guest.

Phi­los­o­phy Bites — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — RSS — David Edmonds (Uehi­ro Cen­tre, Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty) and Nigel War­bur­ton (free­lance philosopher/writer) inter­view top philoso­phers on a wide range of top­ics. Two books based on the series have been pub­lished by Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty Press. There are over 400 pod­casts in this col­lec­tion. Read more here.

Phi­los­o­phize This! — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web — RSS — Lib­syn — Begin­ner friend­ly if lis­tened to in order! For any­one inter­est­ed in an edu­ca­tion­al pod­cast about phi­los­o­phy where you don’t need to be a grad­u­ate-lev­el philoso­pher to under­stand it. In chrono­log­i­cal order, the thinkers and ideas that forged the world we live in are bro­ken down and explained. Read more here.

Very Bad Wiz­ards — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — Very Bad Wiz­ards is a pod­cast fea­tur­ing a philoso­pher (Tam­ler Som­mers) and a psy­chol­o­gist (David Pizarro), who share a love for ethics, pop cul­ture, and cog­ni­tive sci­ence, and who have a marked inabil­i­ty to dis­tin­guish sacred from pro­fane. Each pod­cast includes dis­cus­sions of moral phi­los­o­phy, recent work on moral psy­chol­o­gy and neu­ro­science, and the over­lap between the two.

True Stories & Storytelling

13 Min­utes to the Moon — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — Epic sto­ries of Nasa’s mis­sions to the Moon. Sea­son 1: the first Moon land­ing, Apol­lo 11. Sea­son 2: the near dis­as­ter of Apol­lo 13. Pre­sen­ter: Kevin Fong. Theme music: Hans Zim­mer.

Cau­tion­ary Tales — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — We tell our chil­dren unset­tling fairy tales to teach them valu­able life lessons, but these Cau­tion­ary Tales are for the edu­ca­tion of the grown ups – and they are all true. Tim Har­ford (Finan­cial Times, BBC, author of “Messy” and “The Under­cov­er Econ­o­mist”) brings you sto­ries of awful human error, trag­ic cat­a­stro­phes, dar­ing heists and hilar­i­ous fias­cos. They’ll delight you, scare you, but also make you wis­er.

Crime­town — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — RSS — A ser­i­al doc­u­men­tary pod­cast looks at how orga­nized crime has shaped par­tic­u­lar Amer­i­can cities.

Crim­i­nal — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — RSS — A pod­cast about crime. Not so much the “if it bleeds, it leads,” kind of crime. Some­thing a lit­tle more com­plex. Sto­ries of peo­ple who’ve done wrong, been wronged, and/or got­ten caught some­where in the mid­dle.

Ear Hus­tle — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — Ear Hus­tle brings you the dai­ly real­i­ties of life inside prison shared by those liv­ing it, and sto­ries from the out­side, post-incar­cer­a­tion. The pod­cast is a part­ner­ship between Nigel Poor, a Bay Area visu­al artist, and Ear­lonne Woods, for­mer­ly incar­cer­at­ed at San Quentin State Prison, and was co-found­ed with for­mer San Quentin res­i­dent Antwan Williams.

Futil­i­ty Clos­et — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — RSS — For­got­ten sto­ries from the pages of his­to­ry. Join us for sur­pris­ing and curi­ous tales from the past and chal­lenge your­self with our lat­er­al think­ing puz­zles.

Heavy­weight — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — RSS — A pod­cast cre­at­ed and pro­duced by humorist Jonathan Gold­stein where he helps peo­ple try to resolve a moment from their past that they wish they could change.

HumaNa­ture — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — RSS — HumaNa­ture is the pod­cast that explores where humans and our habi­tat meet. The show tells real sto­ries about human expe­ri­ences in nature. Along the way, we’ll meet peo­ple whose encoun­ters help us reflect on our own place in the nat­ur­al world.

Invis­i­bil­ia — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — RSS — Unsee­able forces con­trol human behav­ior and shape our ideas, beliefs, and assump­tions. Invisibilia—Latin for invis­i­ble things—fuses nar­ra­tive sto­ry­telling with sci­ence that will make you see your own life dif­fer­ent­ly.

Mod­ern Love — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — RSS — Mod­ern Love fea­tures top actors per­form­ing true sto­ries of love, loss, and redemp­tion. It has includ­ed per­for­mances by Kate Winslet, Uma Thur­man, Angela Bas­sett, Jake Gyl­len­haal, Ster­ling K. Brown, and more. A col­lab­o­ra­tion between WBUR and The New York Times.

Mys­tery Show — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — Vot­ed the top pod­cast of the year, this pod­cast fea­tures Star­lee Kine solv­ing mys­ter­ies.

Myths and Leg­ends — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — Jason Weis­er tells sto­ries from myths, leg­ends, and folk­lore that have shaped cul­tures through­out his­to­ry. Some, like the sto­ries of Aladdin, King Arthur, and Her­cules are sto­ries you think you know, but with sur­pris­ing ori­gins. Oth­ers are sto­ries you might not have heard, but real­ly should. All the sto­ries are sourced from world folk­lore, but retold for mod­ern ears.

Out­side — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — RSS —  Out­side’s long­stand­ing lit­er­ary sto­ry­telling tra­di­tion comes to life in audio with fea­tures that will both enter­tain and inform lis­ten­ers. The pod­cast offers a range of sto­ry for­mats, includ­ing inter­views with the biggest fig­ures in sports, adven­ture, and pol­i­tics, as well as reports from our cor­re­spon­dents in the field.

S‑Town — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — RSS — From Ser­i­al and This Amer­i­can Life, this pod­cast tells you about a man named John who despis­es his Alaba­ma town and decides to do some­thing about it. He asks Bri­an to inves­ti­gate the son of a wealthy fam­i­ly who’s alleged­ly been brag­ging that he got away with mur­der. But when some­one else ends up dead, the search for the truth leads to a nasty feud, a hunt for hid­den trea­sure, and an unearthing of the mys­ter­ies of one man’s life.

Ser­i­al — Apple — Google — Web Site — Host­ed by Sarah Koenig, Ser­i­al unfolds one sto­ry — a true sto­ry — over the course of a whole sea­son. The show fol­lows the plot and char­ac­ters wher­ev­er they lead, through many sur­pris­ing twists and turns. Sarah won’t know what hap­pens at the end of the sto­ry until she gets there, not long before you get there with her.

Snap Judg­ment — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — This pod­cast mix­es real sto­ries with killer beats to pro­duce cin­e­mat­ic, dra­mat­ic, kick-ass radio. Snap’s raw, musi­cal brand of sto­ry­telling dares lis­ten­ers to see the world through the eyes of anoth­er. Also see their spin­off pod­cast, Spooked.

Sto­ryCorps — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — RSS — Sto­ries of the human heart. A can­did, unscript­ed con­ver­sa­tion between two peo­ple about what’s real­ly impor­tant in life: love, loss, fam­i­ly, friend­ship. When the world seems out of hand, tune in to Sto­ryCorps and be remind­ed of the things that mat­ter most.

The Bal­lad of Bil­ly Balls — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — It’s 1982, and a man bursts into an East Vil­lage store­front apart­ment and shoots punk musi­cian Bil­ly Balls. Author and activist iO Tillett Wright and Crime­town Pro­duc­er Austin Mitchell unrav­el a mys­tery of love and loss, the ten­der binds of fam­i­ly, and the sto­ries we tell our­selves just to sur­vive.

The Clear­ing — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — When April Bal­as­cio was 40 years old, some­thing she’d feared for decades was final­ly proven true. Her father, Edward Wayne Edwards, real­ly was a mur­der­er. The Clear­ing is about what came after April called a detec­tive in 2009 to tell him about her sus­pi­cions — a call that led to her father’s arrest and even­tu­al con­vic­tion on mul­ti­ple mur­ders.

The Kitchen Sis­ters Present — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — RSS —  The Kitchen Sis­ters Present… Sto­ries from the b‑side of his­to­ry. Lost record­ings, hid­den worlds, peo­ple pos­sessed by a sound, a vision, a mis­sion. The episodes tell deeply lay­ered sto­ries, lush with inter­views, field record­ings and music.

The Leap — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — RSS — From a doctor’s con­tro­ver­sial LSD treat­ments to a mother’s high-risk efforts to recov­er her abduct­ed child to a punk rock pioneer’s rad­i­cal career rein­ven­tion, these are sto­ries of peo­ple mak­ing dra­mat­ic, risky changes—and the big and small deci­sions that change the course of lives. Host­ed by award­­­-win­ning jour­nal­ist Judy Camp­bell.

The Mem­o­ry Palace — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — RSS — Short, sur­pris­ing sto­ries of the past, some­times heart­break­ing, some­times hys­ter­i­cal, often a lit­tle bit of both.

The Moth — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — RSS — Since its launch in 1997, The Moth has pre­sent­ed thou­sands of true sto­ries, told live and with­out notes, to stand­ing-room-only crowds world­wide. Moth sto­ry­tellers stand alone, under a spot­light, with only a micro­phone and a room­ful of strangers. The sto­ry­teller and the audi­ence embark on a high-wire act of shared expe­ri­ence which is both ter­ri­fy­ing and exhil­a­rat­ing. Since 2008, The Moth pod­cast has fea­tured many of our favorite sto­ries told live on Moth stages around the coun­try.

This Amer­i­can Life — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — RSS — A famous week­ly pub­lic radio pro­gram and pod­cast. Each week they choose a theme and put togeth­er dif­fer­ent kinds of sto­ries on that theme.

This is Love — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — RSS — From the mak­ers of the award-win­ning pod­cast Crim­i­nal, This is Love inves­ti­gates life’s most per­sis­tent mys­tery. Sto­ries of sac­ri­fice, obses­sion, and the ways in which we bet every­thing on each oth­er.

White Lies — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — RSS — In 1965, Rev. James Reeb was mur­dered in Sel­ma, Alaba­ma. Three men were tried and acquit­ted, but no one was ever held to account. Fifty years lat­er, two jour­nal­ists from Alaba­ma return to the city where it hap­pened, expose the lies that kept the mur­der from being solved and uncov­er a sto­ry about guilt and mem­o­ry that says as much about Amer­i­ca today as it does about the past.

You Must Remem­ber This — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site —  This is a sto­ry­telling pod­cast explor­ing the secret and/or for­got­ten his­to­ries of Hollywood’s first cen­tu­ry. It’s the brain­child and pas­sion project of Kari­na Long­worth (founder of Cinematical.com, for­mer film crit­ic for LA Week­ly), who writes, nar­rates, records and edits each episode. It is a heav­i­ly-researched work of cre­ative non­fic­tion: nav­i­gat­ing through con­flict­ing reports, mythol­o­gy, and insti­tu­tion­al­ized spin, Kari­na tries to sort out what real­ly hap­pened behind the films, stars and scan­dals of the 20th cen­tu­ry.

Business & Economy

a16z — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — The a16z Pod­cast dis­cuss­es tech and cul­ture trends, news, and the future – espe­cial­ly as ‘soft­ware eats the world’. It fea­tures indus­try experts, busi­ness lead­ers, and oth­er inter­est­ing thinkers and voic­es from around the world. This pod­cast is pro­duced by Andreessen Horowitz (aka “a16z”), a Sil­i­con Val­ley-based ven­ture cap­i­tal firm.

Har­vard Busi­ness Review Idea­Cast — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — RSS — A week­ly pod­cast fea­tur­ing the lead­ers in busi­ness and man­age­ment.

How I Built This — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — RSS — From NPR. Guy Raz dives into the sto­ries behind some of the world’s best known com­pa­nies. The pod­cast weaves a nar­ra­tive jour­ney about inno­va­tors, entre­pre­neurs and idealists—and the move­ments they built.

Mar­ket­place — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — RSS — Host­ed by Kai Ryss­dal, NPR’s flag­ship pro­gram is all about pro­vid­ing con­text on the eco­nom­ic news of the day. Through sto­ries, con­ver­sa­tions and news­wor­thy num­bers, we help lis­ten­ers under­stand the eco­nom­ic world around them.

Mas­ters of Scale — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — The best start­up advice from Sil­i­con Val­ley & beyond in a pod­cast host­ed by host Reid Hoff­man — LinkedIn cofounder, Grey­lock part­ner and leg­endary Sil­i­con Val­ley investor. The show fea­tures icon­ic CEOs — from Nike to Net­flix, Star­bucks to Slack — shar­ing the sto­ries & strate­gies that helped them grow from star­tups into glob­al brands.

Piv­ot — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — Kara Swish­er and NYU Pro­fes­sor Scott Gal­loway offer sharp, unfil­tered insights into the biggest sto­ries in tech, busi­ness, and pol­i­tics.

Plan­et Mon­ey — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — RSS —  The econ­o­my explained by NPR. Imag­ine you could call up a friend and say, “Meet me at the bar and tell me what’s going on with the econ­o­my.” Now imag­ine that’s actu­al­ly a fun evening.

The Jour­nal — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — A Wall Street Jour­nal pod­cast on the most impor­tant sto­ries, explained through the lens of busi­ness. A pod­cast about mon­ey, busi­ness and pow­er.

Work­Life with Adam Grant — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — Orga­ni­za­tion­al psy­chol­o­gist Adam Grant takes you inside the minds of some of the world’s most unusu­al pro­fes­sion­als to explore the sci­ence of mak­ing work not suck. From learn­ing how to love crit­i­cism to har­ness­ing the pow­er of frus­tra­tion, one thing’s for sure: You’ll nev­er see your job the same way again.

Personal Development (Including creativity)

Find­ing Mas­tery — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — RSS — Michael Ger­vais is a high per­for­mance psy­chol­o­gist. His pod­cast is built around a cen­tral goal: unpack­ing and decod­ing how the great­est per­form­ers in the world use their minds to cre­ate amaz­ing jour­neys while they pur­sue the bound­aries of human poten­tial.

Mag­ic Lessons- Apple — Google — Web Site — Writer Eliz­a­beth Gilbert’s cre­ativ­i­ty pod­cast “fea­tures her inter­view­ing peo­ple about how they over­come the fears that are inher­ent in the cre­ative process, and call­ing up famous cre­atives to get their input.”

The Hap­pi­ness Lab with Dr. Lau­rie San­tos — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — You might think you know what it takes to lead a hap­pi­er life… more mon­ey, a bet­ter job, or Insta­gram-wor­thy vaca­tions. You’re dead wrong. Yale pro­fes­sor Dr. Lau­rie San­tos has stud­ied the sci­ence of hap­pi­ness and found that many of us do the exact oppo­site of what will tru­ly make our lives bet­ter. Based on the psy­chol­o­gy course she teach­es at Yale–the most pop­u­lar class in the university’s 300-year history–Laurie will take you through the lat­est sci­en­tif­ic research and share some sur­pris­ing and inspir­ing sto­ries that will change the way you think about hap­pi­ness.

The Jor­dan Har­bin­ger Show — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google —  The Jor­dan Har­bin­ger Show (Apple’s Best of 2018) is where self-moti­vat­ed peo­ple, just like you, dig deep into the untapped wis­dom of the world’s sharpest minds- from leg­endary cre­ators to intel­li­gence oper­a­tives, icon­o­clas­tic writ­ers to vision­ary change-mak­ers. They bring amaz­ing sto­ries and bril­liant per­son­al­i­ties to the table, and help you demys­ti­fy what they do and how they do it.

The Moment with Bri­an Kop­pel­man — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Inter­views about the piv­otal moments that fueled fas­ci­nat­ing cre­ative careers. Host­ed by Bri­an Kop­pel­man.

The Tim Fer­riss Show — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — YouTube — RSS — This pop­u­lar pod­cast cov­ers top­ics rang­ing from per­son­al and char­ac­ter devel­op­ment, to morn­ing rou­tines and med­i­ta­tion habits of celebri­ties, CEOs and cul­tur­al fig­ures like Neil Gaiman, Brene Brown, Michael Lewis, Aman­da Palmer, Alain de Bot­ton and more.

Unlock­ing Us with Brené Brown — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — RSS — Join researcher and #1 New York Times best-sell­ing author Brené Brown as she unpacks and explores the ideas, sto­ries, expe­ri­ences, books, films, and music that reflect the uni­ver­sal expe­ri­ences of being human, from the bravest moments to the most bro­ken­heart­ed.

Sports

30 for 30 — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — Orig­i­nal audio doc­u­men­taries from the mak­ers of the acclaimed 30 for 30 film series, fea­tur­ing sto­ries from the world of sports and beyond. 30 for 30 offers cap­ti­vat­ing sto­ry­telling for sports fans and gen­er­al inter­est lis­ten­ers alike, going beyond the field to explore how sports, com­pe­ti­tion, ath­leti­cism and adven­ture affect our lives and our world. Sports sto­ries like you’ve nev­er heard before.

The Bill Sim­mons Pod­cast — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — HBO and The Ringer’s Bill Sim­mons hosts the most down­loaded sports pod­cast of all time, with a rotat­ing crew of celebri­ties, ath­letes, and media sta­ples.

We Came to Win — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Every four years, peo­ple all over the world turn their eyes, ears, and hearts toward the most excit­ing sports com­pe­ti­tion on the plan­et: The World Cup. We Came to Win tells the sto­ries behind the tournament’s most mem­o­rable moments.

News & Current Events

538 — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — Nate Sil­ver and the FiveThir­tyEight team cov­er the lat­est in pol­i­tics, track­ing the issues and “game-chang­ers” every week.

Deep Back­ground with Noah Feld­man — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — Every sto­ry has a back­sto­ry, even in today’s 24-hour news cycle. In Deep Back­ground, Har­vard Law School pro­fes­sor and Bloomberg View colum­nist Noah Feld­man will bring togeth­er a cross-sec­tion of expert guests to explore the his­tor­i­cal, sci­en­tif­ic, legal, and cul­tur­al con­text that help us under­stand what’s real­ly going on behind the biggest sto­ries in the news.

Embed­ded — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — RSS — NPR host Kel­ly McEv­ers takes a sto­ry from the news and goes deep. Whether that means dig­ging into the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s past, the sto­ries behind police shoot­ings caught on video, or vis­it­ing a town rav­aged by the opi­oid epi­dem­ic, Embed­ded takes you where the news is hap­pen­ing.

Reveal — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — From pris­ons to protests, immi­gra­tion to the envi­ron­ment, Peabody Award-win­ning Reveal goes deep into the press­ing issues of our times. The Atlantic says “the expe­ri­ence of each episode is akin to a spoon­ful of sug­ar, even when it’s telling a sto­ry about Richard Spencer’s cot­ton farms or a man’s final days as a hero­in addict.” Reveal is a project of The Cen­ter for Inves­tiga­tive Report­ing.

Stay Tuned with Preet — Apple —  Google — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — Join for­mer U.S. Attor­ney Preet Bharara as he breaks down legal top­ics in the news and engages thought lead­ers in a pod­cast about pow­er, pol­i­cy, and jus­tice.

The City — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — The City is an inves­tiga­tive pod­cast from USA TODAY that tells true sto­ries about how pow­er works in urban Amer­i­ca.

The Dai­ly — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — RSS — From The New York Times, this is what the news should sound like. The biggest sto­ries of our time, told by the best jour­nal­ists in the world. Host­ed by Michael Bar­baro.

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Studio Ghibli Producer Toshio Suzuki Teaches You How to Draw Totoro in Two Minutes

in Animation, Art, Film, K-12 | May 22nd, 2020

This is some­thing you can do at home. Every­one, please draw pic­tures —Toshio Suzu­ki

There’s no short­age of online tuto­ri­als for fans who want to draw Totoro, the  enig­mat­ic title char­ac­ter of Stu­dio Ghibli’s 1988 ani­mat­ed fea­ture, My Neigh­bor Totoro:

There’s a two-minute, non-nar­rat­ed, God’s-Eye-view with shad­ing…

A detailed geom­e­try-based step-by-step…

A ten-minute ver­sion for kids that uti­lizes a drink­ing glass and a bot­tle cap to get the pro­por­tions right pri­or to pen­cil­ing, ink­ing, and col­or­ing…

But none has more heart than Stu­dio Ghi­b­li pro­duc­er Toshio Suzu­ki’s sim­ple demon­stra­tion, above.

The paper is ori­ent­ed toward the artist, rather than the view­er.

His only instruc­tion is that the eyes should be spaced very far apart.

His brush pen lends itself to a freer line than the tight­ly con­trolled out­lines of Stu­dio Ghibli’s care­ful­ly ren­dered 2‑D char­ac­ter designs.

This is Totoro as Zen prac­tice, offered as a gift to cooped-up Japan­ese chil­dren, whose schools, like so many world­wide, were abrupt­ly shut­tered in an effort to con­tain the spread of the nov­el coro­n­avirus.

via MyMod­ern­Met

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hayao Miyazaki’s Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Releas­es Free Back­grounds for Vir­tu­al Meet­ings: Princess Mononoke, Spir­it­ed Away & More

A Vir­tu­al Tour Inside the Hayao Miyazaki’s Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Muse­um

Build Your Own Minia­ture Sets from Hayao Miyazaki’s Beloved Films: My Neigh­bor Totoro, Kiki’s Deliv­ery Ser­vice & More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her lat­est project is an ani­ma­tion and a series of free down­load­able posters, encour­ag­ing cit­i­zens to wear masks in pub­lic and wear them prop­er­ly. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Robert Fripp & King Crimson Perform a Stirring Cover of “Heroes,” Shortly after David Bowie’s Death (2016)

in Music | May 20th, 2020

In 2016, King Crim­son per­formed “Heroes” at the Admi­ralspalast in Berlin, just after David Bowie’s death, and near­ly forty years after the song was writ­ten and record­ed next to the Berlin Wall. It was “a cel­e­bra­tion, a remem­branc­ing and an homage,” gen­tle­man gui­tarist Robert Fripp wrote in a state­ment. The fol­low­ing year, they released the live ver­sion on an EP called Heroes, in hon­or of the clas­sic Bowie album’s 40th anniver­sary.

King Crim­son sounds absolute­ly amaz­ing in the con­cert record­ing. Yet it’s Fripp’s keen­ing gui­tar line—part vio­lin, part theremin—that most calls out to us, a gor­geous­ly heav­en­ly wail. Like many Bowie songs, the writ­ing and record­ing of “Heroes” pro­duced many a fas­ci­nat­ing sto­ry. Fripp’s con­tri­bu­tion, as a leg­endary char­ac­ter and prog-rock genius, is no excep­tion.

Frip­p’s angel­ic tone on “Heroes,” as Tony Vis­con­ti tells it above (at 2:15), came about most­ly by hap­py acci­dent. Vis­con­ti explains more ful­ly in a Sound Opin­ions inter­view:

Fripp was avail­able only one week­end. So he came to Berlin, brought his gui­tar, no ampli­fi­er. He record­ed his gui­tar in the stu­dio. We had to play the track very very loud because he was rely­ing on the feed­back from the stu­dio mon­i­tors. So it was deaf­en­ing work­ing with him.

Where­as every­one thinks it’s an ebow, this mag­i­cal gui­tar gad­get called an ebow. In fact it was­n’t an ebow, it was just the feedback–Fripp play­ing this “dah uhh­hh dahh uhhh” that beau­ti­ful motif. And Fripp record­ed a sec­ond time with­out hear­ing the first one. It was a lit­tle bit more cohe­sive, but still quite was­n’t right, and he said, “Let me do it again. Just give me anoth­er track. I’ll do it again.” And we silenced the first two tracks and he did a third pass, which was real­ly great. He nailed it. And then I had the bright idea: I said, “Look let me just hear what it sounds like with the oth­er two tracks. You nev­er know.”

We played it, all three tracks togeth­er, and you know, I must reit­er­ate Fripp did not hear the oth­er two tracks when he was doing the third one so he had no way of being in sync. But he was strange­ly in sync. And all his lit­tle out-of-tune wig­gles sud­den­ly worked with the oth­er pre­vi­ous­ly record­ed gui­tars. It seemed to tune up. It got a qual­i­ty that none of us antic­i­pat­ed. It was this dreamy, wail­ing qual­i­ty, almost cry­ing sound in the back­ground. And we were just flab­ber­gast­ed.

It was a typ­i­cal­ly Eno-Vis­con­ti way to find a new sound. That sound, Vis­con­ti says above, is all over the track. For this rea­son, Fripp has been engaged in legal bat­tles with David Bowie’s estate over his cred­it, insist­ing that he should have “fea­tured play­er” sta­tus, a legal des­ig­na­tion that would give him greater rights to remu­ner­a­tion. Always a shame when wran­gling over mon­ey comes between the cre­ators of great music, but in this case, Bri­an Eno and Tony Vis­con­ti both sup­port Fripp’s claims, and so per­haps would Bowie if he were here.

What­ev­er it takes to be a “fea­tured play­er,” Fripp sailed over the thresh­old on “Heroes.” He demon­strates it again in the King Crim­son trib­ute, mak­ing one gui­tar sound like three onstage, and in the video above, which he released with his wife Toy­ah for VE Day. The back­ing track is from the Berlin per­for­mance at the top, with dubbed vocals by Toy­ah and gui­tar, of course, by Fripp, play­ing the same Gib­son Les Paul he flew into the stu­dio with in 1977, and look­ing just as sin­gu­lar­ly unim­pressed by the pro­ceed­ings.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch David Byrne Lead a Mas­sive Choir in Singing David Bowie’s “Heroes”

David Bowie’s “Heroes” Delight­ful­ly Per­formed by the Ukulele Orches­tra of Great Britain

Pro­duc­er Tony Vis­con­ti Breaks Down the Mak­ing of David Bowie’s Clas­sic “Heroes,” Track by Track

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

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1930s Phonograph Doubled as an Alarm Clock, Letting People Start Their Day with Their Favorite Record

in Music, Technology | May 19th, 2020

The Deutsches Uhrens­mu­se­um intro­duces the French-made Peter Pan clock above as fol­lows:

Even as ear­ly as 1930, peo­ple were try­ing to find a way to replace the unpleas­ant sound of the alarm clock. The inven­tor of this gramo­phone alarm clock had a bril­liant idea. The gramo­phone works like the stan­dard alarm clock of those days; how­ev­er, instead of a bell, the gramo­phone motor switch­es on when the alarm goes off and your favourite record begins to play to the live­ly crack­ling sound of a typ­i­cal gramo­phone. The motor plays this side of the record twice in suc­ces­sion. The opened lid of the box serves as a res­onator. Even the name is what dreams are made of: Peter Pan Alarm Clock. Who would not want to be a child again and fly off to Nev­er Nev­er Land?

This great find comes from the always inter­est­ing Twit­ter feeds of jazz crit­ic Ted Gioia and the Bib­lio­thèque nationale de France. You can watch the clock in action below.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

19th-Cen­tu­ry Skele­ton Alarm Clock Remind­ed Peo­ple Dai­ly of the Short­ness of Life: An Intro­duc­tion to the Memen­to Mori

How Clocks Changed Human­i­ty For­ev­er, Mak­ing Us Mas­ters and Slaves of Time

Wake Up & Smell the Cof­fee: The New All-in-One Cof­fee-Mak­er/Alarm Clock is Final­ly Here!

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Take a Virtual Tour of the World’s Only Sourdough Library

in Food & Drink, Libraries, Travel | May 4th, 2020

There’s 15-year-old Pre­cious from the Nether­lands…

And Bub­ble from Aus­tralia, age 4…

Yeasty Beasty Methuse­lah, from Twin Falls, Ida­ho, is esti­mat­ed to be around 50…

Every sour­dough starter is spe­cial to the ones who made or main­tain it, but of the 1000s reg­is­tered online with Quest for Sour­dough, only 125 have earned a per­ma­nent place in the Puratos Sour­dough Library in Saint-Vith, Bel­gium. It’s the world’s only library ded­i­cat­ed to Sour­dough, and you can take a vir­tu­al tour here.

Housed in iden­ti­cal jars in a muse­um-qual­i­ty refrig­er­at­ed cab­i­nets, these her­itage starters have been care­ful­ly select­ed by librar­i­an Karl De Smedt, above, who trav­els the world vis­it­ing bak­eries, tast­ing bread, and learn­ing the sto­ries behind each sam­ple that enters the col­lec­tion.

As De Smedt recalls in an inter­view with the Sour­dough Pod­cast, the idea for the muse­um began tak­ing shape when a Lebanese bak­er reached out to Puratos, a hun­dred-year-old com­pa­ny that sup­plies com­mer­cial bak­ers and pas­try mak­ers with essen­tials of the trade. The man’s sons returned from a bak­ing expo in Paris and informed their dad that when they took over, they planned to retire his time-hon­ored prac­tice of bak­ing with fer­ment­ed chick­peas in favor of instant yeast. Wor­ried that his prized recipe would be lost to his­to­ry, he appealed to Puratos to help pre­serve his pro­to­cols.

While fer­ment­ed chick­peas do not count as sourdough—a com­bi­na­tion of flour, water, and the result­ing microor­gan­isms this mar­riage gives rise to over time—the com­pa­ny had recent­ly col­lect­ed and ana­lyzed 43 ven­er­a­ble starters. The bulk came from Italy, includ­ing one from Alta­mu­ra, the “city of bread, pro­duc­er of what Horace called in 37 B.C. ‘the best bread to be had, so good that the wise trav­el­er takes a sup­ply of it for his onward jour­ney.’”

Thus was a non-cir­cu­lat­ing library born.

Each spec­i­men is ana­lyzed by food micro­bi­ol­o­gist Mar­co Gob­bet­ti from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bolzano and Bari.

A col­lab­o­ra­tion with North Car­oli­na State Uni­ver­si­ty biol­o­gists Rob Dunn and Anne Mad­den revealed that sour­dough bak­ers’ hands share dis­tinct microbes with their starters.

More than 1100 strains of microor­gan­isms have been record­ed so far.

Every two months, the starters are tak­en out of the fridge and fed, i.e. reac­ti­vat­ed, with a com­bi­na­tion of water and some of their flour of ori­gin, year­ly quan­ti­ties of which are con­tributed by their bak­ers. With­out this reg­u­lar care, the starters will die off.

(The pan­dem­ic has De Smedt work­ing from home, but he inti­mat­ed to The New York Times that he intend­ed to make it back to feed his babies, or “moth­ers” as they are known in sour­dough cir­cles.)

#72 from Mex­i­co feeds on eggs, lime and beer

#100 from Japan is made of cooked sake rice.

#106 is a vet­er­an of the Gold Rush.

Their con­sis­ten­cy is doc­u­ment­ed along a line that ranges from hard to flu­id, with Sil­ly Put­ty in the mid­dle.

Each year, De Smedt expands the col­lec­tion with starters from a dif­fer­ent area of the world. The lat­est addi­tions come from Turkey, and are doc­u­ment­ed in the mouth­wa­ter­ing trav­el­ogue above.

For now, of course, he’s ground­ed in Bel­gium, and using his Insta­gram account to pro­vide encour­age­ment to oth­er sour­dough prac­ti­tion­ers, answer­ing rook­ie ques­tions and show­ing off some of the loaves pro­duced by his own per­son­al starters, Bar­bara and Aman­da.

Reg­is­ter your starter on Quest for Sour­dough here.

If you haven’t yet tak­en the sour­dough plunge, you can par­tic­i­pate in North Car­oli­na State University’s Wild Sour­dough Project by fol­low­ing their instruc­tions on mak­ing a starter from scratch and then sub­mit­ting your data here.

And bide your time until you’re cleared to vis­it the Puratos Sour­dough Library in per­son by tak­ing an inter­ac­tive vir­tu­al tour or watch­ing a com­plete playlist of De Smedt’s col­lect­ing trips here.

via Atlas Obscu­ra

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

How to Bake Ancient Roman Bread Dat­ing Back to 79 AD: A Video Primer

An Archive of Hand­writ­ten Tra­di­tion­al Mex­i­can Cook­books Is Now Online

400 Ways to Make a Sand­wich: A 1909 Cook­book Full of Cre­ative Recipes

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her cur­rent starter, Miss Sour­dough, was brought to life with an unholy splash of apple cider. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Library of Congress Makes Its Archives Free for DJs to Remix: Introducing the “Citizen DJ” Project

in Music | May 1st, 2020

Since the begin­ning of hip hop and turntab­lism, the best DJs have been the best crate dig­gers, peo­ple who would spend hours flip­ping thru old vinyl, unknown titles, rare cuts, and some­times seri­ous­ly out-of-fash­ion, embar­rass­ing old records for those brief moments of music that when looped, could be spun into mod­ern mag­ic.

At the same time, hip hop sam­pling has also been a mine­field for copy­right law, so much that mod­ern DJs shy away from sam­pling lest they spend months and or years seek­ing clear­ing rights.

Artist and com­put­er sci­en­tist Bri­an Foo knows where there are plen­ty of crates that have yet to be dug: the Library of Con­gress. Already the author of sev­er­al projects that turn data into music, Foo received a grant from the Library this year to do some­thing amaz­ing with their col­lec­tion and offer it to the pub­lic.

Cit­i­zen DJ is the result and cur­rent­ly you can play around with the beta ver­sion. The above video fea­tures Foo lead­ing you through the site, and I high­ly rec­om­mend you watch it before div­ing in.

Sound sources come from the Library’s many col­lec­tions: Edi­son sound record­ings, Vari­ety Stage record­ings, Joe Smith’s inter­views with ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry celebri­ties, a col­lec­tion of Amer­i­can dialect record­ings, gov­ern­ment infor­ma­tion films, and their more mod­ern free music archives.

You can browse these as a col­or-cod­ed graph­ic tapes­try or as a list, with plen­ty of fil­ters to nar­row down your search. Once you find a sound you like you can chop it up in a sequencer and then bring in loops, change the bpm, and cre­ate some very, very odd mod­ern music. (If you’re lucky it will also be funky!) Every­thing can be down­loaded off­site into a (dig­i­tal audio work­sta­tion) DAW of your choice.

What­ev­er you make, by the way, is yours to do with what­ev­er you want, and that includes sell­ing it as your own track. (Although it’s best-prac­tice to cred­it the source and the Library).

Foo notes that the project is ful­ly launch­ing in late sum­mer, but is real­ly look­ing for your feed­back, whether you are a pro­fes­sion­al musi­cian or a curi­ous cit­i­zen. (We also want to hear any­thing that you wind up mak­ing, so let us know.)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Is Fair Use?: A Short Intro­duc­tion from the Mak­er of Every­thing is a Remix

The Library of Con­gress Makes Thou­sands of Fab­u­lous Pho­tos, Posters & Images Free to Use & Reuse

The Library of Con­gress Makes 25 Mil­lion Records From Its Cat­a­log Free to Down­load

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.

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When David Bowie Launched His Own Internet Service Provider: The Rise and Fall of BowieNet (1998)

in History, Music, Technology | April 29th, 2020

When we con­sid­er the many iden­ti­ties of David Bowie — Zig­gy Star­dust, Aladdin Sane, the Thin White Duke — we often neglect to include his trans­for­ma­tion into an inter­net entre­pre­neur. In line with Bowie’s rep­u­ta­tion for being ahead of his time in all endeav­ors, it hap­pened sev­er­al tech booms ago, in the late 1990s. Fore­see­ing the inter­net’s poten­tial as a cul­tur­al and com­mer­cial force, he got ahead of it by launch­ing not just his own web site (which some major artists lacked through the end of the cen­tu­ry), but his own inter­net ser­vice provider. For $19.95 a month (£10.00 in the UK), BowieNet offered fans access not just to “high-speed” inter­net but to “David Bowie, his world, his friends, his fans, includ­ing live chats, live video feeds, chat rooms and bul­letin boards.”

So announced the ini­tial BowieNet press release pub­lished in August 1998, which also promised “live in-stu­dio video feeds,” “text, audio and video mes­sages from Bowie,” “Desk­top themes includ­ing Bowie screen­savers, wall­pa­per and icons,” and best of all, a “david­bowie e‑mail address (your na**@********ie.com).” While the dial-up of the inter­net con­nec­tions of the day was­n’t quite equal to the task of reli­ably stream­ing video, many of BowieNet’s approx­i­mate­ly 100,000 mem­bers still fond­ly remem­ber the com­mu­ni­ty cul­ti­vat­ed on its mes­sage boards. “This was in effect a music-cen­tric social net­work,” writes The Gar­dian’s Kei­th Stu­art, “sev­er­al years before the emer­gence of sec­tor lead­ers like Friend­ster and Myspace.”

Unlike on the the vast social net­works that would lat­er devel­op, the man him­self was known to drop in. Under the alias “Sailor,” writes Newsweek’s Zach Schon­feld, “Bowie would some­times share updates and rec­om­men­da­tions or respond to fan queries.” He might endorse an album (Arcade Fire’s debut Funer­al earned a rave), express increduli­ty at rumors (of, say, his play­ing a con­cert with Paul McCart­ney and Michael Jack­son to be beamed into out­er space), crack jokes, or tell sto­ries (of, say, the time he and John Lennon sat around call­ing into radio sta­tions togeth­er). As Ars Tech­ni­ca’s inter­view with BowieNet co-founder Ron Roy con­firms, Bowie did­n’t just lend the enter­prise his brand but was “tremen­dous­ly involved from day one.” As Roy tells it, Bowie kept BowieNet fresh “by explor­ing new tech­nolo­gies to keep fans engaged and excit­ed. He always preached [that] it’s about the expe­ri­ence, the new.”

It helped that Bowie was­n’t sim­ply look­ing to cap­i­tal­ize on the rise of the inter­net. As the 1999 ZDTV inter­view at the top of the post reveals, he was already hooked on it him­self. “The first thing I do is get e‑mails out of the way,” he says, describ­ing the aver­age day in his online life. “I’m e‑mail crazy. And then I’ll spend prob­a­bly about an hour, maybe more, going through my site.” Even in the ear­ly days of “the con­tro­ver­sial mp3 for­mat,” he showed great enthu­si­asm for putting his music online. He con­tin­ued doing so even after tech­nol­o­gy sur­passed BowieNet, which dis­con­tin­ued its inter­net ser­vice in 2006. Now, as the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic keeps much of the world at home, many high-pro­file artists have tak­en to the inter­net to keep the show going. David Bowie fans know that, were he still with us, he’d have been the first to do it — and do it, no doubt, the most inter­est­ing­ly.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

In 1999, David Bowie Pre­dicts the Good and Bad of the Inter­net: “We’re on the Cusp of Some­thing Exhil­a­rat­ing and Ter­ri­fy­ing”

David Bowie Sells Ice Cream, Sake, Coke & Water: Watch His TV Com­mer­cials from the 1960s Through 2013

How David Bowie Deliv­ered His Two Most Famous Farewells: As Zig­gy Star­dust in 1973, and at the End of His Life in 2016

John Tur­tur­ro Intro­duces Amer­i­ca to the World Wide Web in 1999: Watch A Beginner’s Guide To The Inter­net

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.

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Watch Free Plays from Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre: Romeo & Juliet, Macbeth & More

in K-12, Life, Literature, Theatre | April 28th, 2020

As depress­ing arti­cles about the upcom­ing Sum­mer of COVID-19 begin to pro­lif­er­ate, our hopes for beach days, con­cert series, and sum­mer camp begin to dim.

Here in New York City, the Pub­lic Theater’s announce­ment that it is can­celling the upcom­ing sea­son of its famed Shake­speare in the Park was met with under­stand­able sad­ness.

You don’t have to like Shake­speare to enjoy the rit­u­al of enter­ing Cen­tral Park short­ly after dawn, pre­pared to sit online for sev­er­al hours await­ing noon’s free tick­et dis­tri­b­u­tion, then return­ing to the Dela­corte lat­er that night with snacks and sweater and wine.

Per­form­ing a quick Inter­net search to brush up on the plot can enhance the expe­ri­ence, but—and I saw this as some­one whose degree includ­ed a met­ric heinieload of The Bard—it can be equal­ly sat­is­fy­ing to spend the final acts enjoy­ing an impromp­tu, al fres­co nap.

Bonus points if a rac­coon runs across the stage at some point.

Alas all this must be denied us in the sum­mer of 2020, but it’s still with­in our pow­er to repli­cate that sum­mer feel­ing in advance of the equinox, using the past pro­duc­tions that London’s Globe The­atre is screen­ing on its YouTube chan­nel as our start­ing place.

First up is Romeo & Juli­et from 2009, star­ring Ellie Kendrick and Adetomi­wa Edun, though accord­ing to the Inde­pen­dent’s Michael Coveney, the show belongs to Pen­ny Lay­den as the Nurse:

Far removed from the fuss­ing tra­di­tion of com­ic gar­ruli­ty and the Patri­cia Rout­ledge fac­tor, Lay­den plays her as a scrubbed, mid­dle-aged, sen­si­ble woman car­ry­ing a his­to­ry of sad­ness. The bawdy assault on her by Philip Cum­bus’s melan­choly Mer­cu­tio is both shock­ing and plau­si­ble, and she retains her qui­et dig­ni­ty while at the same time mourn­ing its sac­ri­fice.

Back to New York City…

Pri­or to start­ing your screen­ing, you’ll want to approx­i­mate a seat at the Dela­corte (which, like the Globe, is authen­ti­cal­ly cir­cu­lar in shape). I rec­om­mend a met­al fold­ing chair.

Sprin­kle a table­spoon or so of water onto the seat if you want to pre­tend it rained all after­noon lead­ing up to the per­for­mance.

Def­i­nite­ly have some wine to pour into a plas­tic cup.

Slather your­self in insect repel­lent.

Silence your cell phone.

If your housemate’s cell phone goes off mid-per­for­mance, feel free to tsk and sssh and roll your eyes. Hon­est­ly, how hard is it to com­ply with the famil­iar instruc­tions of the house manager’s speech?

At inter­mis­sion, stand out­side your own bath­room door for at least 15 min­utes before let­ting your­self into a “stall” to use the facil­i­ties.

Doze all you want to…. arrange for your house­mate to tsk and sssh at you from an appro­pri­ate dis­tance, should your snor­ing become audi­ble.

You have until Sun­day, May 3 to stum­ble sleep­i­ly away from the screen, and pre­tend you’re wan­der­ing to the sub­way with 1799 oth­er New York­ers.

Then make plans to wake up at 5:30 and sit on the floor with a ther­mos of cof­fee for sev­er­al hours, hop­ing that they won’t run out of tick­ets for The Two Noble Kins­men before you make it to the top of the line.

(Spoil­er alert: they won’t.)

Oth­ers in the Globe’s free series:

Mac­Beth, May 11 until UK schools reopen

The Winter’s Tale (2018), May 18 — May 31

The Mer­ry Wives of Wind­sor (2019), June 1 — June 14

A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream (2013), June 15 — 28

Click­ing the red “dis­cov­er more” lozenge beneath each show’s pho­to on the Globe Watch’s land­ing page will lead you to a wealth of sup­port­ing mate­ri­als, from pre-show chats with the Globe’s Post-Doc­tor­al Research Fel­low Will Tosh to pho­tos, arti­cles, and a stu­dent chal­lenge specif­i­cal­ly tai­lored to the times we find our­selves liv­ing through now.

Sub­scribe to the Globe’s YouTube chan­nel to receive reminders.

Donate to the Globe here.

Amer­i­cans can make a tax-deductible dona­tion to The Pub­lic The­ater here.

via My Mod­ern Met

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Shakespeare’s Globe The­atre in Lon­don

A 68 Hour Playlist of Shakespeare’s Plays Being Per­formed by Great Actors: Giel­gud, McK­ellen & More

A Free Shake­speare Col­or­ing Book: While Away the Hours Col­or­ing in Illus­tra­tions of 35 Clas­sic Plays

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Depend­ing on how long this thing goes on, she may look into giv­ing Pen­ny Lay­den a run for the mon­ey by live-stream­ing her solo show, NURSE. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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