https://gimletmedia.com/heavyweight/
I wasn’t necessarily convinced at first, but Heavyweight is turning into a podcast of epic proportions. Jonathan Goldstein and team have found a superb formula for storytelling that worms its way in until you can’t wait for more.
Go give it a listen. It’s good.
My latest musical discovery, which I’m quite happy to brag about, is the “NPR: Live Concerts from All Songs Considered Podcast“, from which I’m hurriedly downloading a couple episodes as fast as possible. I’m a real sucker for live performances and getting a true indication of an artist’s ability, which is why this is so awesome.
There’s a lot of great free stuff in this and a couple of NPR’s other podcasts – this one has live recordings from SXSW 2009, including The Decemberists pulling off their first live performance of their new record, The Hazards of Love, and SA boys BLK JKS giving their first appearance at the festival. Other stuff in the podcast includes Rilo Kiley, Jenny Lewis, Radiohead, Wilco, DeVotchka, She&Him and even Tom Waits, so it’s definitely worth checking out.
If you’re impatient for all the content to end up in the podcast, head over directly to the corresponding NPR: Live Concerts from All Songs Considered website, where you’ll find even more great stuff, including Kings of Leon, Regina Spektor, Arcade Fire and Death Cab for Cutie.
It’s beginning to feel a lot like Christmas!
And the Christmas bonus is the NPR: All Songs Considered Podcast (yes, I know they kinda sound the same, but all these links actually go to different content). On this show you’ll get a regular chance to hear a further variety of damn good music.
So who said radio is dead? NPR shines at it leads the way forward.
[Thanks for the inspiration, Wendy!]
If you want the lowdown on what exactly has happened in the global economy to cause the panic and strain we’ve been seeing over the past few weeks in finance markets worldwide, you could do a lot worse than the following links:
In The Giant Pool of Money, This American Life producer Alex Blumberg teams up with NPR’s Adam Davidson to tell the surprisingly entertaining story of how the U.S. got itself into a housing crisis.
In the follow up show, Another Frightening Show About the Economy, Alex Blumberg and Adam Davidson recount what happened when the credit markets froze, and how the housing crisis started impacting the markets as a whole through the ‘evils’ of unregulated credit default swaps.
In plain spoken English these guys do a great job of informing the rest of us exactly what the hell happened.
As an added bonus, they’ve now started the Planet Money Podcast and Planet Money Blog, essential material for anyone who wants to keep abreast of what is happening in the world of money.
Very, very interesting news – keep an eye on this site for news about Barney Simon’s radio future. I spoke to him on Saturday at The Rock Concert 6 at Carnival City, and he indicated his interest in releasing his show as a podcast while he works on bringing his choice of rock music back into mainstream radio.
I definitely underestimated Barney’s tech-savvy on this one – podcasting is the perfect medium for rock (and any other style of alternative) radio in South Africa’s licensing-choked broadcast industry. Hopefully the podcast will stay online even once he goes over the air again.