S-Town | stownpodcast.org
The Shock (Radio 4) | iPlayer
Yeah, But It’s Not As Simple As That (Vice) | vice.com
A lot of post-S-Town discussion among friends on social media. Some found it irritating: the loose ends too loose, the accents impenetrable, the central character, John B McLemore, uncharismatic. Some (I am one) were so enchanted by the series that they went back and listened to it all over again. It’s more moving the second time around, as you know what’s going to happen. I found myself in tears more often. (Also, is there a sense that McLemore knows, too, what will occur, and entices Brian Reed into his world so Reed can be a witness?) There are, indeed, many loose ends, and we are warned at the beginning about this, when Reed explains how a horologist, when mending an old clock, has to follow the traces of previous mechanics in order to work out how the clock was made, but that this process entails guesswork and frustration, the following of false leads. Anyway, even if you don’t like S-Town, it bodes well for podcasting as a medium. A TV documentary would have been too lumbering and structured, a novel too short and inconsequential. S-Town was all about the voices and the atmosphere, and audio was the only way to tell its tale.
There was some lovely audio work, too, in The Shock, Jude Rogers’s Radio 4 documentary on what happens to our brains during extreme events. Rogers’s father died unexpectedly when she was five, and she can recall the morning just before she was told in vivid detail. But why? What was her young brain doing? What is it about trauma that alters the way our brains work? Rogers talked to others who had been through shock, and to experts in evolutionary and brain science. There were some fascinating revelations about how our hearts and brains interact, but what I really enjoyed were the real-life stories of people who had surprised a burglar, or who had been through a terrifying war situation, or whose children had nearly died. I could have done with a tiny little bit more of those tales and a tiny bit less of the helicopter ambulance pilot, but that is a niggle. The beautiful interweaving of voices, Rogers’s own descriptions and empathy, and the scientific insight made this a really excellent listen.
Vice has revamped its podcast, the promisingly titled Yeah, But It’s Not As Simple As That. And it’s a bit better, but not as good as it should be. Vice has so much going for it: energy, wit, the ability to be in the right place at the right time. Its writers are some of the best out there; its documentaries reach places that others don’t. By comparison, its podcast seems parochial. All the topics are excellent (crap jobs, social media, what stops you fancying people), and the interviews aren’t bad. The problem is the Vice panel. Everyone on it, charming as they are, has the same views, with teeny variations. A show about the future of tracking apps began well, with two interesting interviews – one with a woman who distributes a pelvic-floor-strengthening vaginal pebble that sends results to an app, the other with the author Yuval Noah Harari. (Though when you interview someone for broadcast, don’t keep making an “mmmm” agreeing noise. We can hear you). But the Vice panel’s thoughts on the topic offered as much insight as a five-pints-in pub conversation. If they went a little deeper with their responses, if the interviews were allowed to breathe, if someone could venture out of their comfort zone, then this podcast could be brilliant.
