August 2019 – A Podcast Club

The Big One

By corbett on Saturday, August 24, 2019

👍🏻👍🏽👍🏿 Are you prepared? Do you and your family have a plan for when The Big One hits? This 9 episode podcast does a splendid job of making a not-so-fun topic into something entertaining! Opposed to a show focused on “prepping”, with boring lists that make you feel woefully unprepared, this show focuses on the storytelling — making it an enticing listen. During debriefs we discussed our memories of earthquakes growing up in Southern California and what we could do now to develop a plan for our families. Each episode tends to blend together a first person fictional scenario, an interview with a disaster survivor, a scientist & an expert. At the end of the credits the listener is rewarded with tips on how to prepare for a disaster. The overall effect attempts to make listeners feel empowered to make small changes in their life to be ready to brace for The Big One. This was an eye opening podcast into what it will take to survive a major earthquake. Listen to the show to learn why the following tips are life savers:
~Get online and buy all of these items… immediately! a First Aid kit (i.e. taking broken glass out of your feet), a hand-crank radio, “get home kit” for your car, and a paper map of your hometown.
~Find out if your home is on a Fault or Liquefaction zone https://the-big-one.scpr.org/stories/
~Shake Alert LA app, download it
~Drop cover and hold on
~Text don’t call (less bandwidth)
~Rhythmic noise vs yelling; If trapped = bang object
~Always have ½ tank of gas
~Don’t sleep naked and have shoes nearby
~Keep water stored (1 gal = per person per day)
~Fire extinguisher, buy one or know where they are (Pull,Aim, Squeeze, Sweep)
~Put copies of important paperwork on the cloud
~In a car: Pull over and wait for shaking to stop
~Renters: Get renters insurance for your belonging
~Renters: Know what the landlord will do in disaster if your home is unlivable
~Homeowner: Get Earthquake and Fire insurance
~Free temporary housing for disaster survivors https://www.airbnb.com/openhomes
~Talk about the (pending) earthquake
@kpcc #TheBigOne #earthquake

About: When The Big One hits it’ll take under two minutes for more than 10 million Southern Californians to lose internet, power, and a sense of security. Host Jacob Margolis and Producer Misha Euceph take you on a journey to understand what the catastrophic earthquake will mean for Los Angeles, the U.S., and the world. This is what you need to know to survive.

From: KPCC
Genre: Educational (but entertaining!)

Fashion

Wolverine: The Lost Trail

By corbett on Thursday, August 15, 2019

👍🏻👍🏽👍🏾👎🏿 The majority of us being Marvel fans this was satisfying to get a slice of some X-Men pie while in between major motion pictures. Compared to Wolverine: The Long Night we had major problems with 1) the sound mixing not favoring the dialogue which made character conversations hard to decipher and 2) the script lacking action descriptions during fight scenes which made it hard to comprehend what was going on. The sound mixing issue was slightly remedied by listening to the podcast on headphones, opposed to car speakers, however this did not resolve the lack of description during action scenes. We’re not talking about a cheesy play-by-play (eh hem “Deadly Manners”) but an “Aww my leg!” would have helped out substantially. Usually, within the same episode the script would allude to what happened during the action sequence. But it’s a shame the description isn’t happening at the height of the sequence, because that’s when we were most engaged. Our visualization of the scene goes from a vivid depiction of Hugh Jackman (why picture another Wolverine) to a complete black-out because we couldn’t figure out what was going on! As fans of X-Men we would recommend this podcast as this season featured more mutants and had a redeemable ending…. Just listen on your headphones! #fictionpodcast @officialwolverine #WolverinePodcast @marvel

About: The follow up season to Marvel’s “Wolverine: The Lost Trail” is an epic quest that takes place in the Louisiana bayou. Following the events of the previous season, Logan returns to New Orleans in search of redemption, only to discover that his ex-lover, Maureen is nowhere to be found. And she’s not the only one. Dozens of humans and mutants have gone missing, including the mother of a teenage boy, Marcus Baptiste. With Weapon X in close pursuit, Logan and Marcus must team up and follow a trail of clues that leads them deep into the gothic heart of the bayou, where they encounter biker gangs, Cajun thieves and a world of wonders that defies explanation. It is here that they find Greenhaven — a refuge run by a powerful mutant named Jason Wyngarde.

From:MarvelGenre: Science FictionStarring: Celia Keenan-Bolger, Ato Essandoh, Richard Armitage

fiction thriller

The Walk

By corbett on Wednesday, August 14, 2019

👍🏻👍🏽👍🏾👍🏿 This 31 episode podcast took our group almost 2 months to finish! Despite the length, The Walk kept us on our toes, with each of us keeping up with the listening and debriefing of each episode. From the beginning, all four of us had our thumbs up! The format was new for us, with the story being told as if we (the listener) are the main character “Walker” and an integral part of the story. At first this caused confusion in the group; at some point all four of us went back to relisten to Ep. 1 once we found our rhythm with the unique storytelling. Being a part of the story was captivating! It must have been quite the script writing challenge being that “Walker” never actually speaks, and is only spoken to with all “our” actions being described by the other characters in the story. This entertaining listen really inspired our inner detectives, allowing us to find ways to weave our theories into the listening experience. Perhaps the most intriguing thing to know about The Walk is that it was funded by the UK’s Department of Health as a way to get people outside walking for the duration of each 23 minute episode.
Insta links: #fictionalpodcast

About: The story has been adapted from UK-based Six to Start and author Naomi Alderman’s popular fitness app by the same name. The story begins in Inverness station, Scotland. Through a case of mistaken identity, “Walker” is given a vital package that could save the world. It must be couriered to Edinburgh, but all of the roads are closed to cars and the trains aren’t working due to an explosion. To survive, the listener must walk with other escapees from the city, not knowing if they can trust those around them in a rapidly disintegrating situation.

From:Megaphone (formerly Panoply Media)
Genre: Fiction
Starring: A thriller in which you, the listener, are the hero.

documentary true crime

Over My Dead Body

By corbett on Friday, August 2, 2019

There’s no question that @wonderymedia produces a great podcast. The overall experience of listening to not only Over My Dead Body, but other shows in the Wondery arsenal, is captivating because of the simple sound cues that help listeners really picture the story in their head. It’s almost a step ahead of watching a tv show, because the sounds and narration really help you use your imagination to picture the story in a way other podcasts just don’t. While the production value was strong, the resolve was lacking in the end. We can’t expect all stories to have a clear-cut ending, and this one certainly did not have that, nor did it leave us wanting more. As a group, we love to put in our early guesses of “whodunit” before the story really develops, and this one was difficult to do that since the story line didn’t quite follow that format. It’s worth a listen, but for the type of discussion and debate that our group enjoys when listening to a podcast, this one fell short.
@wonderymedia #truecrime #podcast

About: Dan and Wendi are two good-looking attorneys whose wedding is featured in the New York Times. But when this “perfect” couple falls apart, it leads to a bad breakup, a worse divorce, and a murder case involving a menagerie of high-priced lawyers and unexpected co-conspirators. “Tally,” the first season of “Over My Dead Body”, is a story that says as much about love and marriage as it does about justice, revenge, and the lengths some people will go to get what they want.

From:Wondery
Genre: True Crime
Starring: The team that brought you “Dirty John” and “Dr. Death” Hosted by Matthew Shaer

Month: August 2019

The Big One

Wolverine: The Lost Trail

The Walk

Over My Dead Body