A Podcast Club – Page 2 – we listen so you listen to what's good

The Killing of Marilyn Monroe

By corbett on Tuesday, December 3, 2019

👎🏻👎🏽👎🏾 👍🏿“This podcast is like a 15 page paper that could have really taken up 2 pages” – a direct quote from our @marcopolo discussion. Needless to say, this story of Marilyn Monroe’s life and death was tragically drawn out. Spread over twelve 25-minute episodes, with the same sound bites recycled throughout, this storytelling was deathly repetitive to say the least. Our lone thumbs up is from a place of appreciation that the podcast served as a reminder of the mysterious demise of this American icon, allowing a whole new generation of people to question if Marilyn indeed committed suicide. This podcast may better seduce its listeners by diving deeper into the intel people thought Marilyn knew, as it seems the consensus she knew far more than she should have. We labored through to the end and suggest if you want to give it a listen to save some time and listen to the first couple of episodes and the last few, and you’ll get the gist. @marilynmonroe @endeavoraudio #podcast

About the show | How did Hollywood’s brightest star become its most tragic victim? From Norma Jeane, casting couch girl desperate for success, to Marilyn Monroe, global icon, it was Marilyn’s turbulent love life that ultimately sealed her final fate. Surrounded by a deadly cocktail of pills, her death was ruled “probable suicide,” but questions remain surrounding just how – and why – she died. This 12-part audio documentary analyzes the tangle of sex, power, corruption, and lies that led the most powerful men in America to silence Marilyn Monroe for good.

Review written by @ohcando photo by @pirate_ali_vega

fiction mystery

Blackout

By corbett on Tuesday, September 24, 2019

👍🏻👍🏽👍🏾👍🏿 In a society dependent on the conveniences of electronic devices to map our way, stay in touch or… like a breakfast photo on Instagram, could we survive a nationwide crisis that knocks out the electrical grid and all communication? This fictional podcast is centered on a family trying to do just that. Imagine being trapped in a small town, no power, no cell service, right before the New England winter hits and the only people you can trust are your family. Starring Rami Malek (Mr. Robot, Bohemian Rhapsody) and a whole host of talented actors – this podcast did not disappoint. With plenty of clues along the way, we all had ideas about what or who caused the Blackout! Thankfully, because it’s scripted, there was a resolution that satisfied our outlandish theories. We commented several times on the amazing depth and quality of the sound design, it’s no wonder it’s sponsored by @Sonos.
So charge up your phone, start stockpiling batteries and get ready to hear some New England accents. We caahn’t wait fah ya to become ah listenah!

About: A small-town New Hampshire radio DJ fights to protect his family and community after the power grid goes down nationwide. All of the gadgets society is dependent on are suddenly accessible. Upending modern civilization, the town subsequently descends into an upheaval as people begin to realize they are not prepared to deal with the long-term repercussions of this cataclysmic attack on the power grid.

From: Endeaver Audio Genre: Fiction Starring: Rami Malek (Mr. Robot, Bohemian Rhapsody)

documentary

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

fiction thriller

The Deep Vault

By corbett on Wednesday, July 24, 2019

👍🏻👍🏼👎🏽👎🏾 After much deliberation between the two Sci-Fi fans in this group vs the two non-Sci-Fi fans it was decided that, although the plot was creative, the script lacked imagination. We discussed how repetitive word (and curse word) choice in the script became tiresome and how there were missed opportunities for technical word-play to describe ideas such as the monstrous creatures or the vault itself! Not to mention the incongruous first, second and third act that had us asking “did three different people write this in a game of pass-the-story?”. For these reasons we are split 50-50 in recommending this podcast. The two Sci-Fi fans recommend it for its decent sound design and intriguing mystery. The two non-Sci-Fi fans will point out the huge plot inconsistencies and bad dialogue in the script.
#podcast #thedeepvault #fictionalpodcast

About: Robotic servants, tooth-filled monsters, and terrible computers collide within the claustrophobic, steel-reinforced walls of The Deep Vault, a modern day homage to the golden age of sci-fi radio drama. The Deep Vault is a serialized, seven-episode audio drama set in in the almost-post-apocalyptic United States. The story follows a group of longtime friends as they journey from the uninhabitable surface world into a mysterious underground bunker in search of safety, shelter, and answers to their past.

From:Dead Signals
Genre: Science Fiction
Starring: From the creators of Archive 81

true crime

Teacher’s Pet

By corbett on Sunday, July 14, 2019

👎🏻👍🏼👍🏽👍🏾 Our love for true crime stories and faux detective work brought us to The Teachers Pet. According to the podcast itself, Teacher’s Pet is famous in Australia as a real life drama that’s widely followed nationwide. The story accounts a mother gone missing after her husband, a high school teacher, begins a love affair with one of his students in the early 1980s. The podcast started off slow, peaked, then slowed again. Aside from the fact that it felt like there were a never-ending amount of episodes, the content was repetitive to say the least. Over a span of 3-4 episodes they would tell the exact same “facts” but just told by a different person. Nothing new. Although the outcome seemed to be leading up to some potential fulfillment on the overall time-investment, in the end we concluded that it was too long and too repetitive for your time. #truecrime #podcast #teacherspetpodcast #hedleythomas #hernamewaslyndawson

About: A star rugby footballer. His school girl lover. A wife who vanishes. Chris and Lyn appear to have the perfect marriage. But when Lyn goes missing, dark secrets are buried. This is no fairytale, but a sordid story of strangely close twin brothers, teenage student lovers, and probable murder. The unsolved murder of Australia’s Lyn Dawson.

From:The Australian
Genre: True Crime
Starring: Investigated and written by Hedley Thomas.

true crime

Case Closed

By corbett on Tuesday, July 2, 2019

👎🏻👍🏼👎🏽👎🏾 The group is split 50/50 in giving this one a recommendation. We feel it’s a good podcast for a group listen because it provides a lot of opportunities for guessing who the murderer might be as the episodes progress. However, we felt deceived in that it isn’t the typical true crime genre where a cold case is being investigated by a host digging up new clues from the past. Rather this podcast is exactly what the title indicates – a ‘case’ that was ‘closed’ by the authorities investigating it initially. It’s a recount of the events, the investigation and the trial that took place. The reason for throwing shade on this podcast is that the main driver of the storyline is heavily reliant on the book “Secrets of a Marine’s Wife” by Shanna Hogan. Shanna is one of the main authorities throughout the discourse so in a way listening feels like the show is somehow cheating on its Oral Book Report.
insta links: @macmillanpodcasts #truecrime #podcast

About: Case Closed is a true crime podcast about the times the bad guy didn’t get away with it. Season 1 investigates the murder of Erin Corwin, who was just 19 years old when she kissed her husband Jon goodbye at the Marine base in Twentynine Palms, California, and headed to Joshua Tree National Park to scout hiking trails. It was the last time he would ever see her alive. A true story of marriage, obsession, and murder. Learn more at bit.ly/MarinesWife

From:Macmillan
Genre: True Crime
Starring: Hosted by Charlie Spicer. Based on the book Secrets of a Marine’s Wife by New York Times bestselling author Shanna Hogan.

fiction murder mystery mystery

Deadly Manners

By corbett on Monday, June 24, 2019

👎🏻👎🏼👎🏽👎🏾 We were warned by the reviews and listened anyway. Overall consensus is that this podcast was extra cheesy and sadly a waist of a lot of talent. It was painful to listen to at times. We do not recommend this podcast, you’ve been warned. #podcast @deadlymanners

About: Deadly Manners is a 10 episode, dark comedy murder-mystery series set in the winter of 1954. It follows the events during the night of the affluent Billings family annual dinner party with their distinguished, eccentric guests. However, all is not fun and games as shortly after the party starts, a snowstorm begins to rage outside, trapping all the partygoers inside their host’s mansion. When a murderer starts killing off those in attendance, the guests must figure out who is responsible, or at least how to stay alive — lest they be next.

From: Created by Ali Garfinkel and Alex Aldea Lisbyn Website
Genre: Murder mystery
Starring: Kristen Bell, Denis O’Hare, RuPaul & Narrated by LeVar Burton