Ethosophical

Audio Storytelling: The Essentials

Ever since This American Life pretty much invented the genre, modern radio and podcast producers have been making audio one of the great new mediums for innovative and challenging storytelling. Here are some of my favorites:

This American Life (PRI) is a public radio feature-length program featuring stories on a theme. Check out:

• The Friendly Man, a show featuring all stories by Scott Carrier.
• 81 Words, the story of how homosexuality was removed from the DSM.
• #1 Party School, a profile of homecoming weekend at Penn State.
• Heretics, on a charismatic preacher whose fortunes turned when he rejected the doctrine of Hell.
• Return to the Scene of the Crime, a well-balanced episode featuring great stories by Mike Birbiglia, Starlee Kine and Dan Savage, originally broadcast to movie theaters.

The Memory Palace (Nate DiMeo) is a short artistic podcast on history and historial memory. Check out:

• Six Scenes from the Life of William James Sidis, Wonderful Boy, about the reclusive and troubled child prodigy.
• Citius, Altius, Fortius, Horrendius , about the counter-productive running strategies of 1904 Olympics marathon silver metalist Thomas J Hicks.
• The Saddest President, on the alcoholism of Franklin Pierce.

Love + Radio (Chicago Public Radio / Third Coast) is a variable-length podcast with stories about young adulthood and the often simultaneously funny and serious pitfalls of growing up. Check out:

• The List, a heartbreaking story about a young husband’s attempt to cope with his wife’s death.
• In the Company of Men, a nice chat about lost love in a urinal.
• Show Me Yours, which is about exactly what you think it’s about.
• Love in Bits, about online dating.

99% Invisible (PRX) is a short program about the ways design influences our built environment and the ways we interact with it. Check out:

• 99% Private, on privately-owned public spaces.
• 99% Alien, on the design of the International Space Station.
• 99% Noise, on the civic soundscape.
• A Cheer for Samuel Plimsoll, on the man who saved British shipping by drawing a line.
• Elegy for WTC, a startlingly beautiful reflection on the anniversary of 9/11.

RadioLab (WNYC / NPR) is a thematic program about cognition, creativity and science. Check out:

• Cities, about the emotional connections we make with the places we live.
• Musical Language, about the musicality of our speech.
• Morality, about the science of ethics.
• Help!, about ways in which people trick their baser instincts into achieving big goals.

Too Much Information with Benjamen Walker (WFMU) is a feature-length program on our inner lives in the digital age. Check out:

• The Philosophical Life, about six philosophers and the sacrifices they made to achieve a contemplative lifestyle.
• Free to Behave Like a Fool or a Machine, about privacy on the Internet.
• Kicking Against the Prick, which opens with a great story about ChatRoulette addiction.
• Stages on Life’s Way, about Kierkegaard’s schema of human intellectual development.
• Guided by Voices, about three great scholars who turned away from the troubling thought that the universe is fundamentally chaotic.

These sonic IDs, created by Jay Allison for Cape and Islands Public Radio in Boston, are beautiful little bits of people’s stories, interwoven throughout the broadcast day.