Here continues a series where I discuss the podcasts I like to listen to. Because I’m sure you all care a great deal what it is I’m grinning like a kid about while I’m driving down the freeway. Perhaps you’ll find something interesting to listen to that will help you explore the world around you, or maybe just make you laugh.
If you are a discoverer of music, like myself, All Songs Considered is an invaluable resource. If you can spare 30 minutes a week to hear five or six full songs that host Bob Boilen (who I recently interviewed for Ghettoblaster Magazine) picks out of all the CDs that are mailed to him every week. He considers himself a curator of music, and the show is the product of his time and focus.
Aside from that, Bob and his crew travel the country and go to shows by the bands they like, then streams them on NPR’s site soon after for free. Boilen himself was at the Radiohead show in Santa Barbara that I went to last year.
Can I have your job, Bob? Cause… yeah, that’d be awesome.
I’ll keep this short: if you like music, and you want a quick, free and enjoyable way to get a few new samples every week, All Songs Considered is for you.
Here continues a series where I discuss the podcasts I like to listen to. Because I’m sure you all care a great deal what it is I’m grinning like a kid about while I’m driving down the freeway. Perhaps you’ll find something interesting to listen to that will help you explore the world around you, or maybe just make you laugh.
People tease me sometimes for listening to NPR on my clock radio in the morning. In my own defense, beyond the often-teased demeanor of their on-air personalities, they have some of the best content on the radio waves these days.
Also, I don’t pay much attention to the news on weekday mornings; I’m too tired when I wake up to notice much beyond the general idea of each headline. It’s the weekend content that I enjoy waking up to. And NPR’s crowning moment is Sunday morning at 11, when This American Life comes on.
Granted, I’m generally not paying close attention, but the stories are always intriguing. Ira Glass and company poke and prod the questions we never think to ask (like “what are people doing in the middle of the night while most of us sleep?”), then go find people who have experience and stories to tell about that question.
I recently started downloading podcast episodes more regularly on my Droid, (hence this series) so I’m hearing This American Life in full every week now. I have to say, it’s a highlight that makes my car rides and gym visits something I actually get excited about. Go figure, right?
This American Life is modern storytelling. In our complicated western world, we often lose track of some of the details and personalities behind the scenes of everyday life, and we don’t hear about the vast majority of the strange things that go on around us because nobody is telling the story. Ira Glass and company are here to help us change that.
Oh hey, look. Remember that time I said that anyone complaining that gay marriage destroys the sanctity of marriage should also be in support of a proposition banning divorce? Looks like it wasn’t just me.
In a movement that seems ripped from the pages of Comedy Channel writers, John Marcotte wants to put a measure on the ballot next year to ban divorce in California.
The 2010 California Marriage Protection Act is meant to be a satirical statement after California voters outlawed gay marriage in 2008, largely on the argument that a ban is needed to protect the sanctity of traditional marriage. If that’s the case, then Marcotte reasons voters should have no problem banning divorce.
[via NPR]
Props to that guy.
I suspect we get as worked up about music as we do because we believe it defines us — that music says something about who we are and what we believe, perhaps in ways more illuminating and honest than we could ever conjure on our own, since words alone often diminish the grand ideas and feelings we have inside.
[via NPR: Does Music Define You?]
Does music define me? Yes. Yes it does.
I often tell people that music is my fifth limb. If you can’t see that it’s there or why it’s necessary, you are never going to fully understand me.
I would venture to guess that anyone a passion and fervor for life and exploration and growth has a fifth limb. Maybe it’s books, or film, or photography, or travel, or food, or education. If you don’t have one, maybe it’s time to start letting one grow.
