Born Yesterday: The Emperor and The Empress of the United States.

February 16, 2016

Once again, coming in a little late. By way of an excuse, here’s a very distracting space opera.

With that out of the way—on to the matter at hand: Born Yesterday. I tend to lean toward history podcasts. You got one last week, and you’re likely to get one next week. If you’re feeling skeptical, I get it. It’s tough in these streets. History buffs ain’t always great podcasters. Delivery can be dry. Stories can be lifeless. But when you find a good one, it’s hard to beat. Born Yesterday is a good one, and because I’m like 90% sure it’s dead, it would be easy to miss.

I’ve already shared a couple of history projects on here already. Memory Palace typically finds a historical afterthought you’ve never heard of and then polishes it into a gem. Hardcore History takes the thing you’ve heard about a million times before and then pulls, and pries, and disassembles the story. Born Yesterday falls somewhere in between. Joey Brunelle does a four-parter on the Punic Wars, but he also did a pair on the Aztecs and the history of sea shanties. He tells stories that dive deep without losing their momentum. The production quality is solid.

The episode I’m sharing is called The Emperor and Empress of the United States. I’ll admit the setting in San Francisco does a lot for me—hearing street names I recognize automatically snaps me into the story. But that said, the narrative is so unique, so extensive, and connected in such an unexpected way that I can’t imagine it failing to charm anyone. Perhaps you remember Batkid? Well San Francisco has been good at participatory municipal fantasy for a very long time. The episode opens with Emperor Joshua Norton—a man who made a fortune in the gold rush, lost it, and then lost his mind. But what happened next is special. Norton began calling himself Emperor of the United States… and the city went with it.

Then about half a century later Jose Sarria joined the Army in the wake of Pearl Harbor. The only problem? Sarria was gay—and a couple inches short of the Army’s height requirements. But those hurdles were inconsequential against Sarria’s undeniable skills at, well, pretty much everything. How he ends up as Norton’s widow I’ll leave for Brunelle’s narrative. One last thing—Jose Sarria? First openly gay candidate for public office in the U.S. You need to hear this story.

The last thing I’ll mention is a piece of indecision. I went back and forth between this episode and an earlier one about the history of the gay bar. I went with the Emperor and the Empress, but the gay bar episode is pretty fantastic as well.

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Hardcore History: The American Peril

February 8, 2016

Americans going ashore at Daiquiri by James Burton

Just a tad behind this week, but I hope this recommendation will make the wait worthwhile. Yes, I got held up by the Superbowl, but I also decided I wanted to relisten to the show before I wrote it up. And if you get familiar with this particular podcast you’ll know that can be a bit of a commitment.

Hardcore History is a pretty lame title for a show, but don’t let it throw you off. Dan Carlin’s shows are intelligent, eclectic, and broad (like really broad). But most of all—they’re just really fucking fun. The perspective leans pretty heavily toward military history, but he does a good job of presenting the political and social moment in which the stories occur. At this point there are still fewer than sixty episodes at this point, but Carlin has been at it for about a decade. That’s because the episodes only come out about one every three months. And that’s because they’re monumental. The last episode on the Achaemenid Persian Empire is three and a half hours long. The six episode series on World War One clocks in right around twenty-two hours—the production took him almost two years.

Colonel Roosevelt and his Rough Riders at the top of the hill which they captured, Battle of San Juan by William Dinwiddie

The episode I’m suggesting this week is the one that immediately precedes that WWI series. It looks at Teddy Roosevelt and the U.S. on the verge of becoming an imperial power. It stretches from the explosion of the USS Maine in Cuba through the Spanish American War and it explains the role this moment played in shaping American attitudes just ahead of WWI. In every episode Carlin builds a narrative full of colorful asides and interesting historical connections. There’s William Randolph Hearst suggesting a brigade of the country’s athletes would be enough to overawe and defeat the Spanish military. There are comparisons between late 19th century jingoism and present day neo-conservative foreign policy.

Clearly, if military history is not your thing, you won’t love everything Carlin does, although there are plenty of interesting episodes that depart from the battlefield. But the thing that keeps Carlin so interesting is his ability to retain and impart a healthy skepticism of the motivations behind conflict. There are interesting ruminations on how the country’s racism prompted paternalistic efforts to expand borders. But at the same time that racism elicited fear of the increasing dark-skinned population that would come with imperialism. Carlin considers Roosevelt’s full-throated (and frankly insane) nationalism, and he gives him credit for participating in the conflict rather than sitting on the sidelines. But he also talks about how much that aggressive posture cost Roosevelt later in life. The episode depicts Roosevelt’s boy-like desire to prove himself brave and gallant in battle with little if any thought for consequences. The country’s foreign policy at the time parallels his story as easy success in Cuba gave way to a bloody, stubborn conflict in the Philippines.

This episode is just over four hours—so yeah, probably not great for a single sitting. But it’s one of my favorite examples of a stand-alone Hardcore History episode. If you like it there are a handful of really good multi-episode series. In addition to the one on WWI, there is another about the Mongols that’s still available. The ones about the fall of the Roman Republic and The Punic Wars aren’t available on iTunes any longer, but they’re real goodies if you can track them down. Stay tuned—there will be more to say about roman history.

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Reveal: Do Not Drink. The Water Crisis In Flint Michigan

January 25, 2016

The point of this blog is to share great podcast episodes with someone who just got into the medium. For the most part that means looking back, but hey—things come up. So surprise! I’m moving things forward this week. I just listened to this episode and I suggest you do so, too.

The water crisis in Flint, Michigan has been a major feature in national news for the past few weeks. The situation right now is bad, but the episode I’m sharing this week shows the year or so leading up to now was even worse. It comes from Michigan Public Radio and it airs on a show called Reveal. This time of year is awards season for journalists—I’m glad I’m not going up against them.

The thread that carries us through the episode is a woman named Lee Anne Walters. She first began noticing problems with the water when her two boys started breaking out in a rash every time they went swimming. Lindsey Smith and the MPR team weave together local and state officials as well as the doctors and scientists who eventually forced those officials to take the matter seriously. They lay out a coherent, thoughtful timeline showing how and why Flint ended up where it is today. More importantly for me, the character portraits are clean and well observed. Each person comes across as human—even the public servants who have been forced to resign.

You won’t find any smoking guns, and the story doesn’t vilify the state’s political establishment. It’s clear from this and other reporting that very important people failed to do their job—often spectacularly. But what’s worse, Do Not Drink shows many of those people failed to care about what would happen to the citizens they were charged with serving. Smith makes the failures in Flint plain, but her work is restrained and evenhanded. It’s all the more damning because of it.

Now for the less fun part. Reveal is not in my regular lineup. The production is strong, the host Al Letson is good, and the topics are interesting, but my feelings remain lukewarm. Admittedly, I don’t listen on a regular basis, so take my opinion with a grain of salt.

My biggest complaint is episodes sometimes fail to really hang together around a central theme. An episode titled The Secrets of Church, State, and Business talks about Jehovah’s witnesses, broadband internet policy, and soldiers coping with their involvement in torture. If you’re scratching your head, the theme is secrets. All three are interesting subjects worthy of an hour-long show, but I don’t think they make much sense together. MPR’s piece is a freelance production Reveal fit into its format. But even if they didn't write it, the episode has me thinking about checking up on the show more frequently.

So definitely go listen to Do Not Drink. If you use iTunes, you’ll end up with Reveal in your feed. Maybe subscribe, maybe don’t. But definitely check back.

99% Invisible: Razzle Dazzle

January 24, 2016

Olympic with Returned Soldiers Arthur Lismer — *Olympic with Returned Soldiers* Arthur Lismer

I went back and forth on this one. There are a couple of old episodes from 99% Invisible that are real biggies for me, and I wasn’t exactly sure where I’d come down. More recently, the show has put out great episodes about the carpet in Portland’s airport, challenge coins, and flags. Roman Mars is real into flags.

But for this week I want to reach back a bit further to a show about Dazzle. It’s a type of camouflage developed in the First World War primarily to counter submarines. When you hear the word camouflage, you probably imagine patterns that are meant to blend into a background, but this is completely different. The patterns are loud, geometric explosions designed to hide a ship’s course rather than the ship itself. Dazzle is visually striking, and the show does a great job conveying just how weird it is.

99% Invisible is a design podcast, but the show defines that word in its broadest sense. It's a really good mix of episodes about the familiar things you take for granted and designed objects you’ve never heard of. In terms of production, 99% Invisible is complex, inventive and engaging. More than anything though, it’s absolutely fucking crisp. Every detail in every show is absolutely perfect—it’s jaw dropping. What’s more, the show’s host, Roman Mars, is the driving force behind Radiotopia—it’s a podcast collective that got up and running through annual kickstarter drives. Memory Palace (from Week 1) is now part of Radiotopia, but there are a ton of other well crafted shows including Criminal, Love+Radio and Song Exploder on their slate, too.

Radiolab: Deception

January 17, 2016

Isaac Blessing Jacob, Gioachino Assereto — *Isaac Blessing Jacob*, Gioachino Assereto

For the third week, I’m turning to another of the handful of big, unavoidable narrative podcasts out there. If you already listen to podcasts, there’s a decent chance you’re already listening to Radiolab. But I’m going to reach back to an early episode called Deception.

Radiolab has sort of broken away from these kinds of shows. At the outset, their episodes looked at the science behind almost impossibly broad subjects: morality, stress, memory and the like. But as they’ve moved forward the episodes have narrowed and the show has wandered away from its focus on science. Stories about a premature birth, child custody, and the language behind war are some of their best work.

But for now, on to Deception.

This episode is broken into three segments but it feels closer to five. The part about microexpressions—facial movements that hint at underlying emotions—is one of my favorite produced interviews, in part because it seems like it almost didn’t happen. The tape with Jad trying out the microexpression game on the side of a road is great, but I kind of doubt that’s how they were expecting the show to go. It’s spontaneous (and probably a bit frantic) but it translates into a great scene.

But the episode’s gravitational center is a segment about a con artist and pathological liar. The reporter Ellen Horne uses this brilliant comparison of earthquakes and aftershocks to explain what being conned is like. In the interest of avoiding spoilers I’ll leave it at that.

Deception came out in Radiolab’s fourth season—they’re on fourteen now—but it isn’t up on iTunes. They do host about 150 other full length episodes and shorts though. If you want to hear Deception you can stream it here or download the whole thing on Radiolab’s website.

apéritif.