running





This is the one that started it all for me - like the first transcendental Phish second set you witnessed (Vegas 2003 for me, if you don't count Big Cypress), this is the one I'm always chasing and my metric for all podcasts heard thereafter. I still remember where I was running when I heard certain parts of this story unfold - those sections of trail forever etched into my brain along with the misadventures of Adnan Syed and his pals.





Serial Season 1 is a murder-mystery at its core, but it really is so much more. High School senior Hae Min Lee disappears one day afterschool in 1999 and her ex boyfriend Adnan is arrested and sentenced to life in prison for a crime which he claims he did not commit. Adnan's friend Jay claims that he helped Adnan bury the body, and while you immediately get the feeling that something is up with Jay, you also get the feeling that nobody is telling the whole truth. It's a brilliant narrative spun about the complex world of high school relationships, immigrants in the United States, our flawed but kind of working judicial system, and an average person's inability to ever recall all the relevant details as a witness, especially when they need to.





If you haven't heard this yet - stop reading right now and put this on your phone or mp3 player (do people still use mp3 players? I would be lost without my Sansa Clip 4GB!) Exercise a bit of caution if you like to run alone in the middle of the night deep in the scary woods - there are some scenes from the first few episodes that might get a little spooky out there!





Okay, this is my sleeper entry for the year but honestly as I think about it one of my favorites. I was a little weary of a "Hip-Hop History meets biographic" podcast but it blew me away. The interviews, the storytelling, the quality of the history, and the music - it's all there in a brilliant description of the life of an extremely influential but not widely known Hip-Hop mogul.





The first episode lays the foundation for the art form arising out of the streets of early 1980s New York City and goes on from there. It includes one of the most clear descriptions of the origin of Break-dancing that I have heard, and the imagery is all there as well - you will feel like you are rolling out the sheets of cardboard in the Bronx back in the day.





you





Welcome to Night Vale is a twice-monthly podcast given in the form of community and news updates for the fictional, sci-fi desert community of Night Vale. I love the desert and all the weird shenanigans that go along with it, and Night Vale does an excellent job of capturing that overall creepy desert vibe. The episodes are short (20-30 minutes) and contain what you might expect to find in a small town's daily news briefing, along with the weather (which is usually an original piece of music that often has nothing to do with the weather) and esoteric warnings about supernatural beings roaming around the streets. The imagery is great, it's nothing so serious that it will stress you out, and you can really come and go as you please. The website claims you don't even have to start with Episode #1, although I certainly did. Give this a shot if you're kind of weird, ever been into any kind of sci-fi, like weird desert communities, aliens, dog parks, hooded figures, or creative weather forecasts.

Labels: podcasts