Keep It!
Ira Madison III, culture critic and columnist, is joined each week by journalists, comedians, actors, musicians and just about anyone remotely connected to pop culture and mainstream media, for a conversation that broadly intersects pop culture and politics at a time when we’re all obsessing over both. The #MeToo and Time’s Up movements feature mainly in these early days of the podcast, and Madison’s tongue-in-cheek rhetoric moves the conversations along in a swift and engaging manner. New episodes drop every Wednesday.
The Start
Guardian’s new podcast The Start is all about art and its beginnings, as told by some of the greater artists of our time. Focusing on one work, the artists share how these early moments of creativity shaped them, the influence it had on their subsequent work, and what the piece now means to them in retrospect. In the first episode of The Start, director Sofia Coppola reveals how personal tragedy — and her own not-too-distant adolescence — fed into the process of telling a story about youth and loss in her first film The Virgin Suicides (1999); and explains the emotional significance the film holds for her today.
Launch
A podcast we’re especially excited about is Wondery’s Launch, a deep dive into the world of book publishing through the eyes of screenwriter John August (Go, Big Fish, Charlie and The Chocolate Factory). As August went about writing his debut novel, to be launched in the real world in less than two weeks, he also started recording interviews with authors, agents, publishers and everyone remotely connected to writing the book. The podcast will now use those interviews to examine just how a book is made: from inception to publishing, selling, book tours and everything else in between, and also just how the shadow of Harry Potter looms over everything.
101: The Ways We Learn
A new series produced by the guys at Ireland’s Bureau, 101: The Ways We Learn explores quite imaginatively the adage about old dogs and new tricks. In each new episode, hosts Shane Bergin (and Jane Chadwick, both scientists, follow a full-grown adult learning a new skill — whether it’s cooking, cycling, activism or graphic design. In episode one, we meet physicist Jessamyn Fairfield, who is learning the joys of cycling. And in episode two, we meet Sinead Burke, a PhD in human rights, who indulges herself in a childhood dream — to learn how to make a perfume. The podcast is a wondrous exploration of how the brain works and how, even as we age and find ourselves grating against all things new, it has the capacity to constantly surprise us.
