Never News: Halloween Dispatch
[To call this place a pumpkin patch wouldn't be entirely true. All around you in the field are the grinning, illuminated faces of hundreds of jack-o-lanterns, their innards already hallowed out and their flesh already carved.
As you weave through the vines, you can make out the outline of a scarecrow, its body twisted, its limbs pointed at odd, inhuman angles. A ghoulish silhouette, to be sure, but you're determined to keep moving.
But just as you shift your eyes away from the figure, you catch something in the corner of your eye. Movement. Were the arms of the scarecrow always pointed that way?
You look back. Nothing. But just as you glance away, there it is again. Is the hand of the scarecrow...beckoning you near?
Against your better judgment, you find that you can't help but step closer to that unnerving figure in the dark...]
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!! Can you tell I've been watching a lot of play-throughs of the new Silent Hill game? Anyway, the day is here, and I'm thrilled to celebrate it with all of you, the little goblins that live inside my computer screen. As always, it's me, Producer Georgia, here to deliver you the news bites from the Internet that you crave, along with show news for you to enjoy. Let's do it!
THE BAFFLER: why people hate podcasts
In this excellent piece by true legend Brace Belden, we take the journey through the rose-tinted Obama era of podcasts to, well, where we reside now – where podcasts and a certain stereotype of people who make them (as Belden describes: white, male, brown hair) are treated, often, as a fly to swat away. More people claiming they have a new take on something simply because they have a microphone and WiFi. The kind of "storytellers" and "idea havers" that are deemed worthy of little more than an eyeroll and a click away to another page. I had never thought of the general ire of podcasting and podcasters as being a case study for broader exhaustion around our digital lives, but this piece does an excellent job of exploring that very idea. And, no, the irony of sharing this here is not lost on me.
SHOW NEWS: Livestream pitch meeting on November 10th!
That's right, my pretties – we're going to livestream our regular Monday pitch meeting on November 10th, 11:30 AM EST. If you missed our last one, here's the basics: we'll talk through some ideas that we've been kicking around behind the scenes, and flesh out pitches into segments that may, indeed, become parts of future episodes. This is where I talked through the witchcraft pitch that turned into last week's Halloween episode! Who knows what new treasures are in store for thee. Be there or be turned into a toad!
THE NEW YORKER: on our changing feelings about monsters
I had to throw something a little more Halloween-y, and here it is: a fun, intriguing piece in The New Yorker about our changing relationship to the idea of The Monster. Some of this is, surely, related to the new Guillermo del Toro Frankenstein that just came out (which I loved), but I think it's a topic worth exploring in general as we look at our cultural relationship to monsters and what is deemed truly monstrous. The likes of Frankenstein, Dracula, and your other hairy/scary/creepy/crawly creatures are now given the anti-hero treatment – they're misunderstood, they're lovable. And, usually, their initially frightening presentation is no match for the true reprehensibility of Man, history's greatest monster.
Alright ghouls and ghosts, that's all for this week. Go have fun, be spooky, and don't do anything I wouldn't do. Come tomorrow I shall have my energies depleted and be extremely vulnerable to attacks, so nobody try to put a stake through my heart, 'kay?
A final Halloween song for you, and also one of my favorite music videos