Radio Commons^™

Editorial: Subjectivity And Objectivity In Storytelling Podcasts, Siobhan Mchugh

RadioDoc Review

In this issue, storytelling podcasts and audio works from the US, UK, Australia and Canada receive in-depth critiques from expert reviewers in Latin America, Australia and the UK. The subjectivity-objectivity spectrum is one focus, along with ethics and aesthetics.

Radio Revolten: 30 Days Of Radio Art - Book Review, Colin Black

RadioDoc Review

Radio Revolten: 30 Days of Radio Art documents the Radio Revolten international radio art festival that took place took place during October 2016 in Halle, Germany. It is a densely rich book that explores aspects of radio beyond the format, beyond time schedules and beyond podcast ratings, while still aiming to build a sense of community. It is reviewed by internationally acclaimed Australian sound artist Colin Black.

Skywriting – Making Radio Waves By Robyn Ravlich: Book Review, Mike Ladd

RadioDoc Review

Robyn Ravlich’s Skywriting - making radio waves is partly an extended dissertation on feature-making and radio art, and partly an autobiography of this acclaimed Australian audio feature maker from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). It is reviewed by Mike Ladd, poet, audio producer and an erstwhile ABC colleague.

In The Dark – Pushing The Boundaries Of True Crime, Sharon Davis

RadioDoc Review

True crime podcasts are a burgeoning genre. As journalists and storytellers, how do we balance the pursuit of justice and our responsibility to the victims with the demand to tell a gripping tale? As listeners, are we using the pain of others for our own entertainment? In the Dark podcast (Seasons 1 and 2) takes us beyond a vicarious fascination with true crime stories into a forensic and essential look at deep-rooted biases, corruption and systemic failures that prevent justice from being served.

The first season (2016) investigates the 1989 kidnapping, sexual assault and murder of 11-year-old Jacob Wetterling In …

The Feelings Frontier: A Review Of No Feeling Is Final, Britta Jorgensen

RadioDoc Review

No Feeling is Final faces a two-fold “feelings frontier” in an age of extreme podcast intimacy and empathy: navigating (1) how to convey the kind of deeply personal “big feelings” that are still often seen as off-limits and (2) how to maintain a hyper-awareness about the listener’s feelings. Taking place almost entirely within her mind, No Feeling is Final is a six-part memoir show about host Honor Eastly’s experiences struggling with mental health and what one mental health professional diagnoses as “too many feelings – about four times as many as the average person”. The ongoing tension between creating resonance …

One Story, Told Week By Week: Episodic Podcast Storytelling And The Habitat, Charlotte De Beauvoir

RadioDoc Review

The rise and success of podcasting introduced episodic storytelling in the world of non-fiction sound narrative. Delivering a story in different entries is very different from producing a one-off piece. What concrete implications does this have for the narrative? And what keeps an audience listening to a podcast, episode through episode? This article offers some answers to these questions via a case study of The Habitat, a 2018 podcast by the American network Gimlet.

Down But Not Out: Tara And George And The Boundaries Of Subjectivity., Hamish Sewell

RadioDoc Review

Set on the streets of London, amidst the snarl of traffic and the clip of passers by, this work is a biographical sound portrait of two homeless people, Tara and George. It is a testament to the parlous state of homelessness in the UK today and is masterful in its execution.

To this work, producer and host Audrey Gillan brings a quality of frank disclosure and decency. Relationships between producers and their subjects are contentious, due to an inherent power differential. Gillan neither portrays Tara and George as archetypes nor as helpless and needy. She knows she is the one …