This Week in Podcasts: 4/21/19 – 4/28/19

This Week in Podcasts is a weekly roundup of the goings-on in podcasting, from highlights to pitfalls to updates and more. Have updates or crowdfunding campaigns you want listed? Check here for directions on how to get in touch.

Highlights

Greater Boston
“Episode 38: The Voice in Your Head”
Release date: 4/22/19
Runtime: 1 hour, 6 minutes
Transcript

In its third season finale, Greater Boston manages to juggle its many plotlines with emotional depth and solid pacing. In one of the most beautiful, touching scenes of the series to date, siblings Nica and Dimitri Stamatis return to the beginning of the plot, back to the roller coaster on which their brother died, to have a long overdue conversation. The writing easily could have skewed too far saccharine or too far cynical in this conversation, but instead, in true Greater Boston fashion, it remained the perfect combination of slipstream strangeness and perfect emotional authenticity. Just about double the length of a standard Greater Boston episode, “Episode 38: The Voice in Your Head” still manages to give the precise amount of time needed for each scene and plotline to feel full and satisfying–while still leaving plenty of questions for next season.

A RadioPublic embed of the Greater Boston episode “Episode 38: The Voice in Your Head,” which you can also find here.

Pitfalls

Invisibilia Eschews Reality for Story–continued

Last week, I talked in brief about why this season of Invisibilia has been such a disappointment. Eventually, this turned into the longest, and maybe most personal, piece I’ve written to date.

Updates

Harlem Queen concludes its first season

Harlem Queen is an audio drama based on the life and times of Madame Stephanie St. Clair, “Numbers Queen” during the 1920s. I’ve heard nothing but incredible praise for this podcast, and its first season has concluded, making it perfect for some marathon listening.

Podcast Movement 2019 ticket prices increase this Wednesday

Podcast Movement 2019, a conference for podcasters, increases their ticket prices this upcoming Wednesday (5/1/19). This year’s audio fiction track is being curated by myself and Elena Fernández Collins.

Catch-ups

Catch-ups are podcasts that aren’t new, but ones I caught up with during the week.

Windfall

Ever since the castle first appeared in the sky above the city of Windfall, its residents have been building upward. Now the city consists of towers where the wealthiest residents live at the top while the poor eke out a living on the ground. Our podcast follows Cas, Shaima, and Argus, three brothers who live with their Uncle Vern after being orphaned during the grounder rebellion twenty years earlier. They find themselves drifting apart as Argus, the youngest, falls hopelessly in love with the much-older Helina, a foreign merchant haunted by her past; Cas, the middle brother, works in secret for the local crime boss; and Shaima, the oldest, struggles to keep their uncle’s scrap shop from going under. When Cas’s best friend, Kendall, is offered a position with the Wolfpac, Windfall’s military cult that acts as the city’s police, Cas is forced to decide where his loyalties lie. Meanwhile, something sinister looms over the city itself, threatening the lives of all who live in Windfall, from the wealthiest residents to the ground-level poor.

A RadioPublic embed of the Windfall episode, “1.00 || Welcome to Windfall,” which you can also find here.