#PODCAST LIKE THIS AMERICAN LIFE FREE#

But I think Missing Richard Simmons’s enduring legacy should be the way it highlighted the fact that podcasting is still a largely undefined medium. We can even say that the way it ended (which we won’t spoil, in case you haven’t heard it yet) was super underwhelming (okay, maybe that was a spoiler), though understandable given what was happening behind the scenes as the last few episodes were being produced. We can also say that it definitely whipped up a frenzy. We can say it’s fairly controversial, given its relationship to the question of privacy as it pertains to public figures. So, there are a lot of things we can say about Missing Richard Simmons, Dan Taberski’s part-biography of the celebrity fitness icon and part-attempt to figure why he withdrew from the public eye, suddenly, a few years ago. Their subjects and formats may vary, but they all share a common DNA: The best of the nonfiction genre is defined by deliberate construction, making them fundamental pillars of podcasting as a whole. While the future of the genre looks exciting, this list aims to look at the most influential shows that got us to this point, the titles that helped evolve the whole project of audio storytelling. Just in the past year, we’ve seen new shows that sharpen the standards to perfection (see Lost Notes, from KCRW) and shows that warped and reworked them altogether toward new ends (see Richard’s Famous Food Podcast). You can call this genre by any number of names, but we’re content to call it “narrative nonfiction.” For more than a decade, this has encompassed a variety of storytelling formats, from weekly magazine-style character profiles to in-depth political histories to hardcore reporting from war zones.

#PODCAST LIKE THIS AMERICAN LIFE FREE#

And, as this list demonstrates, they obliged: They gave us radio shows free to push past the boundaries of what was previously possible podcasts that took you around the globe and deep into the heart of America podcasts that sought to bend history into the present podcasts that broke the internet out into the real world. And who knows when you would be able to hear it again.įree from the cavernous limitations of the broadcast clock and armed with the expectation that listeners can follow complex narratives from the very beginning, podcasting offered audio producers and documentarians the opportunity to be more focused - and experimental - with the stories they can tell. Consider: If you, as a listener, were to miss the first establishing minutes of a story when you switched on the radio, you probably wouldn’t get the impact of what the producer was trying to do.

Before the onset of podcasts, narrative-oriented radio shows like Radiolab and This American Life were, in many ways, ill-served by the structural constraints of radio distribution. Long-form nonfiction storytelling has proved to be a crucial format for the development of podcasts, providing an early example of what the medium could offer the world.

Podcast like this american life