Listen Up: A Podcast Discussion Club
Join us for a twice-monthly podcast discussion club: like a book club, but for your ears. Once you've registered, you'll be sent Zoom meeting info a half hour before each session.
Each month will be a new theme and have a new set of podcasts to listen to: from narrative formats to interviews and everything in between. We'll talk content and construction, and participants can have a say in what we listen to in upcoming sessions. And be on the lookout for guest speakers!
Podcast aficionados and newbies welcome!
April's Theme: Local History & Journalism
For April, we are looking at local stories. From the big city to the small town street, let's listen to how communities are making sense of their history and present through podcasts and other audio projects.
Podcasts for Session 1 on April 6th:
Nice White Parents, Episode Two: “I Still Believe in It”
School Colors, Episode Two: “Power to the People”
Podcasts for Session 2 on April 20th:
Two different kinds of local deep dive.
Thunder Bay, A Post-Truth Town
Ojibwe journalist Ryan McMahon, who has a strong local attachment to the very complicated city of Thunder Bay, tries his best to give a full and uncompromising picture of a Thunder Bay, and the factors that have made it such a dangerous and difficult place for many, even as others consider it one of the safest towns around. In the second season, McMahon asks questions about whether self-knowledge is enough, and if a place can change.
It’s infamous as the homicide and hate crime capital of Canada. And now, Thunder Bay has been officially diagnosed as racist. But so what? Does knowing this mean that anything will change? Welcome to Canada's first post-truth town.
Meanwhile, in the conversation podcast RumbleStrip, Vermonter Erica Heilman tells a story about the very New England practice of Town Meeting, and how local citizens, even in deeply divided locales, must meet one another face to face.
Rumble Strip Vermont, Town Meeting
Thanks for highlighting the importance of our town meetings! Here in Middlesex, Vermont we have a lively discussion every year over how much taxpayer funding will go to various organizations such as the library, Meals on Wheels, etc.
In most of New England, town citizens become legislators for one day a year. They get together in school gyms and town halls and vote in person, and in public. This centuries long practice of towns doing the slow and hard work of disagreeing and arguing and compromising on how to govern themselves—this has a profound impact on a place, and what it means to be from a place.
Sometimes it’s contentious. Sometimes it’s boring. But it’s always the most interesting and authentic and civilized social event of the year. Always.
This is a show about where I live, which is maybe not where you live, but we’re all living through a time of awful division. There aren’t a lot of opportunities anymore to disagree civilly, in public, or to make decisions with people who are hugely different from ourselves. And maybe there should be. So I made this show to inspire us all. And you’ll hear a lot about trash removal.
