The rules for last year’s podcast resolution said that I needed to sample at least one episode per podcast, ideally five episodes, before deciding to continue on or not. I had such good luck of late in finding podcasts that really work for me that I haven’t had to mention the ones I bounced off of. But in the end, I thought you all might be interested. Or not.
Here are a group of podcasts that I sampled and walked away from. They’re not bad podcasts necessarily. They just didn’t grab me. Some of them are theoretically excellent (much like Steal the Stars and you all know how well that worked for me…).
Homecoming sucked me in for the professional talent involved and the premise–
Homecoming centers on a caseworker at an experimental facility, her ambitious supervisor, and a soldier eager to rejoin civilian life — presented in an enigmatic collage of telephone calls, therapy sessions, and overheard conversations. The result is an innovative, immersive audio experience — a mystery unfolding across the twelve episodes of Seasons One and Two.
–but my auditory processing issues made it impossible for me to keep track of what was happening. A little too much “drama”, not enough “narration”. I hear it’s becoming a television show and that seems like something I’d love to watch. Again, I liked the premise, just couldn’t keep up with the storyline.
King Falls AM: A less nihilistic Welcome to Night Vale? Sure, sign me up. Oh wait, no, on second thought, let’s not. It’s similar in format to WtNV but similar in the ways I didn’t really like. DJs chattering, advertisements for fake places, a small mysterious town full of mysteries— The problem with this format is it takes a long long time to get a story going. I’m impatient. Pass.
Kakos Industries: A villainous podcast! It sounded like it might be fun. A corporate evil broadcasting to its shareholders and drones and minions. But, in the end, it just wasn’t my type of humor. I wanted something more Better off Ted, less annoying office memos.
Tanis So, this came highly recommended, but, see above: I’m impatient. The premise seemed engaging–people searching for the truth of some ancient mystery. But after the first long episode—complete with sponsorship commercials that felt oddly jarring—I knew exactly as much as I went in knowing. That Tanis is a mysterious city, place, idea, or power. It was too much repetition, not enough specifics. I bet it grows on people; I bet the story gets stronger and more interesting, but I’ve got an enormous backlog of podcasts to listen to! Grab me at once, or lose me.
Alice isn’t Dead: Okay, just too scary. ☺ With no guarantee or even a suggestion of a happy ending. Excellent for people who like horror!
Family Ghosts: A misfire. I liked the first episode, but whoops, this isn’t spec-fic. It’s not even fiction! So, I let it go.
Rabbits: a long-running, well-respected podcast that explores the secret world of a secret game. Like Tanis, this just meandered rather than hooked me. Too much mystery, not enough specificity to lure me on.
Spirits: The concept sounded great–two friends mixing cocktails and talking about mythology–but it turns out I have no patience for two people mostly goofing around in front of a mike.
Under Pressure: A team of people living deep under water deal with personal crises and a hostile environment. Nothing much happened the first episode beyond character introductions and that’s fine, but with so much else to choose from, I moved on for now. It’s a toss-up as to whether I’ll continue or not.
Aquas Marianas: A team of people living deep under water deal with each other and a hostile environment! (I might have a story trope that I like, see The White Vault.) I disliked the main character in this context so noped out of there.
Beasts of Bardon College: A monster college where your protagonist is a werewolf. Interesting first episode but I found it a little hard to follow, and the podcast itself seems to be erratic, maybe discontinued.
And here’s more than a handful that I sampled and decided to come back to later.
Wolf 359: Misfit crews in isolation. Life and death situations. My kind of story. I put it on hold because I only had room for one long running podcast this year, and Magnus Archives snagged the spot.
The Blood Crow Stories: A horror podcast (though in the first couple of episodes I found nothing horrific) that aims to tell a different horror story each season. The first one is about a anachronistic cruise ship meant to escape the horrors of WW2.
Lake Clarity: This is a teen slasher movie turned podcast, as five friends explore a “cursed” campground. Not perfect, but enough spark to keep me thinking about it.
Bubble: has a surprisingly complex world, hard to sum up. But it’s a fantasy comedy that my roommate brought to my attention after learning about my resolution. I enjoyed the first episode and will hunt others down later.
Ars Paradoxica: I’m not a huge fan of time travel stories, but this one at least has an interesting premise—the heroine goes back in time, promptly explains herself to the military, and is sucked in as a secret weapon to be used during ww2. Which is a nice change of pace from the oh god, we might change the world secrecy that time travel stories often have.
Spines: creepy magical horror! I would probably have listened to more of this, but…they made it into a book! So I can just read it instead. That is going to happen.
EOS 10: So I listened to the full first season of this, giggling madly the entire time. The humor is often crass and/or based on non-funny issues– as a couple of examples: the protagonist is roofied on a date, and it’s treated like a joke throughout including the side effects. Alcoholism is amusing. That sort of thing. But it’s so broad and cartoony that it works when it shouldn’t.
Girl in Space: I’m about ten episodes into this story about a young woman who’s been running a one-of-a-kind craft alone for many years, and abruptly finds herself dealing with the actual owners. X, the heroine, is really deftly done, hiding information from herself as well as the listeners.
The Black Tapes: I haven’t gotten far enough into this X-Files like series to know whether I’ll like it or not. Right now, the pieces still feel sort of disconnected, linked only by the collector of the tapes. I’m not sure where this story is going to go.
So as you can see, I’ve been crazy busy with the podcasts. It’s interesting. In 2017, my resolution was to watch twelve movies because I like movies but rarely make the effort to see them. It wasn’t a difficult resolution, but in the end, the moment the year ended, I stopped watching movies again, slipping back to my two or three movie a year habit.
The podcast resolution was a real challenge. A new form of media for me and one that posed difficulties for my aural processing. In March, I nearly begged off. But Limetown made it easy to continue, then suddenly, I had the bug. I love podcasts.
And unlike the movie resolution, I will continue listening to podcasts. I have subscribed to a whole bunch of them and really look forward to listening to them on my work commute. I’m also surprised at how many of them slant toward horror, because if you ask me, I don’t like horror! Except, apparently, I do.
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