5 Great Podcasts to Listen to While Watching the Olympics
Have you been mesmerized by the visionary acrobatics and lithe bodies performing in Rio? We're here to remind you of the entertainment for your other senses, too. These podcast hosts may not boast the physiques of Olympians, but they've got some excellent stories and lithe...voices, maybe? Brains? Regardless, this week's best audio boasts some heavyweights on the podcast dials: episodes involving Darpa and Joan Crawford, Malcolm Gladwell and a rebellious Mennonite, and an interview with Werner Herzog wherein he gushes about his favorite cat videos and predicts that we'll soon use the Internet to communicate with people on the moon.
Internet Explorer, "Werner Herzog Loves Cat Videos Too"
Do you use the Internet mostly for corresponding with friends, watching cat videos, and reading satirical articles about Werner Herzog? That’s funny, so does Werner Herzog! On this episode of Internet Explorer, Herzog tells BuzzFeed’s Katie Notopoulos his theories about Harambe, his conviction that FOMO is an eternal human condition, and who, exactly, “has the right to say the Internet is the manifestation of the antichrist”—unless he’s actually a robot pretending to be Werner Herzog, which he admits is a distinct possibility. Listen here.
Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty ImagesYou Must Remember This, "Douglas Fairbanks/Lucille LeSueur Goes to Hollywood"
Usually, You Must Remember This serves up long-arc projects on an era of big screen history: Check out the excellent 12-parter on Charles Manson’s Hollywood, or the 17-parter on breaking the blacklist. This summer, You Must Remember This offers its equivalent of a beach read: the six-episode story of Joan Crawford, née Lucille LeSueur. Listen as she navigates 1920s Hollywood as a six-month option girl on the lot at MGM. Listen here.
Panoply
Revisionist History, "Generous Orthodoxy"
Malcolm Gladwell found out about an open letter gone viral from the unlikeliest of sources: his Mennonite parents. Chester Wenger, a 98-year-old Mennonite pastor wrote an open letter to the church about how accepting homosexuality exemplifies Mennonite values. His letter was read online over 200,000 times. (For perspective, there are 800,000 Mennonites in North America.) Gladwell uses Wenger’s example to discuss the idea of “generous orthodoxy”: sticking to one’s values, while accepting others. Listen here.
Panoply Media
Planet Money, "The Sewing Robot"
When Darpa put out a call for technological projects around manufacturing, it probably didn’t expect to tackle the problems of inseams and zippers. But Steve Dickerson, founder of SoftWear Automation (get it?), made the case that robotics could bring clothing manufacturing back to America by transforming the sewing machine, which still largely functions as it did a century ago. Listen up to hear how a sewing robot could work—and why Darpa deems it worth a million dollars in funding. Listen here.
NPR
