The Biggest Story in the World | theguardian.com
StartUp | gimletmedia.com
5 Live Daily: Adrian Chiles/Peter Allen (5 Live) | iPlayer
Well, this is interesting. The Guardian has a major new podcast, launched on Friday, about climate change. It’s called The Biggest Story in the World, and it’s part of editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger’s last hurrah, his final change-everything campaigning push before he steps down. He wants to look at climate change in a different way, and the podcast is a big part of this.
Given that the Observer is the Guardian’s sister paper, it may seem weird for me to review The Biggest Story podcast. But it’s one of the most intriguing that’s been launched in a long time and, well, that’s the job. The first episode, which sets out how Rusbridger and his team started on the campaign, is startlingly US-sounding. Partly, that’s because the presenter Aleks Krotoski is American (she hosts Radio 4’s The Digital Human), but also, it’s because the producers have drawn on US public radio broadcasts such as This American Life and Serial when it comes to style. So, we get a lot of emphasis on story (in fact, the word story is repeated over and over in the first minute or so, which is a bit irritating), as well as a lot of cute Love + Radio-style audio tricks: phrases repeated by different people, clever background music, interjections from Aleks that lead to a recap, nice sounds (a vibrating phone indicating an email). We also get the sense of an unfolding tale (like Serial), and a self-consciousness; the storytellers looking in at themselves (again, like Serial). I don’t mind any of this, to be honest: it shows care and craft and it makes The Biggest Story sound up-to-the-minute.
Plus, there’s a sense of jeopardy. The obvious one (that the planet is going to be irreparably damaged) is given a huge shot in the arm by campaigner Bill McKibben. He reframes the climate change story by using three figures which boil down to: we can’t burn all of the world’s remaining carbon fuels, because if we do, we will raise the planet’s temperature to a catastrophic level. There’s a refrain, “Keep it in the ground”, that is repeated many times. Hmm. Not sure about that one: it seems designed to be chanted on protests. The other sense of jeopardy is provided by Rusbridger’s leaving. Will this campaign have any impact before he goes? Can the Guardian reframe the climate change conversation in that time? Tune in (as they used to say) next week to find out…
Another podcast I’ve enjoyed, in binge-listen style, is StartUp. This came out last September, and finished, after 14 episodes, a few weeks back. It’s about Alex Blumberg, a business producer/journalist from This American Life and Planet Money, and tells the story of his attempt to start up a podcasting business. Very meta. And an interesting listen, not only because it’s a story well told, but also because it makes you think, well, what is the future of podcasting outside US National Public Radio and the BBC, two well-funded, publicly minded organisations?
Some trad radio now: on 5 Live Daily, I’ve been tuning in, on and off, to Adrian Chiles and Peter Allen in their mid-morning slots. And Chiles has improved a lot: on Tuesday he hosted two tricky interviews, one about how registered sex offenders can fall off the radar and the other on the menopause. Neither his natural arena, you wouldn’t think, but he was sympathetic, dynamic and asked the right questions.
Peter Allen, much as I love him, doesn’t seem to ever wake up on his slots. He’s constantly surprised by people, always wondering what’s coming up next. On Thursday, he should have made much more of a caller who said that most employers, when it comes to manual labour, specifically want Polish workers. It was a great twist on the Farage quote about removing equal opportunities legislation, as it showed that if the legislation was removed, it might do the opposite of what Farage wants. Allen really didn’t make enough of it. Nick Ferrari or James O’Brien would have made national news with that one.
