If a tree falls in the forest but nobody hears it, does it make a sound? Great question. Another is, if I listen to a new podcast series, have some thoughts about it, but don’t write them up into a blog post, what am I even doing here?
Welcome to Things I’ve Listened To Lately, potentially the first of an irregular series. It’s nothing more or less than some thoughts about new (or new to me) podcasts I’ve listened to lately. Recommendations, reflections, rants — anything could happen.
In this edition you’ll read about post-Medieval Europe, coercive interrogations, the importance of scripting, one true crime show that sticks the landing, and one that doesn’t.
An AI artist’s impression of me listening to things lately
Deep Cover
Deep Cover begins with a cold case – a woman named Brooke Henson disappearing from the town of Traveler’s Rest in 1999. But we also hear a woman’s voice, here and now, shaking with emotion as she describes the regret over what she’s done, and how things just got out of control for her.
So… Henson’s been found? Not quite. Although the show does provide resolutions to some of the mysteries it poses, this is not one of them.
Deep Cover morphs from an investigation into an unsolved disappearance, into something else – a stolen identity scam, and a complicated character study, with first-person insight from the woman at the centre and the investigators who spent years tracking her down.
There’s nothing flashy about the show – but it doesn’t need bells and whistles. The production is rock solid, drawing no attention to itself, and allowing the story to shine. The narration and the script have real personality, without being annoyingly self-referential or diaristic. Every detour in the narrative feels earned, adding context to a twisting and turning story. And the people featured become real characters, brought to life in their true complexity and treated with a sensitivity and empathy by the show.
And it STICKS THE LANDING!! No spoilers, but the last episode ends with emotional field audio that genuinely captures a turning point in a character’s life.
Hell On Earth
I was so ready to love this series. It’s a subscriber-only spin-off from one of my regular shows, Chapo Trap House. If you don’t know that one, it’s a long-running success, and it sounds like political talk radio if it was made by and targeted at funny nerds. Now, two of the hosts are doubling-down on the nerd audience with a limited-run historical narrative series.
Hell On Earth tells the story of the Thirty Years War – a turbulent period of conflict and upheaval in 17th century Europe that you might remember from some of your more impenetrable history classes.
The show expands way beyond those titular thirty years. You’ll hear about the Protestant Reformation, the Habsburg dynasty, the Holy Roman Empire, the Defenestration of Prague, the Twelve Years Truce, the Rampjaar, and the English Civil War. You’ll also hear of about fifty different European aristocrats named Charles, John, and Ferdinand, many of them related. Again – this is nerd stuff. And so far up my alley, it might as well be in the back garden tapping on my kitchen window.
But so far, I haven’t been blown away. There’s no compulsion or excitement to listen to new episodes when they drop, like you get when you’re really hooked on a show. In fact, I find myself zoning out during some sequences. Given the promise of the show – the familiar hosts, the pre-sold concept – the question is, why?
It comes down to this – Hell On Earth is not written to be listened to. The format is two guys, taking turns to read out from a script, pausing occasionally for interludes of off-the-cuff chat and elaboration. Those interludes are enjoyable – conversational, irreverent, funny, the kind of tone you’d expect as a fan of their previous work. It’s the script-reading that’s the problem, because that’s exactly what it sounds like – guys reading a script at you, not talking to you. It’s a subtle distinction but once you hear it, you can’t unhear it.
Sometimes, the show comes across like a lecture from a time-poor professor, looking down at their notes rather than the class. You can even hear the hosts straining against the written words, rushing through long run-on sentences, occasionally stumbling in the maze of clauses, sub-clauses and commas. This kind of writing works in a book or a blog post, where a reader can pace themselves and re-read a sentence. But in audio form, it just tests the speaker and the listener. Some stretches end up downright confusing, and it’s difficult to keep up with what’s happening from week to week as the episodes come out.
I’ll give them some credit – they know their stuff (check out this incredible companion website they’ve built with an interactive map). I think a lot of the overstuffed scripting is just them trying to cram in as much information as possible. Plus, the subject matter they’re working with is a real handicap for listener comprehension. Post-Reformation Europe was confusing even to people who lived there – as I mentioned, about 75% of the nobles in this period shared the same three names. Even putting aside the Charles’, Johns and Ferdinands, the complexity of the feudal relationships and religious debates of the period is one of the key points that Hell On Earth is trying to make. But that’s why it’s even more important to have a carefully worded and edited script.
Just compare Hell On Earth to another nerdy historical podcast – The Age of Napoleon. In terms of content, it picks up the European history thread about a hundred years after Hell On Earth finishes up. In terms of format, though, it’s different – just the one host, E.M. Rummage, talking to the listener. One-voice podcasts are very hard to get right, because they tend towards the exact problem we’re talking about here – without the correcting influence of a conversational framework, a single person reading into a microphone often sounds like… a single person reading into a microphone.
Except, that’s not what The Age of Napoleon sounds like. Rummage is an academic, and doesn’t exactly have the delivery of a voice actor, but that doesn’t matter. His scripting flows at a good pace, sounds natural, and comes alive off the page as a real person speaking to you. To return to the lecture analogy from before – this one sounds like a lecture from a well-prepared, well-informed professor. Sure, it’s still a bit dry, but it’s easy to follow, reliable, and comforting in its own way.
There are a couple of solutions here for a show like Hell On Earth (and it’s not the only one with this problem). The first is to tweak the two-host format so that one is explaining the content of the script to the other. This naturally creates a conversational cadence to the podcast, which makes it naturally easier to listen to. This kind of format works for lots of explainer-type shows, but to be honest at this point I find it hacky – the ‘listener’ host pretending to be ignorant on the show’s subject rings false.
The other solution is obvious, if time-consuming – ruthless re-writing, vigilant editing. Do your research, put it down on paper, and then revise line-by-line to make it sound like talking. I know it’s painful, but so is listening to a host stumble over five sub-clauses in the same sentence.
I think the extra effort would be worth it. At its core Hell On Earth is a good show — just not presented as well as it could be. The seventh episode is the best display of its potential. In this episode, aptly titled HELL, the hosts press pause on the grand political-historical narrative, to try and convey just how the events of that narrative impacted on the people of central Europe. In short, how did it make them feel? (Spoiler: not great!)
This shift from the academic to the impressionistic is powerful. Abstract facts become tangible, and keenly-felt. It flows into the scripting and delivery — instead of getting lost in confusing discursive circles, we hear shocking depictions of staggering human misery. It’s more compelling than “what Ferdinand did to Charles when”, and certainly easier to follow.
The Coldest Case In Laramie
Listening to The Coldest Case In Laramie, I was struck by how it hits every post-Serial true crime cliche:
In the show:
The victim is a dead young woman from a decades-old cold case;
The murder happened in a small, rural town in America;
The host, now an urban journalist, is vaguely connected to the case as she’s originally from this town;
The police’s investigation is repeatedly analysed through racial and gender lenses;
This analysis is delivered with a self-reflexive script and deadpan tone;
The real story isn’t the story of the cold case but the story of the host’s investigation into the cold case (I’ll expand on this);
The ending is inconclusive and mostly unsatisfying – because, like most cold cases, it’s almost impossible to solve decades after the fact!
If that’s what you’re after, fine. I just think the worm is turning on these kinds of shows, and if they’re not careful, they can almost turn into parody. (More thoughts on this from me in this old post)
I won’t spoil too much in this review – not that there’s too much to spoil. It’s a decades-old murder cold case. The general thrust of the series is, first, setting up a presumption, in this case a certain suspect’s guilt. Then, after some investigation, it presents new evidence that complicates that presumption, if not outright refuting it. You don’t end up with any answers, or even new questions – it’s kind of a stalemate.
That’s why Laramie has to be presented as a first-person account. We need to experience the investigation in the same order it happened, in order to experience the dramatic reversal of presumption – because there’s no arc or progression in the case itself. The arc is entirely in the host’s perspective on the case, and occurs right at the end of the show in a “what I’ve learned” monologue. Okay, it’s a common framing in prestige narrative podcasts that don’t really unearth anything new in their investigations. But it does feel… cheap, in some way?
There is one interesting stylistic choice I haven’t heard before in this type of show: the producers really let the tape run. Recordings of interviews and police interrogations play out for what feels like ages, without interruption or summary from the host. I wasn’t entirely sure of the reason for this choice. The cynical side of me thinks it might have been to pad out the show. There are some gems in there, like a heated police interrogation where you can hear the suspect being badgered into an ambiguous confession. But there’s also a lot of stuff that you would cut in favour of better material – if the better material existed.
One example – a couple of years after the murder, a prisoner confesses. You get his full backstory. But it quickly turns out that this is a false confession. The host calls him up, still in prison, for a lengthy interview about that. It’s kind of an interesting detour. But as part of this false confession, the prisoner had named another person as an accomplice. This innocent person was arrested at the time and dragged in for a police interview, which you hear, at length. It doesn’t really add anything – you know it was a false confession, you know he’s innocent. Then, the host finds him today to interview him again – which you hear, at length. He’s very hesitant and clearly uncomfortable talking about his brief association with the case, and doesn’t have much to add. And then that thread peters out.
I get that this is the kind of interview you do as part of your investigation, to see if anything interesting turns up. But if nothing interesting turns up – if your interview doesn’t shed any light on the case or the people involved – you don’t have to include it. Unless you’ve got eight episodes to fill and not much to fill it with.
I finished The Coldest Case In Laramie without a clear takeaway to recommend it. It’s a good investigation, in search of an angle or point to turn it into a good story. By the end it settles on being a meditation on the unreliability of memory, or the fallibility of our conclusions. It kind of feels like kind of a cop-out – the show’s narrative beats are plotted out in order to deliberately give the listener a certain presumption, and then pull the rug from under it. Yes, I came to an questionable conclusion – you gave it to me!
Ultimately it’s a fine show – there’s some good reporting, clever scripting. You’ll want there to be some surprise or dramatic development, even as you feel it’s not coming. If you’re still jonesing for Serial-esque podcasts, this might satisfy you for a while. But it might just remind you of more focused, in-depth Serial-esque podcasts you’ve listened to before.