Vital stats:
Format: Skype talks about genre stuff
Duration: 20m-90m
Frequency: on average, weekly
Archive available on iTunes: all
I worry that Podthinking might lead me into a cultural hall of mirrors from there is no return. So many podcasts aren’t things, exactly; they’re about things. Countless are the net-dwellers who pick up microphones, realize they like and dislike certain things they’ve read, watched, or listened to, and say, “Hey, I could podcast about that!” Though this seems to be one of the most popular class of podcasts, I’ve somehow never known what to call it. But while listening to The Chronic Rift [RSS] [iTunes], a name occurred to me: “Here’s Some Stuff We Consumed”.
Not that The Chronic Rift is run-of-the-mill in this sense; far from it, for a few reasons. This show drives “Here’s Some Stuff We Consumed” to the limit, where it becomes a form of conceptual art. Clocking in around an hour and a half at top flight, its nearly 100 episodes form a veritable avalanche of opinions on, discussions of, and arguments about various books, games, films, and television series. You get roundtables on British sci-fi television [MP3]. You get updates on teen summer reading [MP3]. (One of the Rifters is a librarian for junior-high kids.) You get interviews with someone from Buffy [MP3]. You get chats about Pepsi Throwback. [MP3]. You get a bunch of podcast reviews. (One moment I was sure I had fallen into the void came when they reviewed Edgy Podcast Reviews, meaning I would be reviewing a podcast that reviewed a podcast that I once reviewed that reviews podcasts.)
Eventually, I began to perceive a distinct sci-fi/fantasy/horror slant to the hosts’ cultural selections. My ability to fairly review a podcast turns out, unfortunately, to be inversely proportional to how deeply concerned that podcast is with sci-fi, fantasy, horror, etc. Summer replacement television shows, the Justice League, Doctor Who, zombies: in my grumpier moments, I feel these subjects require no further attention. But just as the creators and fans of The Chronic Rift enjoy their time spent in alien, futuristic, surreal, or otherwise fantastical worlds, I admit that I sometimes quite like to glimpse a realm of bizarre inversion where genre entertainment is the interesting kind.
Yet it’s not always pure discussion of genre, mythos, and the continuity of -verses. The show engages in occasional goofy flights of audio drama fancy as well, which is always fun to hear, though I suppose it does take a very specific sort of person to fully appreciate one that merges H.P. Lovecraft and P.G. Wodehouse [MP3]. There are also big chunks of off-topic talk about cats, work, and how we’re not as young as we used to be. Depending on your podcasting perspective, that’s either indiscipline of an endearing look into the host’s personalities; both, I think, are valid points.
So while what The Chronic Rift discusses isn’t exactly what gets me going, I realize there are millions of others for whom it is. To them: excelsior! What I can tell you is that, as a public access television enthusiast, I’m very much drawn by something that sets the show well apart from the other friends-on-Skype affairs. It first began twenty years ago on New York public access television, and now those old shows are being video podcast on iTunes. The distinctive visual effects of early prosumer video gear, the unconventional tonsorial choices, the being from 1990: it’s everything I’ve ever looked for in a podcast. A+, would publicly access again.
[Podthinker Colin Marshall also happens to be the host and producer of public radio’s The Marketplace of Ideas, the blogger of The War on Mediocrity and the writer of The Ubuweb Experimental Video Project.]