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Irish Examiner
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Examiner
Podcast Corner: Unpacking the theme music to some of your favourite shows
There's something comforting about pressing play on your favourite podcast and hearing the familiar intro music playing, whether it's Corduroy by 'our friends from Pearl Jam' on The Bill Simmons Show or, closer to home and amid similarly familiar sporting soundbites, My God is the Sun by Queens of the Stone Age soundtracking Second Captains. That's not to mention all of the original music that has been created for myriad podcasts over the last decade plus. The jingles that intro Serial and Welcome to Night Vale sound like old friends and feature on episode 429 of Switched on Pop - 'How podcasting got its sound'. A podcast about the making and meaning of popular music hosted by musicologist Nate Sloan and songwriter Charlie Harding, we've featured this show in the past and it's one of those that's always great to dip into - you always learn something. The first half of the episode is like a history lesson, going perhaps a little too far back with the band the Grateful Dead's Truckin' ('the first audio distributed by RSS, the technology that makes podcasts possible'), before then returning to the early 2000s and a host of names piloting what would become known as podcasting. They discuss WTF with Marc Maron and how Brooklyn DIY musician John Montagna created its intro: 'That cool strumming sound is a violin bass like the style of bass that Paul McCartney played. And he's strumming it with a pick like it's a guitar, micing it with a microphone, while also plugging it in and blending those sounds together. He's using kids' toys to create his drums. It has that anyone-can-do-it kind of quality just like the world of podcasting.' As for the Serial theme, Sloane says: 'I thought this was totally new. Something we had never heard before. In many ways it absolutely was. But the music was part of a much longer lineage.' If that all sounds a bit too nerdy, the second half of the episode is an interview with the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder - he hides behind a robot mask a la Daft Punk. The Switched on Pop hosts call him the 'Hans Zimmer of podcasting' as he's made over 200 podcast themes over the past decade-plus. Ultimately the chat isn't really worth listening to. As Sloane says afterwards, it's 'truly one of the most odd interviews that I've ever attempted'. It really is - Breakmaster Cylinder just sounds like he doesn't want to be interviewed. Sloane puts to him at one point: 'I'm feeling a little bit of hesitancy of accepting that you have really heavily put your fingerprint on this sound of podcasting.' Breakmaster's response: 'There are a lot of podcasts, man.' He's not wrong. Read More Tom Dunne: Moisturizer from Wet Leg already feels like my album of the year
Yahoo
23-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
The Retrievals
Credit - The Retrievals is a stunning piece of investigative journalism from the Serial and New York Times team that demands your attention. Host Susan Burton lays out the story of a Yale University fertility clinic nurse who siphoned off fentanyl from patients undergoing egg-retrieval surgery, leaving them in unspeakable pain. When the women complained, they were dismissed by their doctors and the university. (The nurse eventually pleaded guilty and Yale settled with the patients who sued.) It's a horror story about the ways our health system fails women, told from the perspective of a group of victims whose desperation to have children led them to justify their own suffering, rationalizing that motherhood is inextricably tied to hardship. The interviews with the victims are emotional and delve into complex issues. Some, who happen to study addiction or medicine for a living, actually empathize with the nurse who was hooked on painkillers, while others tie their righteous indignation to larger societal problems surrounding habitual gaslighting in women's medicine. It's a disturbing but eye-opening commentary on the quest to become pregnant, a common journey we do not discuss often enough. A second harrowing season on complications with C-sections, one of the most frequently performed surgeries in the world, released in the summer of 2025. Write to Eliana Dockterman at
Time Magazine
23-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Magazine
How We Chose the 100 Best Podcasts of All Time
You're folding laundry or going for a run or prepping your kids' lunchboxes, and you need something in your earbuds. Maybe you want to catch up on the latest news or hear the hottest take on last night's game. Maybe you're eager to hear a film critic tell you what's worth streaming this weekend or listen to a celebrity interview that'll make you laugh—or inspire a cathartic cry. Maybe you want to play detective in a true-crime mystery. If you've ever stared blankly at Spotify or YouTube wondering what to press play on, there is something for you in this list of the 100 best podcasts ever made. Reviewing the nearly decade's worth of 'best of' lists I've compiled since I started on the podcast beat laid bare just how much the medium has changed. Once upon a time, you didn't have to be an A-lister with a professional studio setup to find overnight fame. The likes of Roman Mars, Mike Duncan, Sarah Marshall and Michael Hobbes, Hrishikesh Hirway, and Phoebe Judge all became famous names in the podcast space without the boost of a Hollywood career. Between the mid-2000s and the mid-2010s, all you needed was a microphone and a dream of cutting an ad deal with MailChimp. That low barrier to entry eventually led to a podcasting boom in the late 2010s that accelerated when so many of us were stuck at home during COVID-19 lockdowns and desperate to consume as much content as possible to stave off boredom and loneliness. No longer are podcast hosts just disembodied voices in a void. YouTube, the world's largest video platform, now claims it's also the world's largest podcasting platform, with 1 billion monthly viewers of podcasting content worldwide. As Vulture recently noted, publications like the New York Times are pushing their writers and podcasters to put their faces on camera as the way we consume news and other content evolves on platforms like TikTok and Instagram. With the change in medium has come a shift in focus. Major podcast producers have largely abandoned in-depth investigative reporting and quirky comedic voices in favor of buzzy names. This includes former upstarts like Alexandra Cooper (SiriusXM paid $125 million in 2025 for her Unwell podcast network) and Bill Simmons (Spotify acquired The Ringer for a reported $250 million in 2020). But more often, they cut deals with previously established celebrities like the Smartless actors or retired athletes like LeBron James—not to mention former royals and first ladies. But not every famous person is good at podcasting. (There's a reason the late-night gig is so tough.) Much of collating this list, when it came to this particular breed of pod, involved sorting out who can conduct an insightful interview or piece together a compelling monologue from who is just a big name. That said, we talk a lot at TIME about influence—we do publish an annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world, after all. And that list increasingly includes podcasters. The legacy of shows ranging from Serial to 2 Dope Queens to WTF With Marc Maron that pioneered their respective genres and set the course for what would follow factored heavily in this process. Serial helped spur the true-crime wave—and the many ethical quandaries that came with it. 2 Dope Queens represented an era when relatively unknown comedians could land an HBO special. Remember when Maron got then-president Barack Obama on WTF, and it was a huge deal? Trump doesn't make the rounds of the manosphere and Kamala Harris doesn't appear on Call Her Daddy had Obama not graced Marc Maron's garage. So I included some shows that have ended their runs. I tried to pick podcasts that, if not entirely evergreen, have a hefty archive that can be revisited—series that cracked jokes that haven't gotten old or covered books and movies you can still read and watch before tuning into a specific episode that will help you appreciate them more fully. With this list, I endeavored to find the best of the best, a database you can sort through by genre. Much ink has been spilled over the years about the parasocial relationships we form with podcast hosts, and, yes, while it's wise not to get too attached to a stranger, I certainly think of my favorite hosts as imagined buddies I get to visit with each week. I hope you can find new friends too.
Irish Examiner
15-07-2025
- Irish Examiner
Podcast Corner: West Cork crew tackle intriguing tale of mystery in Havana
It's been over seven years since the West Cork podcast was first released via Audible. It was subsequently made widely available in 2021 to coincide with Ian Bailey's trial in France, where he was found guilty of the murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier. Made by Sam Bungey and Jennifer Forde, West Cork is one of the best true crime podcast series ever made, right up there with season one of Serial. While subsequent promotion, events, and tie-ins (a deal to adapt it for TV was struck in 2021) took up much of their life since, Bungey and Forde found time to focus on an entirely separate investigation for the series Havana Helmet Club, released via BBC Sounds. Forde, in the opening episode Psychological Fortitude, says: 'A recording of the otherworldly sound was posted on Twitter. At the time, we were on an all-consuming deadline for a podcast about an unsolved murder in West Cork, Ireland.' Bungey continues: 'But we were pulled in by this mystery sound.' Havana Helmet Club explores this otherworldly and mystery sound, which was allegedly experienced by more than 200 victims of 'Havana Syndrome'. In 2016 CIA agents and US diplomats working in Cuba started reporting a sensation of standing in an invisible beam of energy, a throbbing pressure, or being deafened by a screeching noise. They said the experience left them with terrifying after-effects including loss of vision and hearing, vertigo, brain fog and loss of balance. Others, however, believe the syndrome is a myth. Is it just an example of a mass psychogenic illness, a product of hysteria and overactive imaginations? That is what Bungey and Forde seek to uncover. 'We were fascinated by the unsettling nature of Havana Syndrome - how it seems to exist in a space between science, politics, and human perception,' says Forde. 'We've spoken to key figures, whistleblowers, and those directly affected to uncover what might be behind this mystery.' Bungey says: 'Our aim is to present the human stories at the centre of this phenomenon — those who say their lives have been upended, and those who believe this is all an illusion. It's a puzzle that remains unsolved, and we're excited for listeners to join us on this journey.' It's a long way from West Cork to Cuba, and listeners of the former will need to pay close attention to the 10-part series - it's incredibly dense and with its talk of undercover spies at funerals to exploding glasses at dinner parties, is perfect for fans of John Le Carré novels or the podcast The Rest is Classified. Read More Live Aid at 40: Tom Dunne and Irish Examiner readers share their memories
NBC News
02-06-2025
- Entertainment
- NBC News
Marc Maron to end his 'WTF' podcast this fall, citing burnout
Marc Maron announced Monday that he would end his acclaimed podcast, "WTF With Marc Maron," after nearly 16 years. In the latest episode of the popular show, Maron said he and producer Brendan McDonald made the decision to end the podcast sometime this fall. 'It was not some kind of difficult decision, necessarily,' Maron told comedian John Mulaney, who was his guest on the episode. 'Neither me nor Brendan, who are the only people in charge of this operation on every level… we both realized together that we were done.' Maron's show, which celebrates its anniversary Sept. 1, broke ground while the medium of podcasting was still in its infancy. Since its launch in 2009, Maron has recorded more than 1,600 episodes, with guests such as former President Barack Obama, rock star Keith Richards and comedian Carol Burnett. An episode he did with Robin Williams was entered into America's National Recording Registry as the first one-on-one podcast episode. Maron's decision to end the "WTF" podcast comes as podcasts are taking over TV screens amid video formats' increasing popularity. The medium first emerged in the mid-2000s and remained a small, niche market for years before several hits, including 'Serial,' gave the medium a jolt of attention and gravitas. While 2023 was a tough year for podcasts as a whole, popular podcasts retained — and in some instances grew — their audiences in 2024. 'We're tired, we're burnt out, and we are utterly satisfied with the work we've done,' Maron said during Monday's episode. 'We've done great work.' However, Maron said that he is not necessarily retiring from podcasting. "This doesn't mean I'm never going to do something like this again," he said. "It doesn't mean I'll never, you know, have talks like I do here, or or some kind of podcast at some point in time. But for now, we're just, uh, we're wrapping things up. It's OK. It's OK to end things." "And thankfully," he said, while talking about McDonald, "we both realized together that we were done."
