For all the chuckles: Bad Romance
This has been my favourite find of the week. Comedians and writers Jourdain Searles and Bronwyn Isaac take apart romantic comedies and mercilessly drag them through the mud. And while most of these movies deserve all the scorching criticism in the world, don’t be surprised to find some of your guilty favourites in there. (Welp: ‘Garden State’!) Other movies they discuss include ‘Runaway Bride,’ ‘How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days,’ ‘He’s Just Not That Into You’ and ‘Bride Wars’.
For the music lovers: Broken Record
After launching with a fantastic pilot episode (featuring Eminem of all the people) exactly a year ago, ‘Broken Record’ co-hosts Malcolm Gladwell (‘Revisionist History’) and Rick Rubin all but disappeared, seemingly having given up on the project. But the boys have made a full comeback, dropping four episodes in November alone. If the name Malcolm Gladwell alone isn’t enough to pull you in (the man is a podcast Midas, turning every show he touches into audio gold) there’s plenty to unpack here for fans of music, evidenced in that very first pilot episode, which featured a free-flowing interview with rapper Eminem. For this season’s introductory episode, Gladwell grills his co-host Rubin, producer and label manager extraordinaire, to mine his rich career for funny anecdotes and creative insights. For listeners who like a little bit of unpredictability when they tune in every week, ‘Broken Record’ is the musical mixed bag you’ve been looking for.
For the news junkies: The Guardian’s Audio Long Reads
I cannot say this enough, podcasts are the gifts that keep on giving. For someone who has a special TL;DR list of articles set up in the bookmarks section, ‘The Guardian’s Audio Long Reads’ is a godsend. These are basically a selection of the Guardian’s long read articles that are published in the paper and online. It gives (lazy) listeners the opportunity to get on with your day whilst listening to some of the more interesting and off-kilter stories the Guardian has to offer: in-depth writing from around the world on immigration, crime, business, the arts and much more.
For the food lovers: Proof
Here at Gulf News tabloid! we can’t stop thinking about food, even as we dream up the next harebrained diet to sunk our teeth into. Indulging this obsession is this week’s final podcast recommendation: ‘Proof’, from the guys at America’s Test Kitchen. Hosted by Bridget Lancaster, the show goes beyond recipes and cooking to investigate the foods we love (deep-fried oreos) and don’t love (like once-in-vogue celery and the meteoric rise of the grain bowl). Proof solves food mysteries, one story at a time. New episodes drop every Thursday. A good place to start is their episode on food cravings: where do they come from, are they genetic, cultural or gender-specific?
