Narrative Podcasting in an Age of Obsession
It has been a decade since Serial brought the narrative podcast to the center of popular culture. In that time, there has been an enormous boom in the production of podcasts that tell stories, particularly in the fields of true crime, storytelling, history, and narrative fiction. Now that the initial glow around the medium has begun to fade, it is time to reevaluate the medium’s technological, political, economic, and cultural rise, in particular what types of storytelling accompanied that rise. 

Narrative Podcasting in an Age of Obsession is the first book to look back on this prodigious body of material and attempt to make sense of it from a structural, historical, and analytic point of view. Focusing on more than 350 podcasts and other audio works released between Serial and the COVID pandemic, the book explores why so many of these podcasts seem “obsessed with obsession,” why they focus not only on informing listeners but also dramatizing the labor that goes into it, and why fiction podcasts work so hard to prove they are a brand new form, even as they revive features of radio from decades gone by. This work also examines the industry's reckoning with its own implication in systemic racism, misogyny, and other forms of discrimination. Employing innovative new critical techniques for close listening—including pitch tracking software and spectrograms—Narrative Podcasting in an Age of Obsession makes a major contribution to podcast studies and media studies more broadly.
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Narrative Podcasting in an Age of Obsession
It has been a decade since Serial brought the narrative podcast to the center of popular culture. In that time, there has been an enormous boom in the production of podcasts that tell stories, particularly in the fields of true crime, storytelling, history, and narrative fiction. Now that the initial glow around the medium has begun to fade, it is time to reevaluate the medium’s technological, political, economic, and cultural rise, in particular what types of storytelling accompanied that rise. 

Narrative Podcasting in an Age of Obsession is the first book to look back on this prodigious body of material and attempt to make sense of it from a structural, historical, and analytic point of view. Focusing on more than 350 podcasts and other audio works released between Serial and the COVID pandemic, the book explores why so many of these podcasts seem “obsessed with obsession,” why they focus not only on informing listeners but also dramatizing the labor that goes into it, and why fiction podcasts work so hard to prove they are a brand new form, even as they revive features of radio from decades gone by. This work also examines the industry's reckoning with its own implication in systemic racism, misogyny, and other forms of discrimination. Employing innovative new critical techniques for close listening—including pitch tracking software and spectrograms—Narrative Podcasting in an Age of Obsession makes a major contribution to podcast studies and media studies more broadly.
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Narrative Podcasting in an Age of Obsession

Narrative Podcasting in an Age of Obsession

by Neil Verma
Narrative Podcasting in an Age of Obsession

Narrative Podcasting in an Age of Obsession

by Neil Verma

eBook

$34.95 

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Overview

It has been a decade since Serial brought the narrative podcast to the center of popular culture. In that time, there has been an enormous boom in the production of podcasts that tell stories, particularly in the fields of true crime, storytelling, history, and narrative fiction. Now that the initial glow around the medium has begun to fade, it is time to reevaluate the medium’s technological, political, economic, and cultural rise, in particular what types of storytelling accompanied that rise. 

Narrative Podcasting in an Age of Obsession is the first book to look back on this prodigious body of material and attempt to make sense of it from a structural, historical, and analytic point of view. Focusing on more than 350 podcasts and other audio works released between Serial and the COVID pandemic, the book explores why so many of these podcasts seem “obsessed with obsession,” why they focus not only on informing listeners but also dramatizing the labor that goes into it, and why fiction podcasts work so hard to prove they are a brand new form, even as they revive features of radio from decades gone by. This work also examines the industry's reckoning with its own implication in systemic racism, misogyny, and other forms of discrimination. Employing innovative new critical techniques for close listening—including pitch tracking software and spectrograms—Narrative Podcasting in an Age of Obsession makes a major contribution to podcast studies and media studies more broadly.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780472129881
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Publication date: 06/03/2024
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 276
File size: 3 MB

About the Author

Neil Verma is Assistant Professor of Sound Studies in the Department of Radio/Television/Film at Northwestern University. His books include Theater of the Mind: Imagination, Aesthetics and American Radio Drama (2012) and, as co-editor, Indian Sound Cultures, Indian Sound Citizenship (2020) and Anatomy of Sound: Norman Corwin and Media Authorship (2016).

Table of Contents

Table of Contents
 
List of Figures
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter One: Obsession, From Map to Strategy
Chapter Two: Structures of Knowing
Chapter Three: The Aesthetics of Amnesia
Coda: Where is Radio?
Notes
Index
 

What People are Saying About This

Michele Hilmes

“In this groundbreaking addition to the existing literature on one of our most talked about but least analyzed media forms, Neil Verma provides a lively, in-depth exploration of podcasting’s narrative modes and devices that will be eagerly read by both scholars and practitioners in the field.”

Kate Lacey

“With this multifaceted study, Verma offers a complex essay on the podcast form, its narrative contents and podcasting’s place in the broader media ecology. The book’s sophisticated framing weaves together both detailed descriptive work and thought-provoking reflections on memory, temporality, and ways of knowing in this current media moment.”

Tim Crook

“This is a groundbreaking, critical, and witty historical assessment of the podcasting phenomenon both as a noun and a verb in cultural communications agency. An intellectually sound evaluation of a perplexing and exciting development in the digital media-sphere separating notions of hyper-obsession, narrative and production innovation, and the advancement of diversity and representation. A triumph in research and writing.”

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