How To Listen Like A Critic
Lessons learned from my weekly podcast habit: Critics At Large, by the New Yorker
Aside from having great conversations and connecting with talented producers, the overarching goal of Bingeworthy is to offer the public a new level of awareness and critical thinking about narrative podcasts.
I posit, developing criticism around a new thing is one of the steps toward promoting public awareness; you don’t go to a Marvel movie expecting an unconventional storytelling format…you don’t bring a tennis racquet to a pickleball game.
My thoughts were validated by a recent episode from Critics At Large, the recently launched podcast from The New Yorker Magazine: In this episode, ‘The Case For Criticism,’ the three hosts—Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz, all critics and staff writers—sat down to discuss what it means to be a critic in this day and age.
Everyone needs a guiding light; this series is mine. Each Thursday I eagerly await the new episode, and I listen, wrapt, allowing each smart observation and witty repartee to embrace me like a squishy grad school hug.
This episode, alongside the wider canon of this oeuvre, have inspired me to understand the mechanics and essence of being a podcast critic. I allow it to position the guardrails for this pursuit.
Alexandra Schwartz opens with her idea: “Criticism is the art of thinking seriously / deeply about something, in public.”
Vinson Cunningham follows with criticism is about feeling and thinking that there’s more to whatever you’re listening/watching, and that people like him intuitively see these deeper connections (like when heard the harmony for the first time), and thus he feels called to share his ideas and reasons with an audience.
Yes, Alexandra Schwartz agrees, but then cautions that one of the baseline job requirements of the critic is to have confidence in your own judgement. If you plan to state something as an observation, in particular if it’s not already purposely said in the piece, you must be able to stand behind it.
Although this show fired many new synapses in my brain, I realized that the concept of podcast criticism is a bit different than the rest of the artistic world.
What does it means to be a critic relate to podcast criticism, more precisely?
The podcast landscape is vast and dense. Much of what is out there, in the wider industry, is backed by corporate money where specific interests are at play. Much of what is available for what passes as ‘podcast criticism’ is sometimes thinly veiled promotion. I have been inspired to attempt to exist in this space without a PR governing body, or a publishing arm’s interest: I act completely independently, driven by curiosity and journalism. This publication is supported by the readers who read it [feel like becoming one of those supporters, specifically?]
If it’s the job of audio journalists to show, and not tell…
Then perhaps this is where the podcast critic comes in; their job it is to listen to a series and help to unearth what the series could be telling you, while you listen.
Where audio journalism differs than from, say, dance, is that there’s often an entire scaffold of facts and details that need to be shared, in a balanced and careful way, so that the listener is able to draw the desired conclusion in absence of being told directly what to think.
Writing criticism about non-fiction work has a different horizon than fiction works, but it’s not absent either.
It’s not the job of journalist to indict someone in their story; nor can they commute a prison sentence or overturn a verdict. But the tricky balancing act is that often this actually is the ulterior motive of what their work aims to do. Bone Valley is a recent example of this, and of course this hearkens back to the original true crime work in this field, Serial. Often these works of reportage and journalism function at the level of public service, which is usually noble. Other times a critic is there to be the dispassionate voice.
This leads me to the corollary: What not to do, as a podcast critic:
To draw a conclusion, or overtly say the thing that the audio producer/journalist carefully didn’t say. For me, these are the rumble strips on the highway. Sure, this is often tempting—you hear new things when you listen. But that’s not the job of the critic to point out the other possible or plausible conclusions that could be formed from the (true) crime in question; a good production team should head off this kind of speculation much further up steam, and perhaps bake it into the script.
This was something I came across in my review of In Her Defense. The journalist, Jana Pruden, was clear that she believed the story that the series’ protagonist Helen Naslund told: That she did kill her husband. Even though it was tempting to consider a different conclusion. But based on the facts that were presented in the courts, I had to stop and ask myself: why should I, as the critic, challenge what the verdict said, the prosecution alleged, the defence admitted, and the journalist reported, just because it occurred to me?
Can critics be nice, and still be a critic?
There are certainly some who make this a bloodsport. As Naomi Fry reminds us in the episode, it’s part of the critic trope to slam the show or event they attended…sometimes such frequency or veracity that you might wonder if they feel joy in any part of their life.
In a moment where I feel like being nasty, I first ask myself: What about this will lead to the greater good? If I spend my energy tearing someone else down, I pause to consider whether this effort serves any positive purpose beyond myself.
Sometimes the answer is still no; but I do this in my own style.
There are plenty of shows that I listen to that I don’t enjoy, or I think are poorly produced, or feel repetitive and derivative. But if I plan to mount my high horse to rain shit down on someone, or a group of producers, who have worked tirelessly for months (or years) to get a series out into the world…I better be damn sure that I have a good point to make, beyond getting likes and clicks.
I don’t need to remind this crew how difficult it is to get funding to do any of these things. So if they get to the finish line, and they do at least some of it well, they deserve time and attention, from an audience. And as a critic, it’s my task to translate, or reiterate, to the public, what it is they’ve been actually saying, for somewhere between four and ten hours.
A note here to illustrate this point: the number of hours spent listening. You don’t spend the equivalent of a full work day at the theatre or the art gallery. The sheer length of a narrative podcast series puts it into the category of “a relationship,” or an “experience,” not just a “show” you polish off between meals.
I begin with my own research
If I think there’s more to an idea that I’m hearing about in a series, or I’m not sure why that certain production choice was made (which coloured my opinion of a show), ask the question to the people who made the show. It’s the same mechanism as the fact-checking and verifying that should be done in each series before they launch.
This is partly why I like to include an interview with the producers of the series that I cover. It’s not so much that I’m unsure if I can stand by what I think, or have observed, but it’s also that I should make sure and check, before I put it out there.
The other reason I do this where I can (which is not every week, or every series I cover…this is just me doing this folks…) is that in the spirit of being open and transparent, in this new age of documentary, when you allow the chance for the person you’re reviewing to answer your questions, perhaps it’s more honest, if honesty is your goal. This was something that came up in my interview with Jess Shane on her short work in Lights Out: Accounts and Accountability.
[Exciting news—> next week I will feature my new interview with Jess Shane about her current series on Radiotopia Presents: Shameless, Heartbreaking, Transformative]
Here are 4 questions I always ask myself as I listen:
What is the conceit of the series?
Whether it’s fiction or nonfiction, there’s a conceit for each series…or there should be because that proves that there’s something bigger at play. You can also think of it as the ‘so-what’ of the show.
In the podcast space, I can admit that this is sometimes hard to excavate. Many of the shows that are out there are dripping with corporate interests, between the ads that they sell, or the host reads, to the way certain people or topics are featured. Other times it’s just salacious click-bait, the unending spiral of true crime, which prefers to option the worst part of you.
This is also something which I wonder whether it will change in the coming year as the once-stupid money has drains out of the system. Will the (likely fewer) narrative shows that do get make will be done in a different way, for a different reason?
Of note here: to be able to place a critique in the appropriate backdrop, within the correct jurisdiction, with all the best and most current analysis, a critic who aspires to place something within a wider cultural context needs to know a whole lot. Not just the foreground of literary and filmic works that it references, but then also a general awareness and understanding of world events, an understanding of industry trends and patterns, coupled with a reading of significant historical moments and cultural touchstones.
Don’t stop reading. Everything.
What is the rhythm and cadence of the narration of the show?
What is the overall overarching tone in the way that the information is presented? Can I discern the speed, the candor, and the pacing?
In the case of a narrative podcast, this is usually gleaned from the host, but the sound design and scoring are definitely part of this. Often, in series that are done well, this is almost invisible. The work can carefully manipulate your emotional state whilst you listen. The rub of the critic is to listen for it, but then place it up on a shelf to remind yourself of the action at play.
If a show is well-written and well-presented well, there’s usually an overall tone to it. The host here can also be the reporter, or the journalist who has done the research for this story. A discernible trend in the last few years of narrative podcasts is that the narrator is what I would call an “Expert Witness,” someone who is intimately connected to the story, which means they get to tell the story, as the host. Often, you can hear that were it not for a crack team of producers, these narrators might not be viable. The gradient from what is listenable, to what is truly un-listenable, varies tremendously.
How is the performance of the host?
Is it controversial to think of the Host as delivering a “performance,” when the topic is hard-hitting journalism?
People might dispute me on this point, but I would say that a well-delivered show should also well-performed. I recall my interview with Avery Trufelman, when I asked her why, when she mentions the credits of the show, she says that Articles of Interest is: “cut, written and performed by me, Avery Trufelman.” In our interview, I asked her it this show was performed, or narrated, here’s what she said:
“It is performed. Because I do feel like when I go into my closet to do narration, it's like…Gotta go give'em a show!”
The illusion that presenting facts and arguments is not a performance is a critical wrong step to make…and the exact wrong turn that makes is that it sounds dull and boring to listen to. It’s often what makes me press skip and move on. If the host cannot muster the energy to work hard to connect me to the subject that was kept their interest, how could I stay interested? But there’s definitely a fine line here in the sand, where over performing, or trying too hard, does not work either.
Does the series deliver on what it promises to do?
After I listen to a full series, I will often go back and listen to the first episode again (and definitely true in the minimum if I’m planning an interview with the producers). What I find, more often than not, is that the entire series will be laid out for me, before I’m even aware of this, in the first episode.
For me, when I notice this, it’s a measure of whether or not the story has been able to deliver on what it planned to do; back in the early moments of a series, when it’s just getting off the ground. I noticed this clearly with Foretold, and then most clearly with The 13th Step, which was one of many reasons why I named it #1 on the Bingey List for 2023.
Some series feel like they make a big promise, or they pull a bait-and-switch; they make a big promise of something, and then don’t quite deliver this. With City Of Rails, I thought I was headed into a mother-daughter story, which it fell short on, and instead seemed to be feeding me a long pitch for a series about a serial killer that the producer wanted to make next.
Are critics a necessary part of the ecosystem?
No, we are not saving lives here. But I see art, and journalism, as part of a wider system.
As Alexandra Swartz says in the episode: “Work is being made, to be seen, and to be responded to.”
Audience is the implicit goal for art and story—nobody aspires to make a show that no one listens to. Likewise that series would never be funded. The inter-step, between the maker and the public, is where the critic plays an important role. They can help make sure the work is seen by others. Sometimes the public response begins with the work of the critic.
In the world of podcasting, where most (and soon truly almost *all* podcasts) can be heard for free, whereas fine art, theatre, or dance, quite often come with a hefty admission price, there’s a different economy at play. If we don’t pay outright for a podcast subscription, we pay with our attention and time while we listen to ads; that’s actually the business model.
In the case where there’s an admission price, the role of the critic is often to bring the art back to others. If you have an interest in said art, but you can’t afford to actually go, the response from the critic might well be your only touch point. Without a critic, the size of the adjunct-audience diminishes.
Accessibility is one of the gifts of podcasting; conversely it is also its curse. There is a tsunami of material to consider listening to. Perhaps that point begets the necessity; the critic is able to whittle down the list of potential series to a smaller and more manageable list, so that the listening public, who does not have time for 20 hours per week to listen, can find their way to something that might improve their life in some small way.
Did you notice….
The Refer a friend button was used frequently in this post?
That’s because I have an offer of trade and swap for you.
I have 3 Free Premium Subscriptions to give away for Craft Talk, which is the Substack home of #1000wordsofsummer, an ad hoc 32,000k+ writing community of folks who commit to writing larger works, 1,000 words at a time, founded up by the novelist Jami Attenberg. The Premium community offers subscriber-only threads and archives (of which there are many letters to draw from when you just don’t know where to start).
I love this community, and dive into these writing sprints with glee each time they pop up. Sure, I write every day; but these sprints are different. Each day of the sprint begins with a letter that’s actually inspiring, not cheezy self-help drivel that actually makes you feel worse about yourself.
Do you want to put writing back into your life, in an intentional and helpful way?
I WILL GIVE AWAY THESE SUBSCRIPTIONS TO THE FIRST 3 PEOPLE TO REFER BINGEWORTHY TO 10 OF THEIR FRIENDS
Who’s in?
Thanks again for your time here, your support, and for giving your attention to narrative podcasts in the first place.