Thursday, July 23, 2015

Starlee Kine Made Most Of The Pilot To Her New Podcast Three Years Ago...

AllTheDigressionsThatFit
NotHoldenVille



....Which is way before podcasts blew up.

Because they've only been really big since, apparently,  the end of last summer.

Or some such thing:

Vanity Fair: Tell us about the genesis of Mystery Show.

Starlee Kine: Someone had come to me and asked if I wanted to do a radio show, and I had never wanted to do a radio show, because I couldn’t think of an idea that was different enough from This American Life. And I didn’t want to do aStory Corps thing, I was kind of tired of doing personal stories and stuff. Then suddenly it just . . . I knew I liked mysteries, so I went out and made a lot of the pilot three years ago. Not the whole thing, but a substantial amount. It was kind of before podcasts were big, because podcasts have only been big since last September.


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My favourite episode of 'Mystery Show' so far?

The one where Ms. Kine vows to find out why a little known book written by a friend of hers happened be in Britney Spears possesion for what appeared to be no good reason at all.

And it is not my favourite episode because of anything Ms. Kine learns about the reading habits of Ms. Spears.

Instead, what slays me is a fantasmagorically digressive phone conversation between Ms. Kine and the guy from Ticketmaster.

Seriously.

You can listen to the entire thing for free, sans service charges....Here.



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Previously, Ms. Kine did some really great stuff on Ira Glass' little radio show and, even, occasionally, Mr. Goldstein's Wiretap...You'd almost think all these audio nerds hang out together or something.


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2 comments:

Norm Farrell said...

The BBC, which has distributed thousands of different shows by podcast, will be surprised to hear the platform has only been big since last September.

My little audio device has, among many other programs, 648 45-minute episodes of In Our Time, Melvyn Bragg's weekly exploration of just about every subject studied by humankind.

Presumably the September reference is to Serial, created by Sarah Koenig, Ira Glass et al. Personally, I thought it delivered much less than promised but, given the quality of This American Life, Serial Season 2 will get better.

RossK said...

Norm--

Definitely a ref. to success, in listenership terms, to Serial, I reckon. Kine's thing is released through Gimlet run by TAL and Planet Money alum Alex Blumberg...It appears that they really do all sit around thinking stuff up together.

I find the Mystery Show (and Blumberg's 'Start-Up') to be superior to Serial as there really is some there, there even if it is only, in the case of Kine's thing especially, made of whimsy and wonder.

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