Podcast Recommendations: Portraits of Possible Futures That’ll Make You Glad for Our Present
It's no secret that the world right now is...not the best. The rise of fascism, late stage capitalism, and Silicon Valley continuing to move fast and break things can make a person feel pretty bleak about the future. Thankfully, we have fiction to help us in our time of need. And sure, we could dive into soft escapism, but how about we dig into visions of the future that are even rougher than our own?
The Hottest Entertainment Mediums of the 21st Century: Snapchat. TikTok. Audio Fiction?
With the world’s obsession with AI and every shiny, new technological advancement, it might be perplexing to see the sustained popularity of audio fiction. In some ways, it feels like an archaic form of entertainment, something your grandmother might have tuned into once a week. And you wouldn’t be wrong: audio fiction has been immensely popular throughout the ages. It first emerged as radio plays, which exploded in popularity during the 1920s, leading to the world-changing "War of the Worlds" broadcast in 1938. According to Edison Research, in early 2023, 75% of Americans aged 12 and older reported that they had listened to online audio in the past month.