Narrative Podcasting in an Age of Obsession

Serial's impact on narrative podcasting has led to a boom in the genre, with over 350 podcasts released between Serial and the COVID pandemic. Narrative Podcasting in an Age of Obsession explores why these podcasts are "obsessed with obsession," why they focus on the labor involved, and why fiction podcasts work hard to prove they are a new form. It also examines the industry's reckoning with systemic racism, misogyny, and other forms of discrimination.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 276 pages
Publication date: 30 June 2024
Publisher: The University of Michigan Press

Serial, a narrative podcast, revolutionized popular culture by bringing the narrative podcast to the forefront a decade ago. Since then, there has been a significant increase in the production of podcasts that tell stories, particularly in the fields of true crime, storytelling, history, and narrative fiction. Now that the initial excitement around the medium has begun to fade, it is time to reassess the medium's technological, political, economic, and cultural rise, particularly the types of storytelling that accompanied that rise. Narrative Podcasting in an Age of Obsession is the first book to examine this vast body of material and attempt to make sense of it from a structural, historical, and analytical perspective. Focusing on over 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.

Weight: 454g
Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780472055210