« Previous (This week's submissions - 2004-12-17) | Main | Next (This week's submissions - 2004-12-17 (updated)) »

December 20, 2004

Podcast Review: IT Conversations; Voices in Your Head

This entry posted in: 4 and a half stars , I subscribe , Podcast Review

IT Conversations - Voices in Your Head

Format: talk show
Content: Interviews with important figures in Science Fiction
Rating: 4 and a half stars
What I'm going to do: listen regularly
Typical Length: around 50 minutes

While I've mentioned before that I was nervous about reviewing any of the IT Conversations series, that was a little bit misleading. In fact I've been greatly looking forward to reviewing Voices in Your Head since the first episode was published, primarily because Dave Slusher's other podcasting effort, Evil Genius Chronicles, was the first podcast I ever reviewed, and Dave is the first podcaster to mention this site "on the air". It also helps that I like Dave's work a lot.

Dave Slusher's work on the Voices in Your Head series of IT Conversations thus far results in some tremendously engaging content. When it comes to Science Fiction I'm a little bit of a dilettante, which might explain why I was unfamiliar with both of the subjects of Voices in Your Head. Nevertheless, by the time Dave had finished his interviews, I felt I had become a little bit familiar with the subject as a person, if not with all of their work. Dave's general style with his subjects is genial and conversational, and he seems to put them at their ease. This style also serves to bring the listener into the conversation. In each case there's enough personal backstory to make the subject interesting as a person, and enough discussion of the subject's work to create some opportunities for critical thinking and interest in exploring the work further.

I'm not exactly sure how these are IT Conversations, but let's set that aside for now - what's important to me is that Dave has a venue to present these interviews to us. They may not be "important" from the standpoint of impacting our day-to-day lives, but they are important in the same way that teaching literature in schools is important, and for that reason I'm glad that Doug has decided to include them here. I only wish they were produced a little more often.

The overall quality of the interviews is strong. Audio quality is good, with little difficulty hearing or understanding either participant and a good balance between the two voices. As you might expect there's not a lot to the production of these podcasts, simply some intro / outro music which is well handled. Track length is unimportant, and file- and track-naming is satisfactory - it's easy to determine the content of these files both in my player and in Windows - Doug/Dave use the interview subject's name as the track title and the series name as the album title in the ID3 tags, which works well from a player standpoint, and both are included in the windows filename.

Postscript
While doing this review, I ran into a bit of a challenge. I had to spend a fair amount of time trying to figure out what was different about Voices in You Head as opposed to Memory Lane because some of the objections I had about Memory Lane weren't shared in my opinions about Voices in Your Head despite the similar format. I felt that this was more than just an exercise in self-analysis; the tag-line for The New, New Podcast Review is far more than simply a tag-line. I really do try to be fair and balanced in my reviews, and I felt the integrity of my writing here was partially at stake if I couldn't discern why these two similar shows didn't engender the same objections.

After considerable soul-searching (OK, maybe that's a little overdramatic), I was able to uncover the source of my difficulty. What I was concerned with is the sense that i had of wanting Halley's interviews to be a little more challenging. I had no such concerns about Dave's interviews in Voices in Your Head. But here's why that's the case. I don't place nearly as much importance on Dave's guests voicing their opinions about Science Fiction as I do on the opinions Halley's guests may hold. It's much less important to me, for instance, what Eileen Gunn's concept of what Science Fiction should be than what John Patrick's ideas about the role of IT in the healthcare system.

See also my reviews on other IT Conversations series:
The New, New Podcast Review: Podcast Review: IT Conversations; The Gillmor Gang
The New, New Podcast Review: Podcast Review: IT Conversations; Memory Lane

Subscribe to mp3s.
Subscribe to aac for iPod/iTunes.
Subscribe to notifications (no enclosures).

Tagged:

Posted by cori at December 20, 2004 08:14 AM