EARLY THIS YEAR, during an otherwise bleak couple of days in Brooklyn, New York, thousands of podcast fans enjoyed a special treat: They got to be a part of My Favorite Murder.
No, they didn't become victims of some bound-for-true-crime massacre; they were invited to the Pod Loft, a pop-up version of My Favorite Murder's original podcasting studio. After spending countless intimate hours listening to the show, these so-called Murderinos were finally able to inhabit a version of the room where it happened, one filled with fan art, listening experiences, and tributes to the pod's motto, "Stay sexy and don't get murdered."
The Pod Loft was one of many installations at this year's On Air Fest, which also featured spaces dedicated to Radiolab, The Heart, Object of Sound, and On Being. The Podcast Experience, as it was dubbed, may have seemed like marketing-an "activation," in industry jargon-but it was also an exploration of the genre's future. With about 220,000 podcasts releasing at least one episode per week, creators need new ways to keep fans engaged. They've sold shirts and gone on tour, but if the On Air Fest asked anything, it was this: What's next?
Jemma Rose Brown, one of the event's organizers, thinks the landscape has changed dramatically. "The levers that could be pulled don't exist in the same ways," she says. "Now you have to create a moment, and you have to create a story. Every podcaster should be thinking about innovation and play and experimentation."
Podcasts have always been a deeply personal experience, thanks in part to how most people listen to them: with headphones in, while commuting, cooking, or cleaning. Now, though, the most successful podcasts are the ones that cultivate communities. There's clout and kinship in being a Murderino, a Friend of the Pod, or part of the Daddy Gang.
Denne historien er fra July - August 2023-utgaven av WIRED.
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Denne historien er fra July - August 2023-utgaven av WIRED.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Spin Cycle - To study tornadoes, it helps to wear a skirt (and rocket launchers).
To study tornadoes, it helps to wear a skirt (and rocket launchers). When the Dominator is about to intercept a tornado, Timmer uses a two-prong system to anchor the vehicle. Air compressors lower the car so its thick rubber skirt nearly touches the ground, and spikes wedge 6 inches into the earth to firmly prevent the vehicle from liftoff. Timmer and ONeal have seen roughly 65 tornadoes in the past six months. It was a historic amount, ONeal says. A lot of meteorological setups are busts, but every day we drove out this year, we felt like we would see a tornado.
Fantastic Plastic - a plastic bag might be the most overengineered object in history.
Stretchy seaweed. Reverse vending machines. QR-coded take-out boxes. To cure our addiction to disposable crap, we'll all need to get a little loony.
Piece of Mind - This diagram maps 1 cubic millimeter of the brain-but its unprecedented clarity deepens the mysteries of cognition.
This diagram maps 1 cubic millimeter of the brain-but its unprecedented clarity deepens the mysteries of cognition. Although this image wouldn't look out of place on a gallery wall alongside other splashy works of abstract art, it represents something very real: a 1-cubic-millimeter chunk of a woman's brain, removed during a procedure to treat her for epilepsy. Researchers at Harvard University stained the sample with heavy metals, embedded it in resin, cut it into slices approximately 34 nanometers thick
I Am Laura Kipnis-Bot, and I Will Make Reading Sexy and Tragic Again
WHEN A FLATTERING EMAIL ARRIVED inviting me to participate in an AI venture called Rebind that I'd later come to think will radically transform the entire way booklovers read books, I felt pretty sure it was a scam.
DAMAGE CONTROL
According to Léna Lazare, the 26-year-old face of the radical climate movement, they're also acts of joy.
AN IMPERFECT STORM
CAN THE U.A.E. REALLY MAKE RAIN ON DEMAND OR IS IT SELLING VAPORWARE?
THE HOLE IN THE MAP OF THE WORLD
ON THE SURFACE, THERE'S NOTHING UNUSUAL ABOUT IT. JUST A SPOT OF OCEAN. BUT BENEATH THE WAVES LURKS SOMETHING INCREDIBLE: A MASSIVE WATERFALL. AND IN ITS MYSTERIOUS DEPTHS, THE FATE OF THE WORLD CHURNS.
COOLER HEADS
The deadliest environmental threat to city dwellers worldwide isn't earthquakes, tornadoes, flooding, or fire. It's heat.
TERMINAL VELOCITY
IT WAS 2 AM at Denver International Airport, and Jared Murphy was only a few hours into a planned 17-hour layover.
THE ETERNAL TRUTH OF MARKDOWN
If the robots take over, we should at least speak their language.
