Podcasting as Literary Form with PhD Student Ella Waldmann

Today Dario talks to PhD student studying at the University of Paris, Ella Waldmann, about her recently published article From Storytelling to Story Listening: How the Hit Podcast S-Town Reconfigured the Production and Reception of Narrative Non-Fiction. We discuss the literary aesthetics and structures of the show, the storytelling devices used to shape an experience that explicitly calls to the novel as modernist form. We speculate on whether this is an example of podcasting attempted to assert a cultural credibility and how this is further imbued through discussion of the shows production and reception, with a marketing discourse that undoubtedly seeks to capitalise on the podcasting literary pretensions.

Also, Dario's monologue takes stock of the discipline of Podcast Studies after speaking at a recent panel hosted by Concordia University and our partners at the SpokenWeb podcast. His reflections also link to recent news regarding further reformations in podcast infrastructures as both Spotify and Apple announce plans for subscription only content and reconfigurations of their podcast software interfaces to accommodate this. If you want more background on these developments I suggest reading the latest BelloCollective newsletter which offers a succinct summary and links to further articles.