radio

So we did a Nose last week. It was good. It was about the second season of Slow Burn and the third season of Serial, and it was kind of also about how both of those shows tie into our present moment in interesting ways and that that's kind of interesting and suchlike.

We thought it went well.

You probably would've thought so too.

Except you didn't hear it, so how would you know? That present moment that I was just talking about got in the way: We were preempted by some Senate Judiciary Committee vote or something.

So we brought the show back for this week. We hope you'll like it now too.

It's been... quite a week. It kinda seems like nothing happened in pop culture at all this week, doesn't it? Regardless, The Nose has a mandate to satisfy.

Slow Burn is Slate's scripted, narrative impeachment podcast. The first season covered Watergate and President Nixon. The second (and current) season is covering Monica Lewinsky and President Clinton. It has a strong, willful woman at its center. It has some sexual malfeasance. It has some questionable testimony.

Serial is This American Life's scripted, narrative true crime podcast. The first and second seasons covered Adnan Syed and Bowe Bergdahl. The third (and current) season covers the court system in Cleveland. It has some justice and plenty of injustice. It has some lawyerly delays and obfuscation. It has at least one questionable judge.

So, when Prince died (which was two years ago), we announced that we were finally going to retire our theme song (which is a Prince song). And then we promptly did... nothing at all.

Over the last few weeks, though -- and in typical Colin McEnroe Shovian fashion -- we've decided that this non-problem is a big problem. And so, in order to try and hopefully finally fix this non-problem big problem, we're doing a whole show about theme songs -- ours and other people's.

It’s the holiday season -- the perfect time to kick back and get lost in a new podcast... or two... or three... or four. But how do you decide what to listen to?

Tom Ashbrook. John Hockenberry. Michael Oreskes. David Sweeney. Garrison Keillor. Tavis Smiley. Leonard Lopate and Jonathan Schwartz. Charlie Rose.

There's no way around it: The sexual misconduct reckoning that's happening in media and politics and elsewhere has hit public television and radio particularly hard.

This hour we wonder why, and we take your calls.

Martin McDonagh's Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is probably the funniest movie you'll ever see about a mother trying to avenge the rape and murder of her daughter. And... that's pretty much all I need to say about it, don't you think? The Nose, though, has much more to say about it.

TiVo. AdBlock. Ad-free subscription options. Cord cutting. The death of print.

There seem to be a lot of signals pointing toward the end of an industry.

This hour: bridging West Africa’s communication gap. We hear how one Connecticut-based nonprofit is bringing community radio to Senegalese villages. It's something host Lucy Nalpathanchil reported on during her visit to the country late last month. 

S-Town is the new, wimpily titled, seven-hour, non-fiction, southern gothic novel of a podcast that the folks behind Serial and This American Life released all at once this Tuesday, and The Nose has listened to the whole thing.

Some of us even listened to it all at once this Tuesday.