This episode of the poscast Love + Radio is a perfect exampe of the power of great tape. The story begins when a guy named Jerome catcalls a radio producer.
When Jerome called out to her in the street, she pulled out her microphone and asked if he could repeat what he said to her. This is the conversation that followed.
Love + Radio made a name for itself early on with its amazing sound design and musical scoring. But what I love about the way the show has evolved is its focus on people. Most episodes are sound portraits of unlikely characters, many of them disreputable characters: bank robbers, extortionists, strip club managers. But it never feels like the show is exploiting its subjects, judging them, or sensationalizing them. The interviewer might challenge them, but they always get to speak for themselves.
This, to me, is the real potential value of podcasts. As Bertolt Brecht once wrote of radio:
Radio is one sided when it should be two. It is purely an apparatus for distribution, for mere sharing out. So here is a positive suggestion: change this apparatus over from distribution to communication. The radio would be the finest possible communication apparatus in public life, a vast network of pipes. That is to say, it would be if it knew how to receive as well as transmit, how to let the listener speak as well as hear, how to bring him into a relationship instead of isolating him.
Most episodes of Love + Radio could never appear on the actual radio. Podcasting made this show possible. We should all strive to take advantage of that opportunity. If you're making a podcast, don't just sit in front of your computer talking to people you already know. Try to turn your microphone outwards at the world, to increase the number of human voices (both reputable and disreputable) speaking for themselves.