What's Up - Your guide to what's happening in Fayetteville, AR this week!
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PODCASTS 38 WHAT'S UP! JANUARY 17-23, 2021 Worth A Listen The New York Times T he New York Times offers, through the eyes of its writers, this list of the best podcasts of 2020, still worth a listen in 2021. 'Wind of Change' Every so often the CIA oversees an absolutely deranged project: spy cats, mind control experiments, a booby-trapped conch shell. So the idea that the agency wrote a popular heavy metal song that helped thaw the Cold War? Maybe not so crazy. In this eight-episode audio documentary, soft power meets power ballad. New Yorker writer Patrick Radden Keefe investigates an irresistible rumor — that the CIA composed the Scorpions' 1990 glasnost-positive anthem, "Wind of Change." On a shaggy dog international tour, Keefe interviews ex-spies, shadowy music industry figures and the Scorpions' frontman, Klaus Meine. But this is ultimately a podcast about a conspiracy theory and, as with most conspiracy theories, the solid evidence is thinner than a vinyl pressing. Still, Keefe's keen reporting and obvious excitement keep your earbuds in, even into the two bonus episodes. — Alexis Soloski 'Into the Zone' British Indian novelist Hari Kunzru describes this show as being about "opposites," and the eight episodes of its first season are dedicated to some lofty ones: life vs. death, native vs. migrant, optimism vs. pessimism. It shouldn't work. But Kunzru's free-ranging intelligence and memorable interview subjects (a performance artist known for having her face cut open, an obscure Silicon Valley entrepreneur who wants to send all human knowledge into space) steer the show in consistently surprising and entertaining directions. An unexpectedly haunting detour into the history of the MP3 file format, in an episode about signal and noise, typifies Kunzru's ability to find fascinating stories hidden in plain sight. — Reggie Ugwu 'Floodlines' The eight episodes in this bone-chilling, blood-boiling, heartbreaking show revisit the events of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans — what happened during the 2005 storm but especially the flooding and corruption loosed in the storm's wake, and what remains unfinished. The series' guide is Vann R. Newkirk II, a senior editor at The Atlantic, who narrates and interviews with a warm inquisitiveness and sly skepticism. People seem incapable of being anything less than honest with him, even when the price is self- incrimination, as seems to be the case with the notorious former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Michael Brown. There's a cinematic sweep at work here and the steely restraint of hindsight. The show brings everything to life — the storm, the city, its people, their straits. Listening to the story of one cataclysm — exacerbated by racism, politics and misinformation — in the midst of another (exacerbated by the same), you're forced to think about a natural disaster's exposure of the tragic underbelly of human nature. — Wesley Morris 'Passenger List' A podcast that you should never listen to on an airplane, this eight-episode audio drama thriller stars Kelly Marie Tran ("The Last Jedi") as college student Kaitlin Le. A flight with her twin brother on the manifest disappears somewhere over the Atlantic, Best podcasts carry on into 2021 See Podcasts Page 41 The eight episodes of "Floodlines" revisit the events of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans — what happened during the 2005 storm but especially the flooding and corruption loosed in the storm's wake, and what remains unfinished. (Courtesy Image)