“Podcast Weekly 26/08 - For Want of more innocent times”

While not strictly a podcast, the BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, currently celebrating it’s 60th anniversary, is available as both streamed content and a downloadable podcast. While I am not a regular listener by any stretch of the imagination, one segment of this week’s shows in particular piqued my interest.

This weeks Wednesday episode (23 August 06) particularly stood out as it included a segment on the curious resurgence of what they refer to as both ‘Girls’ Schools Stories’ and ‘gym slip fiction’. The author of a new book called “The Encyclopaedia of Girls’ Schools Stories’ was interviewed, as was one of the founders of Girls Gone By Publishers.

I tuned into this interview in the hope it delved into deeper ideas of the role of pulp fiction and why people read such formulaic genres. Even why these books regularly outsell more lauded books among women and are often disregarded as a result of being perceived as feminine genre. I understand that it is expecting a lot to expect the final segment of a radio show to solve the high vs low art debate.

Jane Little (an ocassional host of the Woman’s Hour) ever-so-briefly raised the issue of the ‘tom-boy’ character within this genre of fiction but the subject was quickly dismissed as being inconsequential to the genre. Not incidently, the Girls Gone By website lists the Christian credentials of the publishers, so, unfortunately, the majority of the interview was focused on the growing popularity of Girl’s School fiction because of the desire of readers to escape to a more innocent time.

So, the upcoming Girls Gone By Festival is likely to be more The Twins at St. Clare’s and a bit less Madchen in Uniform than i first assumed, which is a disappointment off quite epic proportions.

Other podcasts on the (digital) dial this week were the 19th August episode of the Alternative Source (Frank Sennett) and my first foray into The RU Sirius Show.
Speaking of more innocent times, RU Sirius is a writer I first came across in that bastion of cyberculture publishing, Mondo 2000, lamenting the possibilities of technology in all its glory. And, bless, the cyberporn obsession remains and earns the show an explicit categorisation by iTunes. Show no.61 forms the second part of the GettingIt.com reunion, which reunites contributors Jeff Diehl (editor of GettingIt) Steve Robles, Patrick Hughes (Greenery Press), Annalee Newitz (editor of Other magazine) and Thomas S Roche (author, editor Era zine??).

GettingIt was a webzine published in the late 90s, owned by webporn company Webpower (and hence, predominately sex-themed), GettingIt featured an impressive whose-who of (largely SF based) subculture writing, including Lydia Lunch, David Perscovitz (BoingBoing)and John Marr (Murder Can be Fun zine).

The assembled group discusse the porn addiction problem faced by the Christian communication (as revealed by a recent poll), the influence of GettingIt.com had on their lives, punchbowl surfing(the art of getting invites to product launches) and how RU Sirius came to be fired WebPower.

My favourite anecdote of this issue (which is a tough call as they recount their most bizarre experiences of working on GettingIt.com) was Jeff Diehl’s experience of interviewing Ross Jeffries (author and creator of the Speed Seduction technique) and attendance of a Speed Seduction seminar. Thankfully, the archives of GettingIt.com remain available online.

NPR’s Talk of the Nation this week interviewed Amy Webb (editor of new online magazine Dragonfire) about her recent experiment in forgoing all traditional media interaction for a month. One of the most interesting claims of the piece (aside from the author’s public declaration of Billy Joel fandom) was the underrepresentation of local media in new media formats such as podcasts as even regional media outlets tend to centralise new media production. The interview is a pretty interesting discussion about the increasing role of ‘citizen journalism’ and whether new media is able to usurp tradional media formats in day-to-day information consumption. The full article from Webb’s experiment was published in the Philadelphia Inquirer.