This week…
David Andress on Twitter shares a screenshot from an article in The Times with the following paragraphs:
Patients will be able to obtain antibiotics from pharmacies without seeing a doctor under new plans aimed at reducing the need for GP appointments.
Thérèse Coffey, the [UK] health secretary, has pushed to make antibiotics more freely available and has said that she has previously handed out her own supplies of the medicines to friends and family who were feeling unwell.
I knew since I was in kindergarten that no one should be sharing antibiotics with anyone. My kindergarten teacher wanted to do that with her leftover antibiotics because she was feeling ‘much better’ and my mother, a secondary school biology teacher, gave a stern lecture—and this was three decades ago—about the dangers of antimicrobial resistance as she was picking me up and packing me home. Maybe my mother is a very good teacher, but that speech stuck with me.
And now, a selection of top stories on my radar, a few personal recommendations, and the chart of the week.
Audiobooks: Every minute counts
Karl Berglund for Public Books:
The audiobook boom is altering the book business and reading culture. It provides opportunities for people to read more and in new ways, but it also affects how “reading” can be understood. In highlighting the complexities of popular fiction reading, Janice Radway once famously objected to the metaphor of consumption when equated with reading. Reading is not a passive thing, she claimed. I agree, and a multitude of readership scholars have convincingly proved this to be true: reading is active, participatory, social.
But thanks to audiobooks, we might need to update this reasoning. In fact, some of the audiobook practices surfacing indeed seem to be exactly this: passive. One can easily pose the argument that the rise of audiobooks is a sign of an ongoing crisis of our book culture, where people no longer actively engage in books but lend them half an ear as a mere distraction while doing something else. People are reading while doing the dishes, driving, working out, sleeping, etc. Can such practices really be regarded as reading? In any case, passivity must be a problem for literature, right?
Well, read on and find out.
Formats Unpacked: After the Tone
From Storythings’ newsletter that deconstructs various media formats—whether it’s TV, radio, games or others—this edition highlights how voice notes changed phone-in shows. Here’s Hugh Garry’s review of After the Tone for Formats Unpacked:
After the Tone describes itself as “A podcast for weirds and their friends”. Two mates, Debbie and Scottee lead ‘a gang of weirdos’ to create a weekly podcast made up entirely of voice notes sent by the audience to the show’s burner phone. Each episode is a 40 minute mash up of big questions and silly observations. It’s a bit like late night talk radio, but with nice people and more laughs.
After the Tone doesn’t actually feel like you’re listening to a podcast or radio show. It feels like you’re going to a place. In fact, host Scottee actually refers to the community that has built up around the show as ‘The Pub’. Listening to the 40-minute show really does feel like having a pint with a bunch of old friends on the way home from work. Scottee’s ‘come on in and grab a seat with the rest of us weirdos’ style of hosting sets the tone, and takes podcasting to a new level of immersiveness. Who needs the metaverse when you’ve got Scottee and Debbie with a microphone responding to a load of voice notes?
I recommend checking out both the newsletter and the podcast featured in this edition.
Spotify to cancel original shows from Parcast, Gimlet next month
J. Clara Chan for The Hollywood Reporter:
Spotify first acquired Parcast and Gimlet in 2019 as part of its $1 billion expansion into podcasting. Staff at both Parcast and Gimlet are unionized with the Writers Guild of America, East. The Gimlet union ratified its first contract in March 2021 and Parcast followed a year later, ratifying its first contract in April of this year.
Last year, the audio giant brought in “close to” €200 million, or roughly $215 million, in podcast revenue but also saw a €103 million, or about about $110 million, negative impact on gross profit, Spotify executives said in June.
This September, Spotify also formally launched its audiobooks business in the U.S. with a library of 300,000 works for purchase, à la carte, though the company is exploring additional business models, which could potentially include an ad-based model in the future.
I don’t listen to any of the shows that are getting the axe. The entire podcast ecosystem is turning into radio noise.
What I read, listen, and watch…
I’m trying to read “War of the Words: How Individuals Respond to ‘Fake News,’ ‘Misinformation,’ ‘Disinformation,’ and ‘Online Falsehoods’” by Edson C. Tandoc and Seth Kai Seet in Journalism Practice. If anyone has the open-access version of it, drop me a line.
I’m listening to Rumble of Thunder (2022) by The Hu.
I’m watching Zigipouse (Smoke Break), a short documentary by Alan Sahin about how the cigarette break connects coworkers with conversations ranging from the comfort of wearing medical scrubs to the latest smartphone.
I’m also watching Babakiueria (1986), a role-reversing satirical film on relations between Aboriginal Australians and Australians of European descent.
Reviews, opinion pieces and other stray links:
Why short-sightedness is on the rise by Jessica Mudditt for BBC.
Brazil’s Pix is a great example for future messaging apps interoperability by Rodrigo Ghedin.
The exploited labour behind artificial intelligence by Adrienne Williams, Milagros Miceli and Timnit Gebru on Noema.
Women researchers are cited less than men. Here’s why—and what can be done about it by Claudia Lopez Lloreda for Science.
Chart of the week
From the first story above, percentage per hour of audiobook and ebook consumption:
And one more thing
This whole paragraph lifted from Ann Friedman’s newsletter:
Starbucks founder Howard Schultz laments that unionizing baristas are messing with his “different kind of company” and “good guy” image, Greg Jaffe reports. Reminds me of William Shatner saying he felt sad about the destruction of the planet when he viewed it from Jeff Bezos’s rocket. The performed helplessness of these ultra-wealthy men infuriates me.