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It has been another huge year for podcasts, with a rise in both fictional and celebrity-hosted podcasts, along with the perennial true crime ones. Themes of diversity, social justice, environmental issues and cancel culture were also prominent this year.

Here, then, are five of the best podcasts of 2021 and some suggestions for companion listening.

From Serial to Ear Hustle (produced inside San Quentin prison) to Darwins Birds Eye View, the podcast medium has allowed us to fully hear prisoners stories, without any prior judgement based on their appearance. Suave extends the tradition with a deep dive into the story of a Latino-American man called David Luis Suave Gonzalez, sentenced to life imprisonment at Graterford State Correctional Institution, Pennsylvania, aged just 17.

It turns out that like other juveniles in that state, he pleaded guilty rather than be subject to a potential death penalty. Journalist Maria Hinojosa tracks Suaves story over decades, until a new ruling means he may find freedom, at almost 50. A penetrating exploration of prison psychology, this podcast is anchored in a complex relationship between a journalist and her source.

Companion listening: In the Dark, Series 2, Episode: Curtis Flowers.Years of investigation by this podcast team helped obtain the release of a Mississippi man, Curtis Flowers, who was wrongfully imprisoned for 23 years partly due to a racist district attorney. This long-awaited interview with a freed Curtis reveals a man who is sad, charming, clear-eyed and remarkably free of bitterness.

Read more: Michelle Obama, podcast host: how podcasting became a multi-billion dollar industry

Jon Ronson, the Louis Theroux of podcasting, provides a historical take on the culture wars in this carefully crafted BBC podcast (dropping Feb 9 in Australia). In the first five episodes (all Ive heard), Ronson deploys his trademark ability to scratch a big theme and find the quirky human stories that flip common perceptions.

A televangelist espouses gay rights at the height of AIDS; the censoring of progressive school literature in America in the 60s gives way to a woke backlash decades on against a seminal black memoir; a reformed anti-abortion crusader rues his propaganda; and a 1980s proto-Q-anon-style conspiracy that sent an innocent childcare worker to jail for years shows that framing a victim does not need online hysteria. The series provides sobering context for the conflicts that have been so amplified by social media anarchy, delivered with a kind of wry wonder at our inhumanity.

Companion listening: The Eleventh from Pineapple Studios documents horrifying tales of contemporary cancel culture in its first series, The Inbox, while Limited Capacity from CBC is a more playful take on internet predations.

The title derives from then President Donald Trumps vicious description of Haiti, El Salvador and some African countries in 2018. This spurred young Ghanaian-American Afia Kaakyire to delve into family history and self-discovery, telling true tales dipped in entrepreneurial dreams, green card anxieties, complicated love.

Though her name is made-up (for obvious reasons), Afias voice is utterly authentic. She chronicles with honesty and irony her ambivalent, evolving relationship with Ghana and her extended family, in a wide-ranging essay-memoir produced to the excellent standards we associate with the Radiotopia network of independent artists. Episode 3, in which she interviews her remarkable mother, Agnes, about her long journey to becoming a property-owner in New York, is a standout. And unlike many narrative podcasts, the ending doesnt disappoint: the final two episodes positively sizzle.

Companion listening: Crackdown shares themes of being Other and wishing to be truly seen. This activist Canadian podcast is hosted by Garth Mullins, a drug user who is also a professional radio reporter. In collaboration with a community of drug users in Vancouver, the podcast robustly advocates for opioids and other drugs to be made legal, styling itself as the drug war, covered by drug users as war correspondents.

This epic podcast traverses the Okavango River from its source in Angola to its discharge into the Botswana Delta 1500 kilometres later, through the eyes of local keepers and scientists dedicated to its conservation. Funded by the National Geographic Society and others, its a sound-rich portrait of the river as a vital, living artefact, narrated by two engaging African scientists who are emotionally and environmentally connected to it.

Companion listening: The Repair Season 5 of the always-on-the-Zeitgeist Scene On Radio tackles the climate emergency, starting at the Book of Genesis, which exhorted man to subdue nature.

Sometimes the Big Topics get a bit overwhelming and its nice to be reminded of what podcasting means to many: a chumcast/chatcast, where a couple of pals shoot the breeze on whatever takes their fancy. Countless chatcasts dabble in sport, pop culture and TV recaps.

With corporate heavies like Spotify, Audible and lately Facebook, muscling in on the medium, its refreshing to hear two homegrown Aussies randomly ruminating on a very pertinent theme surviving the share house and riding out the rental crisis. Hosts Marty Smiley and Nat Demena have lots of fun with Karen bin nazis,(entitled white women who police bins on streets), food-tamperers and housemates that never flush.

Companion listening: Helen Garner reading Monkey Grip, her own tale of toxic share houses, set in Melbourne in the 70s. Deliciously observed, this gritty urban anthropology (disguised as a novel) makes you realise not much has changed, despite the internet. Free on ABC Listen app, or on Audible.

Siobhan McHughs book The Power of Podcasting will be released in February.

Continued here:
River stories, culture wars, share house sagas: 5 of the best podcasts of 2021 - The Conversation AU

If you've spent any time online over the past year or so, you've probably been unable to escape the hype around cryptocurrencies, NFTs, and so-called Web3 in general. Celebs like Reese Witherspoon and Gwyneth Paltrow have gotten on the bandwagon, and El Salvador recently became the first country to make bitcoin legal tender.

Equally unavoidable is the backlash. NFT projects from the likes of Lindsay Lohan and the estate of Stan Lee have been met with ridicule and vitriol. Word that Kickstarter planned to pivot its crowdfunding platform to be backed by the blockchain was received by many on social media with disappointment or even disgust.

Web3 fans believe that cryptocurrencies and NFTs are the harbingers of a movement in tech that can decentralize finance and commerce, putting more power into the hands of users and disrupting the likes of Google and Facebook. Skeptics believe the benefits of Web3 are unproven or unrealistic, as cryptocurrency scams run rampant and blockchains damage the environment through their power consumption.

Now tech-industry insiders say the debate over cryptocurrencies is coming home, as developers increasingly take sides on Web3. Twitter is full of anecdotal evidence of developers quitting when their employers embrace crypto, even as execs at companies like Amazon and Facebook take new jobs in the industry. Even leaders like Elon Musk and Jack Dorsey vocal fans of bitcoin and crypto got pushback after suggesting Web3 is overhyped.

Importantly, insiders say, this growing rift has as much to do with politics as it does with technology, with interest in or skepticism of cryptocurrency taken as a statement of values that can pit a developer against their peers.

That's a real bigger-picture risk, some insiders say.

The more polarized the discussion becomes, and the more people who identify strongly with the pro- or anti-crypto camps, the harder it is to have an honest dialogue in the industry about the promise of the technology and to reckon with the harms of the rising tide of crypto scams and other bad behavior on the blockchain.

Some worry that this divide could be disastrous for tech in the long haul. If the Web3 movement shuns even mild or well-reasoned skepticism, insiders say, the dangers will only get bigger, scaling with its growth. And they say that, conversely, if Web3 skeptics aren't willing to assess the technology on its own merits in good faith, the industry could risk throwing the proverbial baby out with the bathwater.

"If it's going to be bad, then we need to know what it is so we can play defense," said Kelsey Hightower, a principal engineer at Google. "If it's going to be good, then we need to know how it works so we can actually get in on the action or play off it. But we can't have either of those options from a place of ignorance."

Fierce debates are common in the tech industry, where developers will endlessly argue the merits of Mac versus PC, or Android versus iPhone, or even whether to put a tab or a space after each new line of code.

The thing that sets the crypto debate apart is that cryptocurrency itself is an increasingly political issue in ways that don't break cleanly along party lines. Hillary Clinton, the former Democratic presidential nominee and secretary of state, has described what she sees as the dangers of bitcoin, while Republican Sen. Cynthia Lummis crossed the aisle to work with Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden to propose new tax rules around cryptocurrency.

Some in tech worry that this is bringing the intense polarization that saturates American politics into the heart of the software industry, making it difficult to hold any sort of good-faith discussion on the matter.

"It's so polarizing," said Tracy King, a software engineer at the startup Xplor. King said that adding ".eth" to her Twitter display name, signifying her support of the ethereum blockchain, solicited a surprising amount of blowback. "I've experienced people who I thought were friends start name-calling and block me for being a 'Web3 shill,'" she said.

Kelly Vaughn, a prominent software developer and cofounder of the gift-card startup Govalo, experienced a similar fallout after tweeting about an interest in learning more about Web3. "I know I have a large audience and with that always brings individuals with strong opinions on either side of the fence, but I definitely wasn't expecting the backlash right out the gate," Vaughn said.

"I feel like everything gets so politicized here," Anne Griffin, a product manager at the travel-booking website Priceline, told Insider. "It's putting people at a disadvantage to get in a technology that is going to change the world, like very early on."

On the other side, even optimistic skeptics of cryptocurrency are hesitant to voice anything like dissent, some insiders say. Liz Fong-Jones, a developer well known for her employee activism at Google, said she worried about losing potential clients or future investors by being critical of crypto.

"The instant you mention anything that is negative about cryptocurrency, there are going to immediately be people who nitpick what you have to say," Fong-Jones told Insider. "I wouldn't necessarily characterize the behavior as overtly harassing so much as it's sucking up the oxygen in the room."

Anil Dash, the CEO of the collaborative coding platform Glitch, said that if the pro-crypto camp doesn't take seriously the concerns about environmental damage, scams, hoaxes, and other dangers and risks that have come alongside the Web3 boom, it'll be that much harder to bridge the divide.

"The Web3 community has not had that moment of realizing they had empowered not just scammers and grifters but people that were going to twist this technology for really evil use," Dash said. "For all the good that it's done, there's been so much harm. And so I think there's anxiety and grief and residual culpability about that."

See more here:
Web3 Boom Is Bringing American Culture Wars to the Tech Industry - Business Insider

Campt, a dialogue specialist, and Mahaley, an anti-racism organizer, are principals at The Dialogue Company.

America is immersed in a culture war that is a new manifestation of its age-old problem with race. School board meetings across America have devolved into ugly protests about critical race theory. The strategy to rebrand CRT was created, organized and executed intentionally as a political wedge issue. Right-wing operative Christopher Rufo publicly admitted: We have decodified the term and will recodify it to annex the entire range of cultural constructions that are unpopular with Americans.

CRT, like all wedge issues, is forcing the public into binary thinking, further polarizing the right against the left. Anti-racism allies on the left have made things worse by belittling the arguments, defending CRT and ultimately adding to the already dangerous polarization of our country. Instead of this divisive debate, what is needed is a nuanced dialogue grounded in compassion, one that can surface legitimate concerns on both sides.

One key claim of the anti-CRT operatives is that some K-12 educators are required to teach children that all white people and America itself are irredeemably racist. Most people, unless they are among the most hyper-woke activists, bristle at this assertion. Why? Because America learned during the civil rights movement that being racist was wrong so wrong that, today, even the Ku Klux Klan denies that it is a racist organization; now, its members describe themselves as simply pro-white. Even those on the left who agree that racism in America was and is an acute problem feel uneasy about burdening their children with debilitating white privilege guilt.

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Amidst the maylay, this anxiety is being funneled into local and state elections. Activists on the right hope to build more momentum toward the U.S. House and Senate elections in 2022. As we saw in Virginias gubernatorial race, using CRT as a weaponized wedge issue works. So instead of fighting harder, adding to the dangerous polarization, we suggest people who consider themselves anti-racist shift the focus and instead ask: What should we teach our children about race and racism?

This question is actually a very useful conversation for Americans to have. This will require some very different behaviors, particularly by people on the left who claim to deplore all matters of violence. In fact, people on the left (and anyone who is tired of endless divisive culture wars) need to embody non-violence in their communication style and end these bitter and divisive debates.

How do they do that?

In addition to diffusing the CRT argument, engaging in ways that allow opposing sides to talk openly and candidly (ideally in small groups) about their fears, hopes and values will lead to better curriculum choices. School boards and superintendents need to create settings where people can actually talk to each other instead of just managing the circus of public comments at meetings. Public officials and non-educational civic organizations need to plan public engagement events for dialogue. We need many groups including churches inviting people to dialogues not about CRT but to answer the question What should we teach children about race?

We can expect to see political operatives on the right continuing to focus on critical race theory as a wedge issue in a culture war. Anyone who considers themselves opposed to racism can use compassion to transform this culture war and create a long-overdue dialogue about how people on all sides collaborate toward America's promise of equality.

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Through compassion we can transform the current culture war - The Fulcrum

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In 2021, the culture wars thoroughly colonised all of our favourite sports.

Nowhere was this clearer than in football. The peoples game was rife with woke politics this year, as it was last year. Players are still taking the knee before each game, more than 18 months after the murder of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter protests, which first inspired all the knee-taking. The kneeling still frequently features as a highlight alongside shots and saves on Match of the Day, in case we hadnt got the message yet.

Not everyone buys into the idea that footballs primary purpose is to promote the Black Lives Matter movement not least those who watch football, many of whom have grown tired of all the virtue-signalling. This was made abundantly clear when England fans booed the taking of the knee in the run-up to Euro 2020. Some fans carried on the booing at the tournament itself.

The woke were not happy about this. For BBC football pundit Gary Lineker, the boo boys were part of the reason why players [were] taking the knee. And the Euros then provided a perfect opportunity for fans to be told, over and over again, that they were a bunch of awful racists.

At the Euros, the England team mounted their best run at a major tournament since 1966. But for many commentators, the culture war, not the pitch, was where the action was. After Englands devastating loss on penalties to Italy in the final, a handful of racist tweets were held up as proof that Englands oikish football fans were dyed-in-the-wool scum, in need of re-education.

The summer of sport that followed provided plenty more podiums for woke posturing. At the Tokyo Olympics in July and August, the trans issue muscled its way into view. New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbard, who was born male, was allowed to compete against biological women despite having some quite obvious advantages.

Predictably, much of the media championed Hubbard as a heroic trans trailblazer. When critics questioned whether it was really so progressive to allow a biological male to take the space of a qualified female athlete, much of the press leapt to Hubbards defence.

The BBC went as far as to publish a 3,000-word article about this reluctant history-maker, charting Hubbards road to Tokyo. Following a predictable backlash to the article, BBC Sports social-media team then threatened to report naysayers to the police for spreading hate. In the end, Hubbard performed poorly.

As some were celebrated with no regard for their talent, one incredibly talented sportswoman was celebrated for quitting the competition prematurely. US gymnast Simone Biles, the greatest gymnast of all time, pulled out of a number of Olympic events citing mental-health reasons. She suffered an unfortunate bout of the twisties that is, feeling a disconnect between her mind and her body.

Her temporary loss of nerve was tragic, for herself and the US gymnastics team. But for the media, quitting made Biles a hero. She was showered with praise for being open about her weaknesses and for putting her wellbeing above her sport. She was even named Time magazines athlete of the year. In 2021, it seems, you could win without even taking part.

A few unfortunate sportsmen found themselves on the wrong side of the culture wars this year, however. And for this, they were shown no mercy. That some of them were hauled over the coals for things they said while they were teenagers showed just how much the harsh world of cancel culture has been imported into the world of sport.

Just think of poor Ollie Robinson, the England cricketer who was suspended from the international game because of offensive tweets he wrote when he was a teenager. Or Marc Bola, the Middlesborough footballer charged by the FA for aggravated misconduct, over an allegedly bigoted tweet he sent when he was a wise, old 14.

That even the genteel sport of cricket was overcome by identity politics this year showed how deep the rot now goes. What began with former Yorkshire cricketer Azeem Rafiqs shocking allegations of racism at his old club soon descended into unseemly cancellation campaigns.

Cricketing legend Michael Vaughan was dropped as a commentator by the BBC and BT Sport because of an allegation, made by Rafiq, that he made a racist comment over 10 years ago an allegation he vehemently denies. Rafiq himself was then brought down when anti-Semitic comments he made years ago were unearthed.

There was just too much identity politicking in sport this year. Too much right-on crusading. Too much cancel culture. And it came at the cost of the sport itself, which at times felt almost secondary to the woke propaganda.

But sporting greatness is not dead yet. England has a competitive and driven national team heading into the World Cup next year. Then theres tennis prodigy Emma Raducanu, about to take her next steps. Despite a valiant attempt by woke commentators to claim the mixed-race players fairytale win at the US Open as one in the eye of racist Britain, her stunning achievement cancelled out the noise.

So lets kick the culture wars into touch in 2022, and get back to enjoying the sport.

Paddy Hannam is editorial assistant at spiked. Follow him on Twitter: @paddyhannam.

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The year the culture wars colonised sport - Spiked

Donald Trump Jr., one of the nations foremost apologists for the win-at-all-costs politics of his father, told an evangelical Christian crowd Dec. 19 that theyve spent half a century turning the other cheek as Jesus taught and it hasnt worked out for them.

Trump Jr.s speech at the Turning Point USA gathering in Phoenix first was reported by Relevant magazine under the headline Biblical Scholar Donald Trump Jr. Tells Young Conservatives that Following the Bible Has Gotten Us Nothing. Then it was reported by Peter Wehner of The Atlantic under the headline, The Gospel of Donald Trump Jr.

While none of the Trump family has strong ties to any church or has demonstrated any pattern of church attendance, Trump Jr. acknowledged in his otherwise incendiary speech that he knew he would ruffle some feathers by speaking ill of the teachings of Jesus. Exactly how he believes conservative Republicans have turned the other cheek in Americas culture wars was not clear.

The Turning Point USA website explains its strategy: We play offense with a sense of urgency to win Americas culture wars.

The nonprofit organization was founded by Charlie Kirk, a firebrand conservative who previously was close to Jerry Falwell Jr. and Liberty University. He and Falwell Jr. created the Falkirk Center for Faith and Liberty, an advocacy and education group housed at Liberty University from 2019 until early 2021, when the university declined to renew its contract with Kirk and quietly changed the name of the center.

Kirk and Turning Point USA focus their attention on high school and college issues, seeking to engage young conservatives in the culture wars through issues such as fighting wokeness and leftist crazy and indoctrination. The organization maintains a School Board Watchlist on its website where students and parents are encouraged to report schools and teachers that promote Critical Race Theory and other leftist ideologies.

Turning Point USA lists three things it believes: The United States of America is the greatest country in the history of the world. The U.S. Constitution is the most exceptional political document ever written. Capitalism is the most moral and proven economic system ever discovered.

Trump Jr.s Dec. 19 speech was given at the groups America Fest 2021, where he spoke alongside keynoters including U.S. Rep. Madison Cawthorn, U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan, U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, and Fox News personality Tucker Carlson. The events website includes an endorsement from Rudy Giuliani. All these personalities have been at the forefront of promoting Donald Trumps big lie that he won the 2020 presidential election despite zero factual evidence to that effect.

To this crowd, Trump Jr. stirred up a roll call of conservative grievances against liberals and leftists and big government and other key institutions he said are hostile to conservatives.

Weve turned the other cheek, and I understand, sort of, the biblical reference I understand the mentality but its gotten us nothing. OK? Its gotten us nothing while weve ceded ground in every major institution in our country.

And although Charlie Kirk, the Trumps and conservative evangelicals in general frequently launch campaigns to boycott or silence people and ideas they oppose, Trump Jr. warned instead about the threat of leftists canceling them.

If we get together, they cannot cancel us all. OK? They wont, he said. And this will be contrary to a lot of our beliefs because Id love not to have to participate in cancel culture. Id love that it didnt exist. But as long as it does, folks, we better be playing the same game. OK? Weve been playing T-ball for half a century while theyre playing hardball and cheating. Right? Weve turned the other cheek, and I understand, sort of, the biblical reference I understand the mentality but its gotten us nothing. OK? Its gotten us nothing while weve ceded ground in every major institution in our country.

Wehner in his Atlantic article explained: Throughout his speech, Don Jr. painted a scenario in which Trump supporters Americans living in red America are under relentless attack from a wicked and brutal enemy. He portrayed it as an existential battle between good and evil. One side must prevail; the other must be crushed. This in turn justifies any necessary means to win. And the former presidents son has a message for the tens of millions of evangelicals who form the energized base of the GOP: the Scriptures are essentially a manual for suckers. The teachings of Jesus have gotten us nothing. Its worse than that, really; the ethic of Jesus has gotten in the way of successfully prosecuting the culture wars against the left. If the ethic of Jesus encourages sensibilities that might cause people in politics to act a little less brutally, a bit more civilly, with a touch more grace? Then it needs to go.

In his report for Relevant, Senior Editor Tyler Huckabee wrote that Trump Jr. is more correct than he probably knows here. Christianity is a poor device for gaining worldly influence. Nearly every page of the Gospels has stories of Jesus refusing earthly power and exhorting his followers to do the same. The most cursory reading of Scripture would leave anyone with the sense that this is not a manual for getting stuff.

Related articles:

Whos behind the nationwide attacks on local school boards over Critical Race Theory?

First Baptist Dallas congregation cheers Trump, breaks out into USA! chant after he speaks

Broken churches, broken nation: Will evangelicals recalculate or rebel? | Opinion by Bill Leonard

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Donald Trump Jr. tells young conservatives that following Jesus' command to 'turn the other cheek' has 'gotten us nothing' - Baptist News Global