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Comment by mattl | Hacker News Reader

Radiolab is incredibly hard to listen to with all the random noises and things they sprinkle into each episode. Contrast this with This American Life and its a world of difference.

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I find the style patronising to the point of irritation. Overly edited, repeatedly cutting to the hosts instead of letting the subject just damn well speak and letting the listeners damn well think for themselves. Maybe I am overly critical but I listen to a wide spectrum of podcast content and their style really gets my back up to the point I gave up listening recently.

TAL tends to deal with a more specific topic or story compared to Radiolab, which deals with an idea that has many smaller bits. The editing reflects this. I find it fine to listen to.

Impossible to listen to. I can’t stand it. Their series on the Supreme Court, More Perfect, is slightly better and just manageable. But I couldn’t finish one episode of their flagship show.

I’m relieved to hear I’m not the only one, to be honest. I thought I was going mad. Or worse: old.

I would recommend listening to the catalogue in reverse order. I agree with the broad criticisms in this thread, and I no longer listen. But for the first 4 or 5 years they produced a lot of fascinating shows. Probably around Jan 2017 it takes a nosedive.

I totally agree. I feel like the audio editor is having fun for their own sake, and it takes away from the show for me. It makes the listening experience super irritating, despite the fact that I often find the content interesting.

I quite like it. I like the interleaving.

My favorite is they figured out the most infuriating amount of dead air it takes to get you to check if the headphones disconnected.

I personally love both styles.

have you listened to a more recent episode (eg this one)? the early episodes sounded like avant-garde sound experiments but the newer ones are much closer to TAL-style editing, just more people talking. they've acknowledged this criticism at least once in an episode.

I think I listened to a reasonably recent one when the Furby source code was released recently. Podcasts are one of my favorite ways to relax and I still found it jarring.

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