Frank Racioppi
Bio
I am a South Jersey-based author who is a writer for the Ear Worthy publication, which appears on Vocal, Substack, Medium, Blogger, Tumblr, and social media. Ear Worthy offers daily podcast reviews, recommendations, and articles.
Stories (442)
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Two Podcasts To Help Podcasters
Think of the podcasting industry like an assembly line. Every day, podcasts roll off the line. The line runs in three shifts -- 24/7. Some models are interview shows, others are informational, one-topic shows, still others deal in comedy or true crime. The most expensive models, not necessarily the best and most reliable, are the network-supported models where celebrities entice listeners into the audio and video showroom.
By Frank Racioppi10 months ago in Interview
Open To Debate Podcast
Open To Debate may be one of the most vital communications channels we still have left in the U.S.today. We don't talk to each other but AT each other. Too often, our solution to communicating to family members, co-workers, friends, and acquaintances is a stony, sullen silence followed by an abrupt, "I don't talk about politics."
By Frank Racioppi11 months ago in Interview
Curiosity Weekly Podcast
Discovery Channel is an American cable channel that used to be known for documentary television programming focused primarily on popular science, technology, and history. Over the years, it has been transformed into a schedule of reality television shows, promotion of pseudoscience, and conspiracy theories. On Discovery, there are people apparently running around naked in the woods and other people searching for gold. The cable channel should merge those shows into one where naked people search for gold.
By Frank Racioppi11 months ago in Interview
The Gray Area Podcast
Vox Media is one of those media companies with a host of desirable properties. Its brands include Vox, New York Magazine, The Verge, The Cut, Eater, and Vulture. Its podcasts, like NPR and The New York Times, have a distinctive footprint -- thoughtful, insightful, inquisitive, and embracing nuance, incongruity, and contradiction. Vox doesn't trade intellectual honesty for fealty to ideology like Fox News and its competitors, desperately trying to carve out space on the political right by "out-extreming" the Rupert Murdoch network.
By Frank Racioppi11 months ago in Interview
Familicide True-Crime Podcast
True-crime podcasts typically recount tales of victims being murdered or kidnapped by total strangers, which is certainly a scary scenario. But how about violence committed by a family member? For women, the numbers are disturbing. In 2023, approximately 60 percent (or 51,100) of women and girls intentionally killed worldwide were murdered by an intimate partner or other family member, according to a UNODC report on femicide. According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, 16 percent of homicides were members of the defendant's own family.
By Frank Racioppi11 months ago in Interview
Mauling The Self-Help Industry
I think these two podcasts -- If Books Could Kill and Bad Therapist -- should be classified in a new genre, which is Public Service. Both shows perform a public good, informing unsuspecting and gullible citizens such as myself that self-help books only help the authors who wrote them while mental health gurus (AKA life coaches, motivational speakers) enrich themselves through psychobabble.
By Frank Racioppi11 months ago in Interview
The Industry Podcast
The genius of history podcasts is that the genre can take three distinct tracks. First, the podcast can cover history as we know it, from the Fall of the Roman Empire to the Boxer Rebellion in China. Second, the show can dispute myths that have been calcified in the historical record. For example, witches were not burned as a result of the Salem Witch Trials, Napoleon wasn't short, and Marie Antoinette never said, "Let them eat cake." Third, the podcast can investigate history that is lesser known and, at times, intentionally forgotten.
By Frank Racioppi11 months ago in Interview
