Everything is Alive: Chioke, Pane of Glass

May 23, 2019 8:57 AM

Note: this episode is a followup to "Chioke, Grain of Sand." If you haven't heard that episode, we suggest starting there. Chioke just wants to be transparent with you.
posted by eotvos (2 comments total)

This was great fun. I'm probably quite biased compared to the average listener, as someone who has spent a non-trivial part of my professional life thinking about the details of the material inside silicon wafers, but, imagining that a grain of sand in a residential fish-tank would ever be made into glass requires a certain suspension of disbelief. But, I'm willing to go there for the benefit of the story.

The discussion of lifetimes was fantastic and one again struck that, "this is something I've never heard before on the radio," chord. And, I'm curious to look up human-Chioke's work. He sounds like a thoughtful guy.
posted by eotvos at 9:12 AM on May 23, 2019

So I just realized that I love this series so much I'm reluctant to listen to new episodes because I don't want to waste them.

This show has a recurring narrative move that kills me every time. The interviewees are SO GOOD at developing some quirk, or world-view, or opinion about humanity, that is so very alien and/or totally bonkers, and then they absolutely keep quiet about it until the trap gets sprung deep into the interview. It's such genius characterization and the patience they show as they slow-drip it out is so fabulous.

And it's sometimes so small: after slamming humanity as the only bad species, the spin he puts on "I don't know that I feel pain... But I guess that I feel enough EMPATHY" is perfect. Or the way he doesn't directly push back against being called invisible but instead goes directly to nitpicking definitions.

These are all great and I think this is one of the best.
posted by range at 8:24 AM on May 25, 2019 [1 favorite]