Stories from the making of a podcast

Apr 18, 2017

Episode 8: Robots, Piers Full of Robots

As always, go listen to the the show! It really is better than reading the flat text, but for accessibility and archivability, here you go.

Worth noting up here only that if you’re in the Bay, Jonathan Hirsch and I are having a…

Episode 7: The Lost Docks

Ok, I know I say every week you should *listen* to this, but really, this week, you should listen to the magic if Jonathan Hirsch’s sound design.

Here’s the setup: It’s 1979 and containerization is sweeping through the waterfront, leaving the old docks in…

Episode 1: Welcome to Global Capitalism

As promised, I’m getting up the transcripts of all the episodes here in this Medium collection. It’s always better to *go listen* to hear the magic that Jonathan Hirsch brings to the show, but hey, for posterity, for accessibility, for searchability, here you…

Alexis C. Madrigal

Apr 4, 2017

Episode 6: They Won, They Won Big

It started with a puzzle: why were people in West Oakland dying 12–15
years earlier than their counterparts in the wealthier hills? The
people in the flatlands were dying of the same things as the people in
the hills, just much younger. Meet the doctor who helped make…

Alexis C. Madrigal

Mar 28, 2017

Episode 5: The America-First Ships

https://player.megaphone.fm/PPY7204462267

As always: the standards caveats around this script apply: it changes sometimes in production, we tweak things at the end, and it’s always better to listen to the episode if you can, so you can hear…

Alexis C. Madrigal

Mar 28, 2017

The worst story about cats that you’ll ever hear

For episode 5 of Containers, I was able to board an American-flagged ship docked at the Port of Oakland. It was a fascinating experience meeting the sailors and exploring the ship with the permission of the Captain, Tony Mociun. You can hear the…

Alexis C. Madrigal

Mar 21, 2017

Episode 4: COFFEE

A trip into the hidden backend that’s enabled the rise of precisely and ethically sourced “third-wave” coffee.

This is the script for episode 4 of Containers, a radio documentary about how global trade works. Things change in the editing, producing, and mixing stages, so…

How to make underwater recordings

When I started thinking about Containers, my audio documentary about global shipping, capitalism, and technology, I started spending a lot of time at Middle Harbor Shoreline Park, a thin sliver of a place pinned between the Bay and the Oakland International Container…

Episode 3: The Ships, the Tugs, and the Port

The third episode of Containers is out. We go inside working life on the San Francisco Bay to see how brutal competition among shipping companies threatens the viability of the small businesses that ply the waters. Meet a tugboat dispatcher, a skipper…

Alexis C. Madrigal

Mar 7, 2017

The things they carried (back to the Philippines)

This is my scratch paper to talk about some of the stories behind Containers, my new audio documentary on global trade, technology, and the people who make capitalism run. Episode 2 just dropped. In it, we meet two Filipino sailors, who risked…