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A busy, busy year for audio. As in 2020, lockdown gave all audio a boost in status, as well as listeners. The lack of gigs, theatre, art shows or cinema from January to March meant that audio (radio, podcasts, music) jumped up the cultural ladder. Podcasts were also boosted by yet more celebrities deciding to fill their lonelier hours with a talking to my famous mates show. Listeners responded, and podcasts are now the fastest growing audio medium (though live radio still makes up most of what we listen to).

2021 saw some interesting big-name radio appointments. Emma Barnett and Anita Rani joined Womans Hour to great success, though the former started contentiously (Kelechi Okafor refused to appear when she overheard Barnett discussing with producers whether Okafor was antisemitic). Amol Rajan moved to Today, where he has brought a more conversational feel (when he remembers to slow down his natural gabble). In late spring, much-loved Radio 1 stalwarts Annie MacManus and Nick Grimshaw both announced their departures, with MacManuss final link achieving a life of its own on social media (Life is short. It thunders by. If you like the music, you have got to get up and dance. Just do it). And 6 Musics afternoon dafty Shaun Keaveny also left, but sadly not of his own accord: his funky replacement, Craig Charles, is upbeat but less of a natural fit. Graham Norton quit his Radio 2 Saturday morning show to do the same on Saturdays and Sundays for Virgin Radio (no effect on Virgins Rajars thus far). On 5 live breakfast, Rick Edwards joined Rachel Burden, replacing Nicky Campbell without fuss or trouble.

In March, the BBC announced a gradual but compulsory move to the regions. Much of this Big Shift About meant changes for radio production teams: Newsbeat journalists are off to Birmingham, technology hacks to Glasgow, and more of Radio 3 and 6 Musics output must come from outside the capital (Charless show is based in Salford). Several old-timers, including the brilliant technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones, chose to retire rather than move.

In commercial radio, niche is still king, with Boom Radio, which launched in February, aiming for the sixtysomethings, and Greatest Hits for the uncool Gen X-ers (the likes of Alex Lester and Mark Goodier were joined by Simon Mayo in March). Times Radio has done well in its first year (around 640,000 weekly listeners), offering a sparky alternative to Radio 4 and 5 live.

Outside radio, big corporations are getting serious about our ears. Spotify gave us podcasts from genuine midlife superstars Barack and Bruce (Renegades), the UKs greatest YouTubers, the Sidemen (The Fellas, Whats Good With Miniminter and Randolph) and the most popular podcaster in the world (Joe Rogan). Its reward was to overtake Apple and BBC Sounds as the most popular podcast platform for younger audiences. Audible, known for audiobooks, has quietly been making some gripping UK podcasts, including investigative shows Finding Q, Death at Deepcut, and inventive dramas such as the Jed Mercurio-execd Zoetrope. Wondery, reliable banger-out of US true crime, added some UK shows this year, such as the excellent Harsh Reality.

With big corporations comes big money: in June, US-celebrities-interviewing-their-mates show Smartless was bought for a reputed $80m by Amazon Music, which also snapped up Wondery. But amid all these dollar signs, the question is whether theres enough advertising revenue to support the independent podcast sector. Some excellent shows are finding it harder to secure those all-important mattress/ bush-trimmer/ website design ads, as theyre all being hoovered up by, you guessed it, new celebrity shows. Still, there is no doubt that since lockdown 2020, audio has boomed. Expect even more next year.

1. Things Fell Apart (Radio 4)Jon Ronson traces the often surprising origin stories of todays raging culture wars.

2. Welcome to Your Fantasy (Pineapple Street Studios/Gimlet)Brilliant in-depth telling of the true crime story you never knew you wanted: the history of the Chippendales. Host Natalia Petrzela is excellent throughout.

3. Finding Q: My Journey Into QAnon (Audible)Journalist Nicky Woolf shows the wreckage that QAnon leaves in its trail, and gets a face-to-face interview with the man most likely to be Q.

4. Harsh Reality (Wondery)Wondery uses its long-established true crime techniques to examine the life of trans woman Miriam Rivera, and how a UK reality show exploited her and others.

5. Uncanny/The Battersea Poltergeist (Radio 4)Danny Robinss two brilliant Radio 4 series about the paranormal: The Battersea Poltergeist, a documentary (with drama sections) about the 12-year haunting of an ordinary family; and Uncanny, which examines 10 spooky real-life stories.

6. Coming in from the Cold (TalkSport/Unedited StoriesThis excellent six-part series traces the history of black players in English football, and includes testimony from Cyrille Regis, John Barnes and Raheem Sterling.

7. Windrush Stories (National Prison Radio) Full-length stories from the Windrush generation and their children, produced and presented by DJ Flight. NPR is nurturing some serious talent (see also Brenda Birungi, winner of best host: speech audio at this years Audio Production awards)

8. Comfort Eating (The Guardian)Famous people as varied as Scarlett Moffatt and Bernardine Evaristo discuss their past through the medium of their favourite comfort food with Guardian restaurant critic Grace Dent.

9. We Didnt Start the Fire (Crowd Network)A witty and fascinating modern history lesson from Katie Puckrik and Tom Fordyce, through the lyrics of Billy Joels hit.

10. Sweet Bobby (Tortoise)A mad tale of the immensely complicated catfishing of a bright young UK woman, which starts off brilliantly but as is often the case with true crime falls away rapidly once the baddie is revealed.

Any podcast of a celeb interviewing another celebWith a few honourable exceptions, such podcasts are always too cosy to offer anything more than dull anecdotes and mutual stanning. We know you need the attention, famous people, but you can all stop now.

Read more here:
Miranda Sawyers best audio of 2021 - The Guardian

You wouldnt know it from the Hollywood buzz machine, but on the first weekend of the month, in a limited release, the film Christmas with the Chosen: The Messengers raked in 8.45 million viewers and came in fifth at the box office. Originally scheduled for a limited three-day release, it has now been extended through Christmas, even while being made available via streaming.

For those who dont know the work, the short film is an offshoot of one of the most successful crowdfunded streaming projects in history, The Chosen, a retelling of the Gospels that focuses on the backstories of many of the major characters. Projected for seven seasons, with two already available online and a third set to begin filming shortly, crowdfunding has supported the $10 million to $18 million cost for each season.

The success of the streaming series and the Christmas film demonstrates the ongoing market draw for shows that celebrate, rather than ignore or denigrate, traditional faith. Yet many films in this subgenre offer nothing beyond predictable, polemical plotlines.

The original Gods Not Dead, released in 2015, set the pattern, with predictable characters and story. The central conflict is between an overbearing atheist professor who is forcing students to sign a God is dead statement and a rebellious Christian student. The latest installment (Gods Not Dead: We The People) is even more polemical as it shifts, following a strain of contemporary evangelicalism, in the direction of putting faith in the service of direct political advocacy.

The Chosen is different. Accompanied by Bible study-guides and created by Dallas Jenkins, whose father penned the Left Behind book series, the series and the film might seem to be more of the same. Yet, Jenkins repudiates the notion that this is a stick-it-to-Hollywood thing, according to The Wall Street Journal. Inspired to become a film-maker after watching the Jack Nicholson film One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest and who likens The Chosen to rich character-driven dramas like Friday Night Lights, Jenkins combines the best of Hollywood with the best traditional storytelling techniques.

The series and spinoff film pose the question what might it have been like to have encountered the person of Jesus in the course of ordinary daily life, to have lived, dined, traveled, laughed and mourned with him. And what might it have been like to begin to wonder about the strange capacities of knowing, healing and forgiving of this otherwise seemingly ordinary human being. The result is a captivating human drama invested with deep spiritual significance.

The Chosen series, whose episodes have been viewed more than 312 million times, is unique. It is sympathetic to faith in ways that Hollywood finds difficult. Yet in its openness to the best of Hollywood and in its avoidance of culture wars and political diatribes, it is atypical of faith-based films.

Its popularity is a good sign for our culture and for art. It reflects our exhaustion with politics and our longing for meaning that transcends ideological battles.

Especially in the faith-based audience, there is a hunger for depictions of faith that include, rather than rule out, doubt. In one episode, Peter here portrayed as a desperate fisherman with a gambling problem and mounting debts complains to God, on behalf of the Jewish people: You cant decide whether were chosen or not.

Viewers also want to see complex depictions of the struggle with evil in the depths of the human soul. While Hollywood continues with some regularity to produce fantastical and absurd stories of exorcism, the story of Mary Magdalene, in the inaugural episode of The Chosen, is a compelling and chilling account of what it might mean to be in the grip of evil. Her eventual encounter with Jesus fills her and the audience with surprise and awe.

The brilliance of The Chosen is to take the most influential story of all time and to make it fresh, not by altering it to suit contemporary fads, but by inviting us to inhabit the perspectives of Jesus contemporaries. In its use of indirection and in its focus on surprise and wonder, The Chosen adopts both the method of the Gospels and the tools of genuine art. It thus opens a fresh path, one with lessons for both faith-based and mainstream Hollywood filmmaking.

Thomas S. Hibbs is the J. Newton Rayzor Sr. professor of philosophy at Baylor University.

See original here:
How The Chosen embraced the best of Hollywood and showed it what people really want - The Dallas Morning News

BENGHAZI, Libya

Libyas top electoral body said Wednesday that the son and onetime heir apparent of the late Libyan dictator Moammar Kadafi is disqualified from running in presidential elections that are to take place next month.

According to a list of barred candidates issued by the countrys High National Elections Committee, Seif Islam Kadafi is barred because of previous convictions against him. He can appeal the committees decision in court within the coming days.

Seif Islam was sentenced to death by a Tripoli court in 2015 for use of violence against protesters who were calling for his father to step down, but that ruling has since been called into question by Libyas rival authorities. He is also wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of crimes against humanity related to the 2011 uprising against his father.

Libya is set to hold the first round of its presidential vote on Dec. 24, after years of United Nations-led attempts to usher in a more democratic future and bring the countrys war to an end. After the overthrow and killing of Kadafi, oil-rich Libya spent most of the last decade split between rival governments one based in the capital, Tripoli, and the other in the eastern part of the country. Each side in the civil war has also had the support of mercenaries and forces from Turkey, Russia and Syria and other regional powers.

The son of Libyas former dictator submitted his candidacy papers in the southern town of Sabha, 400 miles south of Tripoli, on Nov. 14. It was the first time the 49-year-old, who earned a doctorate at the London School of Economics, had appeared in public in years.

He was captured by fighters in the town of Zintan late in 2011, the year when the popular uprising, backed by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, toppled his father after more than 40 years in power. Moammar Kadafi was killed that same year in October amid the ensuing fighting that would turn into a civil war. The dictators son was released in June 2017.

The announcement of his possible candidacy has stirred controversy across the divided country, where a number of other high-profile candidates have also emerged in recent weeks.

Several controversial candidates came forward this month, including powerful military commander Khalifa Haftar and the countrys interim prime minister, Abdul Hamid Dbeibah.

The long-awaited vote still faces challenges, including unresolved issues over laws governing the elections and occasional infighting among armed groups. Other obstacles include the deep rift that remains between the countrys east and west, split for years by the war, and the presence of thousands of foreign fighters and troops.

Link:
Kadafi's son disqualified from running for president of Libya

ROME (AP) The United Nations migration agency said 75 migrants drowned in the Mediterranean Sea north of Libya earlier this week as they attempted to reach Italy by boat.

The International Organization for Migration reported the latest tragedy in a tweet on Saturday, attributing the information to 15 survivors who were rescued by fishermen and brought to the port of Zuwara in northwestern Libya. It did not immediately provide further information.

Also on Saturday, the Italian Coast Guard rescued more than 420 migrants, including dozens of minors, from boats in difficulty in the Mediterranean Sea,

A coast guard statement said 70 people were brought safely by one of its motorboats to the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa, south of Sicily.

Meanwhile, a different coast guard vessel was headed to the port of Porto Empedocle on Saturday evening in Sicily with more than 350 migrants aboard after they were plucked to safety from a foundering fishing boat 70 miles (115 kilometers) from the Sicilian coast, the statement said. Among them were more than 40 minors.

That fishing boat was in danger, due to the bad weather conditions at sea and due to the elevated number of persons on board, the Coast Guard said. After being rescued by two motorboats, they were transferred to a larger Coast Guard vessel.

The statement described the rescue of the larger number of migrants as complex. Four cargo ships in the area were pressed into service to mitigate the impact of the wind on the rescue operation, it said, allowing the migrants to be safely rescued.

Each year, thousands of migrants and refugees from Africa, the Middle East and South Asia attempt the deadly Mediterranean sea crossing to Europe on overcrowded and often unseaworthy boats. More than 1,300 men, women and children have died so far in 2021 trying to cross the Central Mediterranean from Libya and Tunisia to Italy and Malta according to IOM.

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Follow all AP stories on global migration at https://apnews.com/hub/migration.

Originally posted here:
UN agency: 75 migrants drown in Mediterranean off Libya ...

The bodies, including those of a baby and two women, were found late on Saturday in two separate locations in a coastal town.

The bodies of at least 27 Europe-bound refugeeshave washed ashore in western Libya, the countrys Red Crescent has said the latest tragedy on the worlds deadliest migration route.

The bodies, including those of a baby and two women, were found late on Saturday in two separate locations in the coastal town of Khoms, some 90km (55 miles) from Tripoli, the Red Crescent branch there said.

Three other refugeeswere rescued, and search efforts were underway for others, it said.

The bodies advanced state of decomposition indicates that the shipwreck happened several days ago, a security official told AFP news agency, adding the toll could rise.

Images published by Libyan media outlets showed corpses lined up along the shore then placed in body bags.

The refugeeslikely drowned in recent shipwrecks off Libya, a key departure point for African and Asian migrants making desperate attempts to reach Europe.

About 1,500 refugeeshave drowned in numerous boat mishaps and shipwrecks in the Central Mediterranean route this year, according to the UN migration agency.

Migrants often endure horrific conditions in Libya before embarking northwards on overcrowded, often unseaworthy vessels that frequently sink or get into trouble.

The latest tragedy comes only days after 160 refugeesdied within a week in similar incidents, bringing the total number of lives lost this year to 1,500, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

The IOM says more than 30,000 refugeeshave been intercepted in the same period and returned to Libya.

The European Union has cooperated closely with the Libyan Coast Guard to cut numbers of refugeesarriving on European shores.

On their return, many face further horrific abuses in detention centres.

Excerpt from:
Bodies of some 27 refugees wash ashore in Libya: Red Crescent - Al Jazeera English