28 October 2018

SAUSAGE MAKING, TV STYLE


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We are not regular viewers of Rachel Maddow. She is smart but long winded. More importantly, I fall asleep somewhere during the second half of her program.  But last week we were house guests of MSNBC addicts, and so we watched Rachel on non-baseball nights and pieces of Rachel between innings when the game was on.

At the end of one of her programs, she announced she had done a podcast and was very proud of it. It was her first, she was excited but apprehensive of its success, and she urged her viewers to subscribe to it.  There are seven daily segments, the first two will be available on Tuesday, August 30. She said it was about an important event in our history and the title of the podcast is Bag Man.

And then she played a 30 second teaser, containing voices of several participants, the first of which sounded a lot like me.  Turns out it was me!

Explanation:  Some months back, a nice guy, Mike Yarvitz, called me, said he worked for NBC, and was going to produce a podcast about the 45th anniversary of the resignation of Vice President Spiro T. Agnew. He said he had read my book, and asked if he could interview me for his podcast.  Hey, anything to sell another two books. He came to my office, set up a microphone and a small recorder on my desk, and we chatted for about three hours. Easy.

But now it appears that my voice, and apparently the voices of one or more of the prosecutors he interviewed, will be the substance of Rachel Maddow's podcast. I assume her production, of which she was so proud, will consist of her narrating the events and patching in the voices of the people Mike interviewed.

I would like to meet and talk with Rachel, but never have. I am eager to see how she carries this off on Tuesday. 

(The podcast website says something about listening at 9:55 p.m. that night, so I assume she will play a 5-minute teaser segment at that time.)

Now I confess I am such a Luddite that I have never listened to, no less subscribed to, a podcast.  For those of you who are in my league, (and you know who you are!), here is some info:

A podcast is basically a recorded audio program that you listen to on your computer, whether it is a desktop or a smart phone.  When you "subscribe" to a serial podcast, as each new chapter is released it will show up in the podcast library on your device.

I can offer two means of doing this: The hard way is to go Google and ask how to subscribe to a podcast. 

I took the easier route as Maddow suggested; to download "Maddow's" Bag Man,  click on this: http://msnbc.com/BAGMAN 
and download the podcast to the place of your choice. Since I never did this before, I downloaded it to "Apple podcasts" where it appears in my iTunes podcast library. Then, I assume, as each new chapter is released, it will appear in that library.

No, I do not accept complaints about these instructions. If they do not work, or are too complicated to follow, take the short route and ask a grandchild to do it for you.

A bientot.