It Could Happen Here - Podcast Rankings and reviews

This is where I get a lot of my news these days. I appreciate the global + local perspective and how much on the ground reporting they do. The hosts are funny, have great rapport, and seem to be coming from a relatively sober, well-informed, anarchistic perspective that i appreciate immensely.

But mostly I'm writing to say how grateful I am for the inclusion of Margaret's Sunday fiction reading! I'm a huge fan of the Strangers In A Tangled Wilderness podcast and feel reading short fiction aloud as a podcast is a brilliant way to introduce people to stories. The readings are hypnotic and the sound design that's paired with them is beautiful. Moreover, historical pieces of writing and modern speculative fiction pairs so well with the podcast's main content and brings its core ideas of community struggle against forces that wish to bring about the end of days into sharper focus.

Thank you to everyone on the Cool Zone team for making this work happen. Y'all help me stay out of the social media trenches, giving me a little more space to connect with my loved ones and community.

I always love this show but I was so psyched to hear Andrew!!! I love his channel. It has opened my mind to so many new ideas, especially library economies.

A brilliant choice to include him. A testament to the quality of this inspiring show that always teaches me new things and perspectives.

i'm enjoying the book club stories very much but i wish Margaret would allow at least some few seconds of space between the stories and the ad break bumps, and at the end before closing remarks. it feels disrespectful to the text and inconsiderate of the listener's experience not to mark those shifts. full marks for selection and delivery of the texts themselves though. thanks!

I’m writing this review about the podcast from its inception up to around 2021. The storytelling at the beginning at most of the episodes about the hypothetical future is riveting, and the writing is quite engaging. I also enjoy the way the episodes are structured.

That said—and I’m not going to take any points off of my review for this—but the ads are so obnoxious and take up so much of each episode that it greatly impacts my enjoyment of the pod. I get that they need sponsors to continue doing the good work, but I feel like playing the exact same ads for ~3 minutes or more every 6-10 minutes of content is just so excessive and disruptive. I’m admittedly ignorant as heck and have never created a podcast, so I’m willing to accept that I’m just dumb, but I feel like they could make the ads at the beginning and end longer and shorten the ad breaks throughout each episode. I don’t know, I just think it’s crazy how many ad breaks there are and how long they each last considering most episodes are only 25-45 minutes long. Much longer and more frequent than BTB or other podcasts I listen to. Anyway, rant over. I still love the podcast so far and you haven’t lost a listener.

Content-wise, this is exactly the kind of podcast I would normally be hooked on, but the ads are just out of control. I totally get that ads are necessary because the people who make these podcasts need to pay rent and buy food, but this is the only podcast I’ve ever encountered that’s like 60% content, 40% ads.