firehose

Welcome to Random Roles, wherein we talk to actors about the characters who defined their careers. The catch: They don’t know beforehand what roles we’ll ask them to talk about.

The actor: He may have started his film career in a coma—no, seriously, he played a kid in a coma in Hero—but Martin Starr made his mark on the small screen right out of the gate, thanks to his unforgettable work as Bill Haverchuck on Freaks And Geeks, his first full-time series gig. Since then, Starr has made several appearances on the big screen, often in projects by former Freaks folks, including the 2007 Judd Apatow trifecta of Knocked Up, Superbad, and Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. He also turns up on TV regularly: In addition to having been part of the ensemble of Party Down, he’s presently part of the cast of HBO ...

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Chenjerai Kumanyika Linda Tindal

Last summer, I produced my first public radio piece as part of a week-long intensive radio workshop run by Transom. While writing my script, I was suddenly gripped with a deep fear about my ability to narrate my piece. As I read the script back to myself while editing, I realized that as I was speaking aloud I was also imagining someone else’s voice saying my piece. The voice I was hearing and gradually beginning to imitate was something in between the voice of 99% Invisible host Roman Mars and Serial host Sarah Koenig.

Those two very different voices have many complex and wonderful qualities and I’m a fan of those shows. They also sound like white people. My natural voice — the voice that I use when I am most comfortable — doesn’t sound like that. Thinking about this, I suddenly became self-conscious about the way that I instinctively alter my voice and way of speaking in certain conversational contexts, and I realized that I didn’t want to do that for my first public radio-style piece.

Of course, I’m not alone in facing this challenge. Journalists of various ethnicities, genders and other identity categories intentionally or unintentionally internalize and “code-switch” to be consistent with culturally dominant “white” styles of speech and narration. As I wrote my script for the Transom workshop piece, I was struggling to imagine how my own voice would sound speaking those words. This is partially because I am an African-American male, a professor, and hip-hop artist whose voice has been shaped by black, cultural patterns of speech and oratory. I could easily imagine my more natural voice as an interviewee or as the host of a news-style podcast about “African-American issues,” or even a sports or hip-hop podcast. Despite the sad and inexplicable disappearance of NPR shows like Tell Me More, I can find many examples of African-American hosts — like Tavis Smiley, John Hanson, Roland Martin, Bomani Jones, Freddie Coleman and Reggie Osse (Combat Jack) — of both of those kinds of media. But in my mind’s ear, it was harder to hear my voice, that is to say my type of voice, as the narrator of the specific kind of narrative, non-fiction radio piece that I was making.

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Ira Glass of This American Life Neilson Barnard / Getty Images

I love listening to podcasts and public radio. I listen to them in my car, while chopping vegetables, while I’m working out, and when I should be doing other things (writing, grading, or producing my own podcast pieces.) The voices on podcasts and public radio are informed, interesting, gentle friends. They keep me company as they share important, entertaining, and sometimes tragic stories. But the timbre, accent, inflections, rhythm, metaphors, and references of these voices reflect class, region, ethnicity, gender, and other components of identity. Meanwhile — though I don’t have the statistics handy to prove this — my impression is that few of the hosts of popular narrative non-fiction podcasts and public radio programs like This American Life, Invisibilia, RadioLab, Startup, and Strangers are non-white. In short, very few of these hosts speak the way that I speak. This is one reason that some of my black and brown friends refuse to listen to some of my favorite radio shows and podcast episodes despite my most impassioned evangelical efforts.

I spoke to hip-hop artist, poet, author, doctoral student, and podcast skeptic A.D. Carson about this. He and I have produced both scholarly and artistic works together, but we don’t share the love of public radio.

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Now I’m not sure I agree that all podcast voices are “warm coffee voices” and A.D. is clearly not moved by, or not aware of, the many different kinds of podcast and vocal styles that do exist if you know where to look. The problem is that you do really have to know where to look and if you don’t, then you might only be exposed to a narrow range of voices. This is why whether we agree or not, we all know what A.D. is talking about.

To give you a sense of how this affects me, here’s what I sound like as a hip-hop artist. Although I don’t speak this way all the time, it reflects an important aspect of my personality. I wrote it after I heard there would be no indictment in the Eric Garner case.

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How can I bring that voice into my efforts as a radio producer? 

On the other hand, here is what happened with the Transom piece. I hear more code-switch than Chenjerai on my first effort.

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Let me say I’m proud of this piece. It would be arrogant and lazy to expect my first piece to be amazing. So my issue isn’t about that. Some of what bothers me is just problems with poor writing choices. At times, I wrote with in a voice that isn’t my own (“Fisherman with Capital F”? What does that even mean?). What bothers me most when I listen to this piece is that I’m acutely conscious of the way I’m adjusting my whole experience/method of inhabiting my personality. My voice sounds too high in pitch, all the rounded corners of my vernacular are awkwardly squared off. I’ve flattened the interesting aspects of my voice. On the suggestion of Samantha Broun and Jay Allison of Transom, I tried to re-record part of that piece to better understand and illustrate these subtle differences.

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When I hear this rerecorded piece, I’m not sure how much more effective it is, but I feel better listening to it. My voice is calmer, but hopefully not boring. In place of “Fisherman with a Capital F,” I allowed myself to get passionate for a moment about my subject’s fishing credentials. Overall, I feel more centered and I sound like myself, rather than sounding like myself pretending to be a public radio host.

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Protestors in Ferguson, Missouri in November Scott Olson / Getty Images

Different hosts with different voices tell different kinds of stories. I make this point because there are many public radio programs that go to significant lengths to include the voices of underrepresented groups. These voices most often appear as people who are interviewed, but this is not the same has having hosts with different perspective and styles of speech.

In August and then again in November 2014, my wife and I traveled to Ferguson, Missouri. When we first got there in August, I remember talking to some young African-American males who lived on the street where Michael Brown was killed. I asked one why he thought that there had been such an uprising in Ferguson. In response, he reminded me that Michael Brown’s body had lain in the street for four hours (he said eight) before being picked up. Of course I had heard this before, but he made me feel it. I sat quietly for over 40 minutes and let him tell his own story his own way. His voice smoldered with conviction as he spoke. The deep resentment and frustration in his steady low tones pushed through any detachment or emotional distance that I might try to maintain. I felt the weight of Michael Brown’s body, and the weight of so many other lives in this young man’s voice. I wasn’t hearing his voice thrown in as a sound bite garnish to another host’s main dish. Instead, he was the narrator, assembling memories, images, emotions, and even speculation into his own multi-modal account. I would like to hear people who speak with voices like this young man’s voice as hosts and narrators on public radio shows and podcasts.

I can offer many examples of other voices that we don’t often get to hear as hosts. I think about my colleague Marilyn, an African-American female lecturer who speaks powerfully in various voices. Marilyn is from Chicago and when she speaks to me the way that she speaks at home, I learn all kinds of things about her, her family, Chicago, and life in general that don’t come across the same way when she speaks “professionally.” There’s no way to transcribe the music of her voice and that’s the point. You can only enter that world by hearing it yourself.

I also think about Uncle Carlos. My uncle-in-law Carlos lived part of his life in Ecuador and part of it in the Bronx. I remember him reminiscing about his recently deceased dog. Many people have a version of this kind of story, but no one can tell it the way my Uncle Carlos told it. “Oh man!” He would say, almost yelling at me! “You don’t understand the times that we,” (he and his dog) “got each other through!” “After he couldn’t walk so good, I would pick that dog up in my arms and carry him anywhere we need to go! You don’t get it man.” His voice — a beautiful mixture of New York and Ecuadorian English accents would cut into you. Then he would pause for long periods letting it sink in. This silence — the kind that is likely to be cut out in the editing process — was as important as his words. They were part of the unique rhythm and pace of his speech. He spoke loudly and passionately, too loudly and passionately for most public radio, but that’s the way our family communicates. I wonder what my Uncle Carlos would share with us if he were the host of a show.

Before I started writing this piece, this problem seemed simpler to me than it does now. That is because I was focusing on what I heard, and what I heard were the voices of white people on most of the popular public radio shows and podcasts. I didn’t want to hear it, but it would jump out at me despite my efforts to ignore it. Often, but not always, when I hear non-white journalists they also seem to be adjusting their vocal style of narration and reporting to what has come to be understood as professional.

However, as I dug deeper into this problem, I realized how tied up this phenomenon is with the broader complexities of speech, region, identity and dominant culture.

Certainly, there are real problems with diversity that many organizations are working to address, but these problems don’t only have to do with race. In fact, as I look across the landscape of popular podcasts, problems of representation regarding gender, ableism, sexual orientation, age, and other parameters of ethnicity might be even worse. I’m focusing on the racial aspects of this problem because this is how I personally experience the imbalance. I’m not saying that voices and styles of speech map on to the ethnicity of the speaker in any simple way. There is no single “authentic” African-American, Latino, Asian, Native American, or white way of speaking. To say otherwise would be to participate in a reductive and inaccurate essentialism of which I want no part.

However, I do think that there is what the Brazilian philosopher Paulo Freire called a “dominant syntax” and flowing from that is a narrow range of public radio and podcast host voices and speech patterns that have become extremely common. Public radio has become a kind of speech community with its own norms and forms of aesthetic capital. Just as it is not very common for me to hear a radio host with a thick South Boston accent, there is a whole range of vocal styles that are common in the African American, Latino, Asian American, and Native American cultures but rarely heard from hosts.

Which all raises the question: What or who is the public in public radio? The demographics of race and ethnicity are changing in the United States. The percentage of non-Hispanic whites in the U.S. population dropped to roughly 63% in 2014. Middle growth series projections estimate that by 2043 the “minority population” will constitute a numerical majority in the total U.S. population. Latinos are already the largest demographic in California. With these changing demographics come new stories, new languages, and new ways of speaking American English. The sound of public radio and podcasts must reflect this diversity if we are serious about social justice and encouraging active, constructive participation.

So what do we do?

There are two important takeaways from all of this.

1. Depending on who you are, and how you speak, you may not find many examples of voices and styles of storytelling that sound like yours.

It is not just about the kind of stories that non-white journalists tell. It’s also about the ways that vocal styles communicate important dimensions of human experience. When the vocal patterns of a narrow range of ethnicities quietly becomes the standard sound of a genre, we’re missing out on essential cultural information. We’re missing out on the joyful, tragic, moments and unique dispositions that are encoded in different traditions of oratory. Fortunately, there are organizations fighting for diversity in many areas of media. I recommend becoming involved with these efforts.

2. If you’re a radio producer or podcast host and your way of speaking is different from what you generally hear in radio and podcasts, produce many, many, podcasts in which you are the narrator.

As boring and cliché as it is, there is no substitute for practice, and there is actually no other way to develop your voice. I’m still working on being a more consistently productive journalist in this regard. There’s just no way around it: The more you get used to your recorded voice, and writing in your voice, the more confidence you will build.

Republished and edited with permission from Transom.org, the DIY workshop and showcase for new public radio.

• “I believe in the Men’s Rights Movement.” So, like, what parts of it exactly? How deep does his MRA sentiment go? Jerkass comments here and there, vague sympathies, or actually participating in trolling? Celebrating mass murderers who are fueled by misogyny? Reading sites that post personal details of feminists the better to doxx them, harass them, and try to get them fired from their jobs? (these are all real things, though I am not linking them except to send you to We Hunted The Mammoth for the depressing almost-daily rundown)
• You said if you’d known he felt like this when you started dating, you’d have walked out in a heartbeat. How did this all start coming up? Do you feel like he downplayed or kept silent about these views in the early stages of dating on purpose?
• Do you find yourself minimizing your own views, not bringing up things that are important to you, because you’re tiptoeing around to avoid the inevitable argument? Or are your days all him ranting about “false rape accusations!” and you being like “those aren’t really a factor, tho” all the time? Sounds sexy.
• When he says “feminists are crazy and damaging,” you realize, he means you, right? He means you.
• Does he similarly hold back from discussing topics that he knows might upset you?
• How does he treat your friends when this stuff comes up when you’re out and about?
• What will he do if someday you “get out of line“? Right now you are the magical exception to all of these other “out of line,” “crazy,” “damaging” women (women like me).

On Friday, Anita Sarkeesian, host of the Feminist Frequency YouTube series and frequent target of GamerGate-related online harassment, published a year-end financial report as per the requirements of operating FF as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. The report included an open letter to supporters, a boatload of stats, and a detailed list of the nonprofit's plans for the new year—including an expected slew of videos but also an official pivot to focus on "gendered online harassment."

After describing Feminist Frequency's genesis as a video project meant to "bring discussions of feminist theory to a wider audience"—a pitch she used in her successful 2012 Kickstarter campaign—Sarkeesian wrote that her experiences over the past two years, full of "daily vitriol" from online commenters, have forced her to reexamine her organization's purpose. "As a result, we have expanded Feminist Frequency’s mission to include advocacy around ending online hate and abuse, analyzing and advancing awareness of how gendered harassment operates online," she wrote.

The letter said that current efforts include consulting gigs with "tech and game companies" regarding online harassment within their communities, along with helping other active online feminists come up with "long-term solutions to deal with the epidemic of online abuse and create mechanisms for support." The report's list of plans for 2015 doesn't specify exactly how that mission might change or grow, other than hoping to create "a network with a variety of different programs and hosts analyzing media from a systemic/intersectional/anti-oppression lens."

Live-action role-playing, or larping, can be just a nice way to spend a weekend. But especially in parts of Europe, it's also an educational tool — and that doesn't necessarily make it any less cool. On February 4th, a retired German destroyer will become the site of a five-day, 80-person larp based on Ronald D. Moore's Battlestar Galactica. In Projekt Exodus, the ship will be temporarily redubbed the Hesperios, a space freighter that picks up an escape pod and is — through events unknown to us — drawn into the war between human and Cylon.

If this sounds familiar, it's because Projekt Exodus is very similar to The Monitor Celestra, a highly successful 2013 larp set on a Swedish battleship. It's also supported by a significantly older BSG larping group called Twelve Colonies. The team behind Monitor Celestra at one point hoped to host another run in the US, but that seems to have never panned out, so this may be the closest we'll get to a successor in the short term.

Larping: the next step in ahistorical reenactments

Unlike Monitor Celestra, though, Projekt Exodus is explicitly educational. It's designed to "analyze the narrative structure" of Battlestar Galactica, and more specifically, to explore the political issues the show raised — questions about freedom, safety, and humanitarianism. By spending multiple days immersed in a character, playing out a fictional series of decisions, "the players will get to experience problems of our society from a complete new viewpoint," the organizers say. "They will be confronted with [a] new situation and impressions that will leave a lasting mark on their thinking." Besides the actual role-playing, the larp starts with a long workshop that helps players get into character, and it concludes with a day of analysis.

According to the organizers, it's being funded with money from the German Federal Agency for Civic Education. The agency is devoted to fostering political and media literacy; among other things, it's published comics, set up training program for local journalists, and funded international exchange programs. Other national governments have supported role-playing as an edifying activity as well; in Sweden, grants are available for larp and gaming hobbyist groups, and American historical reenactments can edge into larping territory.

Want to sign up for Projekt Exodus? Too bad — it's all sold out (and even if it weren't, you'd have to speak German to participate, locking out most of us here at The Verge.) But if you're near Wilhelmshaven on February 8th, you can visit the "Spaceship Doors Open Day," seeing the ship in full set dressing and with some of its space-faring crew members on board.

Like a lot of kids who grew up in the ’90s, I loved Nintendo’s monthly magazine Nintendo Power with a passion, and one of my favorite things about it was reading the comic version of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. I loved that series largely because it made the weird adventure of the video game even weirder. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I realized the story was written and drawn by legendary manga creator Shotaro Ishinomori — you know, the guy who created Kamen Rider and the Super Sentai franchise, among other things — and realized just why it was so good.

Sadly, the story has been out of print for several years, but now it’s coming back: Viz Media announced over Twitter today that they will publish a new collection of Ishinomori’s Zelda comic, set for release on May 5.

As for why they’re doing it now, it actually makes a lot of sense. After all, the Zelda-themed Hyrule Historia from Dark Horse was one of last year’s biggest selling comics projects, topping the New York Times best-seller list, and while Viz published Akira Himekawa’s Zelda comics a few years ago, none of them had the mix of Nintendo Power nostalgia and a legendary manga creator that you get from Ishinomori’s comics.

Now if we can only get a new printing of those other Nintendo Power comics, like that Mario story where Princess Peach dresses as Luigi or that Starfox comic where Falco beats the living hell out of Fox in order to keep him from flying, everything’ll turn out all right.

A now-former California Highway Patrol (CHP) officer who was charged with criminal felony charges after seizing and distributing racy photos copied from arrestees’ phones has pleaded no contest and will serve no jail time.

Sean Harrington’s plea deal, which was finalized on Tuesday, means that he receives a 180-day suspended sentence, three years of felony probation, and according to local media accounts, “must also speak at a community violence solutions class to tell everyone what he did.” Harrington resigned from the CHP last year after the charges were filed.

The case emerged last year from a woman, referred to in court documents as “Jane Doe #1,” who came forward to local authorities in early October 2014 after being briefly arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence (DUI) of alcohol in late August 2014 in San Ramon, California, about 35 miles east of San Francisco.