“I enjoy the storytelling on this podcast and I think Tim Harford does a great job exploring historical anecdotes and finding nuggets of wisdom.
However, the show is brought down by the reenactments. The American accents in those reenactments range from mediocre to cartoonishly bad. It is especially glaring when they attempt to represent people whose real voices we can listen to. For example, in the Billy Joel/Twyla Tharp episode, the actress playing Twyla seems to be doing an exaggerated impersonation of a TV mafioso. You can watch interviews with the real Twyla Tharp and immediately notice that she sounds nothing like that.
So many episodes seem to have English actors doing bad, obvious fake American accents and it makes the show come across as unserious. It’s one thing to have people doing terrible accents in a comedy podcast, but in a podcast that’s trying to be educational, it’s rather distracting.
I would rather that the podcast just be Tim talking with zero reenactments. That would be a five star podcast.
Also, too many Malcolm Gladwell advertisements. Do we really need the same ad for a Malcolm Gladwell repeated four times in one episode? Is the show’s estimation of its listeners’ memories so low that it assumes that those who would be interested in the podcast must be reminded about it every few minutes?”
TheBargainBasementGalGadot via Apple Podcasts ·
Canada ·
07/05/24