Dear readers, | Mushrooms, what a delight. | Enjoying 1.5x Speed? Feel free to send this newsletter to your buds, and click here to read previous editions. And as always, you can reach me at nicholas.quah@nymag.com or find me on Twitter. | Want more recommendations from our critics? Subscribe now for unlimited access to Vulture and everything New York. | After eight years and a whopping 184-episode run, Rose Eveleth is putting the Flash Forward podcast feed to bed. "It was time," they said. "I'm happy with the decision. It's definitely exciting and freeing, but also, like, fuck, what am I supposed to do now?" | The indie podcast has long served as Eveleth's means to explore a wide, fantastical range of questions concerning humanity's "possible and not-so-possible futures." Its theoretical adventures have ranged from well-covered topics like the pitfalls of designer babies to more surprising inquiries, as in the case of a multi-part series anticipating the future of crime that culminated in imagining what a justice system might look like in space. Like all good works of futurism, Flash Forward is ultimately about the quirks and conditions that define the squishy notions of humanity, modernity, and the experience of now. And the show does that with a verve, carrying itself with a community radio-esque aesthetic that consistently experiments with formats. It's not uncommon for an episode to splice bits of fiction and poetry between explanatory two-ways with experts, scientists, and creative types who live at the edge of our various futures. | For Eveleth, the choice to retire Flash Forward was rooted in a need for reinvention. The past few years had been tough, and not just because of the pandemic, with 2021 being an exceptionally busy period even for the generally industrious Eveleth. Besides making Flash Forward, they were also producing a Netflix show called The Future Of (with our sister company The Verge); a narrative podcast series with the writer Lux Alptraum for Audible, Say You're Sorry; and seeing out the publication of the podcast's book adaptation. All that was accompanied by a cluster of other freelance projects, including a recurring column for Wired, along with all the things that come with life itself: family, health stuff, and so on. Many of those professional engagements finally wrapped up around this time last year, which Eveleth tried to take as an opportunity to chill out. But the dense stacking of all that work extracted a heavy cost, and they ended up spending much of 2022 depressed. | "It wasn't fun, and I'm trying to figure out how to avoid that," they said. "I'm working on not giving into the instinct I have to do something so that I have something I'm doing." | Which can be tough, of course, because freelancing tends to feel persistently precarious, no matter how decorated a freelancer one might be. That precarity presumably accounted for a big part of why Flash Forward remained a pillar of Eveleth's identity for so long, perhaps to a point that may have been counterproductive. "Flash Forward made me who I am professionally in many ways. Most people don't get the chance to do what I got to do with the show, and I had this idea in my head that I had to cling on to because it was my one chance at success. So, to be able to end it and feel like it's going to be okay, that I will still have the opportunity to do more things — that was really important. I'm letting this go, and I still exist as a person outside of Flash Forward with a career that goes on." | That career could end up going in several different directions. Currently, Eveleth is trying to sell a project about sex testing in sports, which they had previously secured a New America Fellowship to develop. They're also working on a few novels (concurrently, it seems), plus a proposal for a nonfiction book that would summarize all the things they had learned from making Flash Forward. There's also some interest in writing a screenplay, and after their experience with The Future Of, perhaps the prospect of really giving this TV thing a go. "I now have the space to ask: Do I want to keep making podcasts?" they said. "Do I want to do something else? Do I want to move to a tropical island and teach rich people how to scuba dive? I'm not quite sure yet." The list of potential projects is stacking up, but the big difference is that Eveleth is trying harder to listen to what feels right. | Any parting words on what they've learned all those years making Flash Forward? "The thing that I come back to all the time is that humans are capable of maybe more than we think," they said. "Which is sort of a weird thing to say, because humans are capable of destroying the entire world, right? But right now there's a hopelessness and nihilism to a lot of media and people's worldviews. To be sure, there are very real stuff behind that feeling … but at the same time, there are a lot of things that humans can do and are capable of, and I think a lot of it involves trying to reject the idea that, well, we're fucked. The future hasn't happened yet, and we have a say in what it can be." | You can find the finale to Flash Forward, which plays out in three parts, on the website here. | ➽ Speaking of which, Shameless Acquisition Target came up big in the Vulture Podcast Survey, and the chronicle of the veteran journeyman executive Laura Mayer finally released its concluding episode last week. I'll leave it up to you to learn what happens, but beyond the show, Mayer appears to have secured her next gig: as the new Executive Producer of Podcast Programming at ABC. | ➽ I've been enjoying the first few episodes of Skyline Drive, which starts out following Part Time Genius' Mangesh Hattikudur as he tries to get more acquainted with the world of astrology — before steadily shifting into something a little different than what you'd originally expect. | ➽ Those looking for that feeling of never really knowing what you're gonna get should pay some attention to Lights Out, a new audio documentary variety shingle published by BBC Radio 4. The opening volley of docs so far have run the gamut: "Accounts and Accountability" deals with the sticky ethics of buying and selling true stories within the context of the documentary world; "Call Signs" follows an amateur radio enthusiast in Kyiv living through the Russian invasion; "The Night Sky" features a group of activists in their twilight years reflecting on their lifelong relationships with political struggle. Lights Out is produced by Eleanor McDowall and Alan Hall's Falling Tree Productions, which is also responsible for Short Cuts, the BBC's weekly short doc magazine show hosted by Josie Long. | ➽ There should probably be a term to describe simultaneously releasing clusters of narrative podcasts that deal with the exact same subject matter. This month's occurrence: competing projects on the Havana Syndrome, one from Vice and another from Fat Leonard's Project Brazen. Both will debut over the next few weeks… | ➽ For those seeking a Maintenance Phase-esque approach to religiosity, consider the new Jesus Wept from the writers Grace Gilbert and Boen Wang, the latter of which was christened (hee hee) Best New Artist by Third Coast back in 2020. | ➽ New Marc Smerling podcast joint: Operation: Tradebom, published by Apple TV+, on a bombing at the World Trade Center, almost a decade before 9/11. | ➽ HBO's adaptation of The Last of Us will be making its debut this weekend, and so will its companion pod, now a customary addition to various HBO projects. | ➽ The Slowdown, APM and The Poetry Foundation's well-regarded podcast, welcomes a new host: Major Jackson, who replaces Ada Limon. The new season kicks off January 23. | And that's a wrap for 1.5x Speed! Hope you enjoyed it. We're back next week, but in the meantime… | Sign up to receive Vulture's 10x10 crossword every weekday. | | | |
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