www.mobydickbigread.com reaches 10 million
by Angela Cockayne
The free to download www.mobydickbigread.com reaches a global audience of 10 million this month. The Telegraph lists it as one of the best podcasts with 8,300 visitors still visiting the site each week.
The best podcasts for stories, fiction and poetry
The best story and poetry podcasts including short stories, readings of fiction and real-life dramas, selected and updated by Pete Naughton
By Pete Naughton 5:45PM GMT 14 Jan 2015
Serial
Created by the team behind This American Life, Serial is an innovative, gripping and artfully constructed weekly podcast that’s been topping iTunes’s charts on both sides of the Atlantic since its debut in early October. Presented and executive produced by the journalist Sarah Koenig, it’s a real-time investigation of some murky inconsistencies in a real-life murder case: namely, that of a Baltimore high school student Hae Min Lee, who was killed in 1999 and whose ex-boyfriend, Adnan Syed, is currently serving time for her murder — even though there are some compelling arguments for his innocence.
The Moth
Close on twenty years ago, the American poet and novelist George Dawes Green set up a New York-based storytelling group inspired by the languorous summer evenings in his home state of Georgia, where people gather on porches, amongst dozens of fluttering moths, and shoot the breeze. It soon gathered momentum, spreading to other cities and expanding to include a variety of live events, a radio show and this fantastic podcast. Each episode features one or more storytellers recounting an episode from their own life in front of a live audience; participants range from the famous (Salman Rushdie, Annie Proulx, Malcolm Gladwell) to the unknown — and they almost never fail to hold the attention.
Moby Dick Big Read
Herman Melville’s strange, wondrous novel about a captain’s quest for revenge on a sperm whale is brought rather stylishly into the podcast age by this series, masterminded by the author Philip Hoare and the artist Angela Cockayne. Each of the book’s 135 chapters is read by a different person, among them Tilda Swinton (#1), David Cameron (#30), Benedict Cumberbatch (#58) and Sir David Attenborough (#105).
The Truth