Culture

Jurassic World Improv and 4 More Podcasts to Start Your Week

We've also got 'casts on auditioning for 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens,' love in comedy, and how pop songs trigger your emotions.
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Universal Pictures

Got a crowded subway ride ahead? We suggest a different kind of harrowing adventure—like, for example, a high-speed chase after one of the seven keys to the Internet, or to a dystopian future imagined by AI. Plus, this week's best podcasts also offer up Lauren Lapkus' tale of what it was like to improvise in Jurassic World, and how pop songs can make us feel all the feels.

  • On *I Was There Too*, Matt Gourley interviews the actors who had small parts in big movies. On this installment Lauren Lapkus talks about what it was like to improvise on the set of *Jurassic World*, get NASA clearance, and which dinosaurs she would want to kill her character—plus, she explains what it was like to audition for *Star Wars: The Force Awakens*.
  • Usually, host Rose Eveleth spends *Flash Forward* imagining a future made possible by new paradigms, like universal body-hacking or telepathy. This week, though, she gave the creative responsibilities to a recurrent neural network, who offered up a script based on every previous episode of her podcast, plus *The War of the Worlds* and *The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy* radio play. As a result, Eveleth speculates about two futures: a post-apocalyptic world where witches go to space, and our possible future where AI regularly create our entertainment.
  • Dan Harmon (creator of *Community* and *Rick and Morty*) and Erin McGathy first met on an episode on McGathy’s live show, *This Feels Terrible*. Then they started dating. And got married, and divorced—all while narrating that relationship through both of their podcasts. This episode of *Sampler* has a lot of comedy, and a lot of candor about living in an audio spotlight.
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    Switched On Pop

    Switched on Pop, "How Beyoncé to The Beatles Modulate Your Emotions"

    What do "Love on Top," "Man in the Mirror," and "Walk the Line" have in common? Diva modulations. The *Switched on Pop* team explains how shifts in key—like moving through apartments with identical floor plans—alter the way we experience a song, sampling artists from One Direction to Mozart to Whitney Houston. [Listen here.](http://www.switchedonpop.com/44-how-beyonce-to-the-beatles-modulate-your-emotions/)
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    Big Data

    Big Data, "Let It All Out"

    There are seven keys to the Internet—and it’s up to a couple intrepid young reporters to keep them out of the hands of nefarious cybercriminals. This new radio drama includes the voices of Jemaine Clement, Paul F. Tompkins, and Cecil Baldwin, and features doxing, a high-speed chase, and a duel—get started on episode one now. [Listen here.](http://bigdata.show/)

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Charley Locke writes about growing up and growing old for publications including The Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine, and WIRED. ... Read More
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