Alaska Is the Center of the Universe (~3 hrs)

“Alaska: So dangerous. So beautiful. So scary. So graceful.”

Recommendation Type: 6-Part Series

Length: ~3 hours

Format/Style: Narrative, Place-Based Reporting

Release Date: November, 2023

Publication: Audible

I’ve never been to Alaska but now I feel like I have, thanks to this recent release from the all-star trio James Dommek Jr., Josephine Holtzman, and Isaac Kestenbaum.

The sound design is tasteful. The music is beautiful. The writing is exceptional.

Fiction lovers especially will love this one. Winding narratives of nonfiction threads weave under and through Alaskan lore.

The series promised that no two episodes would be the same. And they made good on their promise. The place-based reporting and recording really shines, especially in the back half of the series (snow machines and canoes and bears, oh my). If you have only have time for one thing, listen to Episode 5: Refuge Rock. It will stay with you.

One of the best parts of this series is that you can hear Dommek having fun, recording on location throughout remote Alaska and in the VO booth. You’ll hear small improvised asides in the script and small jokes that maybe only Dommek can pull off. The content at times is heavy and dark, but his persona on mic is not self-serious, and we trust him to share Alaska with us. [He is also very fun to follow on Instagram, a social media platform I recently started actually using. ;)]

Listen to the series here.

Producer’s Notebook

This week, a sampling of the Producer’s Notebook, usually a feature for paid subscribers only!

About the making of this series, co-producer Isaac Kestenbaum wrote to me:

“It was great to have the freedom and trust [...] to make something that is pretty unconventional. It was also nice to have the resources and time to get out in the field and travel all over Alaska…”

Kudos

The show was brought to my attention by Sarah Larson’s review in The New Yorker.

And if you’re looking for more, Alaska Public Media recently featured an interview with Dommeck about the series.

Real Quick

Thanks for your patience as I’ve gotten this first issue of 2024 off the ground! The community support has been amazing and I’m so excited to start off a great year of listening recommendations. I’ve been a little slow to get rolling because I’ve been following Substack’s growing content problem and how different creators are moving off of the platform as a result. For now, I don’t know, but I’ll be here for at least a little while. 

P.S. This series is behind a paywall – you have to have an Audible account to listen to it. I hesitated for this to be the first rec of 2024 because of that ($, when we’re used to listening to podcasts “for free,” aka paying with our data and clicking through ads). But hey –– almost all of the TV we talk about is paywalled, too. And we’re still watching that…right?*

*If you know me, you know I don’t watch tv. ;) But I will pay for podcasts.