When I first listened to “The New Norm,” the première episode of the second season of the NPR radio show “Invisibilia,” I had to turn it off for my own safety. “Invisibilia” is about the unseen forces that shape our lives; this unseen force, a podcast, was shaping mine. I was walking down East Seventh Street—construction, bright sunshine, skateboarders, traffic cones, TV-shoot electrical cords, more construction—and listening to a story about an oil rig so harrowing that I had to pause it. I needed my wits. I didn’t want to fall down a sidewalk hatch while listening to a man gently describing an industrial accident.
“Invisibilia” has always been compelling to listen to; in its second season, it has grown more ambitious. That piece, which shocks us at first with violence and then with the efficacy of a program in which, for safety’s sake, macho oil-rig workers examine their fears, open up to one another, and cry, was the first by the show’s new co-host, the veteran author and journalist Hanna Rosin, who joins the founding hosts, Alix Spiegel and Lulu Miller, who were founding producers of, respectively, “This American Life” and “Radiolab.” In addition to hiring Rosin, they’ve broadened their focus.
I’d been surprised to learn that Spiegel and Miller had wanted to change anything about “Invisibilia.” For one thing, the outstanding first season, released on the heels of the first season of “Serial,” was a blockbuster. On a panel last February, David Carr erupted with excitement when Spiegel said that “Invisibilia” had about twelve million downloads. (“Holy shit!” he said. “You’re like a czar!”) It now has more than fifty million downloads. Also, it was already plenty ambitious. Season 1 used interviews with exceptional people to explore themes that you could extrapolate in many directions: how expectations affect performance, for example, or the power of how we think about our own thoughts. We would have been content if the czars had kept doing what they were doing. If I could have had them adjust anything, it might have been the tone; to my ears, the first season suffered a bit from an excess of “Radiolab”-ian sound wizardry and an excess of whimsy. Perhaps in part because I’ve been listening to some shaggier podcasts lately, the confidence and sophistication of “Invisibilia” now feel refreshing, and either the whimsy-wizardry levels have improved or I’ve just about made peace with them. (I’m still undecided about the episode-ending dance parties, which tend to follow moments of wrenching insight and can be tonally jarring. And I love a dance party.)
[For more of this story, written by Sarah Larson, go to http://www.newyorker.com/cultu...wo-people-can-change]
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