I’ve been following the work of historian and archivist Jason Scott for more than a decade, ever since he released his film “BBS: The Documentary” (available on the Internet Archive). He’s known for relentless efforts to preserve digital artifacts and media, like the text files that were the stock-in-trade of the early internet, Usenet and pre-internet bulletin board systems, and as an organizer of the Archive Team, which has archived the user-generated work on platforms like Geocities before they shut down forever. He now works for the Internet Archive, helping to facilitate the preservation of all sorts of collections.
I recently stumbled upon his podcast, “Jason Scott Talks His Way Out of It,” which he’s been producing for more than a year. In each episode Scott delivers a monologue on topics like his current work, an historical note or a reflection on some of his past efforts and experiences. He’s an engaging speaker, and each edition resembles a short conference talk, which makes sense, since Scott is a well-practiced public speaker. His monologues sound well organized, possibly pre-written (or at least outlined), and are well-edited. (Shortly after publication he let me know by Twitter DM that the show is not scripted, but entirely impromptu. That’s impressive, indeed)
This style of podcasting isn’t very common. More often, non-fiction podcasts feature conversations between regular hosts, interviews or journalistic storytelling. My guess this is because delivering a solo 20-minute discourse that isn’t rambling, digressive and overlong is much more difficult than having a conversation or conducting an interview.
It seems these sorts of podcasts were more common in the medium’s earlier days, though my recollection is that they tended to be more stream-of-consciousness and less polished than what Scott does. The closest well-known contemporary analogs that I can think of are those produced by Dan Carlin – “Hardcore History” and “Common Sense” – which are unadorned straight-up solo presentations, without any music beds or sound effects.
Archiving and media preservation are close to our heart at Radio Survivor, so I think most readers will find “Jason Scott Talks His Way Out of It” to be informative and engaging. Some recent episodes should be of particular interest.
In “The Radio Radio Episode” Scott reflects on his college radio days at Emerson College, where he DJ’d – and got fired from – student-run WECB, and filled in on the more professional WERS.
He explains his mid–2000s effort to save all the podcasts in “The Podsucker Episode.” I wrote about this project in 2016 when Scott uploaded that collection to the Internet Archive as the “2005 Podcast Core Sample.”
Finally, there is the “The Don Joyce and Negativland Episode,” which should be self-explanatory. The full archive of Joyce’s KFPA show “Over The Edge” is also preserved at the Internet Archive.
