Popular Reviews of 365 Stories I Want To Tell You Before We Both Die

After spending the better part of a year listening to his stories almost every day, I can say that Caveh Zahedi is not a likable person. Somehow, though, I keep listening. I love the medium of a very short daily podcast - the show’s schtick is that it releases an episode a day for every day of 2021 - so that’s part of the appeal. The intro music is all really good, somehow all recognizable as riffing on a theme yet almost entirely unique each time (or at least with enough variety that I don’t notice it recycling themes). Oh, and it’s really great that there are zero ads or plugs for another show or network - that goes a long way in establishing intimacy. The episodes are so short (typically close to 2 minutes in length) that it’s almost not worth it to skip once it starts playing. Still though, why listen to anyone who is painting a perpetually predictable picture of his poor life choices? I’ve gotten to the point where I can almost predict what terrible thing Zahedi is going to do (even if it’s something as relatively minor as borrowing money without paying it back). There is very little in ways of a redemptive narrative arc, but I guess I’ve long since stopped hoping for that.Yet, despite that, Zahedi’s warm vocal quality makes him a magnetic and almost likable narrator. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, he still sounds like a funny and likable dude with a lot of crazy life experiences. It’s unassumingly voyeuristic, even as podcasts and the accompanying phenomenom of parasocial relationships go. I don’t envy him, but it is interesting to hear someone so objectively unlikable relay tales from the point of view as a protagonist. And then there are the details from his childhood that sporadically pop in, providing a brief window into issues that manifested in young adulthood through to the present (Zahedi, a professional filmmaker, is now in his early 60s). If you are an attentive listener, you’ll also hear glimpses of semi-heartfelt reckoning with regret. This comes in small doses, but the contrition feels genuine in contrast to the largely ambivalent strain of “I wonder why that person didn’t seem to like me after I acted selfishly” that accompanies so many stories.At this point, would I recommend someone jump in? Not exactly. But if there was some way for a podcatcher to sync up a show’s back catalog and automatically download episodes on a set schedule, it is definitely worth a shot. I’ve long pined for such technology, since some shows really would be more satisfying with a slow build. Binging as the default mode of consumption may be here to stay, but wouldn’t it be nice to have the option to programmatically regress to weekly listening for episodic series? It would, if nothing else, make this type of mammoth marathon show more accessible to someone who didn’t hear about it on or close to launch.