Popular Reviews of The Urbanist

Monocle registers in my mind as a fancy jetsetting travel magazine (geeze, do we have a surprise half-theme going here?!) - just look at one of their covers and tell me you don’t absent-mindedly slip into a voyeuristic stupor! It’s a magazine that wants to be a book but also wants to have pictures, and that kind of split personality really speaks to me. I haven’t been to a very exciting new place in a very long time, and this show makes me long to travel while also simultaneously scratching that itch in a way. All that said, Monocle 24: The Urbanist is much more focused on cities and how they work (if you didn’t know Monocle was a $140/year lifestyle and culture magazine, you wouldn’t guess based on its affiliation with The Urbanist podcast imprint). It’s very well made, and speaks to my interests across a vast expanse of urbanism and urban issues. From a city planning perspective and a wealth of features on architecture and neighborhoods, there is something for anyone who is interested in cities.Host Andrew Tuck frames the show with a proper amount of stuffy professor energy, with just enough wry self-awareness to make listeners wonder what his deal is. One of each episode’s joys is waiting until the end to hear what song Tuck announces to ride out on - it’s a surprisingly wide variety of tunes given the buttoned up performance throughout the rest of the show. There are 30 minute episodes that function as a sort of news magazine (a more reported version of The New Yorker Radio Hour), but the bite-sized missives offered up between shows - ‘tall stories,’ often no more than 6 or 7 minutes - are some of the most well produced short form audio I’ve heard.It doesn’t exactly rival the thrill of discovering a new far off place, but Monocle 24: The Urbanist injects some novelty into my small-city settled-down multi-hyphenate lifestyle. And it’s so well done that I’d wager even a very happy globe trotting coastal elite might even find it charming!