Assault Your Ears – Dec/Jan Podcast Review
Welcome to Assault Your Ears, a monthly column dedicated to podcasts.
By Jess Ong.
Rough Translation is a podcast from NPR that takes listeners out of their everyday comfort zones and catapults them into a foreign country, exploring how conversations playing out in one place sound very different somewhere else.
Presenting a global view on familiar conversations, Rough Translation explores ideas around love, race, war and babies through an international lens. All the episodes I’ve listened to have left me wondering how Rough Translation managed to uncover the story in the first place, as they’re all so detailed, different and obscure in their subject matter!
I was captivated by the episode ‘Anna in Somalia’; it tells the story of a man trapped in a remote prison, and on a downward spiral, until he hears a knock on the wall. It’s an unusually beautiful story, I can’t recommend listening to this episode enough.
All episodes are 100 per cent worth listening to – you’ll hear stories that hone in on an unexpected angle, like a Syrian refugee living in Berlin who took on a dating coach to help navigate this murky terrain after his one attempt forging a relationship failed.
Wrap your ears around Rough Translation – it’s a refreshing reminder of what’s beyond our own backyards.
You can subscribe to Rough Translation via Apple Podcasts or your favourite podcast app.
Jess Ong works as a Communications Manager in the arts and the private sector, and is also the Creative Producer of local storytelling night, SPUN. She is the host of the SPUN Stories podcast and moonlights in the world of freelance.
FOLLOW spunstories.net | @jess__ong
