
LeVar Burton Reads - jwfxpr
https://art19.com/shows/levar-burton-reads
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new299
LeVar Burton played Geordi in StarTrek TNG, which I guess is how many of us
know him.

But for those of you who don't know (I didn't until recently)
encouraging/enabling people to "read" is actually LeVar Burton's main gig. He
presented Reading Rainbow [1] long before his involvement in Star Trek.

Reading Rainbow itself, was somewhat recently rebooted by LeVar:
[https://www.readingrainbow.com/](https://www.readingrainbow.com/)

[1] A show to encourage children to read.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reading_Rainbow](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reading_Rainbow)

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olympus
I'm excited about this, Levar has a great voice for podcasting.

On a website related note, the art19 website is bad in one big way. Their
homepage is very "investor focused" and not listener focused. If they want to
sell ads, they need to get people to listen to their shows! I can't find a
link to other podcasts (googling "art19 shows" finds several). I know they
have more, but if they want listeners, they need to have their homepage be a
directory or recommendation engine so I can find other shows. The investor
pitch needs to be secondary. I'm sure the people buying ads will appreciate
that as well.

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Jaruzel
90 seconds of 'promo talk' before the story even started completely put me
off. I'm not a big a podcast/audiobook fan - as I find that the narrator
always talks too slowly and I can't hold focus - so I don't know if this front
loaded advertising is common or not, but if it is, I'd be breaking out
Audacity and chopping those bits off immediately.

~~~
thedudemabry
It is relatively common to hear pre-roll advertising, and sometimes hosts do
speak too slowly. A very niche solution to the problem is a popular iOS
podcast player with a connected web service called Overcast (after downloading
the app, you have access to a browser player with similar features.)

It approaches the pre-roll ad problems by having prominent "skip forward" and
"skip backward" 30 seconds buttons, so usually two to three quick taps will
bring me back to the content. It solves the speech speed problem by offering
pitch-adjusted playback speed controls (so no-one sounds like a chipmunk.)

I assume those can be found in other podcast clients on other platforms, but
I'm not familiar with them.

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Gargoyle
The first selection, the short story "Kin" by Bruce McAllister, is one of my
favorites of recent years. It was a Hugo finalist story, and in a different
life I tried to get a film version of it off the ground. The rights have long
since reverted back to Bruce, but hopefully someone someday will pick it up
and get it made.

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Simulacra
Bless this man. I grew up on Reading Rainbow, and later met him at CES. A
wonderful human being.

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ams6110
How many others had the thought "but he's blind..."

~~~
rdiddly
I confess. But the visor lets him see more than the human eye can. He can even
read _between_ the lines.

~~~
daxfohl
That's the worst thing I've read in a long time.... +1

