Daniel Semo

[Narrator: It rained a few hours later]

BBC World Service - The Documentary Podcast, Birding the gender gap An exploration of how the study of female birds is reshaping our understanding of nature

Produced for @writteninair.bsky.social with the indefatigable @dnnsfnk.bsky.social

Listen:
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p...

BBC World Service - The Documentary Podcast, Birding the gender gap An exploration of how the study of female birds is reshaping our understanding of nature

The story follows Team Galbatross, who compete in the World Series of Birding and focus their efforts on the almost-Sisyphean task of only counting female birds. They travel through forests, beaches and wetlands, hoping to raise awareness in their conservation efforts

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p...

BBC World Service - The Documentary Podcast, Birding the gender gap An exploration of how the study of female birds is reshaping our understanding of nature

About a year ago, I took a walk through an ecological park in Mexico City with a bird expert, who told me in passing about the "birding gender gap" - the lack of research into female birds. Since then, I've been working on an audio doc about it, now out on the BBC:
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p...

New band name

Out of the narrative forest, but now wading in the marshes of SD. Hopefully should be out soon

Got mine a couple of weeks ago

Does this mean your Japanese Period is over?

I could do a Japanese konbini crawl the way other people do temple pilgrimages

First Errand - 99% Invisible Back in March, Netflix picked up a long running Japanese TV program based on a children’s book from the 1970s. The show is called Old Enough, but the name of the original Japanese program translates t...

Yep. Every time I come back to Australia after being overseas, the first thing that strikes me is all the prime land wasted on parking.

This 99pi episode goes into a lot of the Japan stuff 99percentinvisible.org/episode/firs...

I think they're not gigantic because the streets are small! And I'm pretty sure you can only buy a car if you have proof that you've got a parking space

Narrow streets ftw!

Glenn McDonald would probably agree with you on that. But streaming critics might say there's no way for those independent musicians to make a living/career out of it, and Spotify keeps making it harder for them to even get discovered

Every Noise is a Mood: Two Visions of Our Unfulfilled Streaming Present — Daniel Semo After being called a "Cyclops" by Spotify, I dug into two recent books about how streaming is reshaping both music and us.

Spotify called me a Cyclops, so I get back it by looking at two (!) competing visions of what its rise has meant for music (spoiler: they both end in disappointment).

www.danielsemo.com/writing/ever...

Hey a click's a click

Anatomy of a Genius in 5 Reductive Theories — Daniel Semo He clamps into the groove and doesn’t let it go… From the beginning, I found his playing utterly hypnotic and would often stare at him for the length of the show, no matter what band he was in.

Drummers are often the most unsung members in rock bands. Lo Zun Long is one of my favourites, and the best I've ever seen up close. I write about what makes him, and the drums, so special.

Oh and pants. I write about pants.

www.danielsemo.com/writing/anat...

Kid screaming into a condenser microphone that is not plugged in

Can we at least use AI to add a cable to this damn stock photo that annoys me every time I see it?

Tourists, watercolours and the sad, still Star: sketching the route 35 tram showed me a Melbourne I had never really noticed When you are in a city every day, you start to take things for granted. So, after three years in Melbourne, Josh Nicholas decided to be a tourist

I wrote a thing about drawing and Melbourne www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

Live Review: Otomo Yoshihide et al — Daniel Semo A humble weeknight gig at the Northcote Social Club, watching noise artists and avant-garde composers, brings back memories of basement club nights in Koenji.

In which I go to a noise gig in the hip part of Melbourne with all the vintage shops and I'm reminded of noise gigs in the hip part of Tokyo with all the vintage shops... except for the footy on the pub screen
www.danielsemo.com/writing/live...

It's the story of two childhood friends, Brian Johnson and Brian Morden, who bonded over music and video games. And who then, through an extraordinary wish, found themselves on a journey that made gaming history

Given that I've never played Halo (and the last console I owned was probably a PS1), it might seem odd that I would help write and produce this Twenty Thousand Hertz episode. But when it's such a moving story, so incredibly well told, my job is pretty easy.

www.20k.org/episodes/the...

No Coldplay: Reassessing Old Maxims — Daniel Semo I return to an old haunt and try to figure out if it still stands for it once did, and what the most hated band in the world has to do with it.

I returned to an old haunt in Taipei, listened to the full catalogue of the world's most hated band, and lived to write about it
www.danielsemo.com/writing/no-c...

How much of Claude's classy allure is simply about the serif font?

I assume Ponting's busy looking for the 8 other jobs he'll have in the next 6 months. So LinkedIn maybe?

Light and Dark: Kadapat’s Experimental Take on Balinese Gamelan — Daniel Semo It was about four hours into an experimental music festival in Taipei when I saw Kadapat, an electronic-gamelan duo from Bali, standing ominously on a foggy stage, striking metal and wood in complex p...

I profiled the Balinese electronic-gamelan duo Kadapat, whom I saw in an experimental music festival in Taipei last month. After hours of glitchy computer noise and black-box electronics, hearing two guys hitting bits of wood and metal with sticks was refreshing www.danielsemo.com/writing/ligh...

Interview: Freddy Lim — Daniel Semo For the past three decades, Freddy Lim has carved out a singular path through Taiwan’s cultural and political landscape, first as the frontman of death metal band Chthonic and later as an activist and...

While in Taiwan recently, I interviewed Freddy Lim, frontman of death metal band Chthonic and two-term legislator. We discussed neither metal nor politics, instead focusing on Taiwanese identity, the history of the independent music scene, and, well… baseball.

www.danielsemo.com/writing/inte...

If it's possible for England to get demoted through demerit points, I'm willing to entertain this two-tiered Test cricket system

Trying not to radicalise you

Youtube links in group Whatsapp chats >> FB

Succession rewatchables video pod with mike & miles when?