Podcast reviews: ‘Fela Kuti: Fear No Man,’ ‘David Bowie: Changeling’ and ‘The Adam Friedland Show’

Fela Kuti: Fear No Man

(Higher Ground)

Fela Kuti was a pioneering musician and complex man, and this new 12-part series “leaves no stone unturned” in bringing his story to life, said Fiona Sturges in the Financial Times. The so-called godfather of Afrobeat was considered so dangerous to Nigeria’s authoritarian regime that his compound was regularly raided, and his courage as an activist and achievements as an artist get their full due. But so, too, do the 27 singers and dancers he married in a self-glorifying 1978 ceremony.

Fear No Man is hosted by Radiolab creator Jad Abumrad and produced by Barack and Michelle Obama’s Higher Ground, and “you can hear the love and money that have been poured into it.” It can be shocking to learn “just how much brutality Fela endured,” said Michel Martin in NPR.org. For standing up to oppression, he was arrested more than 200 times and frequently beaten, and in a 1977 raid on his compound, his activist mother was thrown from a second-­story window and suffered injuries she eventually died from. Those events forever changed him.

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David Bowie: Changeling

(Zinc Audio)

“There is so much joy to be found here,” said Miranda Sawyer in The Observer (U.K.). This eight-part British series on David Bowie’s early years is presented by model Kate Moss, a friend of the late rock legend, and she does “a pretty good job” of reading her scripts. Still, “she’s not why you should listen.” Listen instead for the fun details and “excellent” interviews, including quite a lot that provide Bowie himself talking and laughing about the persona swaps that sometimes confounded his fans.

The series takes us from Bowie’s school days to his journeyman stints in groups like the Hype through to his umpteenth reinvention, when he remade himself into a soul crooner, on a 1974 tour, to promote Young Americans. “Moss as presenter is both stunt casting and a legitimate call,” said Patricia Nicol in The Times (U.K.). Moss and Bowie were friendly enough that he nicknamed her “Smasher” and asked her to accept his 2014 Brit Award for lifetime achievement. She agreed, but only if he would lend her an iconic Ziggy Stardust outfit. “It fit me,” she recalls, “like a glove.”

The Adam Friedland Show

(Independently produced)

The Adam Friedland Show “feels archetypally new media,” said Nicholas Quah in NYMag.com. Friedland, a comedian who began his podcast career as a co-host of Cum Town, a more ribald interview show, has fashioned a spin-off that’s “at once a parody of talk shows and an earnest attempt to reinvent them.” He performs a spoof of a host while also pushing for candor from his guests, producing unscripted moments that often go viral. His interviews with real news makers including Democratic congressman Ritchie Torres, a staunch supporter of Israel, “pierced the machinery of political and cultural performance.”

Relaunched early this year, the show has matured from the “scatological, bro-centric hangout” it once was to “a somewhat serious comedy exploit,” said Brady Brickner-Wood in The New Yorker. While mainstream celebrities still make appearances, Friedland shows his worth as a political voice with his offbeat questions. “Why are politicians so ugly?” he might ask of a politician. Or better: “Why are members of Congress allowed to trade stock?”