A tool, a podcast opinion and something beautiful to read
Escribir en voz alta is Laura Ubaté's writing lab. What would you like to read?
Hi there
This week I’m celebrating the first 200 subscriptions to this Substack :) Wohoo! I started this space to keep the flame of my love for the craft of audio storytelling alive and it keeps me motivated to reach a new delivery every Saturday. Thank you very, very much for coming to read.
Speaking of reading, I've been asking myself a lot, what would you like to read from me? I have a lot to share and say. The idea is that you receive from this space something that inspires you or answers something you are also wondering about. So today we're going with a new format and a survey, okay? Three types of content, and three options to vote.
Before we start, a little update: this week I shared the English voiceover that I did for 99% Invisible, I was Marimar Terrón, the voice behind the famous “Se compran colchones” pregón in Ciudad de México. Absolut leyend. Also I’m kinda happy cuz I wrote a feminist guide for ChatGPT for Volcánicas. It’s all I ever wanted to read when I first started using the chatbot, the pros, the cons and the reasons why we need to make it more feminist ASAP. Now, up to the show.
A sounding tool
Since this week I had to spend several hours writing with the summer heat outside and the A/C buzz, it was quite complex to get into "the zone" of concentration. I tried playlists and Youtube channels... they work but I’m sticking with this tool: Brown noise. Two minutes listening to this and you’ll focus no matter what.
Brown noise is a type of noise where mid and low frequencies prevail, It’s called Brown not because of the color, but because of Robert Brown, the first human to create this noise. Of all the artificially generated noises, this is the most natural sounding, it sounds like a calm downpour. When you listen to it your nervous system relaxes and as a result you think better and more consciously. Brown noise has been studied for many years for people with attention deficit and lack of sleep. For me it has been the holy grail of concentration. It seems that for the writer Zadie Smith it is also a fundamental. If you want to know more about this noise, I recommend this article.
An opinion about a podcast
Maria Jimena Duzán's podcast is the science according to which everything stays as it is. It started in August 2021 as a series of interviews on YouTube, where the journalist interviewed someone and generated controversy about a current issue in Colombian politics. Let's see, we love her and we love to see a journalist with her experience having in-depth interviews, or as my colleague Gloria Susana Esquivel says "MariaJimenasplanning" the world of politics. It worked so well that in September 2022 the show turned into a Spotify Original “A Fondo: con Maria Jimena Duzán”. It became a place for her to experiment with different formats: audiocolumn, in-depth interviews, guest panel, and at the end it was a blend of all the previous. The podcast was doing so well that Maria Jimena dedicated her YouTube channel only to promote the episodes. “A Fondo" was always the first or second most listened-to podcast in Colombia. The podcast cover changed from a blue to a green background. In July 2023, Maria Jimena announced that "by request of many people" her podcast would now be on Youtube (wait, wasn't a Spotify Original?). Yes, but now Spotify originals are also on other platforms. They uploaded the audio to the still image of the Spotify cover (law of minimum effort) and let me tell you that the more chapters, the more audio capture problems crept in.
Something was off, and we came to understand it until the end of July, almost two years after the podcast’s premiere. Maria Jimena changed the cover of "A Fondo" to orange, changed "Spotify" to "Mafialand" and uploaded a one-hour interview with President Gustavo Petro on two cameras for her Youtube channel. By an act of magic that neither I nor my podcast colleagues understand, the show's feed on Spotify became “Mafialand” and the episodes changed their cover from March 2023 onwards.
In short: the most listened journalistic podcast on Spotify Colombia was born on Youtube and stayed on Youtube, just like at the beginning. "MariaJimenasplanning" did it again.
Why did Spotify end the deal with such a popular show less than two years after its premiere?
What do we have to do to rescue an old Spotify Original feed and keep publishing on the same thread?
And what did it mean for Colombian podcasting that Maria Jimena became a podcaster?
Those are questions whose answers only you know. Plus, I recommend this analysis by my colleague Daniela Arias in Naranja Media’s newsletter. And Maria Jimena, if you’re reading: Amiga, please stop using the new age marimba for opening the show, audio production is way beyond that.
Closing: something beautiful and memorable
Chocolate wafer cookies are like my favorite snack in the whole world. Do you know them? In Colombia there are some chocolate wafer cookies that are sold in family size packages, filled with lemon, chocolate or strawberry flavor. I love them because they are sweet, but not too sweet and since there are several of them, if you eat one you don't notice it, you know what I mean? You feel like there is always room for more.
When I arrived in the United States, especially the first few months, I would spend up to 40 minutes in front of the cookie section of the supermarket, just like that, in silence and deep concentration. I would scan lemon Oreos, carrot cookies, chip cookies, bunny cookies, whatever. None like the wafer cookies from Colombia. And there I would end up picking out some pack of cookies, with discomfort. I would take them home and open them with distrust. Too dry, too artificial, too sweet, too tasteless. I could tell that at the first bite, but if there is something you learn when you start living alone is that food is never wasted so it may be bad but it's yours, every single thing you buy is a long-term commitment. So: not only did I know that every cookie was bad but I knew it every time I ate them, every last one.
Eventually, I found small cakes that I didn't take because they were too expensive or cookies of another brand from Colombia and so on. In the meantime, one begins to have other priorities and to take the wrong buses, to ask for the wrong flavor of soda and to spend money on things that in the end are rather unnecessary. During my second year in the United States, I started talking to my boyfriend's classmates. Taiwanese girls. The shyest, most correct and most joyful people in the world. They love home-cooked food, playing mahjong and I really like them. Sometimes they would spill the tea about China and I would spill the tea about the US and we get along very well. Around that time I met Professor Duff from Singapore who took us to his favorite restaurant one night. He ordered rice and mapu tofu for us. He told us it's a dish that dates back to feudal China when a street cook would make that orange sauce with tofu cubes and red hot pepper flakes. Duff said that the recipe became so famous that even the king of that land sent footmen to buy it, and because the tofu was sparkled with red dots when served, it was called Mapu Tofu or Freckled Tofu. It is soft, salty, juicy, and full of substance. Ever since then, this has been the take-out food we order when we are feeling hearty.
During Christmas, the girls from Taiwan went back home and in January, when school started, my boyfriend arrived home one day with a little package for me. A matte beige cube with a butter paper texture. It had an inscription in Mandarin and the most adorable scribble of a little bug riding a bicycle. "It's an apple cake that Tiffany brought back from Taiwan" said my boyfriend. I was so happy to hold something that crossed the planet and that Tiffany gave us this that I kept the little cake in my desk and spent several days just looking at it.
But you know that when hunger comes, it strikes. One morning I made myself some tea and poured it into the best mug. I sat down in front of my bamboo desk, and took the first sip. Then I opened the little cake, careful not to damage the packaging. I pulled out the sweet cube like someone opening a new drawer. It smelled of fresh apples. I bit into it as gently as I could and closed my eyes, it was incredibly fluffy. The dough melted very quietly spreading the flavor, pure apple flavor. Like a cloud of little apples with apple pieces and a little scribble on a bicycle spreading happiness. Sweet, but not so sweet. Fresh and present. I thought:
This is the best sweet. Better than the chocolate wafers.