Listers

A documentary about competitive bird watching turns out to be one of the best things on YouTube. Plus: the Criterion Channel recommends feel-good films, a small Iranian boy tries to return a notebook, fiction gets a bad reputation, and nobody can remember the plot of Slaughterhouse-Five. Mentioned in this episode: Listers — documentary, free on YouTube eBird app Merlin app The Criterion Channel Tampopo (1985, Juzo Itami) Where is the Friend's House? (1987, Abbas Kiarostami) The Rest is Entertainment Wolf Hall — Hilary Mantel, Dark Matter — Blake Crouch Slaughterhouse-Five — Kurt Vonnegut, novel and graphic novel The Maniac — Benjamin Labatut When We Cease to Understand the World — Benjamin Labatut Exhalations — Ted Chiang Stories of Your Life and Others — Ted Chiang Victory Land — the New York band recommended Image used in episode art by Bettina Arrigoni, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons