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24 August 2015

SRSLY #7: Paper Boys and Paper Towns

We talk the end of One Direction, the BBC podcast Who Killed Elsie Frost?, the new film of John Green's YA thriller Paper Towns and US comedy show Broad City.

By Caroline Crampton

This is SRSLY, the pop culture podcast from the New Statesman. Here, you can find links to all the things we talk about in the show as well as a bit more detail about who we are and where else you can find us online. Listen to our new episode now:

…or subscribe in iTunes. We’re also on Audioboom, Stitcher, RSS and  SoundCloud – but if you use a podcast app that we’re not appearing in, let us know.

SRSLY is hosted by Caroline Crampton and Anna Leszkiewicz, the NS’s web editor and editorial assistant. We’re on Twitter as @c_crampton and @annaleszkie, where between us we post a heady mixture of Serious Journalism, excellent gifs and regularly ask questions J K Rowling needs to answer. The podcast is also on Twitter @srslypod if you’d like to @ us with your appreciation.

If you’d like to talk to us about the podcast or make a suggestion for something we should read or cover, you can email srslypod[at]gmail.com. You can also find us on Twitter @srslypod, or send us your thoughts on tumblr here. If you like the podcast, we’d love you to leave a review on iTunes – this helps other people come across it.

The Links

On One Direction:

One Direction fans are fiercely intelligent. From day one, they engineered the band’s success on their own terms: demonstrating their appetite for the boys’ music on social media sealed the original record deal; calling out the band’s management for tweeting from their accounts forced a closer relationship between the boys as individuals and their fans; downloading specific songs multiple times ensured they would get radio play and a place in the charts. When One Direction unequivocally thank their fans for their success, it goes beyond the usual media-approved cliché, because it is unavoidably, undeniably true. One Direction is a towering monument to the power of teenage girls. It is a phenomenon so much greater than the four or five mediocre men that constitute it.”

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Anna has written a great piece about the One Direction fandom and her own relationship with it.

You should also check out the 1D starter playlist she made for Caroline a while back, and listen to SRSLY #1, where Caroline listens for the first time.

Samantha Hunt’s amazing essay “There Is Only One Direction” for New York Magazine is here.

On Who Killed Elsie Frost?:

You can find all the episodes and more info here.

This Guardian report has some useful background to the case.

On Paper Towns:

Watch the trailer:

Here is John Green’s answer on Manic Pixie Dream Girls and his story.

He’s also written more on this subject here.

On Broad City:

There are clips and stuff on their YouTube channel.

Our colleague Stephanie Boland has written about why you should be watching Broad City.

Your questions:

If you have thoughts you want to share on anything we’ve discussed, or questions you want to ask us, please email us on srslypod[at]gmail.com, or @ us on Twitter @srslypod, or get in touch via tumblr here.

Our theme music is “Guatemala – Panama March” (by Heftone Banjo Orchestra), licensed under Creative Commons.

See you next week!

PS If you missed #6, check it out here.

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