Audiobooks by Glen Weldon

NPR's Podcast Start Up Guide: Create, Launch, and Grow a Podcast on Any Budget

From NPR comes the definitive guide to podcasting-featuring step-by-step advice on how to find a unique topic, tell the best stories, and engage the most listeners, as well as the secrets that will take your pod to the next level. Whoever you are, whatever you love, there's a podcast audience waiting for you, and in today's booming audio storytelling landscape, it's never been easier to share your voice with the world. But while the barrier to entry for podcast production is relatively low (just the cost of a mic and a laptop), the learning curve is steep-and quality matters. That's where NPR comes in. In NPR's Podcast Start Up Guide, Glen Weldon draws on NPR's extensive educational materials and army of talent-from recognizable hosts, such as Guy Raz (How I Built This), Gene Demby (Code Switch), Linda Holmes (Pop Culture Happy Hour), and Yowei Shaw (Invisibilia), to indispensable behind-the-scenes players, such as producers, engineers, and editors-to guide aspiring podcasters through the conception, creation, and launch of a podcast. Part master class, part candid informational interview with the best in the business, this book is a must-read for anyone who wants to make their dream of starting a podcast a reality.

Glen Weldon (Author), Glen Weldon, Various (Narrator)

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Superman: The Unauthorized Biography

How has the Big Blue Boy Scout stayed so popular for so long? How has he changed with the times, and what essential aspects of him have remained constant? This fascinating biography examines Superman as a cultural phenomenon through seventy-five years of action-packed adventures, from his early years as a social activist in circus tights to his growth into the internationally renowned demigod he is today.Written by NPR book critic, blogger, and resident comic-book expert Glen Weldon, this biography chronicles the ever-evolving Man of Steel and his world-not just the men and women behind the comics, movies, and shows, but his continually shifting origin story, burgeoning powers, and the colorful cast of trusted friends and deadly villains that surround him. Superman places every iteration of the Man of Steel into the character's greater, decades-long story: from Bud Collyer to Henry Cavill, World War II propagandist to peanut-butter pitchman, Super Pup to Super Friends, comic strip to Broadway musical, Lori Lemaris to Lois & Clark, it's all here.Affectionate and in-depth, this biography contains analyses of the hero's most beloved adventures, in and out of the comics-his most iconic Golden Age tales, goofiest Silver Age exploits, and the contemporary film, television, and comics stories that keep him alive today.

Glen Weldon (Author), George Newbern (Narrator)

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The Caped Crusade: Batman and the Rise of Nerd Culture

A witty, intelligent cultural history from NPR book critic Glen Weldon explains Batman's rises and falls throughout the ages-and what his story tells us about ourselves.Since his creation, Batman has been many things: a two-fisted detective; a planet-hopping gadabout; a campy Pop-art sensation; a pointy-eared master spy; and a grim and gritty ninja of the urban night. For more than three quarters of a century, he has cycled from a figure of darkness to one of lightness and back again; he's a bat-shaped Rorschach inkblot who takes on the various meanings our changing culture projects onto him. How we perceive Batman's character, whether he's delivering dire threats in a raspy Christian Bale growl or trading blithely homoerotic double-entendres with partner Robin on the comics page, speaks to who we are and how we wish to be seen by the world. It's this endlessly mutable quality that has made him so enduring. And it's Batman's fundamental nerdiness-his gadgets, his obsession, his oath, even his lack of superpowers-that uniquely resonates with his fans who feel a fiercely protective love for the character. Today, fueled by the internet, that breed of passion for elements of popular culture is everywhere. Which is what makes Batman the perfect lens through which to understand geek culture, its current popularity, and social significance. In The Caped Crusade, with humor and insight, Glen Weldon, book critic for NPR and author of Superman: The Unauthorized Biography, lays out Batman's seventy-eight-year cultural history and shows how he has helped make us who we are today and why his legacy remains so strong.

Glen Weldon (Author), Glen Weldon (Narrator)

Audiobook