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The NY Times Recommends the “Song Exploder” Episode Featuring Dan Wilson Talking About Semisonic Hit “Closing Time” on Their Podcast Playlist ‘To Help Distract You (For The Most Part)’

[New York Times]

By Phoebe Lett

As you shelter in place or take other measures to help stop the spread of the coronavirus, you may find yourself with silence to fill. And though podcasts are famously calibrated for a commuter’s journey, there are plenty out there to help pass the time and calm you at home, too.

To find the most distracting of them, I turned to the super listeners on social media, like The New York Times Podcast Club, a Facebook group of more than 32,000 members who often debate and recommend podcasts. Here are the podcast community’s top episode recommendations to lift your spirits or distract you during this time.

But if that’s a little too close to the headlines, try hearing an old song in a new way. Seth Lind, a creator of the sci-fi improv podcast “Mission to Zyxx,” found the “Semisonic” episode of “Song Exploder” surprisingly touching. Each episode of the podcast features an artist taking apart a song to explain how it was made, and the band Semisonic breaks down the end of the dive-bar standard “Closing Time.” “I admittedly went into it thinking, ‘So you’re going to try to tell me this song means something?’ And I was kind of blown away,” Lind tweeted.

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