Deep Fake It to Make It

Audioli #5 - Sweet Bobby

Friends,

Let’s be honest. You’ve had some bad relationships. There was Dirty John: trashy but irresistible. Then there was The Shrink Next Door: intelligent but frustrating. And now, just when you’re becoming comfortable with the idea that a ho-hum, reliable weekly chat with friends is all the companionship you need, you get a Facebook message from a cute cardiac surgeon who knows some people you know. At first glance he appears a little slick, maybe too basic? But after spending a little time listening you get seduced—because damn, Sweet Bobby is good.

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When I first heard of Sweet Bobby I registered the name, took a quick peek at the tile art, saw the word “catfish,” and figured it was a tale about online mischief and a bad romance. Not my typical fare, so I passed. But a colleague whose taste I trust kept banging on about it so I gave it a whirl—only to find that it is about online mischief and a bad romance, but mischief on a scale I’d never contemplated before, and a bad romance unlike any I’d encountered. And I know from bad romances.

I binged the whole thing in day and a half. At one point while listening, I stopped dead in my tracks on 14th Street and University and said, “Wow!” like I was a cartoon character. I had to buy and eat a hot dog just to help lift my jaw off the sidewalk…and because I’ll use any excuse to eat a hot dog.

Sweet Bobby is reported by Alexi Mostrous, an award-winning investigative journalist who’s also a partner in Tortoise Media, a UK-based media company that focuses on what it calls “slow news.” (No, it’s not a series of newsletters about the TSA—I checked!) But the story belongs to Harkirat Kaur Assi, who goes by the name Kirat. The setting is the close-knit Sikh community in West London. It starts in 2009, when Kirat, then a fun-loving 29-year-old, is working part-time as a radio presenter. She soon receives a Facebook message from a man named Bobby and, since they appear to have friends and family in common, she responds. They start chatting constantly. At one point, after they’ve been talking online for a while, Kirat runs into Bobby at a club—but he acts as if he doesn’t know her. Nonetheless, they eventually enter a relationship that will change Kirat’s life forever.

Kirat is an exceptional subject. She is poised and compelling—even if her actions sometimes make you want to bang your head against a lamp post. At the heart of the pod lie the recordings she made of her messages to Bobby, which oscillate from starry-eyed to heart-searing. Mostrous and his team do an excellent job of laying out the story and giving the listener time and space to sit with each beat. He also anticipates the questions listeners will have and answers them the best he can. And unlike another recently released pod that takes place in a UK immigrant community, Mostrous and his team have the knack for knowing which illuminating details to keep in and which confusing ones to cut. The result is a crisply written pod that clocks in and satisfies at a lean six episodes.

That’s it for this week. Many of you pod folks will be attending On Air Fest next week, and I’d love to join you — I even dreamed of hosting a little Audioli happy hour. But, alas, I will be doing the only activity that would make me happier: I’ll be out of town recording the penultimate episode of my very own new podcast. I’ll tell you more about it soon. (The song above is a hint.)

And if you listen to Sweet Bobby and want to talk about it, hit me up! I’ve got theories.

Best,

BFN

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BAGATELLE: 

What have I been up to on the extra week I took off? I saw Parallel Mothers. I’m loving late-era Almodovar: his affection for women, his Hitchcockian twists, and, if I’m being honest, the kitchens. The man’s art department steals from the Pinterest board in my heart!

 

Speaking of mothers, I picked up Janet Malcolm’s Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession. I’m learning so much about a world that’s always intrigued me, including the fact that Freud believed some people were beyond therapy:

One should look beyond the patient’s illness and form an estimate of his whole personality; those patients who do not possess a reasonable degree of education and a fairly reliable character should be refused. It must not be forgotten that there are healthy people as well as unhealthy ones who are good for nothing in life.

I, of course, assume he’s talking about me…something I’ll take up with my therapist!