June 30, 2023, 1:25 p.m.
Country radio, off-beat grooves, and NBA champions*
Three new visual essays (and a browser extension!) from The Pudding
The Pudding
The Pudding is a publication for visual essays. You may have stumbled upon some of our projects, such as Women’s Pockets are Inferior, How Bad is Your Spotify or Apple Music?, or A People Map of the US.
Happy Summer! We have *four* new projects we are excited to share with you.
They Won’t Play a Lady-O on Country Radio - Examining back-to-back plays by gender, race, and sexual orientation
Wonky - An exploration of rhythm and grooves that break the rules
Asterisking NBA Champions - The official haters guide for salty fans
Pass The Mic - A browser extension to visualize how much each person is talking in Google Meet
As always, thanks a ton for continuing to subscribe and allowing us to share our work with your inbox. Special shout-out to Patreon subscribers and paid-Substack subscribers; your support means a lot!
Country Radio
Back in May 2015, a radio consultant said that women in country music are not the lettuce in the salad, but the tomatoes — they should be “sprinkled” on the playlist and not played back-to-back. “Tomatogate” got us thinking: “How bad is bad for back-to-backs?”, an audible confirmation of country radio's tokenism, or the idea that you’ve played one woman so you don’t need to play more. We looked at 29 radio stations across 19 days.
Rhythm and Groove
This piece is an exploration of J Dilla's signature off-kilter timefeel that made him one of the most influential producers of the modern era. You'll learn what made his approach special through dissecting songs and making some grooves yourself.
NBA Champions*
Injuries always seem to spoil the playoffs. So we created a metric that asterisks the post-2000 NBA Champions based on injured and inactive opponents. Who had the easiest and hardest roads? Find out inside.
Pass The Mic
Are you talking too much in meetings? Do you think other people are? This extension displays a bar chart comparison of the share of talking during a Google Meet. Great for folks that want to be hyper-aware of how the conversation is going, or simply want a fun thing to look during an unnecessary meeting :)
Quick aside!
Have a cool essay idea that you want to make? Check out our pitch guidelines.
Want to hire our team to produce data-led, visual stories? Check out our sister studio, Polygraph.
#stuffwelove at The Pudding
Here’s also some special links that are regularly shared on our Friends of The Pudding slack-channel (get access via Patreon)!
The Siren of Scrap Metal - A deep dive into the voice behind the iconic Mexican pregon
Fantasy or Reality: Is Wemby Next? - lovely bit of UI design to emphasize the two-sided concept.
Thank you subscribers!