Press

Wright College Professor Honored with ‘Oscar of the Internet’ for Her Podcast

By City Colleges of Chicago – April 26, 2024

In addition to teaching, Wright College Computer Information Systems Associate Professor Laurie Alfaro has a passion for music that recently landed her a prestigious honor.

Laurie’s love of music was born out of watching Duran Duran music videos on MTV in the 1980s. In order to build a sense of community during the pandemic, Laurie created a podcast called Accelerated Culture: The Rise of Alternative Music in the 80s and Beyond in August 2022. The show centers on 80s and 90s new wave music and allows Laurie and her cohost, Scott Free, to connect virtually with music fans from all over the world.

Two years later, Accelerated Culture has increased its listenership and now holds one of the internet’s highest honors: Webby Honoree in the Best Indie Podcast category. The Webby Awards are presented by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences (IADAS). It is the leading international awards organization honoring excellence on the internet. This year, Accelerated Culture was an honoree in the Best Indie Podcast category in the 28^th Annual Webby Awards out of 13,000 submissions.

“I was over the moon when I found out we’d won,” Laurie shared. “The Webby Awards are a big deal. They’re like the Oscars of the internet. It’s a huge honor.”

Laurie’s cohost is one of her professors from college. She encourages all her students to maintain relationships with their professors as they never know where those relationships may lead them.

Accelerated Culture Podcast – The Rise Of Alternative Music

By Rebecca Cullen at Stereo Stickman – December 14, 2023

Introducing a fantastic new podcast, faultlessly accessing a crucial aspect of music history. Accelerated Culture Podcast provides a deep-dive into the rise of alternative music since the eighties. The concept is simple, take on the albums and bands that shaped the audio landscape, and explore how they came about both technically and emotionally – as well as how their music impacted the scene, and how that impact still lingers today.

Presented by Laurie and Rob, Accelerated Culture Podcast covers a broad range of historical music projects, and most recently explored the story of 1989’s Nine Inch Nails album Pretty Hate Machine – a fascinating take for those who’ve been lifelong fans of the band, but also a worthy gateway episode into the show’s historical journey. We hear the story of the band and how they began, as well as a break down of the actual music and the creative thinking behind it. Categorically one for the devoted musicians, producers and music nerds who crave understanding of the complexities of the art-form!

Coming in at an hour-plus in most cases, episodes of the Accelerated Culture Podcast achieve long-form appeal for their fine balancing of personal anecdotes and factual representation. You can hear a passion for the process from these two music fans discussing the projects that shaped much of their adolescent years, and at the same time we get the more insightful details in terms of what each album did for the scene and the culture – the impact it had, and its overall role in the rise of alternative music.

One major aspect of the podcast is how new wave music paved the way for alternative music in the early eighties and nineties. Snippets of tracks are used intermittently, and the conversation in every case blends artistic inception with media response and personal reference, proving both informative and beautifully nostalgic to listen through.

There’s comfort in the calm and inspiration of the past, and Accelerated Culture Podcast wholly addresses the need for this, as well as delivering a plethora of unknown facts about the bands and albums that carved out much of the global music scene.

From a journalistic perspective, Accelerated Culture Podcast offers plenty of references to the cultural landscape from the time of release, covering the origin story of Nine Inch Nails, for example, and prior to this delving into the background stories of bands like New Order, Jane’s Addiction and Duran Duran. Laurie and Rob showcase an impressively knowledgeable, well-researched and consistently insightful approach, and furthermore inject a likable, conversational dynamic, which makes the podcast an easy pleasure to let play.

Find Accelerated Culture Podcast on Apple or Podbean & follow on Facebook.