Last Saturday morning, at this year's Third Coast International Audio Festival, in Chicago, some eight hundred people looked up from their breakfast in surprise: the theme from "The Daily," the Times' weekday news podcast, was playing over the speakers.
That Ani suffered abuse as a child should come as no surprise: the theme of the sins of fathers visiting themselves on their children has been one of True Detective's preoccupations this season.
To our surprise, the theme 'medication' scored relatively low.
QUESTION FROM JOHN: I'm surprised the theme of racism hasn't come up yet in this discussion.
When he praises Hitler (shown preening and ranting on a newsreel), it is no surprise.These themes come together in the climactic royal speech of the film's title, broadcast on the day war broke out.
To my surprise, spotting the theme proved elusive for many (despite the title, which I'd assumed would be a dead give-away) and for some the penny never dropped at all: some entries had TIMENOJENNY and there was even one TIMENOKENNY.
For this game, we chose to focus on the rather tricky feeling of surprise as our theme, and spent countless hours in discussions and on production.
To my surprise, the recurring theme that I heard from Experts in the Field was: there are too many nonprofits.
A second surprise: The dominant themes of story aren't what we might assume them to be.
