(Podcast art for Missing Richard Simmons)

Have you heard about the new podcast Missing Richard Simmons? I listened to the first three installments this morning and am hooked. Not since the first season of Serial have I been so sucked into a podcast, glued to my iTunes the way I imagine Americans would gather around a shined-up wooden radio cabinet in the 1930s to listen to Our Gal Sunday or Amos 'n' Andy (without the latter's controversial racism).

Well, it's not that Missing is without some controversy of its own, though. Writing for Vulture, Nicholas Quah praises it, but hits hard at the potential ethical conundrum that is at the very core of the show:

I was visited again today by Friend 2 from last week. Repeatedly throughout her visit, the conversation veered into some of the more difficult areas of life- illness, breakups and death. I kept responding to her frustrated statements with, "But I can't control that" and "I cannot make people do what they do not want to do".  She would agree, only to turn right around and then go into complaints. Exasperated (and my voice going screechily high pitched), I finally declared, "Don't you get it? We aren't really in control of many things in life!"

I said control so many times I started to hear the Janet Jackson classic in my head.