In 2005, Nickelodeon premiered an animated series called Avatar: The Last Airbender, about a young boy and his friends who have to keep peace and balance in the world. It combined fantasy and martial arts, and ran for four seasons, won an Emmy and a Peabody, and in 2012, spawned a sequel called The Legend of Korra. This time, the story was about a girl, Korra, a teenager, and just as the characters were older and the world they inhabited was older, the themes of the show matured as well. In December 2014, after 4 seasons of its own, the series and franchise aired its finale. It made headlines for the final shot of the very last scene.
Composer Jeremy Zuckerman used a mix of Chinese and western instruments for the series. Coming up, he deconstructs the music he wrote, reflects on the significance of that scene, and also what it felt like to close the curtain on a franchise he’d been working on over the course of twelve years of his life.

You can hear more cues from Jeremy’s score from The Legend of Korra, via his SoundCloud page:

For more, I recommend this Vanity Fair article, “How a Nickelodeon Cartoon Became One of the Most Powerful, Subversive Shows of 2014,” by Joanna Robinson. And it’s pretty fun to watch this YouTube compilation of fan reactions to the finale.

For a transcript of this episode, click here.

footnotes
The music in the Incredible Hulk end credits is “The Lonely Man Theme” by Joe Harnell.

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Because of music rights restrictions, this episode is no longer available.

The Imitation Game is a biographical film about Alan Turing, a mathematician who pioneered computer science and helped the British government break Nazi codes, but was then later prosecuted by the British government for being gay. Composer Alexandre Desplat created the score, which was nominated for a Golden Globe and an Oscar — his eighth Oscar nomination. In this episode, he breaks down the orchestration of the main theme from the film, which plays during the title sequence.

Here’s Alexandre Desplat conducting the London symphony Orchestra performing The Imitation Game Suite:

Buy “The Imitation Game” on iTunes.

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On February 1st, 2003, the Space Shuttle Columbia broke apart while reentering the earth’s atmosphere. John Roderick, singer and songwriter of The Long Winters, wrote “The Commander Thinks Aloud” about that fateful moment. This episode was made from an interview I did with John Roderick in front of a live audience in Seattle, where we discussed how and why he made this song.

Buy “The Commander Thinks Aloud” on iTunes.

Read the profile of the commander and the six other crew members at NASA’s page dedicated to the Columbia. The seven of them were of seven different religious faiths.

For a transcript of this episode, click here.

footnotes
John Roderick also makes podcasts: Roderick on the Line with Merlin Mann, and Roderick’s Rendezvous.

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