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Teenage adversity that carries into adulthood

The National Longitudinal Surveys from the Bureau of Labor Statistics are unique in that they run long-term to survey the lives of individuals for decades. For The Pudding, Alvin Chang visualized survey responses to show how adversity as a teenager carries into adulthood.

Each person icon represents a respondent and the collective bar chart stacks track through the years. The icons run across the screen on each time segment and demographic shift.

There’s a video version, shown below, and while I enjoy Alvin’s dulcet voice, I prefer the scrolling version.

Tags: Alvin Chang, development, Pudding, teenager

Flipbook Experiment, like the Telephone game but visual

This looks fun. The Pudding is running an experiment that functions like a visual version of Telephone. In Telephone, the first person whispers a message to their neighbor and the message is passed along until you end with a message that is completely different. Instead of a message, you have a sketch that each new person traces.

I traced something around frame 200 and the sketch looked like a scribble already. I’m curious where this ends.

Tags: loss, Pudding, Russell Samora, sketch

Defining the greatest albums of all time

Rolling Stone published a list in 2003 that ranked the 500 greatest albums of all time. The list was updated in 2020, and there was a lot of change. For The Pudding, Chris Dalla Riva and Matthew Daniels delve into the shift and ask what makes an album the greatest.

A lot of the differences appear to stem from who does the ranking, which makes for a good polling and statistical accuracy example.

Tags: Chris Dalla Riva, Matt Daniels, music, polling, Pudding

Diva-ness of national anthem renditions

You’ve probably heard various renditions of The Star-Spangled Banner, and sometimes singers put a little extra something in the anthem. A bit of flourish. Some attitude. For The Pudding, Jan Diehm and Michelle McGhee quantified that extra something into what they’ve dubbed a Diva Score.

Out of the 138 versions they scored, the highest belong to Chaka Khan at the 2020 NBA All-Star game and Patti Labelle at the 2008 World Series.

Tags: diva, music, Pudding

Analysis of romance novel covers

When I was a kid, I remember uncomfortably walking past the book section at a grocery store where I would see a bunch of books with a muscular man, probably Fabio, clutching to a woman as he looked deeply into her eyes. Times have changed. For The Pudding, Alice Liang analyzed the shifting style of the romance novel cover.

Tags: Alice Liang, book covers, Pudding, romance

Clock plays a song with the current time in its title

For The Pudding, Russell Samora pulled songs via the Spotify API and made a unique kind of clock:

Every minute, random songs are played that contain the time in the title (e.g., 6:47 or 6:47 from Central Station). If there are at least two songs with the correct am/pm (or it is absent), then the incorrect ones will be excluded.

Tags: clock, Pudding, Russell Samora, song

Rarity of songwriters who are women for popular songs

It’s common to see singers who are women, but the people who write the songs that end up in the Billboard Hot 100 are still mostly men. For The Pudding, Chris Dalla Riva, with design by Ashley Cai, highlights the rarity of women on songwriting teams over the past decade.

Tags: Ashley Cai, Chris Dalla Riva, gender, music, Pudding

Astericking NBA champions

It seems to have grown more common for basketball fans to complain that whoever wins the championship didn’t have to go through a legitimate challenge. If so and so wasn’t injured on the opposing team, so the naysayers claim, then such and such team wouldn’t have won. For The Pudding, Russell Samora made it easier to whine, based on an aptly named metric called CRUTCH.

Tags: basketball, Pudding, Russell Samora

A moving drumbeat, explained visually

When you first learn to play music, a lot of the instruction is about structure. Turn the metronome on and follow the beats straight up. James Dewitt Yancey, also known as J Dilla, shifted the beats for a different feel and sound. This piece, by Michelle McGhee for The Pudding, demonstrates this difference.

Turn the sound on and press the buttons. It’s neat to hear the breakdown of the rhythm as you walk through the styles.

Tags: beats, Michelle McGhee, music, Pudding

A visual story about kimchi and family

Alvin Chang, for The Pudding, illustrated the search for his kimchi, which is a metaphor for other things. Interact with the items in the story and be sure to turn the sound on. There are charts tucked away for historical context.

Many of my best memories throughout life are tied to food, so this one struck home for me.

Tags: Alvin Chang, kimchi, Pudding

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