Would You Like to Choose the Race?

I’ll admit: I hit play expecting a heavy-handed allegory. Instead, *Would You Like to Choose the Race?* floored me with its surgical precision. The story’s power isn’t in its premise (though it’s devastating) but in how it *unfolds*. The first five minutes lull you with the familiar—Nomi’s giddy phone call to Henry, their playful bickering over baby names—before the consultant’s entrance turns the script into a hostage situation. The narration sells it: Elmore’s Nomi starts with warm, exhausted laughter, but by the midpoint, her voice is a threadbare whisper, like she’s reading the terms and conditions of her own complicity. Campbell’s Henry, meanwhile, oscillates between blustering denial and hollow acquiescence, his performance a gutting study in male privilege confronting its own limits. My only critique? The brevity, while razor-sharp, occasionally sacrifices depth. The consultant’s monologue about *“market trends in melanin”* is chilling, but I wanted more—more about the world’s logic, more pushback from Henry and Nomi beyond stunned silence. And while the sound design is impeccable (that *click* of a pen on a clipboard will haunt me), the abrupt ending left me craving a final beat of consequence. Still, these are quibbles. As a proof-of-concept for audio drama, it’s flawless: a story that uses the medium’s intimacy to force you into the room with these characters, complicit in their silence. If you’ve ever scrolled past a “customize your experience” dropdown without thinking, this 37 minutes will ruin that innocence forever.