💁♀️ Aack! Cathy’s here! Yeezus, Disney World, pretty boys 💄 Rachelle Hampton & Madison Kircher 💻
💌Podcast The Newsletter is your weekly love letter to podcasts and the people who make them.💌
Bonjour!
Today is Monday, June 28st. There are 331 days until I go on my next Disney cruise. This week we’re getting to peek into the podcast app and listening life of Zachariah Moreno, co-founder and CEO of SquadCast.fm. He is also the co-host of two podcasts, author, designer, artist, and software engineer who is on a mission to connect creatives.
The app I use: Spotify and YouTube
Listening time per week: 5 hours
When I listen: Noon and evening
How I discover: Guests on shows I like
Anything else? Creativity is enhanced by collaboration.
xoxo lp
ps If you are pleased with Podcast The Newsletter, please spread the word.
👋q & a & q & a & q & a👋
Rachelle Hampton & Madison Kircher
Rachelle Hampton and Madison Kircher are the co-hosts of ICYMI. Follow Rachelle on Twitter here, Madison on Twitter here, and ICYMI on Twitter here.
Have you two been friends for a long time? It sounds like it!
Rachelle: So Madison and I had never actually met before we auditioned together for the show. I don’t even think we followed each other on Twitter? So we had both gone through another audition before we did ours together and I remember thinking, I’m not really sure this is something I want to do because I had largely been writing up until that point. But after the audition with Madison, I was sold. The chemistry was instantaneous and I truly don’t think I could do this show with anyone else.
Madison: I feel like I’m about to blow our cover here, but Rachelle and I haven’t known each other very long at all! We met at the beginning of the year during an audition taping where we were thrown together with no prep. I got off the Zoom and immediately knew I wanted to make this show together if given the chance. We’ve really only hung out in person twice, since we currently make the show remotely due to the parabola. Can’t wait until we can actually be in a studio together.
What else could ICYMI stand for?
Madison: Internet Creates Your Mental Illness.
What do you hope ICYMI does for people?
Madison: It’s our signoff, but I really do hope listening to our show helps people disconnect a little bit more. Which sounds counterintuitive, an internet culture show that wants you to log off. But I think we’ve done our best work if a listener vaguely registers something happening online and doesn’t bother to investigate further because they know ICYMI will cover it in a way that is (hopefully) concise, funny, and nuanced.
Do each of you have a culture wheelhouse? What is the thing that makes each of you go nuts?
Rachelle: For me, reality television. It’s honestly a lot like the internet in that they both really have an ability to capture the era they’re made in, in a more honest way than a prestige television show. You can kind of track the changing mores and morals of society by watching six seasons of the Bachelorette back to back. Our producer, Daniel Schoeder, calls reality tv the great American art form and I think that’s pretty accurate.
If you were going to start another podcast, don't worry about the logistics or if it would even make sense, what would it be?
Rachelle: I’m fully obsessed with the War of the Roses/early Tudor Era and you will hear me attempt to bring it up at any given opportunity so in a dream world with unlimited resources I’d love to do a really deeply-researched podcast about the Lancasters and the Plantagenets. They were all so messy! The Real Housewives of their time.
How do you decide which internet stories make it to the show?
Rachelle: We plan episodes on Monday and Wednesdays so some of the decision-making process comes down to: do we think this will still be interesting by the time the show airs in two or three days. We’re also a pretty small team and Madison and I do all the research ourselves. We have to move fairly fast and we don’t really have the time or the resources to break news, which means we lean a lot on our ability to situate what sometimes looks like an isolated piece of internet ephemera within a broader context. So we often pick a story based on how many avenues of potential discussion it opens up. It’s a really good sign during planning meetings when we already start riffing before doing any of the actual prep work.
Who are your fans? Who is listening?
Madison: We have the best fans. This is a scientific fact that is not biased in the least. Really, though, we love hearing from our listeners. They are so plugged into the internet, and even better, how the long hand of the internet shapes our IRL world. We just did an episode where we asked for people to send us voice memos describing what the TikTok algorithm thinks it knows about them. (For example, TikTok thinks I’m an ex-Mormon.) We got some really wild and insightful responses. You can hear the episode here! I’ve also been surprised to find our audience spans a pretty wide age range. Turns out wanting the internet explained to you knows no generational lines.
Is the internet good for us?
Rachelle: Ooh a loaded question. I don’t really think most things are unequivocally good or bad, besides like…fascism which is obviously bad. On the show, you’ll often hear me and Madison start off hot and then end up deeply ambivalent by the end of the episode and I think that’s pretty indicative of the internet writ large. The internet has given us access in a way that would’ve been unimaginable a few decades ago. The fact that I can go on my phone and find out in real time what thousands of people across the world are doing or thinking or listening to is kind of mind-blowing. But, like most money-making ventures, the platforms we all use are always going to prioritize profit over safety.
Which podcasts do you listen to?
Madison: Going to take this question as an opportunity to gush about one podcast I love called Maintenance Phase. It’s hosted by Michael Hobbes and Aubrey Gordon and it’s just the best reminder that the diet and wellness industry is a complete shitshow. They did an episode about Halo Top -- the “healthy” protein ice cream that mostly tastes like ass, er, well, let’s say tastes not like ice cream -- at the beginning of this year that absolutely hooked me and I’ve been a regular listener since. Highly, highly recommend to anybody who has been forced to suffer the mortal horror that is having a body on this planet. (Yes, I do mean literally everyone.)
🚨If u only have time for 1 thing🚨
On rare occasions in our time here on earth, we will be delivered a gift from the gods. Today is that day for Jamie Loftus’ new podcast Aack Cast has released its first episode—Cathy Comics, Revisited. Jamie has made some of my favorite podcast-like things (ongoing shows like The Bechdel Cast, original projects like My Year in Mensa and Lolita Podcast, and guesting on anything, but mostly The Daily Zeitgeist.) Aack Cast is Jamie’s (what I am assuming to be) philosophical/academic look at Cathy Guisewite’s Cathy comics, which ran in newspapers 365 days a year from 1976 to 2010. (And returned during the pandemic online.) Jamie Loftus is smart enough to make anything interesting, but this appears to be in her wheelhouse, and in mine. A 30-(40?)-something-year-old woman weighted down with the anxiety of doing things right but failing every time, anyway. I don’t think anyone really thought that Cathy was saying anything of substance but I think we are about to find out that she was saying a fuck-load. Two more reasons I’m so excited for this one: Jackie Johnson is the voice of Cathy, and Miles Gray is the voice of Irving.
💎BTW💎
🎙️If you ever wonder why I love Disney World so much (I see that look in your eyes when I tell you that I am…I feel the judgment!) listen to this episode of Those Happy Places, which dives into exactly what the show is about: how amusement parks like Disney are like works of literature. It’s a philosophical exploration of the tiny details of these spaces that I love so much and never take for granted, from the smells (there are three kinds: intentional, like in Soarin’; accidental, like in Pirates of the Caribbean; intrinsic, like the smell of the ropes when you’re waiting in line) to the magic of being able to be the protagonist in your own story as you go through the parks. Buddy and Alice speak to listeners about their own takes on parks as literature. This is essentially why going to Disney World is like a religious experience for me. And it’s not just because I’m a basic-bitch child who thinks Mickey Mouse would be a great pal. There’s something smart going on here, something you get to tap into each time you not only visit a park, but explore it in other ways, like going online, singing songs, or in my case, living in Mickey Mouse t-shirts.
🎙️I picked up Do You Know Mordechai? this week and I can’t remember the last time I was so eager to blow through a show. (And so mad at myself that I did.) It tells the story of a Dirty John-like Marc Ramsden, who embroiled in a complicated con in which he wooed a number of women, presenting himself as a jewish multi-millionaire spy, cancer patient, artist or Army veteran who was the owner of a ranch, a cancer diagnosis, and a dead wife. None of this turned out to be true. As many of 5 of the “Yurt Sisters” (this is what they called themselves, in reference to Mordechai’s claims to many of the women that he would build each a yurt on his ranch in California) went to the police but were told nothing could be done. But Mordechai was unable to stop them from banding together to track his every move, even becoming friends, to try to take him down. It’s juicy as hell but it’s really the women and the relationships they forge with each other that make this podcast so addictive. The listener feels invited into their circle to track down Mordechai with them. It also felt like a mind game—it’s easy to judge these women for falling for what seem like obvious lies to us, but I kept wondering if I could find myself doing the same if I was in these women’s shoes. I have begun monitoring my husband Justin closely. Do I really know Justin Chen? I predict this show will be on lots of best-of lists, I can feel it. It’s top notch.
🎙️Dissect’s Cole Cuchna is turning his attention to Kanye West’s 2013 album Yeezus. This is an album begging to be dissected—Kayne is a master of storytelling and his work often reflects his own messy life. Yeezus was nothing like Kanye’s previous album, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. So this is a dissection of not just Yeezus, but the mind of…I’ll say it…a genius. Kanye. Episode one draws in everything from Kim Kardashian to Theory of Mind. To be totally honest, I stopped listening to the last season of Dissect. I had been an enormous Childish Gambino fan but learning too much about him exposed him as a pretentious asshole, if you ask me. And I don’t know if there is a bigger asshole than Kanye West. (There probably is, somewhere.) But his asshole-ness is…I’ll say it…dark and twisted, full of pain and contradiction, and brilliance. So I’m in.
🎙️From what I can tell, the team at Trans-Lash started The Anti-Trans Hate Machine not realizing just how powerful the machine really is, and you probably don’t, either. An entire show focused on this is just the thing to point out the secretive nature of some of these cruel forces that are undermining our democracy. These people are so rich and so smart. And what they can do is terrifying. (This is not, as host Imara Jones says, your grandmother’s Christian fundamentalism.) On the first episode, Imara walks us through a historic case: Hecox v. Little and the law that made Idaho the first state to ban transgender athletes participating in sports. Shockingly, Idaho Representative Barbara Ehardt, the sponsor of the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act, agrees to talk to Imara. It’s funny because Barbara has this incredibly opportunity to give her side of the story, but Imara’s (gentle and kind) interview exposes that Barbara hasn’t thought everything through.
🎙️On Getting Curious with Jonathan Van Ness, Jonathan talked to David Yi about the history of beauty beyond the gender binary based on his research from his new book Pretty Boys. David introduces us to his top ten favorite pretty boys in history, from the Neanderthals who used highlighter to the Vikings who kept beauty kits on their weapon belts to Korean warriors who invented three-in-one sticks. It’s fascinating and fun, especially to hear Jonathan shriek with delight the whole way through. David explains how men have always beautified themselves, and there are so many twists in history that led us to where we are now—it being generally unacceptable for men to glam up. Guys, it’s in your DNA to beautify. And when you deny yourself the opportunity you’re giving in to the patriarchy! This episode also made me feel better about my own beauty habits. I love glitter and fake eyelashes and nail art, and I always wonder if that makes me an enemy of feminism. Maybe it’s not totally my fault.
🎙️Lost in Sports does a great job untangling the complicated NCAA issue, taking it back to EA Sports’ College Football video game that started it all. EA Sports did a lot of tricky things to make its football players look exactly like real players. According to the people interviewed in this piece, EA Sports wanted to pay the college athletes depicted in the game. The NCAA didn’t want to talk about it. When a player depicted in the game sued EA Sports, the game had to be discontinued. This pissed off fans—and EA Sports. But more importantly, it was just the beginning of the NCAA’s problems. It was the first time people were exposed to the way the NCAA was exploiting college players. There is so much packed into this episode—voices from the creator of the game who was fired, athletes who have missed out on maybe millions of dollars because of the NCAA, and Sonny Vaccaro, who signed Michael Jordan to his first sneaker deal. (It’s worth listening to his episode just getting to hear from Sonny.)
🎙️Myths and legends beautifully come to life in the new show from TRAX, Cultureverse, an immersive audio drama that tells stories of ordinary kids who find themselves face to face with strange folk characters from their culture. (The first episode reminded me of the beginning of an episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark and that is a compliment.) The sound is amazing, this would be fun if the creatures were invented. (It’s a rare case in which you can listen to it with kids and be equally delighted.) But examining each story throws you deep into one of the most interesting parts of culture. The myths that have been passed around the campfire for sometimes centuries. On episode one we meet The Rolling Calf from Caribbean folklore, a shapeshifting duppy in the form of a bull, created to teach children bravery.
🎙️I have been a subscriber to Aria Code for quite some time but was always intimidated to listen. The Opera is not my thing. But once I started I couldn’t stop. It’s a show that is actually for people just like me—curious about opera but in need of a bridge to get there. Aria Code dissects the most famous arias in opera history, talking to singers and musicians who guide us through the music, but it also brings along people with their own stories to tell, that mirror the stories in the arias. The first one I listened to was awesome but a bit brutal—Strauss's Elektra (t/w childhood and sexual assault,) about the drive for revenge, anger, and one primal scream. But the gateway one is on Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro.
🎙️If you fucking love science (this has become a type of person now) you will love ASAPScience’s Side Note. Hosts are Canadian YouTubers Mitchell "Mitch" Moffit and Gregory Brown, a couple and on the same zany, high-energy wavelength who deliver fascinating facts with humor and enthusiasm. Their episode about the science of less was one of my favorites. They bring on professor and author of Subtract Leidy Klotz to talk about how we are wired to want more, and when we are problem solving, tend to add things instead of subtract them. Leidy says, why not both add and subtract? The idea came to him when he was playing LEGO with his son. They ran into a problem and he instinctively ran to grab m ore LEGO meanwhile his son took some away which completed the puzzle. Leidy talks about exactly why we are drawn to this idea (he brings in ancient civilizations and their desire to build huge, useless monuments even when they had no money or resources) and gives a great tip: instead of a “to-do” list, what about a “NOT to-do” list.
🎙️I built a Harklist about The Language of Sexuality and Gender, and I’d love it for you to listen and tell me what you think. In about 30 minutes you get the best podcast moments I could find about voguing as a language (TED Shorts,) the queer history of YASS QUEEN (Politically Reactive,) needlework’s tie to reclaiming queer slang (Sew What?,) how Gen Z is using the song “Sweater Weather” to identify as bi on TikTok (Bad Queers,) the radical inclusivity of astrology (Outside/In,) using ‘they’ as a singular pronoun (The Allusionist,) the words boi, stud, and blood bath (QueerWOC,) how lemon came to mean nonbinary in Vietnamese (The Wind) and more. Click to hear some interesting perspectives on sexuality and gender, and maybe discover a new favorite show.
🎙️I have been dying for some sort of storytelling treatment of Edith Wilson ever since Very Presidential ran an episode about her husband Woodrow last year. Edith!, a satirical historical fiction podcast, is just that, and Edith herself is answering a common question in the presidential gossip columns: did Edith serve as the first female president of the United States, technically? This podcast just feels expensive…the credits were like 20 minutes long (I am exaggerating) and Edith is voiced by Rosamund Pike and her teammates include Esther Povitsky, D’Arcy Carden, Stephen Root, Adam Conover, and more. The writing is witty and irreverent and paints Edith as someone you love to dislike.
🎙️Frontline PBS has a new 5-part podcast series called Un(re)solved, investigating the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act, which was introduced by John Lewis in 2007 and allows cold cases of suspected violent crimes committed against African Americans before 1970 to be reopened. Emmett Till was a 14-year-old who helped spark the Civil Rights Movement, but the two white men who confessed to murdering him were acquitted by an all-white, all-male jury, and spent the rest of their lives in freedom. Till’s family was never compensated. It’s been 12 years since Lewis’ Crime Act was enacted. What’s taking so long? That is the story this podcast is telling. And this audio makes a story from history that seems so far in our past feel incredibly close. This is everything you don’t know about Emmett Till but should, and what you need to know about the entire story, which is far from over. (Including other stories about violent crimes against Black people that are also un(re)solved. To learn more about this project, see how the team created this interactive site using audio from the series to flesh out the story they are trying to tell.
🎙️If you’ve been in the podcast space long enough, you have surely heard the name Twila Dang, founder and CEO of Matriarch Digital Media, but who is she really? The Pod Broads’ Alexandra Cohl interviews Twila for a conversation packed with insightful takeaways from Twila’s own march through the podcasting industry, and the incredibly story of how she turned herself into the Twila I hear about all over the place. I was grateful for this episode. I have always wanted to know more about Twila. She’s someone to know. So get to know her if you don’t already.
🎙️What if you are poised to be an Olympian, but you are a refugee with no country to call home? Earshot beautifully tells two stories of refugees who, thanks to the IOC Olympic Team, were able to compete to be in the Japan games. It’s rather heartbreaking because I looked up both people (Abdoulie Asim, a runner, and Asif Sultani, for martial arts) and after all they’ve been through (the talk about their harrowing journeys in detail) neither of them made the final cut. So I guess it’s a story in not making it, or maybe what making it really means. And when it comes to Olympics stories, those aren’t the ones we usually get.
🎙️That Glennon Doyle, she says the darndest things sometimes. On an episode of her show We Can Do Hard Things, she brought on her wife Abby Wambach, and I loved hearing her talk about how watching women play sports is a rare-ish opportunity to see them use their bodies in a powerful way, unafraid of what they look like, which goes against what many women can remember being taught as girls. Abby is there to talk about how to have fun, something Glennon seems to know nothing about. Glennon is addicted to work, productivity, and efficiency, meanwhile Abby looks for opportunities for fun at every turn. (Oh my gosh this reminds me of this moment from Almost 30—Glennon talking about being jealous of Abby’s ability to relax. I think about it all the time.) I know a lot of people who read my newsletter are workhorses and I promise this episode will help you re-frame how you look at your day, and hopefully will inspire you to sprinkle in a reward for all that back-breaking (lol I don’t think any of you are lumberjacks or anything) work you are doing. You also get to hear about how Glennon’s “fun” Instagram post of her dancing got her more unfollows than any other post. If you don’t think you’re a Glennon Doyle person, maybe you are. I didn’t think I was, but I guess I am. Although I find myself relating to all of her weaknesses and being in awe of her strengths. (I know way too much about her and Abby to not be a Glennon person. OMG here’s another one, listen to this.)
🎙️Revisionist History is back for another season, and we find Malcolm Gladwell contemplating the future of driving by testing out a Waymo car in Phoenix, Arizona. He paints a picture of a world where self-driving cars are everywhere, yielding to pedestrians, and kind of fucks around with a car on his own two feet, experimenting with autonomous driving and how sensitive Waymo is when it’s interacting with a human on the road.
Do you ever line up your podcast queue, listen to everything, and feel like they were totally different but telling you basically the same message? I woke up on Friday to four episodes in a row about false memories and plagiarism and…I don’t know what god is trying to tell me. Anyway…if you’re into the topic, line up the next four all in a neat little row like I did, accidentally.
🎙️The Flamin’ Hot Cheetos saga is not over yet! Latino USA has wanted to speak to Richard Montañez, the man who claims to have invented Flamin’ Hot Cheetos (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, that’s on you—I can’t help you) the week the explosive piece in The LA Times ran, so Richard didn’t want to do the interview. But we have him now, giving his side of the story, and refuting everything in Ricardo DeAratanha’s article. (We also hear a confusing “apology” from Ricardo—he admits the article didn’t cover everything but stands by what he says.) This story is bigger than Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. It is about the way we tell our stories and the ways white people steal everything from POC. (Whether Flamin’ Hot Cheetos was stolen from Richard or not.)
🎙️I was so excited to see Sideways back in my feed with an episode about originality. Do we own our ideas and if not, who does? Matthew Syed tells his own story about being falsely-accused of plagiarism and how it can happen to anyone thanks to our collective brain.
🎙️Build for Tomorrow has an episode about why we might be nostalgic for the pandemic, a thought that both sounds shocking but it something I have heard so many people admit behind closed doors. But the more interesting part of this episode is Jason Feifer’s deep dive into memory and why it can’t be trusted. It is one of the best pieces on memory I’ve heard, and this is a topic I am drawn to. Jason tells a personal story about his own memory of himself and how it became a story he wasn’t sure he could believe. And he talks with two experts, Anne Wilson and Felipe De Brigard, about episodic memory and why thanks to the mundane nature of a quarantine and segmentation, we might only remember good things from this time. (But we should be encouraged to embrace a post-pandemic world, where we can create a whole bunch of new memories and work for a future self. Build for a brighter tomorrow, if you will.) Anne even suggests we give Brian Williams a break and explains how on earth he could have told such a bold lie on TV.
🎙️The Experiment is also talking about how we will talk about the pandemic in the future, and interviewed Dr. Ruth about touching people’s butts again and also how to remember what we went through in 2020. Dr. Ruth is a Holocaust survivor and makes comparisons to trying to heal from trauma and says we need to remember the pandemic but not obsess over it. This episode also touches on false memories and how we reinforce them in our every day lives.
🎙️If you’re an independent BIPOC, Queer or Trans audio producer, here’s your reminder to apply for Lantigua Williams & Co.’s Podcasting, Seriously Awards Fund. With AIR and Pacific Content as Fund Partners, they’ve committed to supporting 200+ producer award submissions, disbursing at least $20K annually. You can submit up to $200 in awards reimbursements per calendar year. There is no catch. This is a big step in getting podcast awards into the hands of people who truly deserve them. Please spread the word.
🎙️I love you!