🤸♀️ Avery Trufelman ✨ Listener Eavesdropping: Paul Kondo 👀
💌Podcast The Newsletter is your weekly love letter to podcasts and the people who make them.💌
Bonjour!
Paul Kondo (of the podcast newsletter Podcast Gumbo and podcast Podcast Gumbo) graciously let me pry into his podcast listening queue. Thanks Paul! If you love eavesdropping and finding new podcasts in cool ways, enjoy! (Links below.)
Speed: Unless it’s music, I’m using Overcast to bump up the speed and also shorten silences.
When he listens: 95% of my listening happens when I’m taking long walks or long drives so the length of time I listen weekly is dependent on the weather, road trips, and laziness but on average, I’m probably getting 5 hours/week.
How he discovers: Because I’ve always committed to finding less heard of podcasts for my newsletter, I have to listen to a lot of them which makes it tough for me to listen to my favorites. Criminal is probably the only one I tend to keep up with and even that has taken a hit.
Note from Paul: My queue is insanely long, much longer than the eight I’m showing here. But these are the ones currently at the top of the queue with every expectation that something else is bound to sneak in. Except for Podcast Pontifications and Art of Manliness, all the other podcasts will be first time listens for me.
She Explores: To spoil an upcoming Podcast Gumbo episode, someone has inquired about National Public Lands Day.
Food Heaven: I desperately need to get better at cooking because I’m tired of eating the same thing.
Podcast Brunch Club: This is a chosen episode for this month’s theme.
Story Collider: Oddly, I have never listened to this show.
Popcorn Finance: I love short shows and this has me intrigued.
The Oath: My friend just told me how great this episode is. Let’s see if I can trust him in the future.
Podcast Pontifications: I’m always looking to improve my podcast knowledge.
Art of Manliness: A long time favorite ’self-help’ style podcast.
xoxo lp
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👋q & a & q & a & q & a👋
Avery Trufelman
Avery Trufelman is the new host of The Cut, creator of Articles of Interest, and an alumna of 99% Invisible. Follow her on Twitter here.
What do you love about being back in New York?
Honestly I’m kind of getting a kick out of the new New York. I’m biking around everywhere and hanging out in Greenwood Cemetery and taking long aimless walks. I think if I were to move in the beforetimes, I would be so distracted by parties and museums and theater and people… that I would kind of forget to look around at the buildings and the birds, you know? This city is still so magical, just in a really different way!
I loved The Cut on Tuesdays and was so sad when I thought it had ended forever! What can we look forward to with The Cut's new podcast? Can you spill any secrets?
Well the big secret is that everything is up in the air! We have a number of episodes planned out but… ultimately it’s going to be a surprise to all of us. We’re all working in the new parameters of these odd times and trying to make interesting, relevant radio as best as we can. I love love love that the team at Vox Media and Stella Bugbee at The Cut are all so game to experiment and try new things. I’m looking forward to the new sound, even though I can’t, for the life of me, predict what it’s going to be.
I read that after your first season of Articles of Interest, you didn't have a lot of confidence about it. Which seems crazy to anyone who has heard your work! Do you have confidence now? How has the path toward getting confidence been?
Oh hey thank you, that’s so kind of you. Honestly, no, I will never feel ok. But just knowing that I’ve felt this insecure before and that this is a pattern is a close approximation of something like comfort. I mean, The Cut feels like a really different project than anything I’ve ever done before, because it’s a weekly show and no one knows how long it will go on for. I’m used to announcing an episode or a series that I’ve completed. You know? Like I’ve fussed over it for weeks or months and now it’s in a place where I can reveal it. Now I’m announcing something that… I have yet to make. And I am not even certain I can do it every week! No I can totally do it I can do it.
Will you be trying to follow the path that The Cut has already frontiered, or will you be putting your own spin on it?
Yes! To both. I was a massive fan of The Cut On Tuesdays and was also bummed when it stopped. I absolutely want to emulate its playfulness and its inventiveness- I loved that you never knew what you were going to get week to week. And of course, since it's still The Cut, there will be a lot of familiar voices and beloved writers coming back. But of course I can’t help but have a different spin, because I’m a different person and these are different times. Roman Mars had this great saying that I think about all the time with regards to this. It’s something along the lines of “art is imitation plus lack of talent.” And that’s what this is going to be. I’m going to be doing a new interpretation of something I love, equipped with these strange new pandemic-era tools. Wow, really selling it there, aren’t I? No it will be fun! Please listen!
How has Roman (Mars) helped you be a better podcaster?
I would not be a podcaster at all without Roman. I applied to every single job I could find: a beat reporter in Alaska, a news show in New Hampshire, a staff job at WNYC. Roman took a chance on me, and totally crafted everything about the way I work. His approach is independent, scrappy, and inquiry-driven. He never tried to imitate Ira or Jad or an NPR voice - he was always just chasing his own thing. Hearing Roman be so creative and joyful and true to himself absolutely molded the way I make stories. I’m pretty much imitating him all the time.
Are there too many podcasts?
No. Not at all. We would never say, like, “there are too many books everyone stop writing.” Or like “there’s too much music to ever listen to, so please don’t make anymore.” That’s insane. Culture moves and changes, and it is incumbent on all of us to move with it and encourage a variety of new voices and perspectives. I mean, arguably there aren’t enough podcasts, right? I mean there are film schools across the world cranking out thousands of films every year, not to mention film festivals and film incubator programs and independent coalitions of filmmakers- and that’s how you end up with something like, say, Moonlight. Audio needs to go there. Have that level of creation and creativity. We’re small beans in comparison. And we’ve been saying there are too many podcasts since I started in 2013. It’s a scarcity mindset and we have to let it go.
If you were going to create another podcast, don’t worry about the logistics or whether or not anyone would like it, what would it be?
I badly want to make a show about the career of Cher and her relationship with the Aremnian diaspora. Don’t you want to know more about those two things?!
🚨If u only have time for 1 thing🚨
Sounds Like Hate is a new series from the Southern Poverty Law Center that spotlights people who have engaged in extremism and turned themselves around by leaving their hateful communities. Chapter One is a two-parter that features a woman who went from being a staunch liberal to a nationalist deep in the alt-right working behind-the-scenes to support the “Unite the Right” Rally. We all know these groups are dangerous for everyone not involved, but here we get real insight into the dangers inside. Leaving the alt-right could be the most dangerous thing of all. It’s amazing that we have this woman’s perspective and honest recollection of the terrible things she was a part of and what she had to do to escape. It’s powerful intel in trying to grasp what the alt-right is capable of.
💎BTW💎
🎙️I have been enjoying the emotional, unpredictable episodes of California Love, Walter Thompson-Hernández’s memoir of Los Angeles, a version of the city that no one else knows. The last full episode, Ellie, was the most touching. I was so lost in I didn’t realize time had passed. Walter talks to his mother, Eleuteria “Ellie” Hernández, about her story, her Los Angeles. It’s kind of like the root of the entire show. If California Love is the heart of Los Angeles, this episode is the heart of the show.
🎙️Endless Thread is a show where Ben Brock Johnson and Amory Sivertson tell unbelievable stories that originated on Reddit. This episode, Angel’s Glow, talks about something we may have found on Reddit boards in 1862 had Reddit existed (but is being debated on Reddit boards now.) Some injured Civil War soldiers in the Battle of Shiloh reported that their wounds were glowing—and the ones that did were more likely to survive. Is this science fiction or science? Two boys (and very notably, their scientist mom) cracked the case for a science fair project, discovering something about bacteria that nobody in 1862 could have known. Their conditions are also things that we can no longer experience, so it’s kind of a mish-mash of past and future, as the boys (and Dr. Mom) try to recreate the conditions of the glowing wounds.
🎙️Matt Daniels, editor of the publication The Pudding, is defining the 90s music canon with a research study that included hundreds of thousands of participants who provided over 3 million data points to looks at what songs were popular in the 90s, and which of those songs had staying power and are recognizable today by Gen Z. It’s a both comfy and cringe-worthy throwback for anyone who remembers 90s music. (Matt quizzes a Gen Z girl about whether or not she can recognize/sing along to the biggest songs of the 90s.) What’s most interesting is trying to draw comparisons between the songs that have lasted. Why does Ms. Gen Z know the Macarena and Mambo Number Five, but not Mariah Carey or K-Ci & JoJo’s All My Life? This episode made me both love and hate the 1990s.
🎙️An episode of Twenty Thousand Hertz brings us into the world of Paige Towers, who grew up in the midwest and found herself in what is basically the total opposite for so many reasons, New York City. One of the most jarring things for a midwesterner (I can speak to this, I grew up in Ohio) is the noise. Not only are the sounds different and louder, they are absolutely inescapable. When I go home to Ohio I find it hard to sleep because there aren’t people screaming “fuck you!” outside, amidst the constant sound of sirens. This episode captures the sound and stress and negative health implications that comes along with that sound, something I’ve never thought about before. It’s also a celebration of the places that aren’t polluted with sounds—and if they are, they’re chirping birds or crickets or rustling leaves. I seriously had a moment of self-realization, remembering what it was like to live in Ohio, how it made me a different person and made my entire existence different. We are all locked into our surroundings, but I think it’s rare to examine what our surroundings are doing to us.
🎙️There Are No Girls on the Internet has an interview with Blair Imani, who attended a cosplay event dressed as an Islamicized version of Star Trek’s Geordi La Forge, hijab and all. Despite the fact that the cast of Star Trek was made up of an eclectic group of characters, and that diversity was key to Gene Roddenberry’s vision, the internet got very cranky—like death threats cranky. If people are going to get up in arms about the backstories of their beloved, fictional characters being altered from what they choose to believe, it is no wonder that people on the internet go batshit crazy when they hear people say that Jesus was Black or that God doesn’t have a gender. BTW sorry to be a party pooper, internet, but Geordi probably was Islamic—he was born in Mogadishu Somalia, a center of Islam, Jesus was Black, and God is a woman, don’t @ me.
🎙️There are plenty of conspiracy theory shows (I love many of them!) but Langston Kerman’s My Momma Told Me is a twist on the genre, covering Black conspiracy theories with funny guests. (“Conspiracies they learned from that uncle who used to wear jeans when he went swimming in the public pool,” to be oddly specific.) Langston is hilarious and this show has an extremely high laugh-per-minute ratio. But Langston looks at these conspiracy theories with a sharp lens—behind each one there’s usually some racist and sexist shit going on. So each one is more complex and more telling about the world and humanity than you’d think. Start with Yassir Lester’s episode about Usher and Ciara.
🎙️The Cut is back with an episode about optimism and it all come together so perfectly. Avery was asked to host the new show (it used to be The Cut on Tuesdays) right when the pandemic hit New York City, and Avery, who grew up in New York, returned to take the job. So there is optimism in starting this new job, with kicking off the new Cut, and also the fear of COVID. At the time Avery began planning the first episode, The Cut magazine was running an interview with La'Darius Marshall of Cheer. La’Darius has had a life of hardships, but with the airing of Cheer, things were looking up. When COVID hit, his plans of cheerleading were put on hold. The conversation that Avery has with La’Darius is about whether or not optimists are delusional, especially in the age of COVID. It’s a perfect start to the new Cut, and Avery’s life back in New York. It seems the new Cut will be personal, the stories we loved from The Cut on Tuesday, with Avery’s life front and center.
🎙️This episode of Flash Forward talks about the past, present, and the uncertain future of archeology. Many of the tools we use to study ancient bones today destroys them, and the bones obviously aren’t infinite. We are sort of recklessly blowing through them, without documenting them or preserving them. We’re stumbling upon exciting new technology that will help us study bones, but we’re still unsure what this all will look like. I had no idea that in the near future we may run out of bones to study, and that’s now something new to start worrying about. But you leave this episode feeling hopeful—there’s exciting research on the horizon about new ways to learn about our past. The guest, Dr. Keolu Fox, isn’t allowed to publicly say what it is.
🎙️Nichole Hill is producing a playful storytelling show, The Secret Adventures of Black People, that doesn’t follow the rules of most storytelling shows. She’s not telling you her stories, she’s inviting you in to listen to them. You feel like you’re eavesdropping on a phone call with her and her friends—the conversations are open, honest, authentic, and not trying to be anything other than what they are, which are genuinely beautiful conversations that feel like they were conducted in a special, sacred space. It feels a little experimental, and I think you’ll like it if you like The Heart. The episodes are short and thematic, tiny pieces of realness. And you never know what you’re going to get.
🎙️Over the weekend I listened to several episodes of Unprisoned, which explores the criminal justice system and ways mass incarceration affect “families, communities and notions of justice,” focusing on Louisiana, “the incarceration capital of the world.” The episodes are formed around excellent storytelling, zeroing in on real people and their frustrating situations. The show encourages listeners to put themselves in the shoes of people caught up in the system, and it’s impossible not to feel empathy and outrage. It’s a strong example of what great storytelling can do. I recommend You Never Get Nothing Back They Take and Victim. Criminal. The Myth Of Difference as gateway episodes.
🎙️Very Presidential is kind of like Robert Evans’ Behind the Bastards, US President-style. Ashley Flowers details the absolute worst shit about our presidents, and the story about Grover Cleveland makes Trump look like Mister Rogers. (To kick off his adult life, he raped a woman, impregnated her, then took away her baby and tried to make everyone think she was crazy.) It goes kind of down hill from there and is actually a nice reminder that we have had terrible Presidents before. I’m not generally a fan of these shows that often feel like children’s book reports or readings of Wikipedia pages, but I am stuck on Very Presidential. I love Ashley’s storytelling style and I’m learning about things I’ve never thought about before. These aren’t stories that have me thinking, “oh yeah I kind of remember hearing about that.” These are stories that have me thinking, “WHAT! Why did I not know this?!”
🎙️This episode of the The Confessional gets into the mind of elite athlete Abby Wambach, and how someone could go from the top of the world to getting arrested for a DUI. There is a moment where Abby describes what it feels like to achieve Olympic glory after years of pure dedication and sacrifice—something so many athletes experience, but so few of us can understand. What does this do to a person, when the Olympics have passed? Abby also talks about her relationship to religion and coming out to her mom. It’s a wide open conversation that reminds us how complicated we all are. Even if we haven’t won an Olympic gold medal.
🎙️I relistened to an Ologies episode with oceanologist Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, which was a total bummer of an episode. Despite Alie’s best efforts to stay upbeat and find joy in oceanology, Dr. Ayana keeps things bleak by getting into exactly how fucked our oceans are. It’s a constant back and forth—Alie trying to find the bright side of things, and Dr. Ayana explaining how it’s foolish to be too optimistic. Listening to the episode is like someone shaking you and staring you in the eyes and saying, “our oceans are in serious trouble! This is not a drill!” The question is what we can do about it…
🎙️…and that seems to be what Dr. Ayana is addressing with her new podcast, co-hosted by Gimlet’s Alex Blumberg, How to Save a Planet. It’s a funny, frank show that tries to answer the question: how fucked are we, when it comes to the environment? This episode about wind energy is a bleak one. Jeff Grabowski, former CEO of Deepwater Wind, explains how the technology for wind energy is there, and not too complicated. But many people are opposed to it for totally ridiculous reasons. (They don’t want wind farms messing up their beaches and ocean views.) Jeff also says that when he’s talking people into the idea of wind energy, the benefit of slowing climate change is the last thing he’ll mention. People don’t want to hear it. They’ll cautiously embrace wind energy if they are told it will save them money, but care less if they’re told it will save the world.
🎙️The entire premise of Election Profit Makers is somewhat unusual—the whole show is based upon political prediction markets. Using predictit.org, hosts Starlee Kine, David Rees, and Jon Kimball bet money on things from as big as who will win the 2020 Presidential election to what words will be used in the debates. It’s always a somewhat madcap political conversation, with the hosts meandering to funny, barely related topics (like debating the best city skylines in the country) but there’s always interesting debate that has me laughing out loud. In an early episode, the brought on 12-year-old Beckett, the son of one of the host’s friends, who seems wise beyond his years. In following episodes, Starlee, David and Jon argue with Beckett and debate his political stances, holding him up as kind of the complete expert on the 2020 Presidential Election. I always want to know what Beckett thinks. And this week, EPM let Beckett kind of take over the feed, dropping episodes that feature Beckett’s reaction to the DNC.
🎙️I thought I knew a lot about Hannah Gatsby, after watching her special Nanette at least three times. But Ezra Klein’s interview with Hannah went even deeper, with storytelling and a thoughtful discussion about cancel culture, Hannah’s autism, and personal safety. Hearing her in conversation opens up what it feels like to have crippling anxiety and to feel completely othered by everyone in your world. Gatsby’s story seems like it was teetering between success and failure before she hit her stride. We were very close to not having a Hannah Gatsby. In this case it’s inspiring, and in this case, it gives depth to everything Hannah has to say.
🎙️The Orange Tree started as a student project from The Drag Audio Production House at the University of Texas at Austin and is hosted by Haley Butler and Tinu Thomas. It’s a really twisted, brutal murder mystery that took place on Haley and Tinu’s campus, so it’s personal. And Haley and Tinu have done an admirable job attempting to create a true-crime podcast in the way that we expect a true-crime podcast to be. There are a few things that make the show feel amateur—some over explaining, odd commentary, and unusual back-and-forth between the hosts (all detailed in this episode of Crime Writers on…)…all of the show’s holes made me consider how difficult it really is to create a seamless true-crime show. Because it’s pretty good! And it’s interesting to see what these young women were able to do. I know I couldn’t do it so well. And the fact that I’m even criticizing with such scrutiny means that in my head I’m holding it up to the top true-crime shows I’ve listened to. So I think Haley and Tinu can be really proud of the show. And again, it’s a bizarre story. A drunk student on drugs murdered and chopped up his friend-who’s-a-girl but remembers nothing—is he a murderer or was the murder committed by another woman who was there with him? For the record, I think it was the dude. But I’m on the edge of my seat.
🎙️On TransLash, award-winning journalist Imara Jones speaks with trans people and allies about news impacting the trans community and how we can all work to create a better world for it. The first episode looks at the Democratic National Convention through a trans lens, particularly what Imara thinks what a Biden-Harris ticket can do for trans people. I think we’re all clinging for reasons to be excited about Joe Biden, and Imara finds hope (though hope might be a strong word) with him and Harris, reminding us that in 2014 Biden called fighting for trans rights the “civil rights movement of our time.”
🎙️I am watching Lovecraft Country, I HIGHLY recommend it, and I double recommend HBO’s companion podcast Lovecraft Country Radio with Ashley C. Ford and Shannon Houston (one of the show’s writers.) I almost think it’s a crime to watch the show without it! Ashley and Shannon point out tiny moments you may have missed and dive into their meanings. And if you’re white like me, there’s a chance you may have missed some nuance. This show is so rich, there is a lot to unfold.
🎙️I love you!