📚 Books on Tape ⭐️ You Must Remember This' Karina Longworth 🎬
💌Podcast The Newsletter is your weekly love letter to podcasts and the people who make them.💌
Bonjour!
I often tell people the first podcasts I listened to are The Champs, Baby Geniuses, Slumber Party with Alie and Georgia, and Lady To Lady. But you could also say my love for audio storytelling goes back further, to 1987, when I was a toddler who could not be separated from her Fisher Price tape player. At the time I was bingeing two things: Disney books on tape, and My Book of Bible Stories, which was a set of audio tapes that came with the My Book of Bible Stories Bible, a children’s Bible from The Watchtower that taught kids how to be Jehovah’s Witnesses. We had a dear friend who was Jehovah’s Witness, and he gave it to me, and I wore those tapes down to nothing. I loved The Bible and even started telling my mom about “Je-hooohvahhhh” in the same accent of the narrator. “We call that person God!” My mom, who raised me to be Catholic, would tell me. Religious discrimination at an early age!
I loved listening to those stories with the books that accompanied them, which makes me think…why are those just for kids? I would love to listen to podcasts and read along with a book that enriched the experience with cartoons and horribly drawn sketches of Cain and Able. Am I alone, here? Somebody get on this!
xoxo lp
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You Must Remember This’ Karina Longworth
Karina Longworth is a writer, film historian and the creator, producer and host of You Must Remember This. Follow her on Twitter here. Follow You Must Remember This on Twitter here.
I once read that you don't consider yourself a podcaster. Is that still true?
Yes. I'm a film historian. I wouldn't be podcasting about anything but the history of Hollywood, but I have and will in the future do work on the history of Hollywood in other media.
Episode number one, "The Hard Hollywood Life of Kim Novak," is a "lost episode." What do you remember about it?
It's...not very well lost. You can find it if you try. But, I can't include it as part of the feed because it has a lot of copyright music on it, and I don't have the original project file so I can't re-edit it to take that music out. I have pledged to recreate the episode once we hit 1000 Patreon subscribers. We're less than 300 subscribers away!
Is there anyone in film you wouldn't cover? Are there people who don't deserve the You Must Remember This treatment?
My husband is a writer/director, and I won't cover him, or anyone I've met through him, or whom he has worked with, or anyone related to anyone he knows or has worked with. So for instance, because Jamie Lee Curtis was in a movie he made, there will be no Janet Leigh/Tony Curtis season, I'm afraid. I made an episode involving Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds before I met Carrie Fisher, but wouldn't do anything about that family now.
What’s something listeners don’t understand about podcasts and what goes into making them?
I don't think my podcast is anything like most podcasts in terms of the labor that goes into making it. On average, once I have an idea for a new episode, it takes me 6 months to make it.
Women in podcasting are constantly being criticized for their voices. What is your relationship with yours? How would you describe your voice?
I've always been made fun of for my voice, because I grew up in the Valley and I sound like it. I never liked hearing my own voice, and I had to start "doing a voice" in order to feel comfortable doing the podcast. I still get made fun of, for how my podcast voice sounds, and for supposedly mispronouncing words -- but I think at least half of the complaints that I'm mispronouncing things comes from the vestiges of my suppressed accent.
What podcasts do you love to listen to?
Right now my favorite podcasts are How Long Gone, Effectively Wild, Glowing Up, Night Call, Everything is Fine and Who? Weekly.
🚨If u only have time for 1 thing🚨
For some reason I had been ignoring all the ravings of The Missing Crypto Queen when it first dropped, and it was Paul Kondo who recently mentioned it, which made me reconsider it and give it another chance. I’m so glad I did. It tells the story of a Dr Ruja Ignatova, who persuaded millions to join her OneCoin financial revolution before disappearing, leaving skeptics to wonder if there was even a set block chain, and believers to stand even more firmly behind OneCoin’s mission. As Jamie Bartlett gets into the story, we start to wonder if Dr Ruja isn’t hiding right under our noses, in hiding because she’d wanted a baby scam, but it turned into a monster scam she couldn’t stop once it was set in motion, as it took on an evil and wild life of its own. Episode one was fabulous for the fact that Jamie called his elderly mother to give her his best, most simplistic explanation of crypto currency to see if it was basic enough for even her to understand it. It was not—but in his teaching, I ended up learning a fuck load about crypto and bit coin. Really listen to the whole thing, and look forward to episode four, Miss OneLife, where Jamie and his producer Georgia jet off to Bucharest to attend their first OneCoin event: The Miss OneLife 2019 Beauty Pageant. It’s a glorious piece of audio, one that lets us feel like we’re witnessing the pageant with Jamie, whose reactions to the circus around him made me laugh aloud. The last episode contains an incredible moment that puts Jamie in an awkward position as a reporter. Now’s a good time to listen to the whole thing, because almost a year after the last episode was dropped, we’ve been given a new one. The hunt for Dr. Ruja is back on. But here: start with episode one.
💎BTW💎
🎙️Comedian Sofie Hagen (Comedians Telling Stuff, The Guilty Feminist, Made of Human, The Secret Dinosaur Cult) and Dr Julia Shaw, a criminal psychologist, have joined to create Bad People, a show that takes a smart look at criminal cases. It’s more than just a retelling of stories, but a deep dive into the psychology of trends in crime. So if you listen to true crime, it would be a great show to add to your queue so you can better understand what you’re hearing. If you don’t love true crime, it’s still interesting to hear, because this show is about people and what makes us tick. What makes us kill. What makes us marry murderers. It’s also, no surprise here, hilarious, because of Sofie. (Julia is funny, too!)
🎙️On Other Men Need Help, Mark Pagan examines what it takes to BE A MAN!!! in modern society, and sort of asks “why is it like this?” Why can’t men care about self-grooming? Why can’t men be sensitive? On the most recent episode, he asks Why can’t men tell each other “I miss you.” PERIOD. No washing out the meaning by following up with “dude” or “man,” something lots of men do. He read a friend’s social media post that said, “I miss you,” which took him on a journey to find out why that makes some men uncomfortable. Mark’s stories are always beautiful and so funny—if you haven’t listened yet, I promise you will fall in love with him right away. And all of these tiny issues he’s diving into with this show, well they actually feel quite huge, after listening to him talk about them. There aren’t any shows tackling this stuff like Mark is, and few are as well-produced.
🎙️Even if you’re not into low-brow culture, even if you’ve never seen a single episode of Saved by the Bell, I beg you to listen to Zack to the Future. It’s exploring fluff with intelligence and self-reflection from Mark-Paul Gosselaar and the cast and crew of the original show and the remake, and it’s punching above its weight. I swear, I cannot believe the depth I am feeling in a show about Saved by the Bell! Episode two, The Lisa Card, covers the uncomfortable episode in which Zack helps Lisa auction away her clothes and her own kisses to repay her dad for spending money on his credit card. There’s a lot of strange stuff about this Saved by the Bell episode, and the character of Lisa in general. But we get to hear from Amy-Jo Perry, a Black writer on the new Saved by the Bell show, who says that for many of the reasons Lisa is often criticized (for being shallow, for getting called a “princess” by her dad) Lisa could have been seen as a positive role model for bucking the trend of the way many POC were portrayed on TV at the time. This is smart, emotional, nostalgic, funny TV talk.
🎙️Bite Your Thumb! is a Romeo and Juliet podcast hosted by Romeo and Juliet-hater Jessica. She’s decided to reread the text with funny friends. I mean she says she hates it, but the way she talks about it is so funny I find it hard to believe she doesn’t sort of like it. She’s having a lot of fun. One episode one, Jessica quickly skims over the story in a way that reminds me of Drunk History. I realized that I had never read Romeo and Juliet and I was glad I got to experience it for the first time through Jessica’s eyes. The episodes that follow are smart, funny, and all add depth to Shakespeare, and give me a new appreciation for it.
🎙️In my humble opinion, the first episode of Relative Unknown is one of the best first episodes of a show I’ve heard in a long time. I knew very little going in (only that it touched on the Witness Protection Program,) and I want you to have the same joy and shock I experienced when I hit play, so I won’t say too much. But I will say that the description didn’t give too much away (if you want to be a real thrill-seeker, don’t read it,) the episode opens with a scene of a curious incident I had to listen to several times to try to wrap my brain around, and it ends in a way that makes the entire show make sense. If that makes sense. It probably doesn’t, but hopefully it will entice you to listen. Let me know what you think.
🎙️Stand-up comedian and science enthusiast Shane Mauss interviews scientists each week on his show Here We Are, and this 2-hour episode with evolutionary biologist and epidemiologist Nina Fefferman flew by. Nina gives us insight into what scientists are thinking now, as we scramble to come up with a COVID vaccine—the frustrations over people not listening to science, and the frustrations with our government for not supporting the people in the science community. This episode gave me appreciation and gratitude for the people who are dedicating their lives to studying science and improving upon things that we thought were true in the past. And the scientific method in general, where the whole goal is to be flexible and change our minds about what we believe, because we are always learning more. There’s also a conversation about the frustrations regular dumb people like me have about people we know and love who won’t listen to the facts about social distancing and wearing masks. What are we supposed to do with this frustration? How do we respond?
🎙️From Neon Hum comes Smoke Screen: Fake Priest, a show hosted by Investigative reporter Alex Schuman that untangles a scam involving “Father Ryan,” who spent thirty years posing as a priest and swindling millions of dollars from church members. (And also seemed to have a religious artifacts hoarding problem! Religious artifacts are so cool! Who could blame him?) I love Neon Hum so much (Telescope has been a constant friend to me during quarantine) and you know me…I love anything that touches faith and religion. The first episode sets in place several puzzle pieces that are bizarre enough to make me curious and angry, and I honestly can’t wait to hear Alex put things together. But the case hasn’t exactly been solved. Multiple prosecutors have charged Father Ryan, but he’s never been imprisoned for his crimes.
🎙️I relistened to an amazing episode of Invisibilia over the weekend—The Problem with the Solution. (When I interviewed Hanna Rosin, she mentioned it was her favorite episode.) It begins with producer Lulu Miller, who talks about her sister’s health problems, and her family’s ardent desire to fix them. But what if the solution of the problem comes when you don’t try to fix it at all? In parallel, Lulu visits a town in Belgium with a unique approach to this problem—people suffering from mental illness are placed in the homes of strangers. The idea is that strangers are better at taking care of us than our own families because they are less invested in making us “better” or “normal” and are instead truly focused on our well being. Lulu has an incredible revelation about how her family handled her sister’s mental illness, and a heart wrenching conversation with her father, who breaks down into tears. The Belgium town’s non-solution solution makes sense to them, in hindsight. And it makes the whole family reevaluate what Lulu’s sister needed from them.
🎙️Jameela Jamil interviewed Phoebe Robinson (author, comedian, podcast host…oh! check out her new podcast Black Frasier) on I Weigh, and it was one of those conversations that I was underlining in my brain. Phoebe talks about how her frustrations publishing her first book (she was told nobody would read an essay collection from a black woman) led her to start her own imprint, performative activism, consumerism, and the heavy weight on the shoulders of Black women in America. Phoebe and Jameela have one of the most wide-open conversations about money I’ve ever heard on a podcast. In the intro, Jameela mentioned they’d be talking about money and I actually got nervous—I’m terrified of finances and wish I could just make money and not think about it. But hearing Jameela and Phoebe express the exact same fears that I have made me feel like less of a unique sort of dipshit. (Maybe there’s a bigger problem, here, and it’s not just me.)
🎙️Ashley Flowers is known for producing some of the most popular true-crime shows, but she’s taking a slight change in direction with Very Presidential, which uncovers the unknown, terrible things about American leaders. I loved the deep dives into the stories of JKF and Lyndon B Johnson. I had heard many of these facts and anecdotes before, but hearing them all pulled together in well-produced pieces is really something.
🎙️If you are a loyal Podcast The Newsletter reader, you will know that I will listen to nearly anything that touches upon Jesus or dinosaurs, or interviews an old person. (Please let me know if you have stumbled upon an episode that does all three.) This On Being episode has an interview with an exceptional old person, Jane Goodall, the world's foremost expert on chimpanzee who has been studying chimp social and family interactions for sixty years. She talks to Krista Tippett about what she’s learned about people through her research, religion and empathy, and tells an amazing story about being the first scientist to observe chimpanzees using tools, which shocked the world at the time. This was a turning point for Jane and science, and I’m so grateful for this conversation in which we get to hear her talk about it.
🎙️This episode of Throughline, The Litter Myth, turns to the argument that it might not be the responsibility of individuals to keep the environment clean, and that the onus is on manufacturers, instead. It’s something we’ve all heard before, but Throughline uses the Keep America Beautiful Campaign story as a way to frame our relationship with waste, and how the campaign shaped the way we currently think about garbage and recycling. The piece includes a story about this racist Crying Indian TV ad, from the Keep America Beautiful Campaign, that is truly wild and gives us a window into the roots of the responsibility of keeping America clean being placed on the public AND the way in which we were allowed to exploit Native Americans in pop culture. Listen to the episode for that story alone.
🎙️Science Rules! does a deep dive into a subject so interesting it’s one that I think has fascinated everyone since we were DUMB CHILDREN. The Day The Dinosaurs Died talks to Geophysicist Joanna Morgan about the biggest mass extinction of all time and its impact on the world. Joanna is able to tell us what it was like the moment the asteroid hit from multiple places on the globe. Hearing about it is truly mind-blowing, terrifying, and stirs the same emotions I feel when I am listening to well-done true-crime.
🎙️Blood on the Tracks is a new show from Jake Brennan and Double Elvis about the story of Phil Spector, the musician who is currently serving time for the murder of actress Lana Clarkson in 2003. It’s a twist on true-crime—the episodes are written from the perspective of the people in Spector’s life (Lenny Bruce, Ronnie Spector, Ike Turner, Debbie Harry and more,) so it’s a little bit historical fiction, too. In true Jake Brennan form, the readings are dramatic and the sound is immersive. Dark storytelling at its best.
🎙️The Constant has a collection of stories about the best apocalypses to never happen, Apocalypse Now and Then. Mark Chrisler has plucked several strange stories you’ve probably never heard, and breathed life into them in a way that nobody else can. His joyous storytelling makes these stories seem incredible, and made me wonder why my history teachers couldn’t be a little more like Mark in school.
🎙️Of course the history of the mullet is super weird, and Decoder Ring breaks it down, with a story that is a research-heavy investigation into where the word was first documented. Tracking down the word’s origins was harder than you think, and the journey getting there includes the roots of this gender-bending hairstyle, and also a scandal involving someone who tried to set the Mullet-truth seekers off track.
🎙️California City (a show you know I am loving) takes an interesting twist in this episode The Hunted Becomes the Hunter, where host Emily Guerin starts to doubt herself and wonder how victimized the victims in her story are. I love it when part of an audio story is that of the journalist and how they are grappling with what they are finding—they’re really taking us along for the ride. In episode one, Emily interviewed Ben Perez, who fell prey to the California City scandal, and lost more than 30K. In this episode, we hear Ben’s words again, this time wondering if he is completely blameless or part of the problem. A great episode if you’re interested in this wacky story, or if you’re interested in the complexities of journalism and storytelling in general.
🎙️Hall of Shame is dedicating a month to episodes to the Olympics, and this episode talks about the 2000 Spanish Paralympic Basketball Scandal, in which the Spanish basketball team cheated about the capabilities of their para-athletes. Can you think of anything more morally despicable?
🎙️If you’re looking for a horror fiction show, try In Another Room, a collection of interlocking ghost stories, each taking place in a different room of a haunted house, that scan the entire life of the home from the 1870s to today. The experience is pretty transformative—the team put a lot of effort into the sound production—and listening, it feels like you are wandering through a haunted house. Which ghost of the house’s history is around the next corner? It’s a cool idea for a story, especially one to be explored via sound. And I can tell you that there were a few points in which I truly felt scared.
🎙️On The Syndicate, a group of college friends got really good at dealing weed in Colorado, a place it was legal to do so, and successfully expanded their business beyond, diving into illegal, lucrative drug smuggling. The show is centered around the kids, but scales back to demonstrate how the cannabis black market is able to thrive even as weed is legal in many states. It tells an interesting story that asks you to think twice about the protagonists of this story. Are they criminals or incredibly savvy business people whose success carried them away?
🎙️I love you!