👩❤️💋👨 Date Night Pod-seggiatas 🚶🏼♀️🚶🏻 Juleyka Lantigua-Williams 🎙
💌Podcast The Newsletter is your weekly love letter to podcasts and the people who make them.💌
Bonjour!
Friday and Saturday nights in quarantine are different but I like them. No restaurants or comedy clubs or hang outs with friends. My husband and I only have each other. And…podcasts. On Friday and Saturday evening we walk around the East Village listening to the same podcast. We don’t talk, we hold hands sometimes. Some shows work for this exercise more than others. (Podcasts that require too much concentration are bad—the East Village is really distracting.) It’s been interesting doing this week after week, watching New York City go through pandemic/protest changes. Sometimes we stop at the grocery store to pick up something for dinner and then we come home and eat and talk about what we listened to. Because we are DORKS we call these walks “pod-seggiatas,” taken from the Italian word passeggiata, which is the a leisurely stroll Italians take in the evening before or after dinner. I love date night pod-seggiatas, and I’m telling you about them so you can do them, too.
xoxo lp
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Juleyka Lantigua-Williams
Juleyka Lantigua-Williams is the founder and CEO of Lantigua Williams & Co., a digital media studio based out of the Washington DC area. Follow her on Twitter here.
Kindly introduce yourself and tell us what you do!
Hi everyone. I’m Juleyka Lantigua-Williams. I’m the founder and CEO of Lantigua Williams & Co. We produce four original shows (70 Million, Latina to Latina, Feeling My Flo, How to Talk to [Mamí & Papí] About Anything) and produce digital audio for clients like Marvel Entertainment, Mcmillan Podcasts, NPR affiliates, and the Phi Beta Kappa Society.
Most of the stories and shows I listen to are from women and/or marginalized people, so I often forget that podcasting is still a straight, white man's world. Have you seen things getting better in your career or are things just still incredibly hopeless?
I have no idea on this one, as I tend to focus on my work and serving the audiences I am building. That’s a lot of work on its own, so I don’t allow myself to obsess about what the industry is doing when I believe the work my teams and I are doing can have a real impact on it. So better to continue supporting and encouraging the amazing collaborators we work with than to look far afield and get distracted.
What's the best way to get people to listen to diverse voices?
Make shows for them.
What do you think of the Equality in Audio pact? Do you think we can remember to hold ourselves to it? I am so afraid that we are all angry and amped up now, but that things will slide back to how they were before?
This is a good pledge, but it’s intended signatories are people who have to make extra effort to be inclusive and fair, because being inclusive and fair does not come naturally to them. As to the issue of anger, white Americans are not angry enough because they still see this necessary activism as allyship with Black and Brown people, instead of a justified personal rage for a country that de facto prioritizes their comfort and racial supremacy at the expense of large segments of the population.
When you're deciding to make a podcast, how much do you worry about the market, and if people will like it?
Not at all. I have one ideal listener for whom we make our original shows. It’s a long hypothesis about audience acquisition and growth that take a while to explain, but suffice it to say that I ask myself two questions: Will she listen? Will she share it?
What battles are women of color fighting in podcasting that white women like me don't even know about?
How much time do you have? I’ll do this in bullet points, just to get the discussion started.
Not being able to pitch ideas to people who have the cultural competence and audience knowledge to understand their potential
Not having money thrown at them
Not being allowed to experiment and sometimes fail without serious repercussions
Not being paid for their labor, time, expertise
Being expected to be the ‘only one’ on aa team and act as a cultural translator
Not being allowed to be fully themselves creatively because doing so breaks the categories of Blackness/Otherness white colleagues are comfortable with
Rarely leading big projects at the bigger shops
Not being supported in their professional development at big shops
Being perceived as ‘lacking objectivity’--whatever that means
Boxed into only telling Black/Brown/Other stories
Having the role of ‘moral conscience’ imposed on them on important projects but not being given the power to do something significant when its called for
Not receiving enough or being encouraged to pursue technical training (i.e., mixing, engineering)
I have to stop or I’m going to reach for some wine….
If you could write one rule for podcasters, something they would all have to adhere to, what would it be?
Provide a transcript for every episode to ensure better accessibility to their work
If you could host a podcast with anyone, who would it be and what would the show be about?
Errin Haines, editor-at-large at The 19th, one of the most brilliant political minds in journalism right now. She basically predicted so much of what’s happening right now in terms of the political machine that runs the country. Our show would be me asking her the same question after something major happens: “What do we do now, Errin” and letting her talk uninterrupted.
Can you give us some secret information about something you're working on that is super exciting?
I’m launching something completely different--and not a podcast--this month. Podcasting Seriously, a three-part online course for mid-level podcasters and professionals who want to make a lateral move into podcasting. I’m so excited!!
🚨If you only have time for ONE thing🚨
To get a good sense of how terrifying it must have been to one of the peaceful protesters attacked during Trump’s Bible publicity stunt, listen to this episode of this episode of Endless Thread. Two people who were there give a terrifying account, one of them Rahul Dubey, who allowed protesters to flood into his home for safety. We have all heard this story, but not necessarily a first-hand account of the violence. This is that side of the story. It also speaks to the power of the internet, how Rahul and Allison (who joins the episode to tell the story) were empowered by their cell phones to expose the violence of the police. I am begging you to listen to this.
💎BTW💎
🎙️KEARNING CULTURES, YOU’RE KILLING ME. The beautiful show, which tells stories From The Middle East And North Africa, is back with the first part of a fascinating series, Unity High. Producer Darah Ghanem recently stumbled upon an old, pretty unimpressive blog that got her attention. On it was hundreds of historic photographs of a Christian missionary school in Sudan, Unity High School. You or I might have thought, “huh that’s weird” and moved on, but Darah SMELLED SOMETHING FISHY and begins uncovering a corruption scandal at the school that occurred nearly a decade ago. Episode one is really setting things up, and I’m so excited about episode two I won’t be able to sleep all week long.
🎙️Rose Eveleth (Flash Forward) launched the first episode of Advice For And From The Future, which allows Rose, with help from a guest, to “tackle the real, the almost-real, and the totally out there questions from today and tomorrow.” Episode one is with Why Oh Why’s Andrea Silenzi, answering a question about whether or not you should break up with your partner who wants to go to Mars. It’s funny and imaginative, a cool twist on the advice show format, with conversation, scripted content, and a play on Ludacris’ Area Codes.
🎙️One of the most entertaining things I did this week was listen to the entirety of CrossBread, a hilarious mockumentary series from ABC Audio Studios about a Christian rap duo fronted by a brother and sister who are not Christian. The story is geniously told through the lens of their former social media manager, Ken Lim. It’s a fast-paced series with endless religious humor and puns, surprisingly complicated characters, and of course…the raps. I loved it all. And got emotional at the end, left with Ken Lim’s message that we are all just trying to do our best.
🎙️Robert Evans is one of the best researchers in podcasting. His shows—Behind the Bastards, Worst Year Ever, It Could Happen Here, and The Women's War—are incredible deep dives into their subjects and offer listeners content they can’t easily get anywhere else. Robert is very funny and unpredictable so it’s actually enjoyable to listen to him talk about these horrible things. (“Horrible things” appears to be his beat.) His new show, Behind the Police, is exiting and much-needed. Along with rap artist Propaganda (Jason Petty,) Robert tells us the real history of the police and helps us try to understand how we got to where we are now. The environment that was needed in able to produce soooo many bad apples. (It’s time to burn down the orchard, he says.) Episode one starts with the history of Sparta and makes its way to the first police forces in the South, which were basically commissioned to find, torture, and kill slaves who were trying to escape or even just out past their curfews. Robert draws parallels to the police force we have now and it isn’t a stretch in any way. In fact, I often didn’t know if he was describing police violence against Black people 150 years ago or today. Extremely little has changed. White people are finally acknowledging police corruption, asking for perhaps the first time, “how could this happen?” Robert gives the best answers I’ve heard.
🎙️Robert was on a great episode of Night Call, Tearing Down Disney, taking about protests, confronting fascism, and answering questions about what we can do to be good citizens in these troubling times. (I was kind of hoping to hear Robert talk about Disney, but that segment is just an intro before Robert joins the conversation, yet it’s very interesting—a discussion of Disney adapting the Splash Mountain ride to a Princess and the Frog ride.) I started to think that I wish Robert Evans was my life coach.
🎙️On a new show from Crooked, Unholier Than Thou, journalist Phillip Picardi calls friends to discuss their relationship with faith, spirituality and God. I loved The President’s Scarilege. If you don’t yet feel an intense rage about Trump’s ugly Bible stunt in front of St. John’s, listen and join me in my anger. This episode talks about one of my favorite topics, Christian hypocrisy. Reverend Gini Gerbasi, the Rector of St. John’s, said something beautiful I will never forget: “Jesus told us to follow him. ‘Live like me.’ Living like Jesus means loving people, it doesn’t mean going to church. Jesus was Jewish. Jesus was Jewish. Following Jesus does not mean going to church. Going to church is about learning how to follow Jesus.” Phillip was on the latest Lovett or Leave It talking about how that’s kind of what the whole show is about. Another episode talks to Chani Nicholas, a feminist astrologist, about what the stars could have predicted about the terrible year that is 2020. Why didn’t astrology charts warn us? The answer from Chani is…they did. Are you intrigued? Go listen. (On a recent episode of How Neal Feel, Neal Brennan points out that one day “don’t go 2020 on me” will be a common phrase.)
🎙️This is Not a Drake Podcast is about the history of Canadan rap, using Drake as an example to show us the country’s fraught relationship with the hip-hop. On episode one, Toronto was always a hip-hop city, host Ty Harper tells us about the Canadian hip-hop scene that existed pre-Drake and the fight in the year 2000 for the first Black-owned radio station. It is political, and it is racist. Hip-hop was seen as dangerous music, and we hear the story of rapper Kardinal smashing a guitar onstage at a music festival to try to get the attention of closed-minded radio programmers.
🎙️The Constant is usually about the history of things going wrong, but the final episode of the season is about things going weirdly right. What are the chances that an incriminating bundle of papers would be found in the belly of a shark? Per usual, host Mark Chrisler tells Fish Story with unbridled joy, his enthusiasm for the story is contagious. The Constant is the most fun way to get your history lesson.
🎙️The Spirit Animals episode of Stories with Sapphire was great and more than I bargained for. The guest was animal expert Emzotic, who told a story of her own paranormal experience, but because she’s an animal expert, brought a lot of creepy creature facts. (We learn about the Lancet Liver Fluke, which is literally capable of mind control!!!) I loved this weird mix of spooky stories and weird animal facts. And as always, Sapphire tells her stories with beautiful language and sound, bringing to your ears the storybook embedded in her brain. She’s also releasing episodes in a Stories for Change series, an offshoot of the show where Sapphire shares stories and history that can help us become better allies. The first episode of that series is a GREAT conversation with Femlore’s Mindy Scott. They talk about making allyship more inclusive, a racist war we are waging with our bodies, Frederick Douglass and suffragettes, and more.
🎙️An episode of Cautionary Tales opens with two people, Mikio and Hamako Watanabe, whose lives were destroyed by the 2011 Japanese tsunami. But their misfortune wasn’t an immediate result of the natural disaster, it happened long after, in the aftermath. Tim Harford talks about why urgent dangers prompt us to take action, when more disastrous dangers further down the road are completely ignored. He ties this into our current pandemic. What COVD-related losses will happen years down the road? Is there anything we can do about that now?
🎙️If you like Constellations, I think you will like Radio Atlas, a show that lets us hear stories in other languages thanks to subtitles that appear on the app while we listen. Hearing stories in the language they were intended to be told is powerful, and these episodes often feel like immersive art exhibitions. I always end up having been changed. Listening, I feel like I’m kind of being washed by the language while my brain works to storytell on its own. If that makes sense. Pointing at Canopus is an imaginative peek into the sounds and voices of Tehran. It’s a story about language and home.
🎙️Dating White is the brain child of Myisha Battle and Nkechi Njaka, two women of color who are opening up conversation about about dating white men. Myisha and Nkechi are fun friends, totally relatable, but the podcast is intellectual—Myisha holds a Masters in Psychology from The New School for Social Research and is the founder of Sex for Life, LLC, and Nkechi has a background in neuroscience, dance, nutrition and fashion. I’d start with episode two, where you get to hear about Myisha and Nkechi and why they are the perfect hosts for this interesting show, and why exactly being biracial can be complicated upon complicated.
🎙️I know I already told you about Those Happy Places, but Buddy and Alice wrapped up their Birds of Paradise series (talking about Disney World’s Enchanted Tiki Room) and I urge you to listen to the whole thing. It’s smart and great fun. The latest episode talks about our modern fascination with Tiki culture. (And if you love it, don’t miss one of my favorite episodes of all time, Long Distance’s Filipino Tiki Bar.) I also listened to Those Happy Places’ Mickey Mouse as Empty Signifier, which explores who Mickey really is, how he stacks up against other cartoon mascots, and his power in the Walt Disney Company. Mickey is more complicated than he appears. But the reason he is such an effective leader is that he is such a neutral character, able to adapt to whatever kind of Mouse Disney needs him to be. Smart Mickey commentary, with the loveable Buddy and Alice! Those Happy Places is MY happy place.
🎙️I have been having a lot of conversations with my friends about what racism IS and what it truly means. On Waiting on Reparations, Dope Knife and Linqua Franqa interview 22-year-old Kennedy Mitchum, who successfully petitioned Merriam Webster to change their definition of the term to be way more accurate. It’s a lesson in what racism really means, what most definition leave out, and it’s also a remember that WE CAN CHANGE STUFF. This 22 year-old changed an entire definition in the dictionary. What did YOU do this week?
🎙️I was so sad to finish up the fourth season of Insecure, but got PSYCHED when I saw that Issa Rae had dropped Looking for LaToya, the show’s in-universe satirical true-crime series that offers commentary on the lack of attention given to missing black women. The series is star-studded (SZA, Terri J. Vaughn, Ray J, Porsha Williams, Kandi Burruss-Tucker, and Carl Anthony Payne II.) But then I got bummed again when I realized the series is only 1-episode long. (Thanks for the emotional rollercoaster, Issa!) However, if you want more Looking for LaToya, the website offers additional videos, infographics, and other evidence.
🎙️Reply All’s The Least You Can Do gives producer Emmanuel Dzotsisets the mic to set out to solve the mystery of what the fuck white people are doing by randomly Venmoing Black people (as means of micro-reparations?) This whole Venmo thing perfectly illustrates the awkwardness of white people right now. They have probably seen somewhere on Twitter that they should Venmo Black people money, and they want to help, but don’t have the capacity to really understand why, or how to really be useful. A $5 Venmo to a Black person might make them think they are warriors against racism, true heroes. Emmanuel actually gets a white person on the phone who has done this, and it’s a sort of exhausting, but enlightening conversation. It’s nice that the Venmo-er is able to open himself up to awkwardness, and you could consider him a man open to sharing his vulnerabilities, and someone who wants to learn from his mistakes. The cynical part of me doesn’t think he learned anything, and is instead thinking, “yeah I Venmoed my Black friend five dollars. You’re welcome.”
🎙️Please tell me you are listening to Forgotten: Women of Juárez. Okay great. Now listen to the host of that show, Oz Woloshyn, on Stuff They Don’t Want You to Know. It’s a really cool behind-the-scenes look of Forgotten, and Oz talks about the difficult journalism that went in to making it.
🎙️Tara Jean Stevens was just a kid when worshipers in her small Toronto town started laughing, shaking, falling, rolling around on the ground, turning the town into one of Toronto’s Top Tourist Attractions. (My probably politically incorrect upbringing would have me calling these people Holy Rollers.) On Heaven Bent, Tara probes into what really happened in her town. On The Gifts of the Spirit, Tara interviews a scientist who studied the brain frequencies of people speaking in tongues. Before the scientist got into his findings, I was kind of rolling my eyes, like “oh good, we completely wasted an actual scientist’s time to study something completely made up.” But what he found was surprising–the frontal lobes of these people were actually checked out, as if something was overtaking their brains. On The Carpet Time, a skeptical British journalist talks about actually hitting the floor during one of the church’s services, and he has no idea why. I’m learning I have to be less judgmental and more open. This is why I love religion, after all. Because it doesn’t matter so much whether or not these Holy Rollers were taken over by God, it’s more important that it’s happening in the first place.
🎙️Race Traitor, the 4-part series from The Heart, wrapped up it’s final episode, and it is a good listen for anyone, a must-listen for white people. Phoebe dives deep into her mind, personal history, soul, and relationships with others to unpack how she has participated in white supremacy. On the final episode, she talks about how white people can do more than just talk and think about being anti-racist, and truly act.
🎙️I think I have mentioned that when I’m listening to podcasts I take screenshots during moments I want to underline, and the most recent episode of Brene Brown’s Unlocking Us was a heavy-screenshot episode. Brene talked to Austin Channing Brown about I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness. Brene is open about her white woman questions (the same ones that run through my mind all the time) and Austin has a way of simplifying what white women can do to be anti-racists, how to listen but also speak-up, how to be good friends to people of color, and how to fix a lot of our accidentally racist thinking. I sent this episode to no less than five of my smartest white women friends and now I’m sending it to you.
🎙️Thank you to Everything Is Alive for releasing this episode of deleted scenes. It was a perfect peek into the most recent season and made me want to listen everything all over again. Every time I listen to this show I am overwhelmed with respect for what it is. I always want to shout out from my window, “LISTEN TO EVERYTHING IS ALIVE!” But instead I go to my computer and write those words here. Listen to Everything Is Alive! Listening to this recent episode was the highlight of my entire day.
🎙️I gobbled up Growing Up Moonie over the weekend, which is hosted by Hideo Higashibaba, a trans man who left The Unification Church (cult) when he was 22. The show gets deep into the cult’s history, its Korean leader Sun Myung Moon, who proclaimed he was the Second Coming of Christ. Growing Up Moonie is Hideo’s conversations with people who grew up Moonie, like him. But the most interesting parts of these stories are hearing how these adults are grappling with the world they live in now, after being so sheltered. Some are coping better than others. So these interviews are super unique and offer perspectives we don’t always get to hear.
🎙️I sadly finished up The Lost Kids, which had a kind of disappointing ending, in the sense that not much was resolved. But at the same time it was satisfying because I clung to each episode with a vice like grip, my ears glued to the unraveling story. It all starts with the heart-breaking account of a missing 16-year old, who was sent to, and escaped from, a tough-love program for troubled teens called CEDU in 2004. (CEDU has since closed.) Then, with ex-CEDU “patients” and faculty, the show develops into an expose of the “troubled teen” industry. The interviews with the former CEDU teens unveil a place where teens were psychologically abused, subjected to cruel and unusual self-help-y therapy sessions, and prohibited from communicating with their friends or family. So…a cult? Daniel has been missing for more than 16 years, but his story is only the tip of the iceberg.
🎙️Two weeks after his marriage in Venezuela, a Utah man named Josh Holt was captured by armed men, likely members of the OLP, and spent nearly two years in prison there for a crime he did not commit. With his wife, Thamy, he tells the story on Hope in Darkness. It begins with Josh and Thamy’s love story and quickly moves the the horrifying moments of Josh’s capture. Mid-kidnapping, Thamy tracked him down and blocked the road, which led to her own arrest. The two endured harsh interrogation techniques, torture, isolation and dirty and cramped living conditions, and the podcasts details all of it. The news story is everywhere, but the podcast promises to reveal new information concerning how Josh and Thamy were freed. The whole time I was listening to the first three episodes, I was thinking why am I doing this to myself? But I couldn’t stop listening.
🎙️I love you!