👽 Extraterrestrial life, unsent letters, senior citizens on Mars, the snitch economy 📫 FANTI's Jarrett Hill ✨
💌Podcast The Newsletter is your weekly love letter to podcasts and the people who make them.💌
Bonjour!
This week we’re getting to peek into the podcast app and listening life of Alyssa Martino, podcast director at FilmNation Entertainment. (Their most recent podcast is Murder on the Towpath with Soledad O’Brien.)
Pictured: Inherited, 70 Million, Back Issue, California Love
What app I use: I dabble with a lot of apps, but primarily use Apple Podcasts. The others (Spotify, Luminary, Stitcher Premium, RadioPublic) I use for maybe one-third of my listening. Usually that’s when I want to get original or bonus content, but sometimes I’m also just listening to music on Spotify and am in the mood to stick around.
Speed: I listen at classic 1x speed. I want to hear narrative audio (whether nonfiction or fiction) the way it was perfected by the producers and editor and sound designer. They spend so much time perfecting a cut or beat for someone to then speed through feels wrong. However, I also must do a lot of listening each week, and understand the pressure to get through many, many episodes at a rapid pace. I could see listening at 1.5x to more conversational/chat shows, but usually those are for pleasure, so I’m not looking to rush through.
When I listen: If you asked me six months ago, I would have said the obvious answer: commuting (I live in Brooklyn, and commute into Manhattan – appx. an hour each way). Typically, I’d also try to get one more episode in while grabbing lunch or heading to an out of office meeting (Imagine those again?). Now, I’ve shifted to listen at home and around my neighborhood, and I’m not sure I’ll ever go back to just commute listening. I multitask constantly during any free time now. I listen while I’m cooking, eating, drinking coffee, catching up on the news, cleaning, doing errands, walking to Prospect Park, walking to meet friends to walk some more with them. Also – and this was a revelation -- I recently came around on listening while running, which was another quarantine revelation of its own. I used to self-motivate with upbeat music, but I’ve been so enjoying podcast-fueled runs the past few months. Also, I can pick an episode or two based on how far I want to go, and then it makes it way harder to quit early. So it’s ideal for me! I’m very hopeful the pandemic has had positive impacts on people’s listening habits, as it so genuinely has on mine.
How I discover: I really wish I could just go to a bookstore or library and browse for a new show. Alas, I read a lot of the industry trades, newsletters, reviews, press. I do pay attention to the charts (I particularly like to scroll all the way down in random categories), but mostly want to find more under the radar shows – and that takes some going out of your way yet is so essential. I rely on word of mouth and colleagues/producers I trust for recs. I follow along what they’re making and see what they’re enjoying or posting about on social media. I try to ask everyone I meet – in the industry but also especially outside of it – what are your favorite shows right now? What might I be missing? That always leads to the best finds.
xoxo lp
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👋q & a & q & a & q & a👋
FANTI’s Jarrett Hill
Jarrett Hill is a pop culture journalist and writer, and co-host of FANTI (“bringing pop culture and political expertise to things we must stan and stand up against.”) Follow him on Twitter here. Follow FANTI on Twitter here.
Can you tell us about your relationship with your co-host Tre'vell? How did you start working with him?
tre'vell and i met as members of the national association of black journalists. we began working together when he'd reached out to me to aid him as vice president of the organization, which put us together in front of audiences pretty regularly. eventually people started coming up to us insisting we host some sort of a show together.
What's a hurdle POC have to clear in podcasting that white people don't know about?
audiences have a tendency to think a show is for the people that look like the hosts, that can be true in plenty of cases, but not always, maybe not even in most cases. we did an episode called "why white people love wakanda" and our white listeners have told us repeatedly that they started on that episode and then followed up with various other episodes, growing to love the show. but we did the episode because white people kept writing us saying they knew they weren't our intended audience because they (insert their intersections here). but really what that was saying to us was "you like this show, but you think because black queer people are hosting it that it's not supposed to be for you. white people have never had to see themselves in people that didn't look like them, however black and brown people have always had to find themselves in jennifer aniston, or tom cruise, or amy poehler, or whomever else because that's what the media makes most available/ white people aren't used to not being centered in everything around them. i quote a friend of mine in the episode, a brilliant writer and performer named fanshen cox. she says "white is the default for human" in this country. this was a perfect example of that. so we did a show on it, it's still one of the most popular shows we've done in our entire catalog.
What’s something listeners don’t understand about podcasts and what goes into making them?
i think people don't appreciate how much work goes into putting together a podcast. it's a good bit of work to make the conversation sound natural, even between to people who have natural conversations every day like tre'vell and i. it's hours of discussion, research, writing, booking of guests, recording, editing, more writing of episode notes, posting. That doesn't consider the social media clips that have to be cut, posted, maintaining the inboxes on each platform, etc. you get it, lol. To be fair, we're on the higher end when it comes to production value so it's more work, but it's a lot.
What do you hope the show does for people?
i genuinely try to not attach myself too much to the outcome, as it's so different for every individual listener. but my overall hope for the show is that we're able to open up discussions that people are either having themselves and want another perspective to add to their viewpoint, or that we're having discussions people wouldn't have normally thought to have, inspiring a new way of thinking, or at least informing their perspective with another point of view.
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 actually have a lot of shows/content in development, some in my head, some with partners. i always enjoy a conversation podcast, where i can interview people and learn their stories. I think there's real value in learning about other people, why they do what they do, how they became who they are. so, mostly all the content I'm developing centers around telling the stories of black (and brown) people in the hope of making our lives better.
Women in podcasting are constantly being criticized for their voices. What is your relationship with yours? How would you describe your voice?
i hated my voice for the longest time. i used to love the sound of my voice on a live microphone, but when recorded i would cringe. someone said to me "of course it sounds different, you normally hear your own voice from inside your head, not outside of it." that made sense, it should sound a little different. it took me more than a year of hosting my old show, and listening to the shows every week, to get used to the sound of my voice. now i don't think two things about it anymore. but it took a long time.
Do you think there are any rules all podcasters should adhere to?
no. i think that's the beauty of this platform, there are no rules. you can make whatever you want to connect with whoever takes an interest. there's a freedom in that, i hope people can embrace that. also, with great freedom can come a lack of focus, which is difficult for me sometimes. but no, there are no rules except do what feels honest to the intention you have for what you're doing.
Should podcasters read their Apple Podcast reviews?
maybe? i think there's value in knowing how your show is landing, what themes are being established, etc. reading the reviews has highlighted for me the perception people have, or are developing, about what we do and i think being aware of that is wise. but don't make the reviews dictate your show, it's direction, it's purpose.
🚨If u only have time for 1 thing🚨
Ross Sutherland is a genius, and when I see he has dropped a new episode of Imaginary Advice I start throwing my phone between my hands like it’s a hot potato, jumping up and down, if that makes sense. I feel an electric current from my device! A few weeks ago he dropped part one of The Golden House and he has since dropped parts two and three, and I’m too in love with it to wait any longer to tell you about it. Episodes of Imaginary Advice are always inventive, funny, and completely out-of-the-box, and this series is a great example of Ross’ skillful storytelling. We are hearing a fictional branded podcast produced by a secretive tech company that seems to be doing some kind of PR damage control. (A video surfaced of people jumping off the roof, there seems to be ties to a missing Pope.) Everything about the meta-podcast is eerie, and makes you think the host is basically being forced to speak at gunpoint by his producer, his boss, who is in the recording studio. (We’re getting real “blink twice if you’re okay” vibes.) According to the website, the podcast’s presenter is smuggling secret codes into each episode, which means I’m sure I’ll be listening to each episode several times.
💎BTW💎
🎙️I look forward to anything that comes from Mermaid Palace, but the newest project feels extra exciting. Appearances (subscribe! subscribe! subscribe!—you can listen to the trailer here—it’s out soon,) a fictional one-woman audio show that, true to Mermaid Palace’s form, plays with fiction to express fact and universal truths. The Heart dropped a conversation between Kaitlin Prest and Appearances’ creator, Sharon Mashihi, about how the series came to be and why Sharon chose this format. Here we get audio, an intimate conversation on a cruise ship between Sharon and Sharon’s mother, that made me think about mothers in general and launched a huge conversation with my mom about mothers, daughters, and also cruise ships.
🎙️Every episode of Citations Needed is so rich with thought-provoking items, I can’t speak highly enough of it. In this episode of The Snitch Economy, Nima and Adam school us on ways the service industry undercuts employee wages and deputizes customers to determine the worth of workers, and how much money they make. The snitch economy—tipping, mystery shoppers, and rating apps—encourages constant surveillance on workers, turning us all “into petty, mean, busybodies carrying out the agenda of capital with nothing to show for it but a fleeting sense of self-satisfaction.”
🎙️Helen Zaltzman published her live show onto The Allusionist’s feed, and it was so much fun that I felt like I was in the audience. On No Title, Helen treats her audience to a performance about why the English language is obsessed with gendering itself. It’s a whirlwind history of how we’ve referred to people as Master and Ms., and a lyrical take-down of deniers of the singular “they.” This episode is funny, smart, and alive (every time I listen to Helen talk I find myself consistently TICKLED by the funny, subtle things that come out of her mouth.) She also reads perhaps the best advertisement I’ve ever heard, for Progressive Insurance. ANYONE can produce a wildly entertaining podcast episode about the gendered English language, right? But an insurance ad? That takes brilliance!
🎙️Happy Helen Zaltzman week to me, I guess! I listened to her episode on one of my favorite shows, Judge John Hodgman, which was a treat, and that led me to binge her other show, Answer Me This, where people call in to ask their very funny friends Helen and Olly ridiculous questions (like whether or not to use pizza scissors.) I could listen to Helen talk forever, which is convenient because I’m behind on this show, which has been running since 2007.
🎙️I was so excited about the first episode of Sounds Like Hate (Getting Out, a woman named Samantha risked her life to leave a white supremacist group) and episode two was just as good. On Not Okay, we are welcomed into the halls of Randolph Union High School in Vermont, where 95% of students are white, and kids wear MAGA hats with pride. They also LOVE their totally cool mascot, which looks like a hooded Klan member (Jesus Fucking Christ.) Some bold teenagers disobeyed authority to rise a Black Lives Matter flag on school grounds, and hearing the community’s negative reaction is totally disheartening but is also eye-opening for anyone how has a hard time wrapping their brains around this logic. (KKK mascot = good; BLM flag = bad.) Part two of Not Okay dropped today.
🎙️In an episode that kind of reminds me of Reply All’s Yes Yes No, where the hosts unpack things trending on social media and try to explain the complicated stories behind them, Rough Translation has an episode about an incredible story that surfaced online—one that might make zero sense to anyone who didn’t know the back story. Why was the internet cancelling Chinese pop singer Xiao Zhan? It all started with some fan-fiction that was written about Xiao Zhan online and his fans who disliked the story so much (claiming it was pornographic) that they reported it to the Chinese government, which went on to shut down the fan-fiction site. In protest, the fan-fiction site community came together to try to get people to boycott Xiao Zhan, which made him lose his sponsorship and become a pariah. Remember, Ziao Zhan did nothing wrong, it’s the storm around him that got him into trouble. This is a wild internet story that speaks about social media and censorship, and the power of online communities.
🎙️I have only listened to one episode of Come On, Come Out (there is only one episode) but I was laughing so hard that I have to point it out to you. Real LGBTQIA+ women tell their real coming out stories to a terrible, fictional host named Angela Rosserman, who is obsessed with her ex, and hellbent on making every interview about herself. It’s a wacky, experimental format that leads to the kind of laughing that makes you spit out your coffee.
🎙️For lots of gun-toting Americans, the NRA is considered too soft and an organization that kowtows to the left. (News to me.) No Compromise tells the story of three brothers who have a terrifying goal–to pluck people from the NRA and integrating them into their activist community that is fighting for more extreme actions. To these people, it’s not our constitutional rights that grant us right to arms, it’s a right that’s God-given. These brothers are smart and cagey enough to have turned this into a hefty, effective movement.
🎙️Wild Thing “is a podcast about all the strange and unusual things that capture our imaginations.” Season one dealt with Big Foot, and the new season is here, this time exploring the search for extraterrestrial life. Episode one has lots of mini interviews, it almost feels like a long trailer, but it’s packed with fascinating insight from scientists who admit there are certain things in space they cannot explain. There’s specific focus on Oumuamua, the first known object seen passing through the solar system, and its oddities that make some people believe there is extraterrestrial life. This episode made me excited for the upcoming season—my eyes were widening the whole time, listening to brilliant people hint at crazy things we often consider conspiracy theories. (And wasn’t this news about unidentified flying objects overshadowed by something stupid Trump said that day?)
🎙️On Bad People, an episode about eco-criminals (green crime,) Sophie jokes that this is probably the most boring episode ever, but Julia argues that it’s possibly the most important. The Land of Fires starts with a small Italian town where residents are dying from a factory spewing toxic waste into the environment, and the CEO who doesn’t care. Eco-criminals aren’t the sexiest criminals to hear about—most people love true crime because they enjoy hearing stories about real people and their complicated minds, not something that feels far away and out of their control, like the environment. But this episode convinces us that eco-crimes are about people. They are almost invisible crimes that can slowly and quietly murder thousands of people, instead of quickly murdering one (white woman) with much fanfare. It’s hard to pin down who is committing eco-crimes, and when they are over. On an earlier episode, Julia asked Sophie who she thinks the worst kind of criminal is, and Sophia says that it’s corporate criminals, cut-throat billionaires atop gigantic corporations who exploit workers. I think she’s right—I find it harder to find empathy for a criminal who wasn’t steeped in hardships, criming for their lives. And if these greedy capitalists define evil, then eco-criminals are the most dangerous criminals imaginable. BTW if you DO think eco-crimes are sexy, listen to Blood River, a podcast about the unsolved murder of Hunduran environmentalist Berta Caceres, who was shot after opposing a dam project.
🎙️Feet in 2 Worlds’s A Better Life uses immigrant stories to explain how our failed response to COVID has been setting undocumented people up for failure, taking away any sense of security they may have once had. The star of the episode is Rosa, an undocumented Mexican immigrant who cleaned hotel rooms in Phoenix pre-COVID whose story is heart-wrenching. Listening to her uphill battle is a reminder that people like Rosa are too tired to fight. Our country has made it so hard for them to reach their basic survival needs that they can’t even have a voice to speak out against inequality.
🎙️Uncuffed is a storytelling show made by people behind bars in California prisons. The newest episode is a conversation with Joe Kirk, one of thousands released early from California prisons to slow the spread of COVID-19. Joe’s story of being in prison during COVID lines up with all of the other stories we hear from people behind bars. (And how under-protected inmates are.) I don’t think we can hear these stories enough. But then Joe goes on to talk about what it was like to emerge into the real world, without any support from the government. It shines light on how broken our system is.
🎙️Some extremely troubling numbers from 70 Million, here: “By the end of June the U.S. had 20% of the world’s prisoners, and 25% of the world’s COVID-19 cases. The U.S. has less than 5% of the world’s population. Those in prison have been 5 times more likely to contract COVID-19, and 3 times more likely to die from it.” The Peabody-nominated 70 Million is all about putting story behind these numbers. Being in prison during COVID sounds like the setting of a horror film. Some of these people are detainees, guilty of minor crimes or awaiting trial. (Many of them cannot pay their bail, so, poverty.) Most of them are black. This new season of 70 Million takes us to Chicago’s Cook County Jail to reveal how our broken justice system has been completely smashed to smithereens by this pandemic and introduces us to some of the people living the horror movie. This episode (and the two listed above) made me think of something Laci Mosley said on The Daily Zeitgeist this week—she used to love the American flag. She had an American flag bikini and celebrated the Fourth of July. But now she is unsettled at the sight of our flag. Is the American Flag become a symbol of racism, violence, stupidity, and hate? Listening to stories like Rosa’s, Joe’s, and Maria’s makes it easy to think it is.
🎙️I always feel like a shit-head writing about The Memory Palace—Nate Demeo deliberately does not offer many show-notes because he wants you to experience the stories naturally. So read on with caution. I’ll try to be vague. And if you don’t read on, go to your feed now and listen to the last two, tiny pieces that dropped on The Memory Palace feed this week—High Falls and From a Parking Lot. On High Falls, Nate introduces us to Sam Patch, who became famous for jumping off all sorts of high things, and the story of his last jump, which turned him into a legend. From a Parking Lot is about a time in history and a place in Rochester that no longer exists for us to physically experience, but imagines the spirits that might be there instead. It’s a short story that packs a huge, emotional punch.
🎙️Motive is running a series about how neo-Nazi skinheads have been recruiting kids into the white supremacist movement. The latest episode digs into their strategy for getting young recruits, with one of the most terrifying testimonies I’ve heard on a podcast—a young woman recounts being beaten when she tried to leave.
🎙️Endless Thread ran a collection of unsent letters posted to a Reddit thread—some of them are written to specific people who will probably never read them, some of them are written to a group of people. “Thank you, Anna, for sleeping with my husband…” “To the people who don't stay with their pets during euthanasia…” “To my COVID-19 patients...” It’s a touching episode, and a great example of how Endless Thread is able to celebrate Reddit, a place I think some people still consider an internet wasteland populated by 45-year-old coders who live in their parents’ basements. Endless Thread is a must-subscribe.
🎙️Podcasters often email me and ask me to listen to their shows, and I love this. Definitely do this. But if you want your podcast to get bumped to the top of my queue, send me an episode about Disney or the historical Jesus. I will listen to anything on those topics. This is why I went straight to Self-Evident’s episode on the Disney animated film Mulan. (Self-Evident is “Asian-America’s stories,” a show I’m glad I found and will listen to whether the episodes are Disney-centric or not.) Two of the three hosts had just seen the movie for the first time. They outline the things Mulan got right and wrong, and how it’s more of an Asian American film than a Chinese one. They discuss the idea of gender identity in Mulan, and how Disney sort of accidentally created a bisexual character that gender-fluid people found comfort in. (And why it was disappointing that that character was removed from the plot of the 2020 live-action film.)
🎙️There’s nothing quite like Paired. Each episode is a stand-alone vignette that really invites you inside the lives of its characters in a totally unique way. It’s described as “guided meditation,” and your guide through these stories is Pairy, a well-meaning, Alexa-style digital assistant, who tries her damndest to assist, but because life is complicated and Pairy has no nuance, it doesn’t ever work out. It’s funny and strange and a creative way to invite us into the lives of these characters. We witness them through their interaction with Pairy. It’s dreamlike.
🎙️Flash Forward’s Halfway to Heaven imagines a future where we send senior citizens to Mars. It turns out it’s a terrible (but interesting!) idea, especially considering that some things, like lower gravity levels, would be more gentle on older people. But truly this is a valuable conversation about how we treat older people, the problems with nursing homes today, and what a better future would look like for people who are trying to enjoy the last years of their life.
🎙️Tig Notaro has a new podcast with Cheryl Hines that reviews documentaries called Tig and Cheryl, True Story. This seems like a smart idea that provides value—it isn’t always easy to discover docs. And I love Tig Notaro, I would listen to her talk about anything. On episode one they go over A Band Called Death, which is about the 1970s rock band Death and their new-found popularity decades after the group recorded their music.
🎙️My mom has been urging me to listen to Dear Therapists, and I sampled it with the episode Jeff’s Critical Parents, where we hear a letter from Jeff, who grew up with a cold, critical mom and dad. Now that he is a father, Jeff worries they will continue the pattern with his own child. The format really allows for a deep dive into Jeff’s issues—Jeff is invited on the show to walk through his bottled-up emotions, is given a strategy to confront his parents, and then comes back to report how things went when he did his homework. Lori Gottlieb and Guy Winch do a great job helping Jeff reach his, to quote Oprah, “aha moment.” He cries. This is a story about how a family can heal from years of unaddressed issues, even if the healing isn’t easy or straight-forward.
🎙️I listened to an old episode of Those Happy Places about the Jungle Cruise, which gives a lot of history of the ride, and points out many of its problems. Buddy and Alice talk about how without the Skipper who guides you through the jungle, the ride is a terrible, embarrassing relic that celebrates colonialism. But the Skipper, in an interesting way, turns the ride on its head, making fun of the ride itself, and reminding people that they are on a sort of out-dated, corny voyage. The Skippers allow the ride to own the narrative. I love this ride and this episode illustrates how complicated it is.
🎙️The Alarmist has an episode about the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky sex scandal that’s both a reminder of the story (in case you’ve forgotten) and a sharp look at all guilty parties that contributed to the mess. Pantsuit Politics co-host Sarah Holland joins to give a funny, critical look at the story as revisionist history. It’s so thorough it reminds me of an episode of You’re Wrong About. Make sure you listen to the bonus episode The Aftermath, where Rebecca talks with Suzanne Leonard, author and Professor of English and director of the graduate program in gender and cultural studies at Simmons University, who gives a strong feminist take on the story.
🎙️Arielle Nissenblatt (EarBuds, Counter Programming, Outlier Podfest) was on The Only One in the Room to talk about podcasting. If you’re a new/potential podcaster, it’s a must-listen. Arielle offers tons of secrets of the industry! It’s valuable advice. If I were thinking of starting a podcast, or if I had just started one, I would pay to listen to it.
🎙️I love you!