🧠 False memories, Halo Top, The Torture Chamber of Delphine LaLaurie, National Parks 🏕 Laurah Norton 🔍
💌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 Victoria Kinkaid, a doctor working in London who runs a podcast called Virago Voices which is all about women’s empowerment. Virago voices was created by women as a platform to promote empowerment for all women, through conversations with other women.
App you use: Spotify. Will use other apps if the podcast I want to listen to is not available on Spotify.
Listening time per week: Twice a week - depending on whether I have to commute or not. Can be up to daily if I am commuting long distances to and from work. I make an effort to at least listen to a podcast once a week at a minimum.
When you listen: On my drive to work and on runs. I usually listen to podcasts to completely clear my head. I like listening to people’s dialogue as it interests and engages me, helping me to switch off my internal dialogue.
How you discover: Social media mostly, and friends recommendations. I also like when Spotify gives me suggestions, and often they are very accurate! Word of mouth is also awesome, and often the best way to spread the word about a podcast.
xoxo lp
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Laurah Norton
Laurah Norton is a professor (of everything from composition to American Lit to podcasting) and co-creator of two podcasts: The Fall Line, a true-crime pod which she makes with Brooke Hargrove and Maura Currie, and One Strange Thing, a “strange news” pod she started with Maura this fall. Follow Laurah on Twitter here, One Strange Thing on Twitter here, and The Fall Line on Twitter here.
How did the idea for One Strange Thing come about? Did the idea pop into your head while making The Fall Line?
When I teach my creative nonfiction course in podcasting, one of the assignments I give is a fun little exercise in exploratory research. I’ve always loved mysteries, so I have my students look at either the Atlanta Bleeding House or the Georgia Guidestones, gather everything they can, and form a hypothesis based on what they find. Spending time in the archives with them—looking at stories that aren’t as heavy as the material we cover on The Fall Line—it really energized me, and I wanted to turn the experience into a podcast. Maura and I thought that it would be fun to offer people a really specific formula: little-known, regional news stories from the past 75 years that contain one unexplainable element, delivered in snack-size portions. It seemed like the perfect pandemic formula, too: condensed, entertaining, and a bit of an escape.
What's the goal of One Strange Thing?
The goal of One Strange Thing is pure entertainment. It’s a way to share the kind of fun things that we’ve run into during research—while looking into totally different topics—with our audience, and leave them with a sense of wonder. It’s also a much-needed break for me, and for Maura. We love making The Fall Line. But it’s heavy material. This is our escapist project.
Fill in the blank: You will like One Strange Thing if you like ______.
You will like One Strange Thing if you “want to believe.”
How do you unearth these interesting stories?
It’s a combination of things! Some, like the Atlanta Bleeding House, we knew about just by living in the area. Others we stumbled across during research. Now, Maura and I and our research assistants—the same folks who work for us on The Fall Line—comb through archives using certain search terms to look for stories. You’d be surprised how often “strange” and “confounded” will bring up a juicy story.
Can you tease us with anything exciting coming up in this season?
We have a great episode coming up on the 5th of January. I spent months tracking down the few published articles on this case—the year of publication was not archived in any digital collection—and when I finally got a copy, the librarian found that someone had stamped a giant UFO across the text. That is a good preview of the content.
What’s something listeners don’t understand about podcasts and what goes into making them?
I think audiences are pretty aware at this point of how much work a podcast is—many of them follow creators and hear about it. I do wish that they thought about how and why they judge creators, and how much of that judgment is shaped by cultural conditioning. Like the obsession with vocal fry and upspeak. . . I’d love to never hear about either ever again.
What has making the show taught you about our history and ourselves?
That panics, both moral and otherwise, seem to arrive on a pretty predictable schedule. But also: our normalcy is so tenuous, and we don’t even realize it. It only takes a single event to through a town into chaos.
Why are you the perfect host for this show?
I write for my own voice, so I guess that’s the easy-out answer. I don’t write for other people. It’s written from my perspective, narratively speaking, with some tweaks to create a bit of a character—a host position—that I think suits the work. I don’t know if it would necessarily suit another host.
Women in podcasting are constantly being criticized for their voices. What is your relationship with yours? How would you describe your voice?
Oh gosh. That’s a big one. I’ve gotten plenty of compliments and plenty of criticism. I’ve been told I sound like Siri and that I’m putting on a weird fake deep voice (can both be true at the same time?!). A weird thing is: I actually was in speech therapy throughout last winter, because I developed recurrent laryngitis, and had to learn new speaking techniques, especially in regard to breathing, and how I project into the mic. So I think about this a lot. I don’t begrudge people their preferences, and I work hard at improving my vocals every time I record. I would love to hear less about women’s voices, and more about their content.
Do you think there are any rules all podcasters should adhere to?
Learning about licensing, usage, and plagiarism, and really understanding all of these topics before they begin. A podcaster should understand attribution, structural plagiarism, overreliance—all of this is important—what audio material they can use, etc. If you plan to monetize, it’s even more vital.
What shows do you love?
So many! Too many to list. I’ll just list off what I have in my listening queue: Scam Goddess, Pleasing Terrors, You’re Wrong About, Behind the Bastards, My Momma Told Me, True Crime Bullshit, Let’s Not Meet, American Hysteria, What a Day. There are so many more, but that’s what I will be listening to while I work!
🚨If u only have time for 1 thing🚨
The Cut’s The Truth About False Memories opens with the 1995 “Lost in the Mall” experiment, which concluded that if you are told something happened to you as a child, even if it’s a lie, you’ll probably believe it’s true as an adult. It began as an extra credit project by Elizabeth Loftus for her psychology students at the University of California at Irvine in 1995. But the repercussions of this assignment have had a real impact on whether or not we believe survivors in sexual assault cases. The story follows the path of two psychology professors, one whose life was torn apart by the study, and one who built her career around it. It’s an episode of You’re Wrong About waiting to happen.
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🎙️If you love my newsletter, and you know that my mom was my inspiration for starting it, I urge you so subscribe to her new newsletter, I Love Italian Movies. Cookie is a cheerleader for modern Italian cinema, and literally nobody has better access to the stars and directors, or a better take on the good stuff coming out of Italy. Plus, who wouldn’t want a little Cookie in their lives? (Get to know her on our episode of Judge John Hodgman.)
🎙️One of my favorite podcasters, American Hysteria’s Chelsey Weber-Smith (a client,) was on The Daily Zeitgeist, and it was a match made in heaven. They talk about Chelsey growing up with a prepper father, trash TV, the Georgia runoff election, Bean Dad, and more. You should be listening to The Daily Zeitgeist every day, but especially this episode. I was laughing so hard I cried.
🎙️Aubrey Gordon and Michael Hobbes always do such a thorough, funny job '‘debunking the junk science behind health fads, wellness scams and nonsensical nutrition advice.” Their episode on Halo Top is a good example of why the show is such a gem. Who would have thought that Halo Top had such an interesting story, or more importantly, that it could say so much about people and what they are striving for today? So far this show has consistently been one that unearths the most fascinating facets of health to unpack them with researched insight and humor, brought to you by two friends.
🎙️If you’re into interesting audio, you have to be catching episodes of Field Recordings, “a podcast where audio-makers stand silently in fields (or things that could be broadly interpreted as fields).” Each one plops you into somewhere in the world, and lets you experience firsthand what it sounds like to be there. I love escaping to places like the lagoons of Venice, hearing howling wolves at night in Mafra, Portugal, eavesdropping on a storm in Scotland, but also listening to sounds of my own city.
🎙️Vox Media has released a narrative series hosted by actress, writer, and activist Cristela Alonzo, Chicano Squad, the first in-depth account of the “Chicano Squad” – a team of five young Latino officers tasked with solving homicides in Houston’s Latino neighborhoods in the late 1970s. It offers great reporting, a plethora of great voices (Jaime Escalante, Raymond Gonzales, and Cecil Mosqueda from the squad) and Cristela brings so much personality to the show. It feels both important and fun. Episode one sets you up with the story of the murder of José Campos Torres, whose body was discovered in the waters of Buffalo Bayou. It’s a murder case that shook Houston, Texas to its core, yet I don’t think many people know about it. Chicano Squad is making important waves in the true-crime space, and it’s a blast to listen to.
🎙️On the season finale of Flash Forward, Rose Eveleth explores parallel universes, which kind of has to do with false memories. When we remember something (like, say, the death of Nelson Mandela in prison in the 1980s, when he actually died in 2013) are we remembering a parallel reality? It seems more likely that we just get stuff wrong sometimes, but people actually believe this and it’s trippy to think about. I don’t know how she did it, but Rose created another version of the episode so that if you listen to it a second time you experience a different episode. I guess that must mean that Rose has found access to a parallel universe and is inviting us all into it.
🎙️Code Switch tells the story of two friends—one black, one white—who had the same kind of bone cancer and needed a transplant. One survived and one died. We hear from the woman who lived to tell the tale, Ibby Caputo, of how her path to recovery was different as a white woman. It’s an interesting story, but also a heartbreaking one about friendship and a tribute to a woman who fought for years to be well enough to meet her donor but never could.
🎙️Why It Matters talked to professor of media studies Aynne Kokas and Free Expression Research and Policy’s James Tager about the role of Chinese censorship in the making of U.S. films. It’s stronger than you think. Everyone is aware that certain movie tropes won’t make the cut in China, but China’s control goes beyond mentions of Taiwan and Tibet and the Dhali Lami, but the censorship goes is much broader, and America blocks content that doesn’t on the surface seem political—things like ghosts and time travel. It’s stunning to realize the stronghold China has on American society via this sneaky, almost completely ignored form of control. There were a few examples given—about the films Looper and Mulan—that kind of blew my mind.
🎙️On Doughboys, the best fast food review podcast around, Nick announces that he’s going vegetarian in 2021, which will obviously impact the way he eats and reviews food. I love this idea, eating fast food as a vegetarian is such an interesting challenge and I think it will make the show so much better. Mitch is not happy with the change. (“Oh, fuck you.”)
🎙️I wish I could figure out why exactly I love Crimes of the Centuries’ host Amber Hunt so much. She is an expert storyteller, but one who tells you the story on a very personable level. She is talking about serious things and backs up her stories with solid research and analysis, but she isn’t taking herself too seriously. Her style is so different than so many true crime podcasts, she feels closely connected to the material, but also comes to each subject well-armed with research. Each crime is indeed a crime of the century, one that we all would be buzzing about back in the day, but has since faded into the background. The Torture Chamber of Delphine LaLaurie opens with a fire in a New Orleans mansion in 1834, which led neighbors to discover the lady of the house, Delphine, was hiding enslaved people weighed down by chains, starved to emaciation and barely recognizable as humans. It’s astonishing cruelty and a fascinating piece of history.
🎙️Jacqueline Novak and Kate Berlant’s POOG is a hysterical yet honest diary of two friends and their quest to be physically and mentally healthy. They aren’t parodying goop, they’re appreciating what it technically does by sharing their own reflections on the wellness industry and…trying to get free products. Young Geniuses was my favorite episode yet, diving into the “seductive archetype of the young prodigy.” Jacqueline and Kate are both on the exact same berserk wavelength, and even if you’re not there with them, it’s fun to try to keep up. They feed off each other…and their dedicated lies that they went to Juilliard…to offer a look into their sparkling friendship and their sharp, off-the-wall minds.
🎙️Taylor Leigh Fraser is a Platte Canyon High School shooting survivor, and has released an audio drama about the aftermath of the tragedy, called Foreward. It’s a movie for your ears, and I find myself glued to the story. You go into the story knowing it’s technical climax, but completely unaware how the world around the climax and the people in it will unfold. The first two episodes are before the shooting, and they both have this aura of happiness and safety tinged with an eeriness that’s signaling something is about to happen. On episode three, a man enters the school with a gun. The voice actors are top notch.
🎙️One of my favorite things about Kara Swisher’s now defunct podcast Recode Decode was Kara’s ability to push back on tech guys who are used to getting their asses kissed. There is a little less of this on Kara’s new podcast, Sway, which is much more jovial. But I loved the interview she published the day after the siege on the capitol with Parler’s CEO John Matze. John kicks things off by comparing the siege to the George Floyd protesters, and Kara pushes back, asking him about Parler’s responsibility in fanning the insurrection flames. This is what Kara does best, and this is a great interview.
🎙️I was really impressed with how many podcasts were able to quickly respond to Wednesday’s events, with really solid content. Citations Needed did a great job sifting through how the media covered the attack. Michael Cohen was on The New Abnormal, revealing that he is “certain that Donald Trump is psychotic right now.” Conan O’Brien managed to find something to laugh about with Ron Reagan. There was a great episode about how security went so wrong on Today, Explained. Two UK reporters who were on the scene relive their experiences on Trump Lost! Now What? And on Some More News, Molly Conger gives a guided tour of her day in Washington, which she mapped out thanks to the insurrection planning guide she found on Parler. (Something she saw: a woman urinating on the Capitol lawn. Something she did not see: a cop.) I listened to a log of siege content last week, and if you want to hear all of my favorite moments in one place, the Hark team compiled this Harklist.
🎙️The Gatekeepers is such a great show—so far each episode has given me so many new things to think about when it comes to how we police public spaces. The Great Outdoors explores the relationship between people of color and the National Park Service, notorious racist Madison Grant, who is credited for inventing the idea of National Parks, how President Roosevelt used his power to make it a space for rich white people, and why all these years later, it’s the ancestors of these white people who get to enjoy the parks and wilderness in general as places of solace, beauty, and relaxation. For many people of color, these places don’t feel safe. Turns out experiencing nature can still be racist in America. It’s one of the many things not created for all its people.
🎙️Jamie Loftus (The Bechdel Test, Lolita Podcast, My Year in Mensa) was on The Three Questions with Andy Richter. My dad listened to this episode first, and said “I had no idea she had done so much work butt chugging.” Jamie talks about growing up with a back brace, entering Mensa, her complicated journey to understand Lolita (a journey inspired by Lemony Snicket,) her history of gross body comedy, and how all that butt chugging still inspires people to delegitimize her work. Andy asks Jamie if her parents inspired her to “put her neck out” for feminism or pursue comedy, and she says not really. Her dad was a hockey reporter in Massachusetts, and Jamie said he was open to her dream of earning almost no money to pursue work that was important to her. I listen to a lot a lot of Jamie Loftus, but in this episode, I got to hear a new side of her personality.
🎙️Story Collider has been releasing the nicest Covid stories, each one has really stuck with me. (This was my favorite episode, you can hear a clip here.) On Stories of Covid: Generations, Part I, we hear from Mary Sue Kitchen, whose grandmother’s experience of the 1918 pandemic inspired her public health work, and Marta Hanson, a historian who has studies about pandemics. Marta talks about something that is true but makes me sad—how we will continue to live in a pandemic world, long after Covid is gone. We won’t shake hands or hug, we will continue to wear masks. This caused me to face the facts about two other things I may never see again (that will surely not bother you)…Disney cruises and the lunch buffet bar at the Biergarten in EPCOT’s German pavilion.
🎙️In 2011, documentary maker Mike Williams traveled to Hay, North South Whales, to report on the dying art of shearing and why it’s known as one of the hardest jobs in the world. There he met 14-year-old Will Lewis, who had dreams of quitting smoking and leaving Hay. Nine years later, Mike went back to Hay to interview Lewis, who is married with kids, and still shearing. You can hear the audio here on Ear Shots, but check out the original documentary, which reveals the guts you have to have to be a shearer, which is a job that’s only become more difficult since Covid.
🎙️I listen to Crime Writers On…every week to find out which true crime podcasts and documentaries I shouldn’t miss. It’s hosted by a panel of crime writers (one of them is Rebecca Lavoie) so you get a variety of takes that you can trust. On today’s episode, they review a show I’m loving, I’m Not a Monster. Rebecca says it’s one of the best shows she’s heard in four years and predicts it will be her favorite show of 2021. So if I haven’t convinced you to listen to I’m Not a Monster yet, listen to Rebecca.
🎙️Kate and I have a service called Podcast Therapy, where we consult podcasters, giving them ways to grow and monetize. We received an email from two podcasters, a mother and daughter, Dr. Amy and Zoe, who could use some help with their show Am I Embarrassing You? Primarily, with their negative Apple Podcasts reviews. There are way more than the show warrants, and the jabs are completely baseless. Am I Annoying You? is a sweet show about a mother and daughter’s relationship, and their own relationships with beauty and wellness. (Dr. Amy is a dermatologist.) The negative reviews are all coming from Dr. Amy’s ex-husband and his community. A grown person trying to take down a mother-daughter passion project podcast is cruel, unusual, and this whole thing is very nutty. Check out the show, and if you have it in your heart, think about leaving a nice rating if you like what you hear. Dr. Amy and Zoe are hardworking podcasters trying to grow and make a good show, and they deserve it.
🎙️I love you!