✌️ Fingertips, Nipsey Hussle, the Indian Child Welfare Act, Lucille Ball—the podcaster 🤡
💌Podcast The Newsletter is your weekly love letter to podcasts and the people who make them.💌
Bonjour!
Today is Monday, August 30. There are 268 days until I go on my next Disney cruise. If you don’t have time for the whole newsletter: I cannot believe we have this blast from the past, here’s a show that’s back for a powerful season two, and this made me love something I already love a lot, more.
This week we’re getting to peek into the listening life of Rufaro Faith, a UK based freelance writer and producer who hosts You’re Gonna Love This Podcast, a podcast of short specific podcast recommendations. She likes making storytelling podcasts about pop culture, psychology and growing up and is currently working as an Associate Producer at Audio Always and Neon Hum Media.
App I use: I mainly use Pocketcasts, I’ve played around with a few different apps and I love how Entale makes podcasts interactive but I always go back to PocketCasts because of how it lets me arrange my library in a way that makes sense to me.
Listening time per week: I usually listen to around 11 hours of podcasts a week. I listen to more when I’m researching podcasts about themes that I wouldn’t naturally gravitate towards for a new season of YGLTP.
When I listen: I like listening to documentaries and narrative-based podcasts when I’m cooking or taking a walk, audio dramas when I have a bunch of admin tasks to do that don’t require that much concentration and I like listening to new podcasts when I’m on the train or running errands.
How I discover: I find most new podcasts by searching for the specific stories I’m interested in hearing about on Reddit, Twitter and Google. Some recent notable search terms include “podcasts about sleep deprivation” and “podcasts about sorority recruitment”. I also find a lot of great podcasts through the Bello Collective Slack, 1.5x Speed, reading podcast festival programmes and scrolling through Podchaser.
Anything else? I’m trying to listen to more podcasts created outside of the UK and USA, so if there’s a podcast you’ve listened to lately and loved (especially those made by creators based in Africa or Asia) it would be great to hear about it.✨
xoxo lp
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👋q & a & q & a & q & a👋
Ginna Green and Lynn Harris
Ginna Green and Lynn Harris are the hosts of A Bintel Brief. Follow Ginna on Twitter here, Lynn on Twitter here.
Why is the show called A Bintel Brief?
Lynn: A Bintel Brief means “bundle of letters” in Yiddish. The O.G. Bintel Brief was the iconic advice column in the Jewish Daily Forward (now The Forward). The Forward, originally published in Yiddish and English, was founded in 1897 by the Jewish Socialist Press Federation in order to inform, support, and bring together Jewish immigrants from Europe. A Bintel Brief, launched in 1906, was designed to help people in these communities figure out...everything about life, love, work, and more in their very new world. The column has appeared in books and online, and now we’re honored to team up with the Forward to bring it into the audio age and an even wider audience!
Why are you two the perfect hosts for this show?
Lynn: Well, I think Ginna is the perfect host because she is both warm and sharp, and (if you think of advice as a form of strategy) she’s basically strategist by day (for advocacy work) and strategist by night (co-managing a household of 4 children).
Ginna: Lynn is the perfect host because advice-giving is in her genes, and all over her resume. Everyone went to her mom for advice throughout her life, and Lynn picked up the tradition answering pleas for help all over the print magazines of yesteryear.
Who is A Bintel Brief for?
Ginna: A Bintel Brief is for anyone who finds humans interesting. We’re the Jewish Advice Podcast, but we’re really a people podcast at our core. So we’re going to make references to Shabbat, and Torah and Talmud, and also Michael Twitty, Brooklyn and Broadway--and have a lot of fun doing it--while we craft individual advice to universal questions that we can all appreciate.
How does your chemistry come together on the show? How are you similar and how are you different?
Lynn: Ginna and I hit it off immediately, and not just because we both enjoy bourbon. (We’ve actually never met-met.) For one thing, we are able to blend and balance immutable, rock-solid VALUES (Jewish values, human rights values) with real-world practicality. That said, we have different backgrounds: she’s a southerner and I’m a northerner (though my dad is from Atlanta); I am more than a decade older, and my Zoom filter does not lie; she is of color and I am of pallor; I like bugs and she REALLY DOES NOT. One great thing I’ve noticed about our chemistry is that we both toggle between BIG PICTURE and ACTIONABLE TACTICS, and when one of us goes in one direction the other very naturally. When it comes to advice podcasting, SHE COMPLETES ME.
Ginna: We are really quite a natural pair. I harbor some suspicion that we both could have found other co-hosts with whom we also got along famously, but we get along SO famously because we are both people who get along with lots of people!
How is A Bintel Brief the podcast different from the publication that was born in 1906?
Lynn: Some of those answers would have been real different if they’d had access to Tindr. And OSHA.
Ginna: I think we’ve got the same spirit and affection for humanity that has guided Bintel for 115 years, but on a tactical level, the advent of email and phones and voicemail means we can have a conversation with a letter-writer that wasn’t possible in the era of anonymous letters sent with a stamp. We can follow up, check in on our people, and our advice … stay tuned for season two if you want to know what happened to episode one’s Mr. Not-Dad!
What are the qualities of a good advice-giver?
Lynn: I don’t think giving good advice is about being RIGHT. I think it’s about really listening to and hearing what the person is asking, and taking your own agenda (as opposed to your own experience) out of it. Beneath even that, good advice comes out of a set of core values: This is how you treat people; this is how you treat yourself.
Who from the Bible do you wish had a podcast?
Ginna: I bet a podcast with Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah and Tirzah--the daughters of Zelophehad--would be a really good time.
What does it feel like to be part of the rich history of The Forward?
Lynn: Ooh! It’s just an honor it almost gives me the shivers. Not everyone’s relatives read the Forward around the table like mine (and many others’) did, but it is an indelible part of American Jewish history, the history of immigration and socialism, so much more. Also, it feels like a way to honor my mom (z”l), who was one of the great advice givers of her time.
Ginna: It feels ground-breaking to be a Black woman behind The Forward’s most recognizable features. The Yiddish-speaking immigrants of Eastern Europe represent the largest proportion of Jews who came to America in the 1800s, and their culture and lives and story is what shaped Jewish America, even though Jews worldwide--then and now--represent a tapestry of languages, ethnicities, races, traditions and observances. Sitting around that kitchen table reading A Bintel Brief in Yiddish, early readers wouldn’t have believed it was me behind the typewriter. Sitting at my desk behind the mic today, I can hardly believe that I get to be a part of this rich thread of American history.
🚨If u only have time for 1 thing🚨
Season two of This Land is here, and Rebecca Nagle is (with an incredible team that includes Amy Westervelt!) looking at another underreported legal battle impacting American Indian tribes in the United States, this time a scorched earth lawsuit over the custody battle of a two-year-old in Dallas that tells the larger story of the 40-year-old Indian Child Welfare Act. For the first three episodes of the season, my ears were glued to Rebecca’s every word. She’s pulling us through this complex, emotional story that involves neglected kids and the ripping apart of families. (I learned: that according to the United Nations, this is a form of genocide.) Why this case was so important to not just to this family, but to Texas and our constitution, is a layer cake of fuckedupedness. But I kind of picture Rebecca and Amy like two Rescue Rangers-like reporters (they have info that was not available in the courtroom) and I think they can bring us close to the truth. This story gets to your heartstrings but it looks so much bigger with every step you take back.
💎BTW💎
🎙️I hope you have signed up for Arielle Nissenblatt’s newsletter EarBuds—each week a new curator takes it over to curate a list of episodes based on a theme. There’s also a corresponding podcast episode. (I did a list on pain and suffering.) Arielle is a great person to be connected with if you want to join the podcasting community, and her newsletter is really neat-o and brilliant. Follow Arielle on Twitter and sign up for EarBuds. This week’s spotlight was on Aftershock, a fast-paced thriller about a massive earthquake that destroys the West Coast, causing a mysterious island to rise up from the Pacific.
🎙️I started a Podcast Marketing Newsletter called Podcast Marketing Magic. I get so many questions about this very weird thing, podcast marketing, and I meet so many podcasters who have great shows but don’t spend enough time on marketing them, which is a huge miss. The newsletter will be straight-up tips—things I’ve learned, what’s working and what’s not working (expect this to change week by week!), and tiny things you can do to grow your numbers. Launching soon, sign up here.
🎙️On September 10, I will be hosting a chat at the London Podcast Festival with BBC Studios podcast producer Ella Watts. It’s FREE and going to be a lot of fun. It’s called If / Then: Where Every Listener Will Find Something to Love. Ella and I will be going back and forth, recommending both audio dramas and non-fiction shows. We are having a blast planning for it.
🎙️In 1992 I went on a road trip all across Colorado with my parents, and we had one cassette tape for the trip: They Might Be Giants’ Apollo 18. Each song brings me back to buying tiny worry dolls in Vail and exploring Mesa Verde. One of the most unique pieces on this album is the collection of 21 micro-songs, Fingertips. Each song is only a few seconds long and feels like the introduction to an entire universe sprouted from John Flansburgh and John Linnell’s brains. I never thought very hard about these songs, they are just completely weird and enjoyable—kind of a shock to the brain. But on Strong Songs, Kirk Hamilton picked each song apart, finding genius in the structure and note of every second of every song. I don’t think you have to have nostalgic connection to these songs to find them fascinating. Kirk is able to point out the chords and their inspiration from other pieces of music, the roles each of the Johns played in making the vocals snap into place, and the journey the entire piece takes you on when listened to beginning to end, from comfortable beginning, to chaotic climax in the middle, to the sad, winded down ending. I learned so much about song construction I feel like I’m a different consumer of music, and my love for these songs has gone beyond simply remembering a vacation with my family. I’m reminded of the subtle, wacky genius of They Might Be Giants, and the reason Fingertips is one of my favorite pieces of audio ever created. And perhaps why nobody has been able to replicate it.
🎙️In 1964 Lucille Ball launched her radio show Let’s Talk to Lucy, which has been moved to a podcast and it’s a little eerie—Lucy sounds exactly like a podcaster in 2021. (I feel like she’s podcasting from the grave, or that I’m going to bump into her at Podcast Movement, or something.) She’s a sharp, funny interviewer who lets down her guard to host open conversations with big names in Hollywood. In the first episode released she interviews Danny Kaye, Carol Channing, and two of the Vegas Copa Girls. There is something so comforting and delightful about hearing Lucy kind of wind down and ask “a few homey questions” to her guests, to hear her crystal clear, authentic laughter. Her goal, it seems, is to let people know her as anything other than the character she played on TV, and I think it works. I wasn’t alive in 1964, but listening this is like a nostalgic balm for my brain.
🎙️Have you ever listened to a podcast and wanted to dance to it? Not because of the music, but because it’s so melodic and lyrical that it makes you want to move your whole body? Have You Heard George’s Podcast? has an episode, Who Hurt R&B, dedicated to the path R&B has taken in our culture, from serving as a way to communicate love to one to communicate rage and pain since the 1970s. It’s full of great tracks, but George uses poetry to weave it together and trace R&B hits to the story of Black mental health, aiming to pin down when we went from Sunshine Anderson singing Heard It All Before to Dr. Dre’s Bitches Ain’t Shit. The whole thing feels like a song or love letter that’s full of torment and fury.
🎙️It shook the whole world when Nipsey Hussle was murdered in front of his Marathon clothing store in South Central Los Angeles. 30 for 30 and The Undefeated have produced a four-part series, The King of Crenshaw, that sets to explain why Nipsey’s life and death meant so much to people particularly in the sports and music communities. He was more than just a rapper to them—he was a symbol of the principles he stood for, his commitment to his community, and his dedication to social justice. This series collects stories from Nipsey’s family, culture writers, musicians and sports figures who looked to Nipsey for motivation, who listened to his songs to prepare for games and also as a blueprint for their own lives. The story of Nipsey almost feels like a fable, his death the most tragic kind of story ever written. The series is his story but also the story of Black Americans and their hardships and heroes, and how to make sense from a death that seems senseless. Bonus: Amira Rose Davis of Burn It All Down makes an appearance, which is always a sign that you’re getting the sharpest sports takes.
🎙️The Drop Out was one of my favorite podcasts of 2019—it was a masterful treatment of the Elizabeth Holmes story and, if you ask me, it did a better job than both the book and TV series combined. (I gobbled down all three.) The woman is back in the news—her trial starts tomorrow, and a new podcast, Bad Blood, is our guide in continuing the story. How do we find a self-made female billionaire on trial for leading a massive fraud and lying to investors, doctors, and patients about the her mythical technology? She’s a master of persuasion, but will she be able to persuade a jury that she’s innocent? In the first two episodes we return to Elizabeth, who is pregnant (is this part of her defense strategy? John Carreyrou asks,) the center of a story with newly-lost key evidence, and pointing the blame toward Sunny, who she claims to have influenced her crimes. It seems impossible that Elizabeth will go free, but will the jury find sympathy with her story? Or is her victimhood a lesser evil than that of her own victims, whose lives were at stake?
🎙️I love how Switched on Pop does series. I just finished their string of episodes on music festivals (the Juggalos episode was a highlight.) The last episode celebrates festivals with personal stories—Nate and Charlie have asked for people to call in with stories of how music festivals have impacted their lives. I would have told you to listen anyway, but I’m particularly motivated—they used a voicemail that I sent them, which talks about my mom, Cookie, who was dragged (by me) to Vans Warped Tour and left a converted skate boi.
🎙️I thought of another reason I love Follow Friday. There is so much negativity on the internet, and social media can be a toxic place. I have said it before and I’ll say it again, this show makes my Twitter feed better. But I was listening to the last episode with Morgan Sung, and she was talking about someone she admired in the social space, Bettina Makalintal, and I thought, man I wish Bettina could hear this. How good would that feel to know someone admired you and talked about you on a podcast? Follow Friday is a rare place where people can sing the praises of whatever people or things they love. There are more than enough podcasts about complaining (I love those, too) but Follow Friday is putting more love out into the world. We are hashtag blessed to have it.
🎙️Criminal’s Sealand is a story that starts innocently enough, I guess, and then goes totally off the rails. In the 60s, the BBC, which controlled most of the airwaves in the UK, wouldn’t play rock and roll, so DJs would get in a boat and sail past the territorial limits of the UK to set up pirate radio stations in the sea—sometimes on old WWI forts. In 1967, one fort was taken over by a man named Roy Bates, and he eventually formed it into his own micro-nation called Sealand. This is something you can’t really do (the UN particularly does not enjoy this) but Bates wouldn’t back down. He moved onto Sealand with his family and defended it for 50 years—a time when Sealand was involved in fires, attacks, and a rebel government. This story is hilarious, like so many of these Criminal stories are, because it’s so hard to believe that someone could get away with this. Roy Bates died at the age of 91 in October of 2012, but his son, Michael is still maintaining Sealand and in fact is also known as Prince Michael of Sealand.
🎙️I love Build for Tomorrow—it’s a show that points out the things we used to fear but now embrace, and gives us courage to not worry so much about the things we fear today. The latest episode debunks the idea that now that we are constantly being entertained by our phones, are are never bored, and that’s a bad thing. What if, Jason posits, being bored is simply bad? To back this idea up, he talks to a scientist who explains that most people are wrong about boredom all together, and explains what it really does to our brains, and why our bodies are constantly trying to fight that feeling. Jason gives an inspiring pep talk at the end, reminding us not to feel bad if we check TikTok while our food is heating up in the microwave—we’re just occupying our brains. And that just because we are bored doesn’t necessarily mean we are using that time to have deep thoughts. This episode is really about how to be bored better, and Jason gives you permission to go easy on yourself when you find yourself checking your email when your dinner guest gets up to use the bathroom.
🎙️Battle Tactics for Your Sexist Workplace has been on hiatus for so long I assumed it would never come back—but it’s here. (The last episode was November, 2019.) Listening to the first episode, I realized this show is called Battle Tactics for Your Sexist Workplace because all workplaces are inherently sexist—it’s speaking to everyone. Eula Scott Bynoe and Jeannie Yandel are telling you off the top: your workplace is sexist. They interview a longtime server in Illinois who works in a restaurant and shares what it’s like to have a restaurant job after quarantine. Things are worse than you could imagine—she says she is afraid to tell her customers to put their masks on for fear of being denied a good tip, and points out how it’s often young women whoa are sent to the front of the house to deal with anti-maskers. I love this show for opening up my eyes to the enormous impact the workplace has on women and what this says about the culture at large.
🎙️On The Press Box, The Ringer’s Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker host an interesting conversation about sports commentary on TV and podcasts, and why the later is so much better, by identifying why we watch or listen to each, and what the talent for each has to offer. This is a great unpacking of the different ways we consume media, the future of television, where sports commentary is going, and why TV and podcasts can’t be more similar. Even if you don’t like sports, I know you love podcasts, and at the end they tackle the art of the co-host, what might be going on behind the scenes of shows with more than one host, and what we really look for when we’re trying to find a set of co-hosts to connect with.
🎙️The Documentary is doing a series on the Spanish basketball team who pretended to be disabled to win Paralympic gold in 2000. They talk to Ray Torres, one of the players on the team who was unaware of the cheating, but was punished, anyway. The accusation ruined his career. He opens up about being ridiculed for his disability when he was young, making the Paralympic team, and what it was like to be at the center of something so awful.
🎙️StraightioLab examines straight culture with both seriousness and hilarity, asking guests to bring on an example of something funny straights like. Mitra Jouhari came on to talk about Victoria’s Secret, which is not just a a topic that nails the mission of the show, but offers a lot to unpack. George Civeris and Sam Taggart are hilarious—they make you feel like you’re in on the best jokes with them. I’m obsessed with the end segment at the end when they each give a shoutout (with broey vibes) to something, anything. Mitra’s shoutout to post-it notes had me laughing aloud with her. (She has the best laugh.)
🎙️Niccole Thurman and Marcella Arguello are breaking down the week in internet and social media for us on The Scroll Down, a new show from Head Gum. This show is funny because it’s led by two comedians who could make anything funny, but the thing that makes this podcast pop is the funny segments. (Each week identifying the “main character” of social media—you never want to be the main character of social media.) I have convinced myself that it’s my duty to listen, it’s basically like getting the news. The worst-best kind. It’s getting funnier every episode, I think Niccole and Marcella have hit their stride.
🎙️Vice News Reports tells the story of an anti-child sex trafficking group known as Operation Underground Railroad, a fishy-smelling non-charity with ties to QAnon and full of misleading claims and a lack of transparency. Several OUR “success” stories have turned out to be completely false and their actions have made trafficking even worse. Reporters Tim Marchman and Anna Merlan of VICE’s Motherboard have spent months investigating and present the organization’s shadowy history. This is a QAnon conspiracy that runs deep, with MMA fighters, misuse of charity, and a mom blogger who was dragged into a dangerous situation in order to report on the OUR’s organization.
🎙️On The Secret Room, Ben interviews a woman named Rita with an almost unbelievably dark past. When she was a child, she would obsess over committing suicide—instead of playing house, she would play death. (Her parents would find her pretending to hang from a bar in her closet, or covered in ketchup.) This seems like the setup for a horror film, and Rita’s life that follows is ugly. I won’t spoil her secret, but after a life of abuse, she finds herself in in-treatment clinic, where she initially feel like she did not belong, but in the end, didn’t want to leave. Her stories of finding community in the treatment center is more colorful than Girl, Interrupted. I closely listened to Rita’s story, and could not tell if she really wants to kill herself (she says she does) or if this is just a dark thing she does to work stuff out—like very dangerous journaling. Not that it matters. Listen to The Bridge and let me know what you think.
🎙️Burn it All Down has had the best coverage of The Paralympics I have found with multiple episodes covering different angles of the games. One is a preview to the games—(in)equity in the Paralympics and why they should run during The Olympics or even before, and the rhetoric used around inspiration. They also run through all of the events from swimming to Murderball and way these sports offer unique challenges for the participants, illustrating their intensity and how truly badass Paralympians are—real athletes with the mental and physical toughness of Olympians. The team points out all the ways we fall woefully short in giving Paralympians equal treatment (it’s embarrassing and disgusting—BURRRRRRN!!!,) even though they are pretty much doing the Olympics backwards and in heels. That episode is followed up with an interview with Dr. Jonna Belanger on Paralympic Classification and how it determines an athlete’s eligibility to compete in a specific sport based on their disability, impairment and/or disability.
🎙️I was looking for a clip from Floodlines to promote on Hark for the 16-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina (it’s here,) but man once I started listening I couldn’t stop. I listened to the whole thing—again. I actually started to worry deep down in my soul that there will never be a more perfect podcast. It’s devastatingly emotional and journalistic, tells the story of the hurricane and what it did to New Orleans and its people, and it won the fucking Peabody in 2021. If you haven’t listened yet, I am jealous—you are in for a treat.
🎙️Chris and Xand are doctors and identical twins, and on their podcast A Thorough Examination, they are trying to get to the bottom of why Chris is fit and Xand is fat. What environmental and genetic factors made them so different? In the first episode, they talked to their mom to dig into their upbringing. They mentioned their mom used to make them everything from scratch, avoiding all process foods. My family still talks about how my great-grandmother would spend all day on crafting the perfect dinner. But at the end of an interview with Chris and Xand’s mom, she drops something like: “imagine what I could have accomplished if I hadn’t spent all that time making bouillon.” Mic drop. Great-Grandmother Passell, in all honestly, could have been anything or done anything but what she did do was make perfect meals for her family with love, every day. That was her life. (Was she happy or unhappy? It’s too late to ask.)
🎙️I recently was connected with Susie Singer Carter, and meeting her is like getting a jolt of fun and positivity. She’s the creator of I Love Lucifer, a fiction show about two B movie stars battling movie monsters by day, and real monsters by night. It’s funny, dark, and twisted, and feels like a comedy/horror movie for your ears.
🎙️Just a reminder about LWC Studios’s Podcasting, Seriously Fund, which helps independent BIPOC, Queer and Trans audio producers submit work to key Canada and U.S. competitions by covering their submission fees. The Fund accepts reimbursement applications on a rolling basis year-round, and an individual can submit up to $200 in awards reimbursements per calendar year. Arielle Nissenblatt wrote about it for Good Pods.
🎙️I love you!