🔥 Flamin' Hot Cheetos, spoofing The Daily, the sound of hugs, shower orange 🚿 Jordan Ligons and Haley O'Shaughnessy ⛹🏾♀️
💌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 Caroline Mincks (they/them,) a podcast creator known for Seen and Not Heard, Light Hearts, Surreal Love, Hughes and Mincks: Ghost Detectives, and the upcoming {Queer} Pride and Prejudice. They also voice act on a number of audio dramas, including This Planet Needs a Name (Zahava), The Reignition Theory (Chloe Vasker), Desperado (Zylla), Great & Terrible (Lacey Stevens,) among others, and they also serve as an accessibility consultant with a focus on access for deaf and hard of hearing audience members in podcasting.
App I Use: I mostly use Apple podcasts these days - I have this thing where I would love to use one of the podcatchers my friends talk about and love, but I'm one of those types who can't seem to switch easily to a different app. Apple is pretty intuitive for me, so I've been sticking with it for a while now.
Listening Time Per Week: My weekly listening time varies greatly depending on how much I have to use my ears for other things. Since I'm hard of hearing, active listening takes a lot of energy, and if my week includes an excess of meetings, editing, recording, etc., then I may not listen to anything at all. I try to stay at least caught up on shows my friends are working on, so anywhere from 5-10 hours a week is pretty average. I would love for it to be more, but I've been so busy making podcasts I haven't listened to as many as I'd like lately.
When I Listen: I listen on my daily walks and when I'm cooking dinner, mostly - I use my walks to catch up on nonfiction and cooking is for fiction. Tonight I'm making a quiche with a side of Inhale, a podcast by Rick Coste that I just started this morning.
How I Discover: I tend to find things via word of mouth. I'm heavily involved in the audio drama community, so there are always conversations about what's new and what's coming up! Sometimes I browse the categories and poke around to see what's there, but I'd generally rather hear from people I know and who know my taste already.
Anything Else? Provide transcripts for your podcasts, please! It is one of the best ways you can provide access to disabled audience members! I am always shouting about this on my Twitter @saucymincks, so if you don't know where to start when it comes to podcast accessibility, find me there and I'll point you in the right direction!
xoxo lp
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👋q & a & q & a & q & a👋
Jordan Ligons and Haley O'Shaughnessy
Jordan Ligons and Haley O'Shaughnessy are the co-hosts of Spinsters. Follow Jordan on Twitter here, Haley on Twitter here, and Spinsters on Twitter here.
Why is Spinsters different than most sports podcasts?
When we were developing the podcast, we wondered what the audio version of a magazine would sound like. Basketball is multi-dimensional but it’s rarely presented that way on pods. We ran with the idea: Some of our episodes are feature stories brought to us by contributors, some are deep dives on the questions that keep us up at night, and some are us talking about what happened over the weekend.
I love the podcast because I can feel your friendship. Can you talk about it?
First of all, thank you! This has been our favorite feedback, along with people saying they feel like our friend, too. We’re still early on in our careers, so having the chance to create our own thing after working together in the past still feels like a dream. Isn’t it the end goal to make cool shit with your friends? We feel really lucky. (We will say that our friendship has squashed any chance of this being an “embrace debate” sports podcast, but that’s probably for the best.)
What's a perfect example of a sports story that makes you think, "this is a Spinsters story?"
We’re both very curious people inside and outside of sports. So looking at basketball history and asking, “What actually happened here?” or dissecting misconceptions -- like our episode on why people wrongly think women can’t dunk -- are things we’d be talking to each other about even if we didn’t have a podcast. There are so many throughlines between what’s happening in the world and what’s happening in basketball. We’re always trying to find stories that reflect that.
What's the biggest thing people don't understand about women in sports?
How long do you have? It’s the galaxy brain meme: First cis men accept that women like sports. The next stage is acknowledging that we are capable of understanding them. After that is coming to peace with the fact that women can cover sports and have individual skill sets, be it analytics-heavy writing, using the eye test, or leaning on reporting. Finally comes the understanding that all marginalized genders struggle to have their voices heard in this field, as fans or as media, not only cis women. (This is important for cis women and white women covering sports to accept as well.) Sports media can be so bland! That’s what happens when everyone who covers the sport looks alike. There are many, many other perspectives out there that can contribute to spicing it up, if we only allow them in this space. If that’s you, email us! We want Spinsters to be a place for those voices.
Can you shout out some women in sports everyone needs to know about but doesn't?
We’ll shout out some of our contributors first: Natalie Weiner, Katie Hiendl, and Nia Symone. Everyone should be subscribing to the Dishes and Dimes podcast, the Triple Threat pod, and Burn It All Down. Buy every edition of Flagrant Magazine. Follow Jasmine Watkins on Twitter. Thank us later.
🚨If u only have time for 1 thing🚨
Radiolab’s The Dirty Drug and the Ice Cream Tub is a wild ride that follows a drug called Rapamycin from the soil in Easter Island to the refrigerator of a doctor named Suren Sehgal who illegally smuggled the drug to New Jersey because he believed it was the key to unlocking medical mysteries, when no one else did. He ends up the reason the drug survives and is able to make billions of dollars and prolong millions of lives kind of by reversing time, teaching us about science, the human body, and even the history of Easter Island. In the end, the doctor ends up using his own body to test the drug, becoming a martyr for proving its effectiveness. I’m leaving out a lot of important details and nuances of the story (like description of Suren as “your Indian uncle who is not your uncle” and the nonchalance of Suren’s wife Uma as she tells this incredible story) but this newsletter is already too long. Now I’m wondering WHERE IS THE MOVIE? I’m not even sure I want one, Hollywood would probably screw it up. But I can see the movie posters and a dramatic trailer is running through my head now.
💎BTW💎
🎙️If you still have been ignoring my please to listen to The Daily Zeitgeist every day, you should know that Dan Taberski was a guest last Wednesday. What now?
🎙️I was excited to about Inside the Podcaster’s Studio because I love interviews with podcasters, but I had no idea what I was getting into. This show isn’t a straight-up interview show, it tells a fully fleshed out story with beautiful audio design. It lit up my ears. The first interview I listened to was with Eric and Jeff from ItsTheReal, a show I love. (My Tink client Sophia Chang was in an episode, which means I got to witness what it’s like to record an episode of ItsTheReal in their apartment.) Eric and Jeff are charming as fuck, hilarious, and it’s amazing what they’ve built. And that’s what this episode is about. How did two white brothers from Harrison, New York end up being among the most prominent independent content creators in hip hop today? Don’t you want their secrets? They share them with John Frye on this episode, and we get to hear their story in a way that makes us feel like John is reading us a pop-up story book of the whole thing.
🎙️I’ve listening to The Daily Too with interest. It’s a spoof show that takes The Daily’s tone and format to comedic levels. Each episode is in direct response to the podcast from the New York Times, which might have you asking…whom is the scooper, and whom is the scoopee? (I’m a conspiracy theorist.) It also had me thinking, how can you make a story like what is happening with Gaza funny? Don’t worry, it has a creative way to get around being insensitive—the host is serious, its the interviews that are ridiculous. (And they’re smart-ridiculous, and actually say something about dumb political beliefs in this country that aren’t satire.) It’s shorter than The Daily, and the sweet anecdote you deserve after listening to Michael Barbaro. (No hate on The Daily, but any show that is dedicated to solely the news needs some sort of reward at the end.)
🎙️On Endless Thread, Ben Brock Johnson presented a story that I initially thought was too odd to be true—a woman confesses her daily ritual of eating an orange while she takes a shower. (In steep competition with my own ritual of Shower Belly for the world’s weirdest shower habit.) After posting her confession on Reddit, she is greeted with a swarm of people who say they do the exact same thing, which makes it officially a thing. (Note: I have not found a single person who also Shower Bellys.) And the more I started thinking about it, the more I liked the idea. Why not eat an orange in the shower? It’s clean, refreshing, and a way to treat yourself in a busy day. My only question is, can I shower belly and shower orange? It might be one weird shower habit too far. The internet is weird. (Why I love Endless Thread.) Listen to a clip here.
🎙️I recently discovered Asian Not Asian and have been blowing through the archive with delight. Fumi Abe (Comedy Central) and Mic Nguyen (Mcsweeney's) are “two Asian guys not from Asia talking about American issues no American cares about.” Each conversation is packed with legitimately interesting points of view, from people like Tien Tran, Jessica Gao, and Viet Thanh Nguyen. The episode with Roy Wood Jr. had me crying—Roy talks about how in the wake of the increased violence against Asians, he’s been having a difficult time finding a Mandarin tutor for his son. (Listen to a clip here.) Fumi and Abe have a friendship I want to be part of. (They open each episode reading the names of their new Patreon supporters and guessing their ethnicity.) This show isn’t treading lightly around the edges of political conversation, but they lead with humor and kindness and the result is a collection of unique, unforgettable moments that I swear you’ll be passing along to your friends.
🎙️Last week, Planet Money produced an episode that was catnip for the internet. Hot Cheetos tells the rags-to-riches story of Richard Montañez, who was working at a Frito Lays plant when he supposedly invented Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. It’s a feel good story we all want to believe. But shortly after they dropped the piece, I noticed this article and an edit to the episode’s transcript: After this story was published, statements made in this episode have been called into question. We are reviewing the story to determine whether any changes are warranted. A new podcast from the LA Times, The Times, dug into the controversy by talking to Times business reporter Sam Dean about the real woman who may have invented Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, and why Frito Lay was so reluctant to let go of this feel-good story. This is one of those stories that is so juicy and interesting, bringing up some many interesting points about storytelling, the search for the truth, and marketing and branding. I wonder if the plot will thicken even further. (Listen to a clip here.)
🎙️I nearly passed away when I saw that The Waves was coming back, and I wish you could have seen me refreshing my feed for practically two hours straight on Thursday morning, excited to devour the first episode. I have missed it so much. The format is totally new and not what I expected. Moving forward, each episode will feature a new pair of feminists talking about something they can’t get off their mind. On this episode, Slate news director Susan Matthews and Josh Levin and Molly Olmstead talk about working on a recent essay Slate produced called “Mr. Bailey’s Class,” which outlined the crimes of Blake Bailey, Philip Roth’s biographer who has been accused of sexual assault and grooming. They also talk to one of Bailey’s Accusers.
🎙️Ughhhh Telling Stories is so good—it’s a podcast dedicated to learning the best ways to tell stories by hearing the processes of the best people doing it. (And in each episode, the guests provides us with an audio homework assignment, which I have never attempted but still like to hear about.) In a conversation with Sarah Cuddon, we get to hear about Sarah’s beautiful pieces The paddle out and The wind phone, and Sarah’s adventuring in trying to piece together what a hug sounds like. It requires hearing a voicemail from her mom and is so sweet I almost cried. (Hear a clip here.) And it made me think about something I have not once considered. Is the sound of hugging different with my mom than with my husband? I hugged my parents for the first time in almost a year over the weekend and I couldn’t stop focusing on the sound. So even if you don’t do the audio homework assignment, think about the sound it makes when you hug people, which is hopefully something you’ll be doing a lot of for the last half of this year. Let’s make it the year of the glorious-sounding hugs! (Now is the opportunity for me to shout-out my dad’s episode of The Best Advice Show, Drive-By Hugs.)
🎙️If you are sick of 30 under 30 lists (Citations Needed had a great episode about them) maybe you will like Max Linsky’s new project on Pineapple, 70 Over 70, where Max will talk to 70 people over the age of 70, all who have knowledge to share. I was just listening to an interview with Betty White on Clear + Vivid. Everyone wants to talk to Betty White. But I think she is sort of like the only old person most of us want to hear from. It’s like, “Betty White, go OFF girl. All you other old people can shut the fuck up.” The 70 Over 70 trailer is amazing. (“Everyone talks about wanting to get back to normal when indeed normal has put its foot in our butt and said, ‘Get out of here.’” —Andre De Shields) and prepared me for something good, but not this—an interview with Sister Helen Prejean (you know her from Dead Man Walking) who talks about how being hopeful is like stocking coals of the fire banked inside of us, and what she thinks will happen to her when she dies. (Hear a clip here.) Knowing that Max is putting out precisely 70 of these episodes, I’m imagining this show like a series of an encyclopedia, each story a treasure that you can pull out at any time when you’re in need.
🎙️Unaccountable is a new podcast that shares shocking stories of victims of police abuse, focusing on one person at a time. The first episode goes into the story of Muhammad Muhaymin, a schizophrenic man who was killed by the Phoenix police in after trying to use a public restroom with his service dog, a chihuahua named Chiquita. This is a hard listen. It includes audio of Muhammad’s struggle, his last words, “I can’t breathe.” But it’s not just about the struggle. We get to hear from his sister Mussalina (“why would anyone want to kill Muhammad?,”) who paints a portrait of Muhammad as a sweet guy who loved his dog. This show would feel like the equivalent of eating your broccoli (the show’s purposes is to try to get rid of qualified immunity) if it were not for the personal touch and focus on who Muhammad was. (A lack of cell phone footage is the reason that zero chargers were made against any of the officers responsible for Muhammad’s death.) Future episodes will feature people like Killer Mike, Porsha Williams, Danny Glover, and Van Jones. So I think this podcast is taking an interesting approach to putting focus on the problem with police.
🎙️We keep seeing horrific video footage of unarmed people being killed by the police, and other acts of blatant assault. And we are promised that someone is looking into it—that there’s an internal investigation happing somewhere that will secure some accountability. Thanks to a new police transparency law, we have access to the internal affairs files that were hidden from us for so long, and KQED Criminal Justice reporter Sukey Lewis is examining these cases with the podcast On Our Watch. On the first episode, In Good Faith, we meet a woman named Katheryn Jenks who calls 911 for help and ends up in jail with a terrible dog bite. So now we have police body cam footage and an investigator's audio recordings that flesh out the story and get to the bottom of the investigation, of which Katheryn knew nothing about. We learn the goal of these internal affairs is not exactly justice, but to act as an investigative arm of HR. On Our Watch is letting us peek into a world we’ve never had access to, with great storytelling and audio that (whether you like it or not) takes you right to these terrible moments and interrogation rooms.
🎙️I know TH Ponders for many reasons, mostly for being an audio wizard who is able to carefully and beautifully unearth stories I do not see with my own eyes. Their show Accession is good enough to make me fall in love with art, something I’m not usually drawn to and have little confidence in even thinking about. (Listen to one of my favorite episodes here.) While being separated form their partner by a closed border for over a year, Ponders was busy making a queer fairy-folk tale audio drama called The Wanderer, which is about being separated from the ones who make you feel like everything is going to be ok. With an almost startling beauty, it makes you feel like you are outside and completely lost. And knowing that Ponders was alone longing for someone far away take is over the top. I actually listened to episode one again once I read that anecdote, it changed things for me. This is a fairytale that lives inside Ponders’ head, which is a nice place to be. To put it more simply, The Wanderer was just one of the nicest things I’ve listened to in a long time.
🎙️Comedians Alison Spittle and Fern Brady were on The Guilty Feminist to talk about embarrassing stories. As hosts of Wheel of Misfortune, a show all about embarrassing stories, they are experts in the field, and share some moments that made me lol (it’s not just the outrageous stories, it’s the way they talk about them) but also get deeper about why women are intended to feel more guilt than men and how some of our most embarrassing stories can also be our most feminist stories.
🎙️I went straight from The Guilty Feminist to Wheel of Misfortune and could not stop. Each episode is a curated collection of cringe-worthy stories that one might just feel shame for experiencing, but the storytellers don’t, which will make you reevaluate the punishments you’ve put upon yourself for every blooper you’ve ever made. Between the listener calls is the magic between hosts Alison and Fern. They are unapologetic and make the funny even funnier. They always have on a guest to share a tale—Lottie Bedlow of Great British Bakeoff talks about getting several terrible tattoos, Siobhan McSweeney from Derry Girls (god, I love) tells a story about drinking way too much, and the comedian Katherine Ryan tells a story about a weird thing she drew in Catholic school. This was the hardest I’ve laughed listening to a podcast all week.
🎙️Very Amusing is back, which means my entire life will be 80% happier. Carlye is better than the best antidepressant, and she talks about Disney in a way that is both enthusiastic, informative, respectful, and even critical. (She gets called out for talking trash about Olu Mel in the last episode.) And in this episode she explores the world of someone I am always talking trash apart, Duffy and his entire fucking crew! The world of Duffy (he’s supposed to be Mickey Mouse’s stuffed teddy bear?) is a mystery to me, but I not only found this episode hysterical for its zaniness, but it also gave me some empathy for the guy, I guess. If you don’t know wtf I am talking about, I still think this episode will fascinate you. How does something as strange as Duffy blow up, especially in a place like Japan? Why?!
🎙️Invisibilia opened us up to the world of Stockton’s most popular website, 209 Times, for a three-part series, The Chaos Machine. The 209 Times has become controversial for fudging facts and spreading false information that has led to the take down of progressive leaders like Michael Tubbs. (Despite the fact that the man at the helm, Motec Sánchez, seems to be aligned with progressives. His top five areas of concern for Stockton are homelessness, violent crimes, economic revitalization, small business growth, and government accountability.) Co-host Yowei Shaw goes digging for answers but everything she finds makes her ask more questions. Who is Motec, what is he trying to do, and how is he doing it? (The journalists and contributors work for free.) How big, exactly, is his grip on Stockton? (Huge.) Is Motec a troll, or is he changing the way we need to think about politicians and truth? I ended the last episode in the series not quite sure where I’ve been or where I ended up, but the story is a puzzle that will make you rethink local communities and media.
🎙️You may have noticed that The Daily and This American Life did a switcheroo—it was a great episode. (Ira Glass takes over the last part of The Daily, “here’s what else you need to know today.”) The episode, which focuses on daily rituals, kicks off with a block in New York City where, over a year into the pandemic, neighbors are still clapping for health care workers every night at 7 p.m. Another story from Cecilia Brown features audio between her and her grandmother Dee Brown, who is suffering from dementia in Covid. It feels like an audio exchange so intimate we should not be hearing it.
🎙️VICE News Reports tells an interesting slice of the Israel-Palestine conflict mess, a story about a confrontation that was captured on video of a Palestinian woman confronting a Jewish settler in her family home in occupied East Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah. (“If I don’t steal your home, someone else will steal it.”) This piece is so personal yet so symbolic of the fighting in Gaza. You may have heard the audio of this exchange, but the VICE News piece gives all the context. Hear part of the story here.
🎙️TED has a new show, Body Stuff, hosted by Dr. Jen Gunter, who promises to clear up the most popular urban legends we are taught to believe in surrounding our health. The first episode addresses that whole “you need 8 glasses of water a day” thing. It’s so interesting to hear the history of this myth, and who’s behind Big Water. This podcast makes health myths fascinating and fun, and can probably actually make us healthier, as a little icing on the cake.
🎙️ I love you!