🏠 Haunted houses 👻 Rick Rolling 🕺 blue balls 💙 crow funerals ⚰️
💌Podcast The Newsletter is your weekly love letter to podcasts and the people who make them.💌
Bonjour!
Today is Monday, October 11. There are 233 days until I go on my next Disney cruise. If you don’t have time for the whole newsletter: This is what I want to see more celebrities doing, this is what I want to see more brands doing, and I’m begging you to listen to this.
This week we’re getting to peek into the listening life of Marika Brownlee, Headgum’s Director of Marketing. She’s now focused on helping shows on the network continue to grow and engage with their community. Marika is also a producer and reluctant co-host of the staff-led podcast/panel show/waking nightmare, The Headgum Podcast. When she's not doing podcast things she enjoys seeing an obsessive amount of theatre, reading comics, watching motorsport (a recent addiction), and posting bad memes on Twitter.
The app I use: I've jumped around over the years but most recently have settled on Spotify since I use it for music.
Listening time per week: My podcast listening took a dip at the start of the pandemmy and hasn't really recovered until recently—I’m only back up to 1-3 hours a week unless it’s for work.
When I listen: I wish I was someone who could work and listen to podcasts at the same time, but alas! I mainly listen during commutes (hence the dip), but I don't love having to pause an episode every 20 minutes so I generally save a pod for when I'm on a long subway or bike ride.
How I discover: Word of mouth, in-app recs, newsletters (like this one!), Twitter, and good old-fashioned research. I do a lot of searching for shows to potentially cross-promote with and the recent additions of “You might also like” & “Listeners Also Subscribed To” sections on Spotify & Apple Podcasts are always great for finding similar shows or guest appearances. In the height of my podcast listening, a lot of shows I added to my queue came from hearing one of my favorite hosts recommend a podcast or following a guest I really enjoyed to other shows they appeared on.
xoxo lp
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👋q & a & q & a & q & a👋
Ashley Carman
Ashley Carman is the Senior Reporter for The Verge and lead writer for Hot Pod. Follow her on Twitter here.
How did you get introduced to the audio space?
As far as journalistically, it happened somewhat randomly. An editor came into Slack with a tweet about NPR’s RAD technology and was like, “someone should look into this.” That someone ended up being me. After that story, I realized I wanted to pursue this beat a bit more, and around a couple months later, Spotify made its first podcast acquisitions with Gimlet and Anchor. I was the reporter assigned to that story, and the ball kept rolling from there.
As far as personally, I’ve always been interested in audio. I hosted a radio show at my college station; worshipped the radio hosts I listened to in high school; and co-hosted my own podcast at The Verge called Why’d You Push That Button?. It makes sense that I ended up deeply covering the space.
How will Hot Pod change?
Hot Pod won’t change much! I love the format Nick established, and he set a great precedent for the newsletter. I’m always looking to break more news or add a different perspective to an ongoing conversation, so that’s really the only way it might change — just more breaking news!
Nick already operated like this, but it’s worth reemphasizing that although the newsletter is called Hot Pod, I plan to cover the audio industry widely, which includes social audio platforms, as well as smart speaker content and podcasts. I might widen the scope ever so slightly. And finally, because Hot Pod now lives under The Verge, we have teams here who specialize in product reviews and how-tos, so I imagine we might find some way to collaborate eventually.
Can you share any podcast predictions for 2022?
It’s a little early for predictions, but I’ll give it a shot. I think we’ll start seeing more discussion about show exclusivity and whether that’s something that benefits programs or even makes much business sense. I’m sure I’ll be poking at Facebook and Amazon entering the space and how that’s going, under the broad theme of fragmentation and siloing of platforms. (I have a feeling it might be going better than I expected!) Then, there will always be more talking about how podcasts and audio creators make money in the space — are subscriptions working out, for example? And is it worth the extra time and labor involved?
What speed do you listen to podcasts?
Hah, I listen on 1X!! But if I’m listening for non-entertainment purposes, like for work, I can usually handle 2X speed. I listen to podcasts when I’m cooking, cleaning, or walking, so I try to slow down and enjoy the moment. It’s not about consuming as much as possible as fast as possible for me.
Do you have a genre of podcasts you like the most?
Given that I’m a business and tech nerd, I tend to listen to shows in that vein. I also usually have some narrative shows in my arsenal that I’m waiting to enjoy until I’m taking a longer trip and have time dedicated to binging.
What’s your favorite beat to write about when it comes to podcasting? What excites you?
I enjoy writing about what audio creators are experiencing. You can see much of that come through in various stories, like my most recent one about Clubhouse’s Creator First program lacking sponsors, my feature from June about the ”hype house from hell,” and one I published in August about Apple Podcasts presenting major problems for podcasters on the platform. The people who live the life of podcasting and are trying to navigate these platforms and ecosystems regularly are who I learn from the most. Hearing their stories is so important.
If you were going to have a podcast, don’t worry about the logistics or whether or not anyone would like it, what would it be?
I would love to do a food podcast! I have no idea what the concept is, but I imagine it’s something about trying new restaurants, or going really specific, like reviewing all the bagels in Brooklyn.
If podcasts hadn’t caught on, what would you be writing about?
Prior to covering podcasts, I wrote about dating apps, independent hardware companies, and the broad world of creators. I imagine I would have continued doing that if audio hadn’t come my way.
🚨If u only have time for 1 thing🚨
I am as sick as everyone of clueless celebrities starting podcasts, but Seth Rogen is doing something different. It’s Storytime with Seth Rogen, a richly produced show that highlights the stories of others. Rogen is asking, “do you have a story to tell?” And then he helps tell it, with the help of executive producer and editor Richard Parks III, of Richard’s Famous Food Podcast. Parks’ touch is evident in the first episode, capturing his signature madcap, cartoonish style. And the first story had me smiling the whole way through—it begins with a comedian who remembers having a warm interaction with Paul Rudd, and goes backwards from there. Rogen attempts to find out how Rudd got so nice, by tracing a celebrity who showed him kindness (Dan Wilson from Trip Shakespeare and Semi Sonic,) and then how Dan got so nice, in turn. It’s a Russian nesting doll of kindness. And so much of Rogen is in this, his genuine laughter reminds you that he cares. That’s something I don’t get from a lot of these celebrity podcasts. So I don’t think I’ll think of Storytime as one. It’s a great storytelling podcast, and the host happens to be a celebrity who is respecting his medium.
hey.
✨Last week I gave a talk about cross-promos for Podcast Movement University. If you missed it, you can view it here. (You have to sign up to watch, but it’s easy and you should do it, anyway. You’ll get access to a wealth of interviews with people who will help you understand the podcast space.
✨The second issue of Podcast Marketing Magic came out last week, and it was dedicated to how to find people to work with to help your podcast grow. At the end, I have a section where I ask people to write in with their show info if they want to swap with someone, and then I try to match them up. I’ve already been able to match two people, so I think it works. And the more people who sign up for a swap, the better and more robust the system will be. Sign up your show here.
✨This week on Feedback with Earbuds (get the newsletter here,) Arielle Nissenblatt is spotlighting LOUD, the true story of Raggaeton and the young people from Jamaica, Panama, Puerto Rico and beyond who beat the odds, refused to be quiet and created an irresistible musical culture that has kept the world dancing.
✨Michael Hobbes is leaving You’re Wrong About.
✨Tom Butera a new company called CompanionCast that's fully dedicated to companion TV content.
💎BTW💎
🎙️I am fascinated with brand podcasts, and I love what House Beautiful is doing with Dark House. Editors Hadley Mendelsohn and Alyssa Fiorentino are looking at “the cross roads of true crime, interior design, and the paranormal.” They’ll be interviewing authors, set designers, mediums, and paranormal investigators about houses with inhabitants who have never left. Hadley and Alyssa are dynamic hosts, and in each episode they tackle one house, its history, and the design that feeds into its haunted story. In the first episode they talk about haunted houses in general and why they take up such a big part of our cultural imagination. The second episode is a tour of the Villisca Axe Murder House, where two adults and 6 children were found brutally murdered in their beds in 1912. The house has become a tourist spot for visitors to Villisca, Iowa, and people have long studied the house and its architecture to determine who committed the murder, which is still technically unsolved. That episode wraps up with an interview with the production designer of The CW’s Supernatural who talks about how the Villisca house has influenced the designs of houses in TV shows we watch today. This podcast forges an interesting pathway into true crime, by looking at something often overlooked—the places in which the crimes occurred. h/t Ashley Lusk! And if you are interested in haunted houses, listen to this episode about how to sell one from Criminal.
🎙️When Anita Hill accused Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment, the world seemed to turn upside-down, and many people seemed to forget that it was not Anita on trial, but Clarence Thomas. Anita was villainized, and the story was somehow about her yet at the same time completely out of her hands. Because of Anita is retelling the story with all of the context we missed the first time around. The first episode has a fascinating interview with Kimberlé Crenshaw that unearthed things about the trial I didn’t even know about (I was like seven.) Today, which marks 30 years of Dr. Hill’s accusation, her conversation with Dr. Christine Blasey Ford dropped and it is wow, wow, wow. The series is only four parts, so cherish each one.
🎙️Endless Thread is back with a series all about memes, starting out with a story about the meme that started it all, followed up with two episodes that continue to deepen our understanding of meme culture. One is an interview with the current Scumbag Steve, and we hear about the origins of that famous photo and in a spirited conversation with his mother, how being meme famous impacted Steve’s life in big ways. Then, the history of people Rick Rolling each other—how the Rick Astley video stuck and what it says about us when we share it. This well-reported series has in-person videos and lots of funny reflection from Amory and Ben. And together these stories are telling us something important about us and technology. The internet can be such a negative place (as shown in Steve’s story) but it can also be a place where people let their imaginations run wild. Silly as they can be, memes humanize everything, including technology. Learning about the meaning behind the image made me more optimistic about technology and social media.
🎙️Radio Rental is back with two eerie stories about a) a man who witnessed something that is unexplainable to him today and b) a woman who had a terrifying interaction with the police. The second story is about fear more than anything, and how we let it build up inside us. Radio Rental is one of my favorite spooky shows because we get to hear scary stories directly from the people who experienced them, set to rich audio design. So many of these stories (like Laura of the Woods) have stuck with me for years, and I’m excited for more.
🎙️This American Life featured a few of the most embarrassing stories I have ever heard, one of them brought to you by Jane Marie of The Dream. I want your jaw to drop as hard as I did, so I won’t spoil the surprise, but it involves Jane Marie overdressed at a charity ball doing something that humiliated her, along with everyone who was in her orbit (including some people she was trying to impress.) This story was followed up with the kind of embarrassing story shared by Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy, that isn’t funny but acutely painful. There is a poop story and a nudity story that, when I retold them to my husband, caused him to freeze in his tracks with a look or horror glued on his face. I advise everyone to listen to them all and decide which one makes you feel the most nauseous. It will tell you something about you.
🎙️Heavyweight announced it’s going to Spotify, and the world is mourning. It seems a bit of a tease that right before they make this move, they release one of the most beautiful episodes, a story with John Green (of The Fault in Our Stars and The Anthropocene Reviewed.) When John was young he witnessed an event so horrifying it made him question God. It completely changed his life. Now twenty years later he’s being connected to the person at the center of that story, which allows for an interesting conversation about faith and prayer. Heavyweight going to Spotify could be the show that breaks the camel’s back. I think people (like me) would follow it to hell and back.
🎙️Spooked is another great show that I would do something death–defying to get to. Ordinarily it’s behind Luminary’s pay wall, but they threw us some DELICIOUS crumbs this week with Flora and the Fox. A woman suspects there is something off about her cousin and discovers she was right—and that her cousin has been overtaken by a dark force. It’s a good old fashioned exorcism story that will change the way you think about exorcisms.
🎙️Bodies reporter Hannah Harris Green brings us along to West Virginia, my birthplace, and also the place that has had more overdoses per person than anywhere else in the country. She introduces us to Lill, a resident who is (illegally) working to make it safer for people to do drugs by helping them get clean syringes. Listen along as Lill takes trips to help drug users, and comes face-to-face with the police. Their heart is in it, we can hear it in their voice. Their perspective on drug use might feel counter-intuitive to some, but they’ve thought about this more than anyone and is experiencing what drug policing can do to a community.
🎙️Oh my god finally someone is talking about blue balls. (You can hear me on Death, Sex & Money bemoaning the fact that we weren’t having enough honest conversations about them.) Science Vs. invited You’re Wrong About’s Sarah Marshall and a gang of doctors to answer the questions: do men think blue balls are real? Are they real? I have always been skeptical but this episode gave me the real answer, which was a real “aha” moment for me. The most interesting part is hearing about the money and research that has gone into researching things that impact men. But blue balls is something that has been left for us to wonder about—almost nobody is researching it. Listen to the only credible blue balls podcast episode I have been able to find, and I have been looking. It’s a good one.
🎙️If you’ve never been invited to a crow funeral, you might not know they exist. On Ologies, Alie Ward interviews Corvid Thanatologist Kaeli Swift about the intelligent lives of crows and the ways they mourn their dead. This episode provides enough eerie crow facts to terrify a seven-year-old for years, but also a funny description of the way Kaeli goes about conducting her research. (It involves her sneaking around the woods wearing a mask.) This episode reminded me a bonus reason to love this show: yes, you always expand your knowledge of the natural world, but you also get to hear scientists nerd out about something they love, and to get to know them as people. If we could all find something that excites us as much as these scientists and their subjects, we’d be lucky.
🎙️You’ll want to get out your pencils and notepads for this episode with PodNews’ James Cridland’s on Bubble Trouble, where he gives a good update on the state of podcasts and whether or not we are looking at a bubble about to burst, and what happens when listeners have too many choices when it comes to shows. What’s the longtail of of shows when there are 4.2 million to compete with, and apparently 2 new shows being launched per minute? (I recently tweeted that I have seen so many podcast pitch letters for this here newsletter and my two notes are that a) the competition is stiff and b) so many of them are Spotify exclusives.) Will Page gets James to enlighten us on Mr. Joe Rogan’s and the visual experience of his show. James talks about exclusives in Audio, and the problem with offering some people ad-free for a price, when at the end of this podcast, there is a promo for an exclusive, ad-free version of Bubble Trouble. You love to see it.
🎙️If I had to bring one pop culture podcast on a deserted island, I think it’d be Galaxy Brains. It’s never just a straight-up conversation about something we’re watching, it always takes the conversation to a much deeper level, offering theories or takes that require an extra layer of thinking. Their philosophical episode about Seinfeld with Good One’s Jesse David Fox made me miss the show, and consider it and all of the characters in a new way. Dave, Jonah, and Jesse go character by character, explaining how they all fit into Jerry’s world, treating them as characters of their own universes, and even posit that the whole show is kind of a figment of Jerry’s imagination. They also talk about how Larry David’s influence on the show, and the different directions Seinfeld and David were pulling it in. This episode reminded me to relisten to this great episode from Twenty Thousand Hertz about the brilliance of the Seinfeld theme song. If you find yourself rolling your eyes at Jerry Seinfeld and annoyed at how his show has aged, give these episodes a try and let me know if you still feel the same way. I found myself with a new appreciation Jerry Seinfeld’s sitcom. (My appreciation for Seinfeld has been growing since I moved to New York City. I swear I have experienced every plot line in Seinfeld since I moved here.)
🎙️Sounds Profitable is the podcast you need to be listening to if you have a podcast or are simply interested in what’s going on behind the scenes. On it, Bryan Barletta takes us through the ad tech weeds. It’s always been very, well, technical. I often find myself relistening to certain parts, or having to sequester myself in silence as I make my way through his companion newsletter. This week he made the announcement that for season two my girl Arielle Nissenblatt will be co-hosting, which indicates exciting stuff coming up. Arielle makes everything seem fun and surmountable. She strikes a perfect balance with Bryan and Arielle’s presence will make Bryan’s valuable advice even stickier than it already is.
🎙️On Working, the costume designer for Only Murders in the Building Dana Covarrubias, enlightened Isaac Butler about what goes into every scrap of clothing you see on the show. I loved getting to hear about the way these people work, from storyboarding to people watching (which sounds like the fun part) to stopping at nothing to source the perfect shirt for Steve Martin. Learning about the costumes deepens the story of each character, a wink to Charles Haden Savage’s repetitive nature, or Mabel Mora’s protectiveness of herself. If Working turned into a podcast that only interviews costume designers about their work, I’d listen every time. (But I do listen to Working every time anyway, and you can hear some of the best moments of the show with this Harklist that June Thomas made.)
🎙️Pushkin launched a new show called Bad Women, all about the victims of Jack the Ripper. These are stories we’ve been ignoring for more than a hundred years, a time when we’ve chosen to focus on the criminal. So Hallie Rubenhold is here to remind us that the victims were people with real lives. I love the format so far. The first episode focuses on so much of what we think about Jack Ripper is wrong. For the second episode, it feels like you are seated in a theater to watch the curtains rise on the scene—it’s a atmospheric description of the neighborhood of Whitechapel in the late 1800s. It is in the third episode we start to really get to know the women. How did someone like Polly Nichols, who at one point seem to have it all, end up mixed up with Jack the Ripper?
🎙️After six years, Jon Stewart is back on TV with The Problem with Jon Stewart, and has released a podcast of the same name. The first two episodes went in depth about our treatment of veterans. I enjoyed the deep dives and interviews interspersed with funny segments. (In the second episode, Alexa Loftus wrote some steamy porn based on the idea that our Department of Defense loves money so much that they would definitely fuck it.) There are definitely some talented comedians in this writing room, including head writer Chelsea Devantez (of Celebrity Book Club!)
🎙️I love you!