🐴 Horse girls, they called me Hapa, straight culture, Fabio, sacred texts, juggalos 🤡
💌Podcast The Newsletter is your weekly love letter to podcasts and the people who make them.💌
Bonjour!
Today is Monday, August 23. There are 275 days until I go on my next Disney cruise. If you don’t have time for the whole newsletter: not enough people know about this, this made me lololol, here’s some fantastic fiction for you.
This week we’re getting to peek into the listening life of Ted Woods. Ted started his professional radio/podcasting career in 2006 as Production Director at CSULB's student run station KBeach.org. In 2008 he moved on to Westwood One where he produced/engineered long form radio for stations across the country (weekend shows that we sent out on CD to stations from LA to NYC.) His favorite show from that era was 'The Beatle Years', a weekly Beatles documentary based from flagship KRTH in Los Angeles where they had a brief stint as the #1 show on Sunday Mornings. When Westwood One expanded their podcast presence in 2018 with the WWO Podcast Network, Ted was tapped to lead the in-house production team as Director of Production; our lean/mean team produced upwards of 25 episodes a week--my favorite being 'The Jim Ross Report'; a top rated pro-wrestling show hosted by legendary "Voice of Wrestling" Jim Ross. After leaving WWO in 2019, he produced a local morning show in San Diego ('The Cantore Show'--KFMB) before moving on to work as a freelance podcast engineer/sound designer/producer. This year, he and his wife founded SaxtonWoods Creative where, among other upcoming projects, they produce podcasts for National Geographic ('Overheard at NatGeo' and the Ambie nominated 'Trafficked with Mariana VanZeller'). He’s also been working as a radio producer for Apple Music Radio, working on their Hits station's morning show hosted by the lovely Jayde Donovan.
The app I use: Apple Podcasts (mobile/desktop/TV)!
Listening time per week: Average must be around 7-10 hours/week depending on day-to-day production schedule.
When I listen: I love to listen while jogging (generally average about 22 miles/week on the road) which can seem strange to some. Additionally: my ears are usually busy during a normal workday spent fussing about with audio production but occasionally I do have busy work that allows me to enjoy my daily news or long form shows in the background.
How I discover: Like most, I rely on word-of-mouth recommendations from friends and family...I also find new shows via some of my favorite newsletters (PTN; Podnews; Inside Podcasting; Bello Collective; Podcasting, Seriously).
Anything else? Shout out to the Podcast Movement team and community in general! I love how this medium has brought together such a phenomenal group of like-minded creatives. I've learned so much by attending several Podcast Movement events and am eternally grateful to Dan Franks, Jared Easley, and the entire PM team for all the opportunities their friendship has afforded me!
xoxo lp
ps If you are pleased with Podcast The Newsletter, please spread the word.
👋q & a & q & a & q & a👋
Caleb Hearon and Shelby Wolstein
Caleb Hearon and Shelby Wolstein are the co-hosts of Keeping Records. Follow Keeping Records on Twitter here and Instagram here, Caleb on Twitter here, and Shelby on Twitter here.
How did you get the idea for Keeping Records?
Caleb: Shelby and I had been thinking about starting a podcast but we really wanted to have a complete concept. We just felt like purely shooting the shit with our friends wasn't interesting enough to have longevity. So we were tossing around ideas for a few months and then I randomly learned about the Golden Records through my friend Chandler Classen who was studying them in grad school. I immediately was fascinated by them, called Shelby, and the idea came pretty quickly. Jake and Amir at Headgum had some great ideas for it, too, when we pitched the concept to them. Then they hooked us up with Mike Comite who is truly a world-class genius audio producer and he has taken the concept to a level that we could've never imagined on our own.
In trying to explain the concept to people who don't listen to the show, can you explain what your guests are trying to do?
Shelby: Our guests are curating a little slice of our world to give to whatever intelligent life is out there.
What is the recipe for a perfect item to be sent into space?
Caleb: The perfect item to send to space is something that a guest really cares about. It's not a concept that does super well with flippancy or irony. We want to talk about the shit that genuinely moves people, makes them laugh, and feels representative of life on Earth from their vantage point. And of course we want to make it fun and funny but the best submissions start with sincerity.
Shelby: There's also sort of a few directions an item can go. A warning, an olive branch, purely informational, etc. I think the important thing is that it feels representative and the guest cares about it and can speak to its importance to them. If they care about it, how it speaks to the rest of the world will typically translate. But what message it will give to the aliens is something we often think about when someone gives us their submissions.
The number one reason I love Keeping Records is because of the two of you! Listening makes me want to join your friendship. Do you go way back?
Shelby: We met four or five years ago in the Chicago comedy scene. And then we moved to LA together in the middle of a pandemic and saw only each other for a year and a half which translates to about 30 years of friendship.
What do each of you bring to the table? How are you different, how are you similar?
Caleb: I think me and Shelby are both very naturally curious about people. We want to know what makes people tick and that's a very shared quality in us. We also find pretty similar things funny, grew up in the midwest, are queer, did comedy in Chicago at the same time, and then moved to LA together. So there's a lot of overlap. I think where we differ is that Shelby does a lot of research before episodes. She digs into the guest's submissions and really tries to understand what they're bringing before we record. My main goal is to show up and cause chaos or start drama.
Are you, like, obsessed with space or something?
Shelby: Space is actually really scary.
I laugh every time I hear you say "Record Heads." Who are the Record Heads? What is your relationship with your audience like?
Shelby: We truly love everyone who listens to the pod. We message with people a lot on the Keeping Records Instagram, and sometimes on Twitter as well. Our favorite thing is hearing what other people would put on their records, or if something new popped into their head to delete or add, etc. One time someone told us they met strangers at a bar in Texas and they got to know them by playing "what would you put on your records" and Caleb and I both sobbed.
Fill in the blank: You will like Keeping Records if you like __________.
Caleb: Homosexuals riffing on the culture with their little friends.
If someone is new to the show, which episode should they start with?
Caleb: We actually lucked out with our first episode (Holmes Holmes) being a pretty exemplary look at what this podcast is. Samantha Irby and Beth Stelling are two of mine and Shelby's favorites from an all around perspective.
🚨If u only have time for 1 thing🚨
At Podcast Movement, I heard Hina Wilkerson ask a question at Twila Dang’s presentation on BIPOC podcasting and I grabbed her afterwards to learn more about her, and I’m so glad I did. Hina is part of Salted Logic, an indigenous, women-owned
media collective that recently partnered with the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center to bring their Youth Access program to a group of 8 students from Hawai’i. The students were asked to have hard conversations about language, identity, and culture centered around the word ‘hapa,’ a Hawai’ian word that means a person who is partially of Asian or Pacific Islander descent, but some believe is now being missused. They Called Me, Hapa is a 3-part series that lets us in on these interviews and tackles the word ‘hapa’ from all angles. It also feels like a workshop in itself, posing important questions about Hawai’ian culture, identity, and representation. It asks us to consider the weight of what we call ourselves and whether or not someone can “feel” Hawai-an enough. I gobbled down every second and listen to many sections more than once. Hina and her co-host have shined a spotlight on the student voices, while weaving it all together with important context so we get a fuller picture. (Yet I feel like this podcast could have been 30 episodes long, not 3.)
hey.
If you don’t subscribe to Arielle Nissenblatt’s Earbuds newsletter and podcast, do it now. Arielle cuts straight to the chase when it comes to helping people promote their podcasts (she is one of the best follows on Twitter—free advice for you, plus she is hilarious. This tweet went viral!) This week in Feedback with EarBuds she spotlighted Unravel: A Fashion Podcast, which unpacks and challenges the hegemony of white, Western designers within the canon of fashion history.
💎BTW💎
🎙️On the 11th day of each month, Pineapple Studios will be dropping a piece of The 11th, each episode taking on an entirely new shape, length, and style. An installment may be 5 minutes, it may be 75 minutes. It may be one episode or three episodes. It’s a fun way to challenge the way we listen to podcasts and break out of our expectations for what one can be. On August 11, we got a 4-part episode called The Inbox, where storyteller Emily, who was up for tenure at her university, was falsely accused of harassment. When she opened up about it, she received emails from people in the same boat. What do these stories have in common, and what can these people do when nearly everything they do to defend themselves seems like an attack? It’s a wonderfully produced series and will turn the idea of what a sexual harassment accuser is on its head.
🎙️Slate’s One Year has been telling stories from 1977, and for their final episode exploring the decade, they interviewed Maria and Rosie Rubio, the mother and daughter who drew attention for finding an image of Jesus in a tortilla. The Rubios were the laughing stock of the world (they were mocked on The Phil Donahue Show and Oprah) but on One Year, describe what being the center of that whirlwind was really like. Finding a tortilla with Jesus on it seems like winning millions in the lottery—the attention that follows can have a deeply negative impact on an entire family. This is an interesting story about belief, race, and the media, and whether or not we are able to protect our own stories.
🎙️StraightioLab promises to unpack straight culture, but what you get is much more than that. George Civeris and Sam Taggart are improvisors who take you on mini joke journeys that make you feel like you’re upside-down in the rabbit hole, in the best way. They bounce off each other perfectly, and their segments lend to some very strange conversations. The Josh Gondelman interview, on its surface, is about the many ways straight men decorate their homes with movie posters, but the conversation veers wildly off its path. Love the hysterical segment at the end that allows everyone to give a bro-y shoutout to something (like: the hours between 10-11pm.) I have been shoving this podcast in everyone’s faces all week.
🎙️Each year, more than 3,000 Americans are imprisoned every year in other countries. Many of them are wrongly convicted, and many never go home. Marcia Clark, The Marcia Clark, is telling some of these stories in Convicted: Across Borders. The first episode is about Alan Gross, who in December 2009, was found guilty (after awaiting 14 months for a trial) and sentenced to 15 years in prison for crimes against the Cuban state. These stories force you to wonder what seemingly-harmless acts could land you in jail abroad, how you would navigate a foreign legal system, and who you could reach out to in order to seek justice. I would listen to Marcia Clark talk about plumbing.
🎙️You Must Remember This’ Karina Longworth has teamed up with Vanessa Hope to tell the love story of power couple Joan Bennett and Hollywood producer Walter Wanger in Love is a Crime. Together, Joan and Walter invented the category of film noir, with Joan as femme fatale. (Vanessa is their granddaughter.) Right off the bat it feels cinematic—like film noir played out in real life. In the 1951, Walter shot an agent who was sleeping with Joan. Love is a Crime (the inspiration for the Billy Wilder film The Apartment.) This is about the murder but in the first episode, we get hints of much more—violence, PTSD, and sexual fluidity. When she was young, Vanessa was told that her grandfather “shot the balls off her grandmother’s lover in a parking lot in Beverly Hills in 1951.” It wasn’t until later she realized the trauma she has carried. I love Karina alone on You Must Remember This, but I think this personal addition of Vanessa could make this show an unforgettable classic. The voice cast includes Zooey Deschanel, Jon Hamm, and Mara Wilson.
🎙️The Gathering of the Juggalos was last week, and for Switched on Pop’s summer festival series, Nate Sloan and Charlie Harding interviewed Nathan Rabin, author of You Don't Know Me but You Don't Like Me: Phish, Insane Clown Posse, and My Misadventures with Two of Music's Most Maligned Tribes (a book I really enjoyed!) to deliver a profile of The Insane Clown Posse that you might not expect, by going into their ethos, what their music really means, and the sense of belonging and acceptance that the ICP community fosters. (He calls it a “very nice cess pool of depravity.”) Understanding where the music comes from and what is actually going on at The Gathering speaks to the power of subcultures and examines our need to assume we know them. The truth about them is more boring than what you’re probably imagining—and that’s fascinating. (Bonus listen: Ke$ha, yes that Ke$sha, interviewed Shaggy 2 Dope and Violent J—the guys behind the masks—on Kesha and the Creepies and I loved it.)
🎙️If you’ve been listening to PEOPLE in the ‘90s (which I hope you have—Jason Sheeler and Andrea Lavinthal pick up a 1990s issue of PEOPLE magazine and interview the person on the cover, like Paula Abdul) you know that Andrea and Jason have been chasing Fabio for almost a dozen episodes. The quest could be a mini podcast called Chasing Fabio, about the elusive star. They were having a hard time getting to him but for the final episode, they reveal that they have found him and share an interview with him. It’s charming for many reasons—Fabio does not do a lot of interviews but he comes across funny and warm. But the best part is hearing, at the beginning, Andrea and Jason share the audio of their preparation for the interview. They are so nervous! (“Glasses or no glasses? What is he wearing? Should I sit here? No, you sit here.”) It’s adorable and an honest look at the nerves that go into interviewing someone famous—something I don’t think we always get. This podcast was unique, the hosts very funny, and it broke many of the rules of most traditional interview shows.
🎙️I have been binging the tiny and beautiful episodes of Ochenta Stories, which has been asking artists, writers, creatives and podcasters from around the world answer the question: “What do you want to hear when this pandemic is over?” The result is a collection of voices recorded in living rooms and closets and bedrooms and on balconies, all over the world, in 15+ languages. (Each story is told in English and the original language.) There is something comforting and beautiful about hearing the stories in the language I don’t understand, especially after I heard it in English. It’s a listening exercise that gets you to listen close, for cues and familiar words and emotions you know are there. This is a show you can binge for hours. It’s like flipping through a picture book and randomly entering the lives of strangers with beautiful stories to tell.
🎙️The Villain Was Right is a podcast where comedians Craig Fay and Rebecca Reeds unpack a movie, trying to determine who the real villain of the story is. This episode about Dirty Dancing was fun if you’re a fan of the movie, it’s always amusing to hear seriously funny people walk you through a movie. But it truly pointed out the very and slightly-off things that exist in this cinematic world, things I had never considered before. (Like: Patrick Swayze breaks his car window the second he is unable to open his car door without trying any other doors or considering doing anything but punching a hole through the window. Perhaps a red flag?) The villain, it turns out, is nearly everyone. I also listened to an episode on 10 Things I Hate About You, which unpacks the intense relationships between father and daughters, and finds villainous intent in Cameron’s mission to get the girl.
🎙️I listened to Robert Evans’ show about the possibility of a Civil War in America It Could Happen Here in December 2019, a time that feels rather like a paradise now. It was terrifying because with his shows Behind the Bastards, After the Revolution, and Worst Year Ever, Robert is able pull from his knowledge of world culture, politics and history to draw startling conclusions about where we are headed. When Robert says “It could happen here,” I believe him. Robert and his producer Sophie Lichterman have started their own progressive podcast network, Cool Zone Media that will also house Q Clearance: The Hunt for QAnon, Hood Politics, the original podcast Assault on America, written and co-produced by Novel, that examines the events of January 6, 2021. (And more.) It Could Happen Here has been dormant for awhile but is picking up where it left off with It Could Happen Here Daily as part of Cool Zone Media, which Robert promises will chronicle “the journey of the current collapse of the known and birth of a new unknown.” The first focus is climate change.
🎙️The Experiment had a rare interview with Aséna tahir Izgil, a 19-year-old Uyghur who escaped China and is now living with her family in the US. In China, Uyghurs are an ethnic minority who are often imprisoned in labor camps by the Chinese government. Now, in the US, Aséna says she feels like a grandma—the things her peers talk about and worry about (TikTok) are from a very different universe than what she experienced living in China. (Genocide.) She describes how she and her family escaped, and the gratitude she feels for living in America, where she has the freedom to speak her opinions. And she tells a story of a teacher in China to tried to do just that, and then shortly after disappeared. Aséna’s father is Uyghur poet and author Tahir Hamut Izgil, and the episode shares a conversation with him, where he speaks about his friends who have gone missing, and one of his poems. This is a clear window into a world that is very secretive and closed off.
🎙️Rebecca Lavoie, whom I raved about in the last issue for being a podcast tastemaker and my go-to resource for true-crime stories, was on The Waves to talk about the evolution of true-crime by exploring pre-Serial and post-Serial true-crime. She said something that sort of blew my mind—that many “true-crime” podcasts aren’t. If it’s two people just chatting about a murder, it’s a chat show. Real true-crime involves research, original sources, and hard facts. Rebecca and The Waves producer/true-crime author Cheyna Roth discuss why we tend to think women love true crime more, why they really might, how the true-crime frenzy has changed our culture, and the sexist nature of the genre—how shows led by men are often considered more serious, while shows hosted by women are more likely to be considered fluffy.
🎙️The Forward recently launched A Bintel Brief, a podcast that brings back the advice column for Jewish Americans that began in 1906. It’s a fantastic show and on Joy and Conversation, host Daniel Osborn published a great conversations with the hosts, Ginna Green and Lynn Harris and the Forward’s archivist Chana Pollack about the history of A Bintel Brief, what makes it a Jewish podcast, the the emotional intelligence required to host it. Daniel has a great understanding of why this column, and now show, is such a necessary outlet for Jews, and he both looks at the column’s history’s past and its future as an advice column built on tradition but made for the modern ear.
🎙️The 2021 Olympic games will be remembered for a lot of things, but perhaps most of all for the racist treatment of Black women athletes. These stories were popping up all over the place (swim caps, Sha'carri Fichardson…) but on Therapy for Black Girls, Dr. Joy Harden Bradford distilled what the Olympics were like for Black women, and how the Olympic committee’s supposedly neutral rules are harming Black women specifically. This is the episode to listen to in order to understand the economics of Black women in sports, why Black women quit sports and athletic activity in general, trauma, and the idea of the strong Black woman archetype. These weren’t tiny whoopsie daisies, they were huge systemic problems part of economic racism, and it’s worth taking a step back to see how they are all part of the same huge, racist machine.
🎙️The American Scholar’s Smarty Pants explored the relationship between girls and their ponies on All The Pretty Horses, a conversation with Halimah Marcus, editor of Horse Girls, an essay collection that features the writing of Carmen Maria Machado, Jane Smiley, T Kira Madden, and more. Even if you weren’t a horse girl (a girl who went through the possibly never-ending horse phase—I was,) you’ll be fascinated to follow Halimah as she draws the lines between girlhood and wild animals. We often think of horse girls as white, thin, rich, straight, daughters of privilege. But these essays reflect all sorts of different experiences girls have with horses, and the important thing these animals bring to the experience of anyone growing up as a girl. This is one of those podcast episodes that sparked my interest and made me want to read the book badly, opening me up to an idea that I had never considered: that horses had allowed me to buck the expectations of being feminine, and that it was an important step in my upbringing.
🎙️You should listen to this entire episode of This American Life (there is a wacky story about animal-rights protesters that is almost too crazy to believe) but if you’re short on time, skip to the Weeknight at Bernie’s segment to hear the story of a town in Alaska and its neighborhood drunk, who happens to be a Moose called Buzzwinkle. (Trigger warning: things do not end well for Buzzwinkle. But maybe they do. It seems like he lived a colorful life.)
🎙️I will be speaking on a panel at Podcast Maker Weekend, the UK’s biggest podcast festival on Sept 11. The panel is going to be so much fun I think I might barf again (throwback to Podcast Movement 2020!) I will be playing a little game with Ella Watts, a podcast producer at BBC Studios and an audio fiction expert. Ella will present a fiction show she loves and I will come back with a show in response. “If you like this, you’ll like this, too!” So I’ve been diving into more fiction and absolutely loved Midnight Burger, an audio drama about an American diner that is traditional in most ways except that it can travel through space and time, and is trying to escape the universe, which is trying to kill it. (Think of the burger bar as a Tardis.) It’s funny as shit (so many one-liners I found myself repeating to my husband, who was not listening and did not get the jokes) and the music is perfect for the scene. There’s also something so comforting about the world that’s been created, here. A diner full of people who are connected by this strange circumstance, and all the people they meet along the way.
🎙️I loved this episode of Mortified, which featured a reading of a woman’s childhood erotic fan fiction for Phil Simms. I didn’t know who that was, either, and the specificity makes it even weirder. It’s almost too awkward to listen to but trust me, it’s too funny not to.
🎙️I love you!