🐳 Lethal whale constipation, dollhouses, Dr. Phil sux, love poems 👩❤️💋👨 Evan Stern 🗺
💌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 Anne Baird (they/she,) COO of Hug House Productions, where they manage the production of urban fantasy fiction podcast VALENCE and its making-of documentary Scoring Magic, as well as the marketing manager and line producer for Radio Drama Revival.
The app I use: I started with Apple Podcasts in 2012 when I was only listening to Welcome to Night Vale and maybe one other Dungeons & Dragons podcast. But once I started picking up new shows and listening regularly around 2017, I switched to Pocket Casts and haven’t looked back. There are some small things I dislike about the app and other features I’d love to see added, but so far nothing else has been able to convince me to switch to using it for my every-day listening.
Listening time per week: [insert nervous laugher here] I hate being left alone with my thoughts and love to multitask, and as a result I am almost constantly listening to podcasts. I’m also one of those crazies who listens on 1.3x speed with silences trimmed out (But only for nonfiction! Don’t worry, sound designers who spend extra time adding meaningful pauses!) because there just aren’t enough hours in the day to listen to everything I’d like to listen to.
I work from home, and have a lot of time to myself, so I usually end up listening to between 5 and 10 hours of podcasts each day. I’m currently subscribed to over 200 podcasts, with 177 of those being ones that I listen to regularly and the majority of that 177 being nonfiction shows that update at least once a week, which means the answer to listening time per week is… all the time? Just… so many hours.
When I listen: As seen above, I am always listening! I listen when I’m getting ready for work, cooking meals, working, driving, playing video games… if it’s a task I can do without required listening, I’d rather be listening to a podcast and I probably am listening to one. I’m actually listening to BBC World Service’s new podcast The Lazarus Heist right now as I write this.
How I discover: My discovery process really depends on the type of podcast I’m looking to find. If I’m looking for fiction, I usually know about each new show as it comes out through being so involved in the fiction podcasting community and knowing most people working in indie fiction. I find some nonfiction shows through friends and acquaintances, but most of those come from searching for something specific on Google or scrolling the Discover tab on my Pocket Casts app and seeing what’s trending.
My current favorite topics are anything to do with technology and cybersecurity -- if you know of any new ones, send me a message on Twitter @annecbaird so I can add it to my queue! I need more!
xoxo lp
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👋q & a & q & a & q & a👋
Evan Stern
Evan Stern is the host and creator of Vanishing Postcards. Follow him on Twitter here, and follow Vanishing Postcards on Instagram here.
I'm always surprised how professional this show feels, yet at the same time, homemade and from your heart. How do you strike that balance?
I know what I like in a podcast, and quality is important to me- both in terms of sound, and focused storytelling. At the same time, I don’t like it when authenticity is sacrificed in favor of sanitization. The first person I interviewed for this show was Angel, the bartender at Austin’s ancient Dry Creek Cafe. She was a tough cookie, and incredibly hesitant to talk at first. But when she found out I was okay with cussing, she let out a belly laugh, cut loose and let the f-bombs fly. I, and I think most people, appreciate that level of rawness.
How did Covid change the show?
When I first started, I could show up at a bar unannounced and just start talking to people- which is exactly what you’ll hear in my first episodes. I rarely told anyone I was coming in advance. Understandably following COVID, I couldn’t approach people that way, and many of the kinds of places I initially visited fell off the table. It forced me to do much more in the way of outreach and pre-reporting, and I had to get a little more creative in the places and subjects I chose to cover. That said, I feel the storytelling actually deepened because of this, and have a wonderfully diverse season as a result.
Who is the most memorable person you interviewed?
Too many to name. Many like San Antonio restaurateur Diana Barrios Trevino have become friends, and cowboy poet Hoot Gibson was such a character I had to give him his own bonus episode. That said, the 99 year old Normandy veteran Johnnie Plsek was unforgettable. I met him by pure chance at Sefcik Hall, a historic Czech venue where he proudly told me one night he’d recently “danced with 32 different women.” He wasn’t able to celebrate his hundredth birthday at the hall as planned due to COVID, but his neighbors staged a distanced drive by parade for him, and understand he hopes to mark his 101st at the hall this May since they’re now back open!
How did the people you interviewed receive you? Was anyone hesitant to be interviewed?
I found that most people were sincerely eager, honored and appreciative of the chance to share their stories and talk about their work or places that surrounded them. There were few no’s, but the hardest one I got was from Arkey Blue, the country singer/owner of honky-tonk Arkey Blue’s Silver Dollar in Bandera, TX. That probably made the segment more fun as his refusal became a part of the story, and his fans, bartenders and regulars all lapped up the chance to talk about him. As I understand, those who know Arkey and the bar have gotten a real kick out of the portrait that emerged, and received a nice message from his wife on facebook following publication.
What do you hope Vanishing Postcards does for people?
Obviously, I hope Vanishing Postcards will touch and entertain anyone who listens. Beyond that, I hope it causes people to realize that culture and art is everywhere, and in many cases is born in places that get the least attention. Detroit gave us Motown, Clarksdale Mississippi gave us the blues, and the border has given us conjunto music and some of the richest folklore you’ll find in this nation. Additionally, while I do not think that anything we’ve experienced in the last five years should be normalized, in this most polarized of ages, culture is one of the rare areas that provides opportunity for agreement, and the sharing of stories engenders empathy.
🚨If u only have time for 1 thing🚨
This Ramadan, Misha Euceph released a story a day that highlights the voice and life of a different Muslim person. Rappers, astronauts, comedians…Malala! You all know I am a podcast power consumer, but I have not been able to keep up with them all. They are so glorious, each one so perfectly packaged and moving, I cannot rush them, and I will be finishing up the collection throughout the year. I did dip in occasionally, and the last was one I listened to—the story of Anousheh Ansari, the first Muslim woman in space. Anousheh talks about the sadness she felt returning to earth—is beautiful and devastating, the best one I heard. (But I feel like I say that about all of them.)
💎BTW💎
🎙️When I say I watched some of the Ambies last night, I mean I watched the part where Jack O’brien and Miles Gray hosted the pre-show. I was loving the shit out of it, but I am such huge fans of these guys (and Jacquis Neal, who was interviewed) so you can ignore my opinion. I am biased. I think it is important to note that out of 23 awards given, more than half were from professional studios: Wondery (5,) QCode (3,) NPR (2,) WNYC (1,) BBC (1.)
🎙️Planet Money’s TikTok, courtesy of Jack Corbett, rules. But there is a question as to whether or not their Flamin’ Hot Cheetos episode is accurate.
🎙️Behind the Bastards had a two-part episode with Jamie Loftus exploring the underbelly of the world Dr. Phil has created. (Titled: Dr. Phil Is Even Worse Than You Think And You Probably Think He Sucks.) I love some of the dumb things Dr. Phil says, “that horse won’t go out to the pasture to roll around in the hay by himself!” or whatever, and when I ask my mom for advice, she almost always comes back with, “you know what Dr. Phil says about this?…” So I tend to avoid these kind of exposés. But Robert and Jamie are so funny and so perfectly point out how dangerous what the non-doctor is doing, how he cares much more about ratings than actually helping people, and exploits upon often poor people who don’t understand what being on the Dr. Phil show will do to their lives. And he’s doing this to children. And will put people in damaging situations to get those ratings. The terrible thing is, some of these salacious Dr. Phil topics are things I’m drawn to, like a teen who was on the show for an episode—no joke—called, “I want to give up my car-stealing, knife-wielding, twerking 13-year-old who tried to frame me for a crime.” What’s missing from these Dr. Phil episodes is the context, and I end up feeling guilty anytime I even hear about them. But Jamie and Robert provide the real conversations that should be happening around these stories, which is more interesting than the stories themselves.
🎙️I was immediately drawn to this episode of This is Uncomfortable because of the description—a girl named Diana, from Ohio, moves to the big apple to take an unpaid internship with Harper’s Bazaar, which highlighted the way magazines exploit unpaid laborers, and the lawsuit Diana filed against them. In 2007 I moved to New York for an internship that was paid, but I lived in the exact frightening, intense world that made The Devil Wears Prada look like Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood. I worked for a parenting magazine, so replace “handbags” with “strollers” and you’ve basically got my story. I had an exact replica of one of the stories Diana tells—I was blamed for losing something important, and after almost throwing myself onto the streets to be murdered by a taxi (I went to the bathroom and prayed to God, ‘please, make something just happen, I do not know what. If I get fired, they’re going to send me back to Ohio’) the Editor-in-Chief found the document in question and went on with her day, while I remained shell-shocked for weeks. In my story, I ended up surviving (mom magazine editors are much more forgiving than fashion ones) but Diana reports her episode from her home in Ohio, with a baby, which was my precise nightmare. This was a chilling listen (for me) but also drives home an important point. When someones says they had an internship, they should probably be saying, “I was privileged enough to work for (almost) free.” This system ends up rewarding the wrong people and stops so many talented people from getting a job in New York.
🎙️Poetry Unbound ran two episodes back-to-back—one from Vivee Francis, How Delicious to Say It, where she lists a bunch of beautiful words, but her favorite among them is the word she has for her husband. The next one is from the husband in question Matthew Olzmann, who offers us his poem Mountain Dew Commercial Disguised as a Love Poem. Get a room, you two, you’re freaking adorable. I don’t love poetry and I don’t love love stories, but this was beautiful and I think my heart grew a size, which means that I’m still pretty Grinch-like, now my heart is only one-size too-small.
🎙️I feel like there should be a Buzzfeed list or something that says “What your favorite You’re Wrong About episode says about you.” Because I would like to know that about everyone, and myself. My favorite episode is one from last year about Courtney Love, and this one on the Dixie Chicks comes close. Their controversial opposition to George Bush and the the 2003 invasion of Iraq made them a target for the right (lots of their fans.) But Michael and Sarah take it back to before the controversy to explain the history of the band and their relationship with the music industry in general. This fact (and humor)-packed episode covers this extreme cancellation, the intense censorship and patriotism going on at the time, country music and politics, antifandom, and how this incident as the first internet cancellation. I can’t believe how much I learned along the way just trying to figure out how the Dixie Chicks got so screwed.
🎙️You Must Remember This is back for a new series on celebrity gossip by focusing on the stories of two trailblazers in movie journalism who invented and dominated Hollywood gossip in the 20th century: Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper. Both Louella and Hedda worked for completely corrupt organizations, and both had backgrounds that made them seem unlikely candidates for breaking the glass ceiling. In episode one, Karina Longworth follows their lives and careers and talks about how they fought the system within, sob sisters, yellow journalism, and the origins of “behind-the-scenes.” It’s so good and juicy, and it’s exactly what I feel like getting into right now, even though I had no idea until I heard it. Karina always does this to me. My dad and I always talk about how we never would have thought our attentions could be held for 10 episodes on Polly Platt (for some reason) but I ended that series wanting even more. I became a Polly Platt expert, and I’m ready to get my degree in Louella and Hedda, too.
🎙️Home. Made. is a new podcast from Rocket Mortgage (I KNOW HANG WITH ME) that explores stories and the home. Branding podcasts are almost always terrible, but this one is great. This show cares more about story than branding—I basically don’t even know what Rocket Mortgage is. Is There a Doctor in the Dollhouse tells the incredible story of a doctor named Kwandaa Roberts who always loved dollhouses. She made a dollhouse for her daughter but was like, “she is going to fuck this thing up” so she made one for herself, and it’s actually beautifully designed. The dollhouse went viral (garnering attention from Buzzfeed, “Good Morning America,” HGTV and Joanna Gaines.) And when the pandemic hit, Kwandaa decided to realign her work life with her passions. (Kind of like what Manoush Zomorodi is urging people to do with her new project in Zig Zag.) I love this weird story about someone following their passion and accidentally finding success. (It’s a bigger example of what my hero, my mom, does with I Love Italian Movies and Barbie Snack.) Another Home. Made. story tells the story of a woman who is given a second chance at life as a child, and the adventure she goes on to track this person down years later, which ultimately restores her hope in humanity.
🎙️Joy and Conversation had an episode that made me sincerely so grateful for this medium. I don’t know where else I could hear a Jewish scholar talk about Maurice Sendak and how Sendak’s work is a product of his queer, Jewish, immigrant, and traumatic experiences. Guest Golan Moskowitz appears to be 21 years old from his bio photo, but I would have pegged him for someone who has been around for quite some time…I cannot believe how he was able to inform and and excite me about Sendak’s In the Night Kitchen. It reminds me of my favorite Latin teacher in high school who used to read booming descriptions of the Roman Forum to the class aloud, in a language I didn’t really understand. But he would say, “Laurena, can you hear the chariots charging?” And I would say yes because I was pretty sure I could. Anyway, wow. Where we were? I was totally captivated and want to re-read In the Night Kitchen Now. And re-listen to one of the best podcast interviews ever, Maurice Sendak talking to Terry Gross at the end of his life.
🎙️I keep seeing teensy windows into the world of Uyghurs being held in Chinese internment camps, but it’s been hard to find a story that isn’t cloaked in speculation and fog. I understand why, but Throughline’s Five Fingers Crush the Land was the best (worst?) and most detailed thing I’ve heard. This piece gets to who the Uyghur people really are, and NPR foreign correspondent Rob Schmitz gets some chilling details from a few people who have been detained in these Chinese re-education camps, that include cryptic writing on the walls, interrogations, and children singing "if you're happy and you know it clap your hands."
🎙️Science Diction had an episode I didn’t think I’d like, but I ended up listening to it twice. It’s about ambergris, a substance that ends up washing ashore on beaches and was often used as a substance to get perfume scent to stick. But those people slathering it on their bodies did not know that it’s kind of like whale poop, but not quite. It’s more like a whale’s lethal constipation. This sent me into a black hole of researching whale shit, but I didn’t just love this episode because it taught me something new. Christopher Kemp, author of Floating Gold: A Natural (and Unnatural) History of Ambergris, gives a poetic description of how the ambergris gets from whale to beach. Set to music, it put me into a bit of a meditative state.
🎙️I used to have a vague idea of how the idea of how prohibition is misunderstood, but this episode of Gastropod clarifies the whole thing. It wasn’t the party pooper of the century, it was part of a worldwide social-reform movement led by people like Leo Tolstoy, Frederick Douglass, Mahatma Gandhi, and Chief Little Turtle. Political scientist Mark Schrad and historian Lisa Lindquist-Dorr join Cynthia Graber and Nicola Twilley to break down why Russia was trying to get people to drink to the point they were losing their pants, literally, and what Tolstoy was fighting back against.
🎙️Jessa Crispin hosted a valuable conversation over on Public Intellectual about the politics of meat, with food writer Alicia Kennedy. It’s a conversation that I don’t think enough people are having—about the joy of being a vegetarian, that it isn’t just about sacrifice. And these announcements of restaurants adapting vegetarian menus isn’t new, even though when famous white chefs do it we herald them as change-making innovators in the space. I just listened to an episode of How To Save a Planet episode that talked about the beef industry, where Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Alex Blumberg point out that 20 years ago, 5% of Americans were vegetarians. Can you guess how many are vegetarians today? Still 5%. Adopting a plant-based diet is one of the biggest steps an individual can take to reduce their own carbon footprint, but trying to turn everyone into vegetarians doesn’t work. Back to Public Intellectual—Alicia unpacks this, with a discussion about why people decide to go plant-based, and everything that’s wrong with the marketing and PR behind vegetarian messaging.
🎙️I have found it really hard to get around the fucked up way the media is covering the Palestine/Israel conflict, but Even More News had the episode I needed to understand the legalities behind the evictions in Sheikh Jarrah. Citations Needed had the best episode about the most common ways the media twists the truth in delivering news. (Debunking the 5 Most Common Anti-Palestinian Talking Points.)
🎙️Hidden Brain has such an unusual story that feels a little from out of left-field, but had me totally engrossed. It’s the story of Jane, who, probably because she has social anxiety?, ended up going on a long ride to play a role in another man’s life story, even when it meant pretending to be his bride. This is one of those stories that will drop your jaw lower and lower at each turn. How did this story become so unhinged? How did Jane get in so deep? I felt like I was watching a horror movie, screaming “GET OUT!” at the protagonist. This story does feel like a horror story.
🎙️The second season of Confronting is covering the Columbine High School massacre. Amy Over, a survivor of the shooting, is host, and in episode one remembers April 20, 1999 in great detail. It’s impossible not to go through that day with her, trying to remember where you were. I was also in high school, and so much of this story (Amy trying to run out of the building in platform heels, because that was the thing) hit me hard. Amy has her own unique story, but that’s just one of the many. Amy talks to survivors, investigators, classmates, and reporters, bringing an almost Rashoman-like treatment to the story we all know. (Speaking of Rashoman, I’m obsessed with that podcast project and wish Hillary Rea was still making it.) The second episode focuses on one of the teachers who worked so hard to hold together the Columbine Rebels that he was unable to hold together his own family. I’m no Wondery expert, but I tend to think that even when I’m enjoying Wondery shows, it feels like the storytellers are very distant from the story. Not so with this one. (Or the new UK podcast from Wondery, British Scandal, which is packed with personality.)
🎙️Astray is covering such a strange phenomenon, India Syndrome, or what happens when spiritual seekers go missing in India. Each study focuses on someone who went to India searching for enlightenment, most of them never came home, some end up dead. Their families share stories of the strange behavior they witnessed from afar. Each of these is an unusual mystery, unlike any missing persons story you hear about in the United States. What happens to these people? Where do they go in their minds and souls that causes them to abandon everything they know, often believing they are Christlike or beyond the physical world? The episode dedicated to Charlie Martinelli was stressful to listen to because Charlie’s mother tells in great detail how she spoke with Charlie after he had spent time in India and found himself under the wing of a guru. In a FaceTime video, he looked like a stranger, had possibly burned holes through his hands, and believed himself to be immortal. She snaps into action and somehow is able to bring him home. (Hear a clip here.) And after listening to so many of these stories (I have inhaled each one) I know how unusual that is. So we get to hear from Charlie, and it’s a pretty happy ending. But that’s not the case in most of these episodes. A recent episode argues that India Syndrome should perhaps be renamed Seeker Syndrome, and describes in detail the dangers of Datura (I got lost in a Datura rabbit hole,) one of the drugs that makes many of these seekers appear to completely lose themselves.
🎙️In light of the violence in Palestine, Kerning Cultures re-released Jerusalem Calling, about The Palestine Broadcasting Service which aired from 1936 until 1948. It was technically the British national radio station of Mandate Palestine, but inevitably became a powerful tool that connected the Arab community, keeping culture, religion, and language alive. It’s amazing story that speaks to the power of radio and how cultures are continued through war. I did not know this story, but even if you do, this episode offers exclusive audio from the radio station, and you get to hear from the daughter of one of the voices behind the Palestine Broadcasting Service. This episode is a treasure.
🎙️Armchair Expert had an episode with Prince Harry, which I had to had to listen to, and it felt a little promotion-y, Harry was clearly there to talk about mental health. (Would love to hear other reactions to this episode, I felt like he only talked 10% of the time.) But it was interesting to hear him speak more candidly than I’ve ever heard him talk before. There was an interesting moment where he talked about how cool and good (sike) it is to be a princess. However I much more enjoyed an earlier episode with Seth Rogen, who was there to promote his memoir Yearbook. There is a hilarious snipped where he talks about how he used to love to go antiquing, is obsessed with design now that he has money, but the fact that the house in Knocked Up was truly and 100% based on his own home at the time.
🎙️Clever Creatures has such an interesting structure—each episode starts with a random word, and host Jason Gots gives himself one day to write short story and a song inspired by it. He then has a conversation with a guest using the word as a launching point into an always surprising discussion. I will tune in no matter who the guest is, but was excited to see that the first episode of the new season is with Neil Gaiman. (The word is: thaw.) Each of these episodes is a beautiful piece, and Neil talks about rediscovering books he loved as a child, and the relationship between book and reader.
🎙️Switched on Pop always makes me appreciate music I never thought I’d like (I have said this before and Nate…I think it’s Nate…says that in this episode, too.) A great example of this is the latest episode on Willow Smith, who has a new emo-slash-pop punk (think: Paramore) track starring the drumming of Travis Barker. Charlie and Nate outline Willow’s career, and the influence her entire family has had on music culture. (Did you know Willow’s mom Jada used to be in a nu metal band, Wicked Wisdom?) It’s easy for me to dismiss celebrities, or even more so, the children of celebrities. But breaking down the work of the Smith family makes it clear that they are each moving along in the music mode with their own unique mission.
🎙️I love you!