🍿 Movie theaters, public pools, killer clowns, QAnon, Woodsy 🤡 Sharon Mashihi 👪
💌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 Matt Lawell, my friend from high school! Matt and I ran cross country together at Western Reserve Academy, and I’ve been fortunate to keep in touch with him. He is an over-achiever, he always has been. (Subscribe to his newsletter Three Road Games.) And he provided me with an abundance of information about his listening habits, so much that I could not publish them all in this newsletter. See everything here. (I urge you to visit this page, Matt has lots of great recommendations.)
Pictured: Not So Superintendent, This Day in Esoteric Political History, The Daily, The Michelle Obama Podcast, Dads Read Princess Stories, The Constant, Ongoing History of New Music, Wind of Change, Trivia Regulars, AFW Unrestricted, All-American: Tiger Woods, The Distraction, California City, Red Web, Little Stories for Tiny People, All Songs Considered, Every Little Thing.
The app I use: I am a Spotify man, and beyond that, a Spotify mobile app man. I listen almost exclusively on my phone.
Speed: I used to listen at 1.2 speed but developed such a backlog that I upped it during the first weeks of the lockdown to 1.5. Should have made the change years ago.
When I listen: I move forward, either walking or running, at least an hour every day. I don’t listen to anything during my runs but I do wear my right Bose earbud on every walk. I also listen during my 20-minute commute (almost no one goes into my office these days, so I don’t mind going in two or three days a week) and whenever I’m working on something that doesn’t require much reading or writing focus.
How I discover: I have stumbled across so many shows over the last few years — a good friend turned me on to Doughboys, an acquaintance of a friend told me about Conrad Thompson when he was still running only one wrestling podcast a week, I will occasionally tune in to podcasts advertised on other podcasts, sometimes I’ll just treat the Spotify search bar as Podcast Google (recent favorite searches include the 1904 Olympics, Colonel Sanders, and codebreakers) — but my best bet these days is Podcast The Newsletter. You have at least two or three new series or episodes every week that I want to listen to and download while I’m still reading your blurb. (I need to remember to read the newsletter more often but Mondays and Tuesdays are my busiest days and sometimes it slips too far down by Wednesdays. I’ll be better in the fall. Promise.)
Notes: Just want to shine a light on some recent limited series that have really impressed me. I finally listened to Wind of Change, in which Patrick Radden Keefe of The New Yorker keeps asking people who might know: “Hey, remember the 1989 Scorpions hit Wind of Change? The soundtrack for the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Soviet Union? Yeah, did the CIA actually write that?” (By the end, I wondered whether the podcast itself might have been written by the CIA.) … My 4-year-old just started ballet and it is so much fun to watch her dance. Maybe gymnastics will follow in a year or two. If they do, I’ll remember ESPN 30 for 30’s Heavy Medals, Alyssa Roenigk’s and Bonnie Ford’s brilliant biography of Béla and Márta Károlyi and their affect on generations of young female gymnasts in Romania and the United States. I started listening on an evening walk in August and just kept walking, I didn’t want the story to stop. … Emily Guerin hooked me with her visit into the unfulfilled desert vision of California City. I wanted more but genuinely feared for her safety the last episode or two. This was definitely recommended in Podcast The Newsletter, so thanks, Lauren.
I listen to podcasts to learn, to be entertained, and for work (I write about the golf course maintenance industry and run a small bar trivia company on the side). I think that reflects directly into my queue, which includes 123 episodes as of Wednesday afternoon. There’s just too much good stuff out there right now.
xoxo lp
ps If you are pleased with Podcast The Newsletter, please spread the word.
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Appearances’ Sharon Mashihi
Sharon Mashihi an audio artist, screenwriter, and story editor, and the creator of Mermaid Palace’s Appearances (trailer is here! comes out tomorrow!,) an elaboration and response to her award winning personal documentary, Man Choubam, which won the Silver Prize at Third Coast Audio Festival in 2018. Sharon has been a longtime editor at The Heart. She was also the editor of the CBC fictional series, The Shadows. Follow Mermaid Palace on Twitter here.
How did you get introduced to the audio space? Have you always loved it, before podcasting?
As a fan, This American Life was my gateway drug. As a maker, when I was in my early 20s, I used to carry around a tape recorder in my bag. Initially, I wasn’t planning to make anything out of my recordings. I just liked what happened to a conversation once the recorder was on the table and everyone knew it was rolling.
How did you get involved with The Heart?
I met Kaitlin Prest in 2012 and we instantly became collaborators and friends. I used to give her feedback on episodes of Audio Smut, which was a slightly grittier precursor to The Heart. Then once she started The Heart, it seemed only natural that we'd continue working together.
Tell us about Appearances!
Appearances is a little hard to describe. It's a show about a woman who's just like me, but isn't me. This woman's name is Melanie. Just like me, Melanie is Iranian American. And just like me, Melanie is desperate to have a kid. Also like me, she has some psychological and logistical blocks to becoming a mother. The series follows Melanie as she tries to understand her family better and make her way towards motherhood. We never really know if we’re meeting Melanie’s family as they actually are, or if we’re meeting them through Melanie’s skewed perspective of them, as voices she carries around in her head.
How much of the show is fiction, and how much of it is memoir?
The show is 6 ½ out of 10 true.
The Heart is known for pushing the boundaries for what we hear on podcasts. Will Appearances do that?
I play a lot of the characters on the show, so that’s new. And the sound design has a homemade aesthetic about it that’s not like a lot of other things out there. Personally, I don’t think about pushing boundaries as much as I do about specificity. I put my deep raw specific heart into this show. And so, it’s very “me.” I don’t know if that pushes a boundary exactly, but it does make Appearances specifically uniquely itself.
What’s more important, story or sound?
Story!!!!
What’s something listeners don’t understand about podcasts and what goes into making them?
A lot of effort goes into making podcasts, but I think listeners probably know that. What I didn’t know before I started working on Appearances was how much making a podcast could feel like painting. That it could be like coming back to a canvas again and again, one day adding blue here, the next day adding a little red. I don’t mean to sound pretentious when I say this. Maybe when I say “paint”, we should imagine a five year old finger painting on construction paper. But before working on this show, I just never knew how iterative making audio could be.
If I may go even further and mix some metaphors… Making this show was like playing in a sandbox! It was like dancing in the ocean! It was like going to a contact improv jam session, standing on the sidelines trying not to get hit!
What do you hope Appearances will do for people?
I hope it’ll hold their attention. I hope they’ll have a little spark of delight each time an episode shows up in their feed. It's my very greatest wish to make something listenable, something that’s not a chore to listen to, something that feels like a real treat.
Women in podcasting are constantly being criticized for their voices. What is your relationship with yours? How would you describe your voice?
I’ll be honest and tell you that I hate my reflection in the mirror, but I adore the sound of my own voice.
🚨If u only have time for 1 thing🚨
I am used to being on the edge of my seat from Maria Hinojosa’s storytelling. Her work on Latino USA is some of my favorite audio journalism. On The Confessional, Maria tells a shocking, heartbreaking story of her own about her efforts to make a documentary of a family crossing the border and how the project went horribly wrong. Like, imagine the worst thing that could happen. It’s worse than that. The way Maria tells the story (the first time she’s telling it) had me hanging on her every word. And she tells it all, from how it made her feel like a failure as a journalist, one who caused harm, to the backlash that she was forced to make her way through.
💎BTW💎
🎙️I have been subscribed to City of Women, part of the Google Podcasts creator program and PRX, since March and had lost hope in ever seeing episode one. I had sort of forgotten about it. When I saw the first episode in my feed, I felt like I was being visited by a ghost. It didn’t feel real. But it is! And it’s excellent. City of Women explores the absurd lengths women go to have fun and feel free in their city, from the streets of Bangalore. Episode one talks about going to the movies as an act of rebellion, of comfort, of individuality and self-care. It celebrates the magic when you feel when you go to the movies alone—it’s almost as if you are the star in your own film. The audio bits on this show really draw you into the story, the theaters, the streets, and the collections of voices used to tell the story. It’s a good example of how you can turn a kind of ordinary idea (like going to the movies) into a beautiful piece of art.
🎙️The Gatekeepers is a new podcast from DAMEMagazine that unfolds the who, what, where, when, and why of white people seeking to block access to public and private spaces from people of color. The first episode was insert chef’s kiss, with a history of public swimming pools, how they went from integrated to segregated to just totally fucked up, and how that led to many Black families being uncomfortable in water. I cannot wait to see with other places this show uncovers.
🎙️It was a podcast match made in heaven (or whatever you believe in) when American Hysteria’s Chelsey Weber-Smith appeared on You’re Wrong About to talk about killer clowns. Chelsey is one a world renowned killer clown expert (I just made that up) and the way they are able to tell a story of moral panic from killer clown anecdotes is hypnotizing. This episode is a blast, packed with every weird clown story and fact you have ever wanted to hear (the shocking origin of creep clown music) and lots you would rather never have heard. And of course Michael and Sarah up the fun with their wit and knowledge in the field of moral panics.
🎙️I recently just finished The Ballad of Billy Balls, and loved it, and urged you to listen to it, and I hope you did. Your guide to this batshit crazy story was iO Tillett Wright, who had a very batshit crazy story of his own. But telling the story of Billy Balls, the story of his mother and the murder of the love of her life, was crucial in understanding himself. Jameela Jamil interviewed iO on I Weigh, and we get so much deeper into iO as a man. (He’s since transitioned.) Consider this the most recent episode of The Ballad of Billy Balls.
🎙️Unfortunately for many of us, our public education systems passed over a thorough teaching of The Green Book, even though technically thanks to the Oscar winning film and Lovecraft Country, we may technically know what it is. But the podcast Driving the Green Book is giving us the full ride. Award-winning BBC broadcaster Alvin Hall and social justice trainer Janée Woods Weber invite us on their road trip from Detroit to New Orleans, collecting personal stories from Black Americans along the way, using The Green Book as a guide. But wait! There’s more. Driving The Green Book has integrated Apple Maps so that listeners can use the story as an audio guide, traveling the path of The Green Book in their cars. I don’t have a car but if I did, this would be the perfect vacation for a podcast nerd like me. But for now I’ll listen to it on my couch or scrubbing dishes, and that is fine. The stories Alvin and Janée have collected are so good the last episode I listened to, episode two, nearly made me say almost aloud, this is why I love podcasts! Hearing voices from the original drivers of the Green Book as they share their incredible memories feels like a gift.
🎙️One of the valuable things I’m learning listening to There Are No Girls on the Internet is that women of color are constantly being robbed of the credit they deserve for their ideas, hard work, and innovations. This story featuring Nandini Jammi strengthens this argument. Nandini co-founded Sleeping Giants, an activist movement that tries to persuade companies to remove advertisements from conservative news outlets. Nandini’s white male co-founder gaslighted her out of the movement that she helped to build. She left Sleeping Giants, but not because she wanted to. I cannot imagine how heart-breaking this would be. I would have ground my teeth out of my mouth. It’s a frustrating lesson for Nandini (she’s learned a lot,) and other women, particularly women of color, who find themselves moved to the footnotes section of their own projects. And it’s also an example of what is happening to women of color across all fields.
🎙️Getting Curious with Jonathan Van Ness has an episode about being a better cat owner, and it’s full of helpful information but also kind of fun to listen to even if you don’t have aa cat. Jonathan shares a lot about his life and the lives of his cats—it’s clear he loves them more than any cat-lover could. His distress over the mental health of his cats is so sky-high it’s pretty adorable. Jonathan is personally invested in the interview which is what gives it so much character. It’s an episode about cat care, but also about Jonathan and the wild amount of empathy he has for his pets.
🎙️One of the most joyous moments of my week was listening to Tink clients Cam and KarenLee Poter (Sex Talk With My Mom) on High and Mighty with Jon Gabrus, talking about cougars. Cam and KarenLee are hilarious on their own, and throwing Gabrus into the conversation makes for an over-the-top combination. If you’re a Gabrus fan, like I am, you’ll also get to learn a lot (too much?) about Gabrus’ porn habits. They have a pretty smart conversation about why people love cougars, and how humiliating it is for Cam to have his mom so open about her sex life.
🎙️One Strange Thing is a show that mines local news events for weird, local stories that never made it to mass media. The Owl explores the backstory of Woodsy the Owl, the federal mascot who was born in 1970s to help deliver important public service announcements. (“Give a hoot, don’t pollute.”) The weird part: an alarming number of people can specifically remember designing the mascot in a nationwide contest when they were kids. It almost seems like there is some weird Mandela Effect thing going on, here. How do all of these people have this memory? The are all pretty salty about it—many of them, to this day, demand credit for drawing Woodsy into being. It really does seem like Woodsy was developed by a marketing company, but the fact that so many people recall a different history is…a strange thing.
🎙️Reply All has published the best QAnon story I have come across. PJ’s investigation takes us to QAnon’s humble beginnings and he goes on to unearth some theories about who Q really is. PJ was also on Love It Or Leave It, talking about some bonus stuff that didn’t make the Reply All Episode.
🎙️This episode of Into the Zone opens with an interesting story about a punk rocker in East Berlin, which at the time was a terrifying thing to be. Punks were not welcome in pubs, despised by citizens loyal to the state, harassed by GDR authorities, locked up in prison, and targets of the Stasi secret police. This episode is about what it was like to be punk in East Berlin, to strive for freedom when freedom was illegal. But this show never stops there. Host Hari Kunzru posits that if we don’t have privacy and are living under constant surveillance, we aren’t living. Being denied privacy is not a small thing (to respond to people who say, “I don’t mind if you search my bag, I have nothing to hide!”) And the effects of living without privacy are long-lasting. Today Germans are hesitant to share personal information because of the fear that has stuck with them from a history of living in an unfree state.
🎙️Another episode about privacy landed in the 99% Invisible feed—The Address Book, about the history of putting address numbers on homes, and our initial resistance to it. It was advertised as a tool used for society’s convenience, but at the time people were aware that it was a way to monitor and invade upon their privacy. The history of addresses then moves on to explain how we name streets, a tool cities use to segregate cities.
🎙️One of my favorite shows to come out recently is Bad People, a show that pairs comedian Sofie Hagen and criminal psychologist Dr. Julia Shaw to look at common threads between true crime stories and what drives us to crime. Sofie has another show, Made of Human, and interviewed Julia. If you’ve been enjoying Bad People like I have, it’s something you’ll enjoy. These two truly seem like friends, despite their differences. Julia talks about her obsession with curiosity and being bi. This interview made me love them both even more.
🎙️I was struck by the strong connections Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Alex Blumberg made between the environmental movement and the Black Lives Matter movement on How to Save a Planet. There is an awkward moment where Alex, as a white man, doesn’t see things as clearly as Ayana does. But then unfolds an interesting discussion about what the environmental movement can learn from Black Lives Matter, and why if white people want to save the world, they must master anti-racism first. I couldn’t stop thinking about how white people spend a lot of time outdoors, hiking and bird-watching, but don’t actually do much to help the environment. And then, as we are reminded in this episode of The Cut, we don’t even make spaces in nature safe for people of color. Ayana points out that Black people don’t even have the energy to worry about the climate when they are fighting racism every day.
🎙️This season of Motive is all about how neo-nazis were able to recruit young skinheads to build their community, and the latest episode about a pivotal moment in their ability to convert people was powerful. And it was all because of the Oprah effect. Oprah asked some skinheads on her show in the 90s, I guess to facilitate a friendly conversation??? It was disastrous—we get to hear footage of all the yelling and one of them calling Oprah Winfrey something super racist I don’t feel like typing here. We then get to hear Oprah explain what happened during the commercial break—the skinheads were signaling to each other. It was then she realized that they were using this appearance to strengthen their message. They had her right where they wanted her. They won. It seems like this was deeply troubling for Oprah, and something that forever changed her approach to interviews. Appearing on TV shows worked for the skinheads for awhile, but eventually that tactic became less effective, and the skinheads switched gears by going from “boots to suits,” attempting to look like normal, respectable people with longer hair and classy clothes so that they could infiltrate government organizations and sneak their neo-nazi ideas inside.
🎙️Wild Thing’s What Is Life? talks about life on our planet and beyond. Life isn’t just in people, animals, plants, and microbes. By definition it is in fire and wind and even your coffee table. Based on how we define life, we have to believe that it’s on other planets.
🎙️Morally Indefensible dropped the last episode of the series, The Final Witness, and it turns what we’ve learned on its head (this is the stuff that has already been turned on its head several times.) ICYMI, Jeffrey MacDonald was accused of murdering his family, and an author, Joe McGinnis, was writing a book about the case that Jeffrey thought would put him in a favorable light. But as McGinnis’ research continued, he started to doubt whose side he was on, and the book decried that McGinnis was a murderer, which made MacDonald feel betrayed. It raises questions of ethics in journalism and how open a writer should be with their subject. This episode drops a bomb on the evidence that made Jeffrey’s innocence questionable. The way the show ties things up is interesting—it’s a reporting on the reporting (on the reporting) of MacDonald, which puts itself in a tricky situation. How transparent should Morally Indefensible (the podcast) be? This podcast is part of a campaign to push people to the FX series, which came out over the weekend, A Wilderness of Error, directed by Errol Morris.
🎙️So I finished Morally Indefensible (it was great) which means I’m ready to start A Wilderness of Error, on the same story. Criminal’s Phoebe Judge interviewed Errol—it starts out with an insane story that Errol always wanted to make a film about, but never did—a community of people who strategically self-mutilate themselves to cash in on life insurance claims. This story is crazy but sad, that people in our country are poor enough that they are willing to sacrifice a limb or an eye in order to have enough money to survive. Errol has had a fascinating life, deep in the crime world, often flirting with danger and crazy, shady characters. He talks about his life chasing crime stories (he feels he’s running out of time to tell them,) why crime stories are so compelling, and why pursuing them feels like an addiction.
🎙️Just launched: KQED’s new 5-part series, SOLD OUT: Rethinking Housing, which zooms in on California’s housing affordability crisis to help us get a better grasp on the nation-wide housing crisis. The first episode focuses on Project Homekey, which helps California cities convert hotels, motels, apartments and other buildings into permanent housing for formerly unhoused people. I was really grateful for the story of Sonja Summerville Trotter, a previously unhoused women who was interviewed in her new studio apartment in downtown Oakland. I listened to this soon after people in my city pushed unhoused people out of their neighborhoods, despite the fact that this was a move made to save lives during COVID. Stories like this strengthen empathy, and I wonder what those New Yorkers would react to hearing Sonja talk about how Project Homekey changed her life.
🎙️It’s spooky season, so time to listen to Spooked, from Snap Judgement. You’ll like this series if you like Radio Rental. (Cookie Passell, I’m talking to you.) The stories are excellently produced, you get to hear things unfold from the person who experienced them. The most recent story is about a man haunted by a little girl, and how he discovered who this little girl was and why she demanded to be seen.
🎙️ Episode four of Imaginary Advice’s The Golden House dropped today. Listen to this amazing series from episode one!
🎙️I love you!