✍️ Notes on Notes 🗣️ The Allusionist's Helen Zaltzman 🔡
💌Podcast The Newsletter is your weekly love letter to podcasts and the people who make them.💌
Bonjour.
Do you read podcast descriptions or show notes? Do you care about them? I do. When I had a podcast, PodcastPodcast, the podcast about podcasts (I don’t really like to mention it JUST KIDDING I TALK ABOUT IT ALL THE TIME) I would pack the description fields with all the notes I could think of. Capital letters, exclamation points, the most exciting elements at the beginning, eager copy. LOVE MEEEEEE!!!!! The descriptions really say. THERE ARE A LOT OF PODCASTS OUT THERE BUT THIS ONE!!!! THIS ONE!!!! IT WILL MAKE YOUR DAY!!!!!
I was overcompensating for my lack of confidence as a podcaster.
I always felt it was bold when a show like Pete Holmes’ You Made It Weird would simply put in the show notes, “___[GUEST]____ makes it weird!” And that’s it. What do you mean, Pete!!!? HOW exactly does your guest make it weird? What do you discuss? Why should I listen? The confidence of this man! To boldly assume that we will listen without knowing anything at all. This is the confidence of a mediocre white man than I admire to this day.
On Lovett or Leave It, the podcast titles never brag about the episode’s guests—another bold move. Sometimes I will start listening and hear the voice of Hari Kondabolu, John Hodgman, or Emily Heller and think, “Jon Lovett, why on earth didn’t you tell me that’s who is on the show!? Way to bury the lede!” BOLD, I TELL YOU.
There’s The Memory Palace, which always has a description with links, but politely asks us not to read them, because the episodes are best experienced without knowing anything about what’s to come. I am generally not strong enough to follow these directions.
And then there are my favorite episode descriptions, the one on Ezra Klein’s show. They’re long and thorough, they always feel like they were actually written by Ezra. I picture him sitting at his desk with a pencil and notebook paper, furrowing his brow to spill his heart out onto the page. (If you know this is untrue, please don’t tell me.) Ezra’s notes actually tell us why he wanted to conduct this interview. Why maybe we don’t think we want to listen, but if we think that, we’re wrong. So many times I see an episode that I feel inclined to skip. But I read the description and am convinced otherwise. Ezra, you get me every time! (He also successfully convinces me to buy the book almost every time.)
This is so interesting to me. Do big shows know that their fans will listen to their episode no matter what? Do shows with tons of description (like PodcastPodcast) seem thirsty? How will these descriptions evolve as podcasting emerges out of this fun, crazy Wild West stage?
I love a well-thought description, especially because I listen to so many shows. Often a description is a deciding factor for me. But what do I know? Maybe it’s more intriguing to be mysterious, to say nothing, and to assume that your most ardent listeners will follow your story, no matter what. And fuck the people who won't.
xoxo lp
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The Allusionist’s Helen Zaltzman
Helen Zaltzman is the host of The Allusionist, an entertainment show about language; co-host of Answer Me This!, where she and Olly Mann answer questions from listeners across all kinds of topics; and Veronica Mars Investigations, which recaps every episode of the TV show Veronica Mars from the beginning. She also runs a Facebook group for podcasters, Podcasters' Support Group, which has more than 20,000 people. Follow her on Twitter here. Follow The Allusionist on Twitter here. Follow Answer Me This! on Twitter here.
What has your podcast journey been like?
Long! I feel like a relic from a different era. For context, I started podcasting before the iPhone launched, and MySpace was still a relevant service. For the first eight years I was podcasting, if I said that I was a podcaster, the response would be, "What's a podcast?" Then for a couple of years after that, it was "Oh yeah, I love podcasts, I listened to Serial," then in recent years it's "I'm thinking of starting a podcast." That's the evolution!
Anyway, my podcast journey has been a pretty happy and lucky one; I started a show in my living room, knowing nothing - I learned how to edit audio and run a website by doing those things. There wasn't much podcasting information or support around at the time, so we just had to figure it out as we went along, and I'm really glad of that because now, there is SO much information that it can be so overwhelming that some people never actually start their show. I would have been such a person too, but fortunately I didn't know what I didn't know.
Off the back of Answer Me This, I got nicer and nicer jobs, then eight years in I got the nicest job of all, which was becoming a full-time podcaster with the Allusionist. That was absolutely life-changing - and it was incredibly empowering, for Roman Mars and PRX to say, "We trust you to make something, go do whatever you want." Opportunities like that don't come up often, so I wanted to make the most of it, and the show has forced me to discover neighbourhoods of my brain that I didn't know existed. As soon as I master one part of making the show, something else becomes more challenging. It's the hardest job of my life, but the most rewarding. Productionwise, I'm still as amateurish as when I started, self-taught and doing nine different jobs, usually sitting in bed.
Women are criticized for their voices on podcasts all the time. What is your relationship to yours?
Most of the criticism for my voice comes from me - like most people, I hated hearing my own voice, but got over that after about eight years of podcasting. I don't receive all that much criticism for my voice, and I think that might be because it's quite low - the Voice Police particularly seem to go after higher voices, ie young-sounding and female-sounding - and because I have an English accent. I think most of the Voice Police are American, and they are more critical of American-sounding young-sounding female-sounding voices. Do they only hear vocal fry in American voices, or is it the British accent privilege at work again? (Which I don't approve of, by the way! I'm sure I've benefitted from it, being an English-accented person making podcasts that Americans listen to, but how many times does Britain need to prove that it is NOT smarter than other countries??)
Wow, I just had to explain why I think people don't hate my voice even though it's female! The Voice Police sure waste a lot of time for female-sounding broadcasters!
We've been conditioned to feel like only certain kinds of voices should be on air, and those reinforce certain paradigms of what power and authority sound like - and I'm ready for those to be smashed. So: examine your voice prejudices, people. Why do you think you don't like the way a particular person sounds? Why do you think voices should sound certain ways? Consider these things using the time you might have spent sending rude messages to people whose voices you didn't like.
What do you hope The Allusionist does for people?
I hope that the Allusionist makes listeners think a little differently about language, this tool pretty much everyone alive has to use in some way but may not have thought much about before. I hope it's inclusive, because there's way too much language snobbery in the world. And I hope it makes them cry, sometimes. I'm a clown, so the main use of me is to amuse people while they're listening on their commutes or doing chores or whatnot; but fewer things make me feel prouder of myself than a listener telling me they cried. Is that bad?
What’s something that most podcasters don’t understand about podcasting?
People often assume I just turn up, talk into a mic and swan off, then Some Man does the production. I've spent the majority of my time over the past thirteen years producing my podcasts, so Some Man getting the credit for that really pisses me off!
I think a lot of podcasters don't realise the value of editing - I see so many people equating editing with dishonesty, which is way off the mark in my opinion; good editing is to clarify honesty, really. Plus every other form of media or art involves some form of editing, if not in post-production then pre-, so why should podcasting not have it? People also often miss what a creative job it can be. But anything that I've ever made that has been good has been good because of the choices I've made about what to remove.
Why is the podcasting community so great?
I think because - until very recently - there was no reason to be a part of it unless you loved it. And even in the current podcasting gold rush, there's something very sincere about it. There's a lot of kinship between podcasters because it can be quite an isolated pastime, so when we meet we form friendships quickly because we really need each other. I've met many of my favourite people thanks to podcasting.
What show would you love to be a guest on?
Gilmore Guys was the dream. But, it's too late! Desert Island Discs is the Lifetime Achievement Award of guest spots.
💎BTW💎
🎙️I listened to Dane Terry & Ellie Heyman’s Dreamboy and was immediately swept away. The setup: Dane is a musician spending the winter in Cleveland, Ohio (WHERE MY CLEVELAND BABIES AT?!) and is balancing his time between working at the Pepper Heights Zoo and hooking up on Grindr. But he starts having strange, vivid dreams, and finds himself embroiled in an incident at the zoo that involves a murderous zebra. (There is only one thing more intriguing than a murderous zebra, and that is a set of creepy children. This podcast has that, too!) I mean this in the best way: listening to Dreamboy makes me feel like I am going through Sleep No More—floating through a parallel place and time, discovering things on my own. I would listen to this show for the music alone—it tells its own damn story. Dreamboy is mysterious, immersive, funny, and haunting. I was so sad when I finished it. I wanted it to last forever.
🎙️Maybe you aren’t already obsessed with Kaitlin Prest, The Heart, or Mermaid Palace. Maybe you’ve heard random things about Kaitlin and what she’s doing but haven’t listened to her work, or don’t have any idea why she is such an audio pioneer and why we are so lucky that she is getting the recognition she deserves. If that’s you, listen to her on the Financial Times Culture Call. In an interview with Lilah Raptopoulos, Kaitlin describes her background, her theory on creating her unique audio style, and she talks about consent, which was a strong theme in Kaitlin’s work with The Heart, particularly with a project called “No.” At the end, Emily Segal (who coined the term “normcore”) randomly jumps in to share her top five alternate takeaways from fashion month, and I really enjoyed that conversation, too.
🎙️Or maybe you have been following Kaitlin Prest since The Heart was born, in 2015. Maybe you remember, in pre-#MeToo 2017, where you were when you first listening to her series on The Heart called “No.” (I was at the Union Square Starbucks.) And maybe you are super excited about Asking For It from Mermaid Palace, coming next week. After hearing Kaitlin on Culture Call, I relistened to “No”—I had forgotten how good it is, I appreciate it so much more now than I did in 2017. In “No,” with honest and enraging interviews, reenactments, whispers, uncomfortable & intimate sounds, and thoughtful fan letters, Kaitlin brings us on 3-dimensional journey from her youth to the present, focusing on how she struggled with pleasing people (a theme that comes up in new episodes of The Heart) and consent. (“People pleasing is how women survive. We use sex as social currency to belong and protect ourselves.”) Speaking of people pleasing, here is what I think about blue balls via Death Sex & Money.
Kaitlin is a genius because she captures and delivers audio in a way that nobody else does, she sees opportunity for beautiful moments where others don’t. The projects she envision are complex but emerge gracefully. Listening to “No” is like flipping through a fairy tale pop-up book written by a punk rock poet.
🎙️The first episode of Over The Road is here! Over The Road is an eight-part series from 🎼Radio-TO-piahhhh🎼 that gives voice to the trials and triumphs of America’s long haul truckers. The first episode talks about how technology has changed trucking (for the worse) over the years. The host, “Long Haul Paul” Marhoefer, has been trucking for almost 40 years, but his warm voice and ability to tell a story makes him a natural host of this genius show. I’m so excited to be on the road with him!
🎙️The Documentary Podcast is just like it sounds—documentary for your ears, from the BBC. I got lost in the episode Reinventing Miss America, a piece that was so wild it felt like a watered down version of the hilarious mockumentary Drop Dead Gorgeous. (Complete with the pageant leaders insisting that it’s a scholarship program!!!!) Everyone acknowledges that the Miss America Pageant is it a bit of an identity crisis. How does it stay modern and true to its mission? Is the mission worth dying for? It’s not currently marketing itself to young millennials and Gen Z. So what now? This episode leaves the listeners to decide for themselves whether or not the Miss America pageant can survive.
🎙️On Because I Watched, we hear personal stories from real people all over the world about the ways their favorite tv and movies have shaped them. Orange Is The New Black helps an Egyptian woman struggling with her identity, Delhi Crime empowers a Pakistani journalist to catch the attention of the President after speaking out about the desperate need for women’s representation in media. This podcast feels like a beautiful essay collection, but the perk of it being served to us via audio is that each essay is read by someone central to the show. The Queer Eye episode is read by Fab Five member Bobby Berk, who not only does an excellent job reading the essay, but is personally moved by the fact his show reunited a homophobic mother and her daughter in Venezuela. Remember when our moms would only let us watch 30 minutes of television a day? (lol jk my mom let me watch like 8 hours per day.) Maybe we should be showing people television shows in therapy.
🎙️Less Is Morgue is a fiction show hosted by dead people, and when I listened, I felt happy to be alive. Mismatched friends Evelyn Hooper (a ghost) and Riley Almanzor (a ghoul) are stuck together for reasons so funny I’ll leave it to you to explore and get the backstory yourself. It’s been argued back and forth whether or not everyone should have a podcast, just because they can, but Evelyn and Riley definitely should. The two are recording from Tallahassee, and Evelyn loves Nickelback. Less Is Morgue is a playful mix of dark humor and sharp wit.
🎙️Fanti is a show that celebrates problematic faves. Journalists Tre’vell Anderson and Jarrett Hill discuss “people, places, and things we love don’t love us back.” It’s a perfect balance of pop-culture and politics, and offers conversations I don’t think we’re hearing anywhere else. (I mean, we hear about them on Twitter but that doesn’t count.) The first episode about Kevin Hart does a great job mapping out why Kevin Hart is so complicated, whether or not we can like him, and if we do, the best way to do that.
🎙️If you read last week’s newsletter, you know I recently spent hours going through the backlog of American Hysteria. And just when I thought I had completed the omnibus, Chelsea dropped the first episode of season three, and season three is exciting. It promises to explore guilt and shame, and “how our most ingrained beliefs, delusions, and archetypes, how cognitive dissonance shapes our culture, and how our reality is created by the stories we tell, especially the stories we tell ourselves.” Episode one, Burgers, is about our longtime relationship to eating meat, but it’s not just a history lesson. Chelsea defines our relationship to eating meat as a long term hysteria, overall proving that our ingrained cultural practices, traditions, and symbols (like hamburgers) are key examples to how we ignore reality and tell stories about the things we want to believe.
🎙️The Infinite Monkey Cage is a comedy and science show hosted by physicist Brian Cox and comedian Robin Ince. Science can be SO FUNNY. (See: Bad Science, a show that pairs a comedian with a scientist to break down the scientifically inaccurate elements of popular movies and TV shows.) I just discovered this show and am giddy about the backlist—I see episodes on the human voice, dreaming, the periodic table, and more. I listened to an episode on dinosaurs (did you know that all dinosaurs had feathers and looked nothing like what we think of them today?) and the science of laughter, which was actually the least funny episode I listened to. (Dissecting comedy is fascinating but not always funny.) Ever since I listened to it, I have been scrutinizing every single joke I hear, and everything that makes me laugh. If you have any interest in comedy, what technically makes a good joke, or why you think certain things are funny, give it a listen. This show is heavier on the science than the comedy, and is like a British version of Moshe Kasher’s Hound Tall. (More below.)
🎙️Back when I was just getting into podcasts and had no idea even where to find them, I somehow stumbled upon Neal Brennan and Moshe Kasher’s The Champs. It’s a show I loved so much, but am afraid to relisten for fear it does not hold up. (Neal and Moshe interviewed black comedians, rappers, and athletes only.) About the same time that show was winding down, Moshe started the terribly named Hound Tall Discussion Series, a live chat with an expert and a panel of comedians that dissects things about the universe. I can remember thinking, for some reason, that this show would never last, and I had completely forgotten about it. Listening to The Infinite Monkey Cage reminded me to check back in with it, and as it turns out, Moshe has been consistently releasing episodes for years! And now I have a lot of catching up to do. Moshe is smart, astute, and able to instantly find humor in anything. The conversations he hosts are fascinating and funny. (Heavier on the comedy than the science.) I’m listening to an episode about pirates while I’m typing this, and I wish I could underline all the facts and jokes with my ears. It’s so, so good. (Unsurprisingly, almost everything we think we know about what pirates looked and sounded like is wrong. “Buried treasure is a myth.” “What? That’s the whole deal!”)
🎙️So I listened to The Infinite Monkey Cage and learned that dinosaurs did NOT look like “dinosaurs.” I listened to Hound Tall and learned that pirates did NOT sound or act like “pirates.” And listening to Remarkable Providences (a show I wrote about for the Bello 100 of 2019,) I learned that witches in Salem Massachusetts were not “witches.” Host Kate Devorak explains what Puritans meant by "witch," what we mean by "witch," why that's different, and why that matters. (“Sorry to disappoint you, but there were no witches in Salem.”) It all comes down to this: witches were women with power, and the Puritan reaction to them was what happens when men in charge sense the encroaching power of women. So this isn’t just a history lesson, it’s a news update. Kate does such a great job presenting the dark history of Salem, Massachusetts. The style and tone of Remarkable Providences reminds me of Karina Longworth’s You Must Remember This.
🎙️Citizen Critic from Double Elvis is a show that critiques critics and everyday reviewers. Culture critics are so interesting to me. With each review they publish, they add to their own story. But who is examining those stories? (And as Beach Too Sandy, Water Too Wet proves, there is an interesting story behind every silly consumer review.) We usually learn so much more about the reviewer than the actual things they are reviewing. Their terrible takes can take you down an internet rabbit holes for days. So yes, I am excited about this podcast, and yes, I think it could run forever. I listened to episode two, which dissects critic Rex Reed's deliriously bad take on Once Upon A Time...In Hollywood. This feels like kind of high-brown, cultural gossip and I’m here for it. Related: a story in the most recent episode of Family Ghosts talks about how many reviewers of plantation tours bemoan the fact that the tours talk about slavery. What?!
🎙️I had been saving an episode of The Ezra Klein Show about our changing relationship to work for a long time, and I finally listened. It features Anne Helen Petersen, who wrote that viral Buzzfeed piece about burnout culture, and Derek Thompson, who wrote this Atlantic piece about workism. Anne and Derek map out how totally depressing and inescapable our work culture has become, describing it almost as a sickness. I listened to this interview and thought about how workaholism (maybe my own) isn’t cute or quirky or admirable, it’s really sad. Not to be a downer, but I worry that future generations (if there are any, global warming, lol) will look back at us and say, “what the fuck was wrong with these people? All they did was work,” kind of like how these days we look back and wonder what the fuck is wrong with pregnant women who smoked on airplanes. I shared this episode with the workaholics I know, and I suggest you listen to it if you are one, too. It made me think hard about what I value, how I relax, what things I can do that are not related to work, and what, exactly, I enjoy. Related: an episode about hustle culture on Hysteria.
🎙️I squealed with delight when I saw that Rachel Syme (journalist, wonderful tweeter) contributed to You Must Remember This’s Make Me Over series. Rachel is one of those people who finds interest in quirky things, and I find myself wanting to hear her opinion on everything. She’s a natural fit for this series, she exudes glamor and writes looks at girliness and femininity (she used to write a perfume newsletter) through an intelligent, journalistic lens. Rachel DIVES (you will get this joke in a sec) into the life of Esther Williams, who became famous in the 40s for being an aquatic glamor girl, starring in Hollywood films like Bathing Beauties and Million Dollar Mermaid. Esther was first a strong swimmer, but at the time nobody really cared about that, and because she was beautiful, Esther found work in modeling bikinis and putting on mesmerizing water shows. Since she needed to look beautiful underwater, she revolutionized waterproof makeup. I love this series from You Must Remember This, I love Rachel, and her investigation into the tragic life of Esther Williams is fascinating for both the writing and the presentation. (“Tragic life” is a common theme of many of the women on You Must Remember This.)
🎙️The most recent episode of Family Secrets dropped my jaw. Dani interviews David Kacyznski, the brother of the Unabomber, and we hear about Ted Kacyznski’s childhood and path to isolation. When David and his wife Linda first suspected that Ted was responsible for the bombs, they were forced to make a big decision. Telling the authorities could save more people from being killed, but it could also result in the death of David’s brother, unless Ted was determined to be legally insane. David talks about reaching out to one of Ted’s victims, which turns out to be a lesson in radical forgiveness and understanding, and how when tragedy strikes, we can find solace with one another, no matter the circumstances.
🎙️Marlon and Jake Read Dead People is a podcast hosted by (Man Booker Prize-winning author) Marlon James and his editor Jake Morrissey. In each episode, Marlon and Jake talk about dead authors. There would be a problem in negatively reviewing books of authors that are alive, particularly from an author and editor active in publishing. But because Marlon and Jake are talking about dead writers, they can be a bit more honest. This podcast is a fresh take on the literary podcast, but that’s not the only thing that makes this show worth a listen. Marlon and Jake have great chemistry, right off the bat. I would love to have been in the room when the idea of this show was born. “Hey Marlon.” “Hey Jake.” “What if we had a podcast about…dead authors?” “Let’s do it.”
🎙️I love you!