⛸ Queer ice-skaters 🎙 Joe Rogan is a government plant 🩺 meet the Dallas Taylors 💁♂️ shop terrible products 🛍
🍭 👂 You're in for a treat! 🌈 🤸♀️
Bonjour!
Today is Monday, February 7. There are 120 days until I go on my next Disney cruise???????? In case this email is too long, Arielle and I had a very hot take on Joe Rogan, how’d we miss this?, one of my favorite funny shows is back.
This week we’re getting to peek into the listening life of Pariya Taherzadeh-Desovski, a multi-award winning Iranian born, Sydney based freelance podcast producer. To find out more about my story and work, visit www.pariya.com.au.
The app I use: I mainly use Apple podcasts to listen to all my shows. I've tried other platforms but I always end up going back to ye ol' trust Apple. I also use an iPhone so I'm probably super bais.
Listening time per week: Does mixing podcasts count toward the listening time?? Because I find it really difficult to listen to them lately, especially since we've been in lockdown here in Sydney. Also, I freelance from homes so I barely have time to listen to anything other than the productions I work on at the moment. So sad, but true.
When I listen: When I actually do get a chance to listen I'm driving. I find I can concentrate more on the shows and as is the case for everyone, time goes by a lot quicker.
How I discover? Word of mouth is usually how I get my podcast fix. Although, when I am searching for a new show it's usually via the browse section and 100% of the time it's a true crime podcast.
Anything else? Podcasting is finally taking off in Australia (we're a little behind in everything, not just podcasting), and I'm here for it!
xoxo lp
ps If you are pleased with Podcast The Newsletter, please spread the word.
👋q & a & q & a & q & a👋
Hillary Frank
Hillary Frank is the host of The Longest Shortest Time and the creator of Here Lies Me. Follow her on Twitter here.
Please tell me how The Longest Shortest Time went from a spark to an idea to a real thing to a community?
When I started The Longest Shortest Time, barely anyone was making a living in podcasting — and if you were, you were probably a man. I did not imagine that LST could possibly become my job. I just wanted to prove that I still had chops so that I could continue to get work in radio after having a baby. I had gone through a traumatic birth and aftermath, and I desperately wanted to connect with other people who had experienced struggles in parenthood. At the end of every episode, I would tell listeners to contact me if they had a surprising struggle to share — and to my shock, I started hearing from strangers right away.
The show grew quickly and mostly by word-of-mouth. This was 2010 — before podcasts had trailers or marketing budgets. I didn’t have a regular production schedule because I was making the show in 20-minute spurts during my daughter’s naps. Three years in, I did a Kickstarter to see if there was any way to fund LST. If I didn’t make my goal, my plan was to end the show and find a full-time job — possibly not in audio. I made $10k over my goal by enlisting brands to make challenge grants. So every time I brought in, say, $5000, a brand would kick in $5000. These were brands that I cold-called. They had never considered podcast advertising, but I was able to convince them to contribute to my campaign by leaving messages on their marketing managers’ voicemails. I figured I was selling my ability to tell a story, so I told them my story, including how much their products had helped me as a new mom. I asked if they’d consider supporting my podcast in exchange for ads, and almost all of them called me back and said yes. Soon after the Kickstarter, WNYC picked up the show and I was able to have a producer for the first time. A couple years later I moved to Stitcher.
I think the community piece began really early with listeners commenting on the LST website. There was real dialogue and camaraderie there. It was clear to me that parents were hungry for connection — not “mommy wars.” Later, we had a couple of Facebook groups and we also did “Speed Dating for Mom Friends” events in several cities around the country.
Pretend I am launching a podcast all by myself in a month. What should I be doing now to plant the seeds for growth?
Think about how you’ll give your audience a stake in your show. Will you interview listeners? Poll them on topics they’d like to hear? Have Q&A or call-in episodes? The more you involve them in the show, the more they’ll want to tell other people about it.
Engage likeminded creators with loyal audiences. Notice I didn’t say “celebrities with huge followings.” Reach out to people who are passionate about the topic of your podcast or share a similar worldview. Ask if they’re down for an interview or some form of cross-promotion. This doesn’t have to be podcast-to-podcast; you can get great conversion rates from newsletters too!
Craft CTAs with specificity. When you ask people to take action, what exactly do you want them to do? Is there a specific question you want them to answer on social media? Do you want them to use a specific hashtag? Is there a specific aspect of your show that you want to encourage fans to mention in reviews? Try to ask for only one thing at a time — and if you have more than one request in an episode, split them up so that they fall at different spots in the show.
Invest in good art. It matters.
Anything else you want to say about growth?
Each year, try to do one or two special series. If you’re lucky, you’ll get media attention when your show launches. But that attention doesn’t last very long. If you want to continue to get noticed, a special series gives you a new reason to pitch the press. Plus, those series are often creatively satisfying.
How did you go about crafting the story for Here Lies Me? I know you collected real stories from people about their awkward teenage years!
Before I started The Longest Shortest Time, I wrote three YA novels. Here Lies Me was going to be my fourth. I developed the idea for it around 2006, but when I pitched it to my agent he told me that if I wanted to write this story I would have to age the characters up to high school. I felt deeply committed to making this story about middle school, so I set the book concept aside.
A few years ago, I started thinking that maybe podcasting was the perfect medium for Here Lies Me because there are no rules in podcasting. I had already done some audio fiction too — I co-founded The Truth with Jonathan Mitchell and had done a fiction piece for This American Life.
The story plot of Here Lies Me really started to come into focus for me with the #MeToo movement. It had always been a story about a girl trying to get a boy to leave her alone. But before #MeToo, I didn’t know that the word for that was “harassment.” With all the stories in the news about harassment in the workplace, in college, and in high school, it dawned on me: Ohhhh, this is a story about harassment in middle school! And I’ve come to believe that middle school is where harassment begins in earnest.
Writing about harassment among children gave me the opportunity to complicate the narrative. This didn’t have to be a clear-cut story of victim and perpetrator; it could be a story with blurred lines, where everyone is a little of both.
And, yes, I did invite Longest Shortest Time listeners to share their middle school experiences with me in a survey. I got nearly 400 responses!
So much of the best fiction podcasts are dystopian, sci-fi, and horror. What did you pull from for inspiration for Here Lies Me? Any non-fiction?
I’m a big TV-watcher, so most of my inspiration came from TV. The big ones are Twin Peaks and Freaks and Geeks… and the Brett Kavanaugh hearings. I remember watching those hearings and being horrified, but also fascinated, by how Kavanaugh so masterfully turned himself into the victim. Some of my favorite scenes in Here Lies Me are the ones where Little God (our antagonist) is clearly harassing Noa (our protagonist) but also clearly sees himself as the victim. And the conversations are complicated because in some ways he’s absolutely right.
Is there anything I didn’t ask you about that you want to talk about?
Yeah! Here Lies Me is a very pandemic production. Our teen cast came from a performing arts high school in Houston, where they hadn’t been able to perform in over a year. We directed them entirely over Zoom in their bedrooms. When they sang the title themes, they had to go on mute because of internet delay, which meant they couldn’t hear each other — and we couldn’t hear them either. My composer, Casey Holford, magically made them all sound like they were in the same room. Also, nearly the entire show is scored by my 11-year-old daughter on her drum kit. I’ve worked with people remotely in radio and podcasting for more than 20 years, but the pandemic forced me to use the tools at my fingertips and invent new methods for producing audio stories. I think the results make the show sound different from other podcasts — and not just in fiction.
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🚨If u only have time for 1 thing🚨
Blind Landing’s new 3-part series on figure skating will appeal to you if you are interested in sports, gender, history, mass media failure, or even just in need of some inspiring stories. It has everything but not too much, and I simply enjoyed the experience of listening to it. Ari Saperstein and Chris Schleicher are taking us back through skating history, to the days when it was a stodgy all-men’s sport, and talking to LGBTQ+ skaters in an attempt to explain how a sport with a history of institutionalized homophobia could also be so closely intertwined with queer culture. I think everyone who listens will discover their own special moment that sticks. (I had a physical reaction hearing a segment of clips from news anchors grappling with the idea of gay athletes on the ice and how to talk about them.) I was surprised to learn this show is a totally independent passion project made by a small team of journalists in their free time on nights and weekends. It feels much bigger than that.
⚡️News from Sounds Profitable⚡️
Sounds Profitable (check out the newsletter and podcast) offered a piece from Fatima Zaidi, CEO and Founder of Quill Inc., who breaks down how agencies and advertisers can evaluate branded podcasts as a viable solution. She says that podcasts can hold a user’s attention for 14x longer than video and recommends diving into the analytics of any site traffic being driven from your podcast, particularly in terms of things like demographics (who is visiting your page?), timing (when do they visit your page?), and actions (what do they do when they visit your page?) before you get started. “This can provide you with a lot of valuable information about potential consumers and what they most respond to when it comes to your podcast, especially if it requires an email sign-up or subscription for access.” Read/subscribe here.
💎BTW💎
🎙️Arielle and I were on Lizard People in attempt to convince Katelyn Hempstead, Alexis Preston (Can I Pet Your Dog?,) and you, that Joe Rogan is a government plant whose mission is to undermine the legitimacy of podcasters. I realized, listening back, that Lizard People is an improv comedy show, and Arielle and I are not improv comedians, but I think you will find it funny as we grapple with proving this conspiracy theory to be true. If nothing else, this is an episode that might bring you comfort when you ask yourself, “how is Joe Rogan?” This is a fantastic show, Katelyn is a comedic genius, and I cannot believe we got to be a part of it. (I was also on an episode ranting about The Donner Party.) Listen here.
🎙️Erick Galindo, L.A.’s TACO’s Managing Editor emeritus (you know him—WILD!) dropped an entire series last week, Ídolo: The Ballad of Chalino Sánchez that takes us through the life of a Mexican singer and songwriter Chalino Sánchez and episode-by-episode, all the theories of his death. (He received a note on stage that warned him to stop singing or he would be killed. He crumpled it up and was murdered later that night.) Chalino had a dangerous past, and his death is a mystery. Erick takes us through his life and involvement with the drug cartel, and all the people who would have wanted him dead. The podcast is a tribute to the many things Chalino paved the way for, from his music and style to a certain normalization of violence. The unique format leaves us with many questions but also a clear idea of Chalino as a person and the culture that he shaped. For each episode, the crew has written a corrido about the corresponding theory. Chalino is a legend who sang ballads and has become a ballad of his own. Listen now.
🎙️Sound Deals is back for a new season in a new warehouse with new products to review, and I was only minutes into episode one when I found myself laughing aloud. (Ivan and Max seem to be almost unable to hold it together for their review of Spoonola.) Sound Deals is “the first Podcast Shopping Channel,” where the hosts enthusiastically hock terrible (fake and now listener-submitted) items. Poor Ivan is always tasked to review all of the products, which often lead to his torture. These hosts are hysterical and fully committed to the joke. And the joke is very funny. There is no show like this one. Listen here.
🎙️When writer Laura Leigh Abby was 17, she kept a detailed diary, she still has it, and she’s sharing it with us for the new podcast Seventeen: Conversations with My Teenage Self. (Not something I’m sure I could do.) The entries are voiced by teen influencer Leia Immanuel, and Laura is there to offer her adult perspective to what she wrote. (Which includes some printed-out AOL Instant Messenger chats, sometime I’m not even sure I could revisit myself let alone share.) The episodes contain problematic sexual encounters, and Laura explores how a generation of would-be feminists were influenced by the mixed signals of pop culture. I got a hit of nostalgia for the early 2000s. This feels like being thrown into a live YA book that you can’t put down. Listen here.
🎙️When Imaginary Advice dropped a “part one” episode, I used to save it for when the rest of the series came out. I wanted to listen to it in one sitting. (Something I rarely do but will do for this show.) But I discovered I am not strong enough—Imaginary Advice is hands down my favorite show and I cannot resist hitting play as soon as I see something new. And then there’s the fact that Ross Sutherland isn’t like other hosts, he breaks all the podcasting rules. Which is why his show is so fantastic, but also why you don’t know when you’ll get episodes two and three (you’ll get them when he’s goddam ready, that’s when) or whether a three-part series is actually a four-part series, or whatever. He dropped part one in Wiki-heist, a fictional heist story he’s written, generated by “characters” he found hitting the “random article” button on Wikipedia. It’s imaginative and beautifully made, and I can’t tell you when the second installment will drop, or even how many episodes the series will contain. These days I listen to Imaginary Advice series when the first episode drops, then listen to one and two when two drops, one two and three when three drops, and so on. If this is a marketing strategy to get more listens, hats off to Ross. But everything excellent Ross does is the product of Ross trying to make the most creative audio projects in existence. Not to get more downloads. Listen here.
🎙️I have spent PARAGRAPHS raving about the inventive, beautiful show It’s Nice to Hear You (I chose it for one of my best podcasts of 2021 for Bello Collective) and wrote about This Is Dating a few weeks ago. But there was a show that attempted to do that before those shows, and that hasn’t gotten the coverage of the other two. On LoveSick, by House of Pod, Cat Jaffee and Paul Karolyi set up people on blind dates when Covid started via Zoom, and it’s so similar to This Is Dating it’s eerie. But I think it’s better. Cat and Jeff really bring themselves into the storytelling—part of the show is getting to know them (Cat reveals she was diagnosed with cancer when they started recording) and all about their attempts to guide the daters on their date with fun activities. House of Pod just announced that it was shutting down, and in a recent newsletter Cat says that not getting LoveSick the attention it deserves is a regret for the team. It’s a lesson, Cat says, in focusing on one successful concept that you can continue and own. They deserve attention for this great show, it’s an incredibly fun listen. Listen here.
🎙️You and I know Dallas Taylor as the guy behind 20 Thousand Hertz, but did you know there are other Dallas Taylors out there? Who are they? In a recent episode of the show, Dallas offers a beautiful vignette of conversations with the other Dallas Taylors to learn what it’s like to be one, and how being one can shape your identity. You get to eavesdrop on Dallas’ intimate conversations with these regular people who end up being pretty fantastic. Laura Wattenberg, name expert and author of The Baby Name Wizard, deciphers the many messages names carry. I’m not sure every podcaster’s name would provide such rich storytelling, but I wish other hosts would copy this format. It was a showcase of people that could have been totally random but felt purposeful, that connected the dots between a group of people named Dallas Taylor. Listen here.
🎙️Well-Read Black Girl has been around since I was in book publishing in blog format, and it makes so much since that Glory Edim is moving her community to a podcast. First of all, not the most important thing, but the artwork is beautiful. The show kicks off with an interview with Min Jin Lee, who talks about writing one of my favorite novels of all time, Pachinko, and how she uses her legal background to write. I loved hearing Glory and Min Jin talk about bell hooks and there’s a great moment where Min Jin explains her own self-awareness riding the New York City subway when she was a young writer. Glory is a natural podcaster, which isn’t always a given, and she is bursting with the joy of reading and good writing, something she has been steeping in for years. Listen here.
🎙️I was refreshing my feed for days waiting to hear Bridget Todd’s take on the whole Joe Rogan thing. I have been hungry for everyone’s takes, but I knew that disinformation expert Bridget would have the best one. On her episode of There Are No Girls on the Internet, she had a layered conversation with disinformation researcher Abbie Richards, and the two of them brought up three points that all the other people talking about Rogan are skipping—a) awareness for Joe Rogan’s dangerous content rose when doctors and scientists wrote an open letter late last year, but what about the BIPOC community and women who have been warning us about him for years? b) Joe Rogan has a supplement company that I didn’t know about, which raises questions about his motives to rile up a community of men who are concerned about their place in the world. c) All this talk about Joe Rogan has knocked down a lot of content created for Black History Month. I can’t even. Listen here. (And congrats to Bridget for winning best technology podcast in the 2022 iHeartRadio Podcast Awards.)
🎙️Since I don’t listen to podcasts on Spotify (this isn’t a cancel Joe Rogan thing, I never did) two episodes of Heavyweight slipped my attention. I think it’s worth going over to the platform even if just temporarily, to hear them. Mark is the story of an art misunderstanding (yes more art) gone wrong, and it felt big—a painter with big dreams fucks up a famous artists’ painting, and now years later, as a puppeteer, wonders if that incident changed the trajectory of his life. Maura tells the story of a woman whose cousin died in a car accident when she was young, and decades later, she’s still afraid to drive. Both of these stories illustrate what Heavyweight does best—produce beautiful storytelling for us, but also offer help and a safe place to fall for the storytellers. You can feel the storytellers struggling with their healing process. Listen here.
🎙️Because of the reason I stated above I also missed that Crime Show is back. I love it because it’s expertly produced and contained, each episode tells a wonderfully confounding true-crime tale. I like that you can dip into any story at any time, although I have now listened to all of them at least once. The War in Jennifer Weiss is about a woman who discovers she is adopted, her birth mother was a sex worker murdered by a man now sitting in jail, and her efforts to befriend him in hopes of finding her mother’s decapitated head. (And the remains of his other victims.) Listen here.
🎙️If you listen to The Daily Zeitgeist (Arielle, I am talking to you,) you will recognize the name Liza Treygor, a frequent guest and funny comedian. On her new show Enemies, she’s gathering up people she hates, people who hate her, experts, duos who want to call each other out, conflict-prone comedians advising on listener-submitted drama, and overall cool guests to talk about their issues with relationships and communication. The first episode was actually a great conversation about friendship with Danielle Bayard Jackson of the Friend Forward Podcast. And the second was an interview with Steven Krueger (Coach Ben of Yellowjackets.) I’m waiting for the real enemies to come out of the woodwork but am enjoying this show until that happens. Listen here.
🎙️From PodNews: Gimlet’s Wendy Zukerman and Blythe Terrell of Science Vs. say they will no longer make the podcast, excepting episodes “intended to counter misinformation being spread on Spotify”, adding that Spotify’s support of Rogan feels like a “slap in the face”. Over the weekend they released an episode on Spotify about Rogan’s interview with Dr. Robert Malone, poking holes in not really what Malone said, but Malone failed to say. Listen here.
🎙️Kerning Cultures has a breathtaking episode about a group of archeologists who risked their lives by entering illegal artifact trafficking to recover artifacts from historical sites across Syria that had been looted by ISIS. Amr Al-azm co-founded an emergency initiative called Day After, a group of people who would go out and try to record and document damage to the local cultural heritage sites and local museums, and try to document the damage. This is one of those stories that overwhelmed me every time I tried to wrap my brain around how long it must have taken to make. Gosh, support Kerning Cultures on Patreon. Listen here.
🎙️S-Town’s Brian Reed met Hamza Syed at an event, the day before Hamza was to start journalism school, and he came with a story. A strange letter had appeared on a city councillor’s desk in Birmingham, England, where Hamza lived, that included a plan called Operation Trojan Horse, masterminded by Islamic extremists to infiltrate the city’s schools. The story didn’t make sense to Hamza—the letter sent the town into panic mode but nobody was as skeptical as Hamza about the letter’s legitimacy. Who wrote it? He joined forces with Brian to get to the bottom of the letter’s origins by asking this very simple question for the new podcast from The New York Times, The Trojan Horse Affair. All of the episodes dropped last week, and it’s the kind of story that feels good to binge. Listen here.
🎙️Shreya Sharma of Inside Podcasting pulled together a playlist of podcast episodes for Podcast Brunch Club that includes podcast episodes that challenge the ways we think about love. Pieces from Being Seen, Embodied, Inappropriate Questions, Wild, and more—Shreya has great taste and these are shows that are great but often overlooked. Here’s the list.
🎙️Arielle Nissenblatt spotlighted South in the City in her newsletter and podcast.
🎙️I love you!
Wow, reading this was definitely a treat Lauren! It felt like a newspaper published to be all about podcasting with several different columns written by someone who loves podcast, just amazing! I'm so grateful for you. ✨