🔫 “Should we tell her?”, 🥕 'The Omnivore’s Dilemma' dilemma, 📖 the erotic 80s 🎞 AIM messages circa 2000 👩💻 speaking Danslang 👄
🍭 👂 You're in for a treat! 🌈 🤸♀️
Bonjour!
Today is Monday, April 4. There are 33 days until I go on my next Disney cruise. If you want me to send you a postcard from the cruise, fill out this form. In case this email is too long, this made me cry, why children are falling asleep and not waking up here, a linguistic study of a (fake) teen language here.
This week we’re getting to peek into the listening life of Foluké Tuakli. Follow her on Twitter here and Instagram here.
Your brief bio: I’m a forward-thinking media strategist and producer who partners with brands to create content that drives visibility and community impact.
The app you use to listen: Google Podcasts (*whispers* and Spotify). For context, my Google Home is my domestic partner. We wake up together, we chat throughout the day, and we get in cute squabbles over the sound of my voice. Our bond only got stronger throughout the pandemic. As a content enthusiast and the owner of two small ears, I thoroughly appreciate the opportunity to immerse myself in the sounds and let the distinct voices bounce off the walls of my studio apartment. It's not enough to listen; I want to be in the room. I use Spotify more for its discoverability -- there's an ease in finding new shows or hosts -- and mobility. I like to take Spotify downloaded episodes with me on the road. You could say Spotify is my affair (does that make Apple Podcasts or SoundCloud my ONS?).
Listening time per week (hours): 5-10 hours/week
When you listen: Weekday afternoons, Saturday mornings, and Sunday evenings.
I listen to podcasts when I want to get stuff done. Once I've coated my spirit and adjusted my energy with music, I dive into podcasts to help with my productivity. It helps me concentrate because the noise is coming from outside the dome. My brain will not generate as many miscellaneous thoughts and it will work harder to focus mental resources on my cognitive functions.
The exception? I listen to podcasts focused on meditation, wellness, and intention setting in the mornings on a walk or hike.
How you discover: Mostly, recommendations via friends and Internet friends. I also will search by topics and featured speakers. When a subject, person, or current event has intrigued me, I eagerly seek out additional content even if it leads me toward uncharted territory. I'm always open to a new show if there is relevance. Relevance will make you a regular.
Anything else you want to say… Life is making room for a lot of new beginnings. Please reach out if you'd like to partner, discuss television, and/or start a gospel choir bike gang.
Fun Fact: I created, produced, and hosted a podcast about Married At First Sight called MAFSMamas. It definitely gave me the audio bug! I would welcome the opportunity to craft more content in this space. I am a visionary evangelist and have tons of ideas I'd love to bring to life.
Foluké Feels: If you're still reading, I appreciate you. May countless blessings come your way.
xoxo lp
ps If you are pleased with Podcast The Newsletter, please spread the word.
👋q & a & q & a & q & a👋
Land Romo
Land Romo is CEO of Starburns Audio. Follow Starburns on Twitter here.
If you, Land Romo, were to start a podcast—don’t worry about the logistics or whether or not anyone would like it, what would it be?
I would talk about Queer history and artists. It would be great to really get into the topic and introduce new listeners to the Mattachine Society, Hibiscus, Jack Smith, the Compton’s Cafeteria riots and so many other people, places and organizations who have made unique contributions.
What’s a Starburns show that not enough people know about?What’s your relationship with your voice and how would you describe it?
Definitely Valley Heat! [Ed. note: I love this show!] It follows Doug Duguay, a freelance insurance adjuster living in the Rancho Equestrian District in Burbank, California, who thinks his pool guy is using his garbage can as a drug drop and decides to investigate. It is absolutely hilarious. Listen to the first 5 minutes and you’ll be hooked!
What’s a show that you love but not many people know about?
Lizzy Cooperman’s In Your Hands. [Ed. note: I featured this as a “if u only have time for one thing” pick a few weeks ago.] I am completely obsessed. Lizzy is placing her life decisions in the hands of her listeners each episode by outsourcing two tough choices every week and asking the audience to vote on her next move. I can’t wait to see where this goes.
What’s a show (any network) that you love that everybody loves.
I love Dumb People Town with the Sklar Brothers and Daniel Van Kirk. Especially the past few years, the news has been wild and stressful and I can always count on Dumb People Town to take a break and laugh at the some of the weird stuff people are doing out there. One of my favorites is the story of a man and his cat named Spaghetti who broke into an Oregon home and made themselves very comfortable.
Do you have any interesting stories about the fans?
Listeners of Ghosted! By Roz Drezfalez [Ed note: I interviewed Roz] regularly share their personal experiences with the paranormal. We have heard stories about shadowy figures, haunted hospitals and phone calls from the other side. It’s pretty interesting how many people say they’ve never had a paranormal experience and follow it up with, “Well, there was that one time…”
hey.
✨I created a podcast swap database for podcasters who want to set up promo and feed swaps and other sorts of partnerships. Fill out the form to enter your show into the database, then browse the shows that have already been submitted to find your new podcast friend. The more people who enter, the more robust the database will be! Learn more in Podcast Marketing Magic, (there is a bunch of other shit in there you should probably read) and on tinkmedia.co.
✨I’m hosting another podcast marketing session with Radio Boot Camp on 5/6. This time it’s an hour longer, which means an hour of more fun. (And we can TOTALLY nerd out.) Sign up here.
✨On May 5-6, indie and network podcasters are gathering in Austin, Texas for Outlier Podcast Festival. Arielle Nissenblatt is emceeing, and they’re still seeking dynamic speakers and sponsors. (I hear they are very open to out-of-the-box panels!) Learn more here.
✨Arielle Nissenblatt spotlighted the podcast The Accidental Activist in her newsletter and podcast.
🚨If u only have time for 1 thing🚨
🎙️On Fiasco’s Audible original podcast about the AIDS crisis, I didn’t feel like I was being reported to or told a story, I felt like I was in the passenger seat of Leon Neyfakh’s time machine to 1980s New York and San Francisco. It made me feel the fear of the AIDS crisis more than any book or film or play ever has. Leon gives a thorough early history of AIDS, starting from its birth and moving through the years we grappled with what it is and how to stop it, to the development of the triple cocktail and the fight over needle exchange during the Clinton administration. Leon includes audio from some of the main players of the movement (like Bobbi Campbell, Larry Kramer, Larry Mass) and a hotline set up from the Gay Men’s Health Crisis, where we hear the voices of absolutely terrified men wondering what was happing them them, if they were going to die, or…sure they were going to die but looking for solace. The storytelling swings from tender to frustrating to feel-good to scary to sad, sad, sad, but together it feels like a horror story. You may occasionally be triggered by moments that remind you of the Corona Virus, “should we be wearing masks?” days of early Covid. (There are certain things all pandemics have in common.) Tune in closely to every second. I was hanging on every word.
⚡️News from Sounds Profitable⚡️
Sounds Profitable ran a guest piece from Krystina Rubino of Right Side Up about how publishers are shifting to impression-based ad sales, with shows and cross-network inventory being sold on actual delivery, and the way pricing must evolve. It’s a smorgasbord of flighting, third-party ad serving, delivery reporting, “Faked-in” ads, and more. Read here. Today’s podcast episode was a recap of Podcast Movement Evolutions, and I got a Disney-related shout out. Listen here.
💎BTW💎
🎙️I can remember the first time I listened to Lemonada’s first show Last Day—it was saved on my calendar. I woke up early to listen to it on my morning run. I was in Disney World. It felt like a big moment, the show felt different and bold, and like it was setting up something important. And it was. Last Day has taken us through drug addiction and suicide, and now, what feels like the most dangerous territory of all, gun control. Last Day has never podcasted the easy way. Episode one of the new season brings Stephanie Wittels Wachs to Montana, where she meets the pro-gun Yates family, Wayne and Nancy, that has lost two people to gun violence and experiences culture shock talking to them. (“Should we tell her?” Wayne asks Nancy in a whisper, on mic. “Everyone here is armed.”) Stephanie even shoots a gun and likes it. How do we live safely in a country with 400 MILLION guns? Stephanie is doing the dirty work to find out. Listen here.
🎙️On In Your Hands, Lizzy Cooperman is putting her life…in our hands, by letting us vote on her Instagram account which path she should take on her fork in the road, then talking to friends about her options, and reporting on the whole thing. The stakes are intensifying! The first episode had Lizzy either hiring a life coach or buying a Coach wallet, now listeners are voting whether she should go out with a dude or start an Only Fans account. The show is unfolding in a fascinating way…while Lizzy’s friends (like in the most recent episode, Nikki Glaser) might want one thing for her, ultimately it is up to us. And I’m not sure we’re doing her any favors. Do listeners want to watch something exciting, or do they want the best for her? Maybe this show is telling us more about ourselves than Lizzy. This is a show you can’t miss, and I mean you literally can’t miss a single episode. She’s taking us along for the ride, which is her actual life. Listen now.
🎙️You Must Remember This is back with a new season about the erotic 80s, and in the first episode, Karina Longworth starts ramping up to Eyes Wide Shut by first looking back to the 70s for a recap of how filmmakers were grappling with how much they could get away with in a world with a new rating system, both the anti-sex work and anti-pornography movements, feminism, and Regan era conservatism. There are heartbreaking and shocking stories about Linda Lovelace in Deep Throat and Maria Schneider in Last Tango in Paris that offer a snapshot about how sex was shown and talked about in movies when we were just figuring it all out. This episode doesn’t step into the waters of sex and film gently, it cannonballs. Listen here.
🎙️Laura Leigh Abby (of Seventeen) was on Feeling Seen to talk to Jordan Crucchiola about Now and Then, a movie that defined for many people my age what it was like to grow up and have girlfriends and change into a world that expects us to start liking boys and adapting to society standards of being a woman, and having a nostalgia for a childhood we might not have had. (It was our Sandlot.) The movie is a celebration of kid friendships (“What did we even talk about?”) and what it was like to—ahhh—be bored alone with our friends. Even if you haven’t seen the movie, you’ll feel like you have (and want to watch it.) Listen here.
🎙️This reminded me to catch up on Laura Leigh Abby’s Seventeen, where she pulls from her teenage diary and real AIM conversations from the early 2000s to retell the story of her high school years. (Which is scarier? This project, or Lizzy Cooperman’s?) If you’re 36-ish or a former AIM kid, you will be flooded with cringey, adorable memories. This show is entertaining but also doing something bigger, speaking to the toxicity of being a woman in the early 2000s, to be groomed for the male gaze, to have nutty expectations to be perfect and chaste and sexy all at once. It also made me retrace my own path through high school. It made me regret-less of my own embarrassing high school years, where I was in this cloud of teenagehood that made it impossible to know what the fuck I was doing. If I was being strategic in high school, I might not be where I am today. (Married to a cute guy I had a crush on who went to my high school, but was never my boyfriend.) Listen here.
🎙️I promise you that I’m not going to turn this into a Those Happy Places fan newsletter, but I loved their episode on theme park shows, parades, and nighttime spectaculars so much—and you will, too, even if you don’t love Disney. I had never thought too carefully about what a parade does to a space, but Buddy and Alice explained it in a way that took me back to my religion classes in college (which is a compliment) when I was first learning about ritual, the sacred, and liminal spaces that transform you from a mundane to magical experience. Shows, parades, and nighttime spectaculars often seem like a hassle but in allowing people a rest and by offering the absence of movement, they open us up to opportunities for creative and immersive storytelling that comes to life, something that rides cannot do, and serve as strong roles in the theme park narrative. If you’re yet to listen to Those Happy Places, this would be a good episode to start with. It’s a great example of what Buddy and Alice do best. (And it will appeal to more than just Disney fans!) Listen here.
🎙️The Skewer, the podcast that brings you a movie-like montage for your ears based on the week’s news, is back for a new season. It’s a wild tornado of interesting sound bites and music that in a kind of theatrical (but short) arc will have you laughing and crying. And maybe even dancing. Listen here.
🎙️Something unusual is going on in Sweden—young, traumatized asylum seekers are being hit by “resignation syndrome,” falling into comas and not waking up for months or years. Kerning Cultures gives a cohesive report by focusing on a Yazidi family who fled their home in Kurdistan, that was trauma #1, and their young daughter was retraumatized acclimating to life in Sweden, which may be why one day she fell asleep and didn’t wake up. Doctors are divided—some believe she should be treated as normally as possible, the other side thinks she needs to be removed from her situation. Is it a medical disorder or a cultural bound disorder? Why Sweden, a place thought to be welcoming to asylum seekers? And why not Swedish children? It’s a terrifying (but not unique) medical mystery with more questions than answers. Listen here.
🎙️Good Ancestor has completely relaunched with a much larger mission (that includes a book club,) so scoot over to Become A Good Ancestor, where Layla Saad’s new projects will live. To kick things off on the new podcast feed, Layla interviewed Danté Stewart, who writes and speaks about where race, religion and politics intersect. Danté recently published a book Shoutin’ in the Fire to talk about loving Blackness in a white space, some of the emotional stories from his book (and the beautiful meaning of its title) and more. Listen here.
🎙️Damages is part Law & Order, part climate crisis storytelling, where Amy Westervelt is digging into the stories behind more than 200 climate cases around the globe. The season wrapped up with an episode about the Lake Erie Bill of Rights, and the fight spearheaded by midwest moms (my people! I’m a Clevelander!) to give it personhood. Lake Erie is am ecological mess (it was declared dead in the 60s) and people in Toledo were unable to drink their water. How both the fossil fuel industry and the people of Toledo responded tells the complex story of what it takes to, and who is invested in, protecting a whole US ecosystem. I was feeling so grateful for these people. They’re fighting all day while I’m just listening to podcasts. Listen here.
🎙️When people tell me they don’t like fiction, I point them toward The Truth, which I find is many people’s gateway show into audio dramas. Each episode is a short, beautifully produced fiction tale that is often both dystopian and incredibly funny. Danslang is about what happens when a community creates their own language to bond, by taking us to Newlin High, where kids have started speaking in Danslang. As if that weren’t funny enough, a visiting linguist elbows his way in (in a “how do you do, fellow kids” kind of way) to study the language in the hopes of preserving it before the principal wipes it out for good. Listen here.
🎙️Border City opens in an emotional introduction to the beauty of Tijuana from Sandra Dibble, a journalist who spent more than 25 years reporting at the border. In 1994, Sandra Dibble left a prestigious job in Washington, D.C., for Tijuana. On Border City, we are introduced to the city that Sandra knew and loved and didn’t love, both as a reporter and human being. It’s a guide to a city known for violence, but in seeing things through Sandra’s eyes, we get a more layered picture of the city. Listen now.
🎙️On a new episode of Oprahdemics, Kellie Carter Jackson and Leah Wright Riguer discuss how Oprah covered the LA Riots, which is a peek into how America reacted to them and maps out the way Oprah actually offered early CRT conversations to America, introducing us to arguments about institutional racism and exploitation, and how The Oprah Show went from tabloid to masterclass. This is a bonus to the Slow Burn series on the LA Riots, showing us what was happening outside of LA, in living rooms all across the country. Listen here.
🎙️A Hit Dog Will Holler ran its fourth and final episode, and I was impressed with how much it was able to communicate in such short amount of time. It’s complex in both storytelling and production, and says so much about the burden we put on Black women to fight for their own equality alone in a really inventive way.way. Yet this podcast is somehow as fun as candy. Listen here.
🎙️When Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma came out, it felt hard to critique. What could be less polarizing than getting people to “eat like their grandmothers” and get back to the farm? On Maintenance Phase, Aubry and Michael have done it, poking holes in Michael Pollan’s philosophy of farming = better, and eating like we did back in the good old days. (If you’re aware of our history with racism/homophobia, cringe along with me at the idea of “the good old days.”) Michael and Aubrey offer the back story of the cutest lil farmer in Pollan’s book (who on second glance is not so adorable and is grossly depicted as a wholesome, salt-of-the-earth guy. You’re wrong about the farmers market—Aubrey and Michael expose the problems they pose for both farmers and consumers. Listen here.
🎙️I love you!