🦖 Sleeping dinos, juice library, thin places, Sun Ra 🚀 Zak Rosen 🗣
💌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 Adela Mizrachi of Podcast Brunch Club, which is like book club, but for podcasts. They have 50+ chapters across 5 continents plus a global virtual chapter. Every month they send out a curated podcast playlist on a theme and then the chapters meet up to discuss!
The app I use: Pocketcasts. It's a solid app that has some really great features. One of my favorite features is that you can tell it to skip a certain number of seconds at the beginning or end of a podcast. I'm a power listener, so I like to find ways to maximize my listening time! According to the app, I have save 41 days of time by speed listening and skiping. Not bad! The one thing I wish it had was a way to create clips of podcasts to share. When I want to do that, I head over to Overcast.
Listening time per week: Tough one! I'd say about 15 hours a week on average, but it depends on the week.
When you listen: Every spare second I am not using my brain for other things! Getting ready in the mornings, making meals, going for walks, driving anywhere, doing laundry, during my nighttime routine, doing dishes, in the shower, playing mindless games on my phone, etc. I created a t-shirt design that says "Podcasts Make Chores Fun"....because they do!
How you discover: The Podcast Brunch Club community will often recommend podcasts on our Facebook Group or Slack. We also reserve time at the end of all of our meetings for members to share any new podcasts they've discovered, so that's also a fun way to find new content. Also, I read podcast newsletters like this one to get inspiration.
Anything else? Podcast listening has totally enriched my life, but it can often be lonely. That's why I started PBC...as a way to use podcasts as a jumping off point to create deeper connections with people. Anyone is invited to join us. It's free and a no-pressure way to have interesting conversations.
xoxo lp
ps If you are pleased with Podcast The Newsletter, please spread the word.
👋q & a & q & a & q & a👋
Zak Rosen
Zak Rosen is the host of The Best Advice Show and former host of Pregnant Pause. He produces and/or edits How To Survive the End of the World, Shattered, and Space Curious. Follow him on Twitter here. Follow The Best Advice Show on Twitter here. You can listen to my episode of The Best Advice Show here.
What's it like to talk to random people about advice almost every day? How has that changed you?
I’ve always felt so lucky to use my microphone as a kind of passport to connect with strangers. Since I’ve been cooped up for the last year, the show has been a lifeline. To have an excuse to talk to strangers in general is a gift, but to then get to glean a real, tangible, often soulful piece of advice from them is really rewarding. Not just for me but also as an exercise in reminding my interviewees that they are experts in making it through this challenging life we’re living.
What advice has stuck with you?
Practice freedom.Talk to yourself like you’d talk to your best friend. Fart in-front of your partner. Eat oranges in the shower.Feed your dog berries. Investigate your shame. Don’t hate on your early work.
What do you hope The Best Advice Show does for people?
I love the idea of my listeners being able to actively practice the advice they’ve just heard on that day’s show. Ultimately, I hope my show explicitly improves listereners’ quality of life. I also want to delight, delight, delight.
I was on your show (and so were my parents!) so I know a lot of editing goes into each episode. How long does it take and what is that process like?
It really depends. I probably spent a good 20-30 hours on this episode. But your episode was super easy and took less than 2-hours. There’s very little narration in the show, and what there is of it, I try not to write but instead just riff till it sounds natural. The big lift is booking this beast. A new episode everyday takes a lot of coordination and I am not as organized as I should be!
What’s something listeners don’t understand about podcasts and what goes into making them?
I don’t think listeners have a sense of how deeply we hosts/producers care (uh, obsess) about our shows or how much their feedback means to us.
What shows do you love?
My first podloves were Dawn and Drew and What Would Rob Do? More recently, I fell hard for the Short Cuts episode, Self-Portrait featuring How to Remember by Axel Kacoutié. Also, Sharon Mashihi’s Appearances and Phoebe Unter’s series on The Heart, Race Traitor. Annie McEwen’s Radiolab episode, Red Herring, was delightful. Still Processing is consistently excellent. And the Bruce Springsteen interview on Broken Record was amazing. You Might Actually Be In Love With Your Best Friend on The Cut was really memorable. I’ve also been making my way through the back-catalogue of Employee of the Month, hosted by the late, Catie Lazarus. There are few interviewers I can think of who so deftly combine humor with interesting, probing questions like Lazarus did. What a loss.
🚨If u only have time for 1 thing🚨
I hate talking about money so much that I hate writing this sentence about hating money. When I see money podcasts, I think, ‘that might be great but it will be triggering.’ I have found one I am absolutely obsessed with—AM I A FINANCE BUFF AFTER ALL? No, I just love stories, and This is Uncomfortable is completely heavy on the perfect storytelling with a backdrop of money. The stories are about people and love and awkwardness and horror, nothing nitty gritty. The marriage penalty tells the story of wives Amber and Diana—Amber was in an endless fight to get disability benefits. It proved to be difficult (there is a horrifying anecdote about a case worker calling her out because he found evidence that she had gone to a park to look at birds, so therefore could not be that disabled) because Diana made money, about twelve bucks an hour. Diana was literally trying to make less money so that Amber could keep her benefits, but it was a constant source of stress and they barely had enough money to survive. Their lawyer advised them to get divorced. (“Everyone knows marriage can threaten disability benefits.”) This is the best solution for people in Amber and Diana’s situation—they are stripped of the life to survive as normal people. At the top of that episode, two other episodes were recommended, and they were equally compelling. On Why don’t you fix your teeth? a woman talks about how her teeth were keeping her poor—no one would hire her, they assumed she was a meth addict. And now I’ve possibly saved the best for last—on Instrument of sabotage, a clarinet player’s career is upended by a vengeful mystery person, and he doesn’t find out until it’s too late.
💎BTW💎
🎙️I am a regular Song Exploder listener and recently got my dad hooked on the show. He is one of the only people I know who says “I love all types of music” and really means it. Before Covid, he would go to everything from Ghostface Killah shows to Against Me! shows in Cleveland, several times a week. I have held back on writing about Song Exploder because every time I listen to my dad rave about it, I think, “my dad needs to write about this show.” He sent me his own write-up, and I’m including it here:
“But down in the deep the honey is sweeter.” I did not think I needed to have Swedish singer and songwriter, Robyn, describe the creation of her song Honey, but guess what, I really did. In episode 167 of the podcast Song Exploder, Robyn breaks down the essence of the song from the highly technical elements to what this song really means to her. There are about another 110 artists sharing their experiences with Song Exploder.
Hrishikesh Hiraway created Song Exploder in 2014. The beauty of the podcast is that it is for everyone, music tech nerds, casual listeners and die-hard fans. Even better, once you start handling these little twenty-five minute gems, you will want to hear them all, even if you don’t know all of the bands.
There is no wasted effort. Exploder strikes just the right balance, giving us the birth of the song, how it was pulled together in the studio, and then each story leads to us hearing the final version. But you will hear it like you never heard it before. I dare you not to find five episodes you want to hear this week. (—Daddy-O)
🎙️I am a regular Imaginary Worlds listener and have no idea how I missed this amazing episode, Music from Saturn. Eric Molinsky explores the world of the father of Afrofuturism Sun Ra, untangling Sun Ra as a person (genius or charlatan?,) how he used music to reflect the Black experience in America by considering himself an alien from Saturn, and the way he created not just a new kind of music, but entire world that he invited people to join him in. Live Sun Ra shows were multi-dimensional experiences, and each one transports you to another time and place. The term Afrofuturism wasn’t termed until Sun Ra died, but Ra has been doing it all along, and now Afrofuturism seems to be having a moment. (See: Black Panther. Hear a clip about this from Passport here.) I thought I knew a lot about Sun Ra (I used to go to Sun Ra shows every time they came to New York—that was the last thing I did before the world closed down to Covid, and The Arkestra played at my wedding!) But I had never thought of how Sun Ra has created an Imaginary World, and now have an even greater appreciation for what the current bandleader of The Arkestra, Marshall Allen, is doing today. There is nothing like Sun Ra and this was a wonderful tribute. Hear a clip here.
🎙️Misha Euceph’s Tell Them, I Am is back, this time produced by the Obama’s Higher Ground, to tell one Muslim story every weekday throughout Ramadan. This feels like a treat I didn’t know was coming—I loved every single one of the previous episodes of this show. The very first episode, a heartfelt introduction from Misha, is one I think of often. (It explains where Misha got the name of the show, and why it’s so important. Listen to this episode first. I clipped a bit of it for you here.) The first few stories of the new season have been even more beautifully produced. The first is a story from rapper Muhammad “Mvstermind” Austin about prayer and fatherhood and running in the moonlight, and it feels almost like a prayer itself. The second story from Nadiya Hussain had an opening that made me laugh out loud—he father would tell her every morning as a child, “no questions today.” There’s even a piece with Radiolab’s Latif Nasser. Each story speaks to the uniqueness and universality of the Muslim experience, and is a totally little treat. I’m so excited to celebrate Ramadan with Misha and her guests,
🎙️99% Invisible opens up with the story of icebergs, and how we only are able to know about them what w see on the surface. This relates directly to the next story, about dinosaurs, and the way we imagine them. It tells the history of dinosaur depiction in art—they used to be illustrated as immobile, lazy beasts with zero energy. And now we almost solely see them in action—ripping other dinosaurs to shreds, stomping around a goddam forest. This leaves out a huge side of them and their lives—they spent a lot of time hanging around and doing nothing! (They also had fat…something we almost never see.) Paleoartist John Conway started drawing dinos in a different way, in his book All Yesterdays. One of his favorite drawings was one of a T-Rex, a dinosaur that is usually seen in action. But even the T-Rex had to sleep, and Sleepy Stan is a T-Rex shown napping. Conway’s work allows us to dream about what dinosaurs were really like, to think outside the box of what we’ve ever seen before, and realize that the most of the pictures we have been shown are just the tip of the iceberg. Hear a clip here.
🎙️Never has an episode of Celebrity Book Club been so emotional as this one! This show is always hilarious and poignant, but on a recent episode, Chelsea Devantez and Danielle Schneider cover Sally Field’s 2018 memoir In Pieces. (I was actually at Hachette when this book was published.) The book avoids taking the dishy angle (Sally didn’t have a ghost writer) and dives headfirst into the pain and trauma of a woman who really has been wanting people to like her for her entire life. The book strikes a nerve with Danielle, who talks about her relationship with her own mother, and I know this sounds CHEEZY AF but I wanted to jump inside my headphones and hug them both. (I would have asked first.) This episode makes you want to read the book and love Sally Field, these vulnerable podcast moments are rare, and I was brain-underlining something that Danielle said: the world tells people like Sally, and Chelsea, and herself, that woman are taking up too much space, that they are too much. And shows like Celebrity Book Club and Danielle’s show, Bitch Shesh, are saying that women don’t take up enough space, and are just right.
🎙️I know that this episode of Euphomet is spooky, but I found myself smiling throughout the whole thing. (I know we all throw the word “goosebumps” around, but I literally had them. I looked down at my leg and though, ‘well how about that!’) The unexplainable stories take place on the San Juan Islands, a place that storyteller Libbie believes is a thin, liminal place—beautiful and open to the other world. She has one story that shocked me and sticks with me. My aunt lives in the San Juan Islands, and I could completely feel the beauty of the island in this piece. It had a great sense of place. The stories are creepy, that is nothing new for a podcast. But Euphomet is possibly the best at capturing these experiences with sound and storytelling, and that is what pushed this episode to goosebumps level.
🎙️On Why Are Dads? Alex and Sarah covered The Shining. It’s an episode I was waiting for, but this movie has been talked about so much, what more could possibly be added? But I mean, that is the beauty of podcasts, that two people like Alex and Sarah could have a lengthy conversation pulling from their multi-faceted brains about something old in a new way we’ve never considered before. What are the real horrors of the story (evil twins? or alcoholism and spousal abuse?) How does Stephen King “tell on himself” in this work? Alex and Sarah talk about some moments that I’ve missed through my million times watching. I don’t mean to spoil too much, but Wendy is the daddy. Remember her walking around with her overalls, checking all the equipment in the boiler room? (I do not know how to talk about boiler rooms.)
🎙️This Ends at Prom went from an extremely intense episode about Promising Young Women to a totally fun one about Troop Beverly Hills. I would have been happy to hear two people just drool over how wonderful this movie is, how underrated, the perfect performance of Shelly Long as Phyllis Nefler is. I was also a little afraid that BJ and Harmony would tear Phyllis down. That would be so easy to do. But instead they speak about how she is depicted as ultra feminine but uses her femininity as a superpower, to actually act “like a man.” They shine a compassionate light on these mostly rich kids, who actually have kind of shitty lives, and on the rich Phyllis, who isn’t spoiled, just working her way through the world the way she knows best, by focusing on details so tiny, like the water she drinks while sitting shiva over the death of her marriage. I have always wanted The Bechdel Cast to do an episode of Troop Beverly Hills. (I literally asked them to.) This episode was exactly what I was hoping for.
🎙️Nicole Georges’ 2013 graphic memoir Calling Dr. Laura has been turned into a wonderful podcast, Relative Fiction, and now you can imagine what it is like if a true-crime story is also a graphic novel and is also a podcast. Growing up, Nicole was told that her father was dead, and until a palm reader told her he wasn’t, she never doubted it. This incident sparked a search for the truth, which is a reconciliation of the memories of her mother and family members and an exploration of how memories can take on a life of their own. Nicole’s mother has not agreed to be on the podcast (and did not give Nicole a very good Amazon review for her book) but is painted in such an interesting, complex way. I instantly felt pulled into this story, desperate for answers, and happy to be kind of feeling like I was sitting in Nicole’s pocket, on her search with her. Nicole’s has a visual, animated way to tell her story. I’m having so much fun and am totally intrigued.
🎙️I wake up on Fridays in a festive mood, and I kind of celebrate the beginning of the weekend with Follow Friday, a show where Eric Johnson talks to people of the internet about who they follow in the digital space. The guests are great, the conversation is always fun, and it makes my Twitter account better, every episode. I would follow Helen Zaltzman to the end of the earth and back (I bet she is cringing reading this because that is a terrible use of the English language) and so I loved hearing about who she follows on this episode of Follow Friday.
🎙️I am trying to think about how Jeff Emtman thought of turning a story about fruit juice into an interesting podcast episode. On the surface it seems ordinary, or maybe quirky at most. Amanda Petrus worked overnight shifts at a fruit juice factory, tasting cups from enormous batches of complicated fruit punch concoctions and comparing them to the juice standards in a juice factory’s juice library. What you get from this episode is a beautiful story of anti-nostalgia and the crippling discomfort of working with a toxic person, which is tied to an even more traumatic, mind-boggling incident that led Amanda to lead the juice factory. (It includes the accusation of juice poisoning.) And the feeling of a woman who eventually achieves her goals of being a chemist, having a bunch of cats, and marrying a woman.
🎙️Jameela Jamil took a look into tabloid culture with former UK tabloid journalist Dean Piper, who came clean with a lot of the shady things he did as someone behind all of the terrible headlines we read about celebs in the 90s and 2000s. He is a former because his conscious made him leave the industry. The shit he spills offers a tip of the toxic relationship the press has with famous people. He is there to be interviewed, but Jameela has a lot to get off her chest. She has been the victim of people of the press threatening her, attempting to record her without knowing, and participate in horrendous journalistic practices. She frames this celebrity-bashing machine so well: we choose a star, almost always a woman, build her up, over-romanticize her presence in our lives, and then either force her to do something naughty or catch her doing something normal, then completely exploit her for it and tear her down to the point of mental instability. This episode is full of two things: insane anecdotes of what we are doing to women, and larger conceptual ideas about what’s wrong with celebrity “journalism.”
🎙️Do you remember Laurie Beth Denberg, one of the insanely talented actors on All That? I always assumed she would be one of the biggest comedic actors in Hollywood and more than once have wondered where she went. And I found her! She is the host of Bad Advice with Laurie Beth Denberg. The advice itself was interesting, generally weirdly and amusingly specific, but Laurie Beth is funny, as is her co-host, and uses her sense of humor and compassion to give actually good advice. From what I can gather, Laurie Beth didn’t go on to become one of the biggest comedic actors in Hollywood, but went on to have an exciting life full of funny stories, which she pulls from to guide her listeners in their problems.
🎙️Supervision was originally released from New Hampshire Public Radio and hosted by Emily Corwin in May of 2019 with four episodes which focused on the story of Josh Lavenets, a man who was convicted of domestic assault, spent years in prison and was eventually let out on parole. This is where the story begins—what happens to a man on parole? How is he cared for? How does he try to build his life back up? In 2019, it was where the team thought the story ended, too. After it was published, a listener led Emily to new information that added depth to Josh’s story. It wasn’t just a post script, it reshaped the entire series. So Supervision re-released the whole season. (You can listen to both versions with a fuller explanation on the site.) So this is not just a story of a man on parole, it is about a reporter getting the wrong story and then going back and fixing it. I flew through these short episodes, there is no excess fat, yet it’s a well-paced following of what Josh was experiencing and a shocking ending that will make you want to listen to the whole thing again once you finish.
🎙️I had been waiting for a great episode about the most current situation about schools reopening, and I found it in this episode of Past Present. Natalia, Nicole, and Neil offer an honest look at what’s going on (I don’t have kids, so I feel like I am looking into a goldfish bowl) and also offer the history of keeping kids home. It’s not so much about what all this virtual schooling is doing to kids, it’s more about why we can’t get them back. There is also a great piece on Jill Biden, and how she is a ground-breaking first lady. Hear a clip here.
🎙️Dear Young Rocker is back for a totally different season. This time around, we are hearing the stories of other rockers and their awkward teen selves, their letter to themselves when they were young. On Nerd Camp, Chelsea Ursin passes the mic to Amy Hoffman of the band Future Teens. We are so used to being engulfed by Chelsea’s story, so this is different. But the beautiful storytelling style is the same, and like Chelsea, Amy was saved by music. I loved this show the first two seasons around, and this new season proves that Chelsey has built a community of people and her sharing her vulnerabilities of her youth can rub off on others. This idea, and episode one, reminds us how universal the teenage experience is, and that with Dear Young Rocker, Chelsea has created something that other people can take to and run with it.
🎙️Saadia Khan has launched a fundraiser for Immigrantly. By donating this Ramadan, you'll be supporting an all-women of color team to create a really beautiful, important show. Donate here!
🎙️I love you!