🤬 Swearing, Britney Spears, sea monster, The Biden Special 🍽 Hari Kondabolu💥
💌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 James Poole aka Kristi Yamaguccimane, a friend I met via The Daily Zeitgeist (he is the god of AKAs,) and host of Lour After Hours.
Shows pictured: The Dan Lebatard Show, Trillbilly Worker’s Party, The Daily Zeitgeist, Q Clearance, Behind the Bastards, The Bechdel Cast, Exterverted, Spinning Out.
App I use: Overcast
Listening time per week: about 30-35 hours a week. Then at least a few hours on the weekends.
When I listen: At work! I’m left alone the majority of the day. I do full car details, restore headlights, paint correction, etc., at a dealership so it’s a fairly solitary job. I only listen with a single earbud because I need to be able to hear what’s going on around me since there’s heavy machinery being used and the risk of being hit by a vehicle is very real lol.
How I discover: Mainly Twitter. I’ll keep an eye out for podcasts that others are talking about or I’ll check out shows that are hosted by guests of The Daily Zeitgeist. They have so many guests that also have their own shows that if I enjoy them on there I usually check their show out. And of course Podcast the Newsletter! Lauren does the heavy lifting so we don’t have to! Use her guidance!
Anything else? Two fairly new shows that I’m enjoying just to escape the current news cycle is Extraverted! (disclosure: I guested a couple times) which is a show hosted by Jules & Jeremy that brings two news stories that fit a theme each week to see which one is more outlandish. It’s light hearted, fun and the perfect length at around 25-35 minutes an episode. The second is Spinning Out hosted by Josh Robbins. Josh has artists on to talk in-depth about a single favorite album each week and the detail to which they go into is relaxing and even if I’m not familiar with the record they’re discussing it makes me want to check it out by the time they’re done.
Also, shoutout to Zeitgang and the podcast I help out with and host sometimes: Lour After Hours which I recommend no one check out unless you listen to The Dan Lebatard Show since it’s centered around that show lol.
xoxo lp
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Hari Kondabolu
Hari Kondabolu is a comedian, writer & co-host of Politically Re-Active with W. Kamau Bell & Hari Kondabolu. Hari he has a Netflix standup special out now called "Warn Your Relatives" and his documentary, “The Problem with Apu,” is now available on HBO Max. Follow him on Twitter here. Follow Politically Reactive on Twitter here.
How are you personally different than you were in Politically Reactive season one?
My partner and I just had a baby, so that certainly is a huge difference from the first 2 seasons where me being single was a running joke (on the podcast and in my life). There's obviously a lot more Dad talk on the show now and Kamau loves to give me tips like "Refer to yourself as a 'Dad" and not as a 'Daddy' because that word doesn't always mean what you think it means.
Why did you decide to come back now? Were you often hit with pangs of nostalgia in the last three years, longing to be hosting Politically Reactive again? What did you miss?
Kamau and I definitely talked about the possibility of bringing it back periodically over the last 4 years, but we were both so busy. The show's high quality is the result of many, many hours that both of us, the producers and editor put in. I don't think people always knew how much work was involved. Whenever we were overloaded with touring and projects, the podcast recordings during the week would nearly push us over the edge. COVID freed a lot of our time up and with another Presidential election, we thought it was the right moment to return.
What do you love about the podcasting space?
I love the immediacy of podcasting and the fact that anyone can do it. I realize this means that there are now a million podcasts, but it's amazing that we live in a time where you don't need gatekeepers to prevent you from sharing your points of view to the masses and the production values can be whatever you want them to be. Our podcast is extremely well-produced with tons of bells and whistles, but my podcast with my brother Ashok, "The Untitled Kondabolu Brothers Podcast," is really lo-fi and still really fun and loved by an audience.
What do you hope the show does for people?
I hope Politically Reactive is both informative, funny and hopeful. This isn't a podcast where we discuss opinions from both the left and the right. This is a podcast about justice, equality and equity and how we get there. Knowing that a lot of the listeners are advocates, organizers, teachers and other people who are actively trying to save the world and that our podcast might be useful or cathartic for them definitely makes us proud.
What shows do you love?
In the Thick and Code Switch are amazing, as is Yo, Is This Racist? I love podcasts, like ours, that have honest conversations about topics that make people uncomfortable.
🚨If u only have time for 1 thing🚨
Open World has been such a smart, joyful, optimistic show, and the final episode of the season, I’ll Have You Know, is a look at what the trans experience might look like in the future, and made me think a lot about what it would be like to wake up every day having to be someone I’m not—how stressful and awful that would be. It sounds like sci-fi or horror or both, but I’ll Have You Know offers hope. There’s a wider message about living as your true self, no matter what, no matter how old you are. So it’s also a brighter look at ageing. The conversation at the end gave me even more appreciation for the story’s creativity and details, things I might not have picked up on by myself. Rose and TK ask every guest to name something that’s giving them hope, which hasn’t been the easiest question to answer lately. But Cat’s answer to the question made me want to stand up and cheer. This story paints a very funny, imaginative future and the sound will take you away. T.H. Ponders, you’re brilliant!
💎BTW💎
🎙️Last week I misspelled Local Switchboard’s Jordan Gass-Poore'‘s name. The correct spelling is Jordan Gass-Poore’!!!
🎙️I listened to two sweet pieces of Radio Diaries this week—both audio diaries of interesting woman. 1) Quarantined in the Pizzeria is from 11-year-old Francesca, who due to COVID, has to spend her days going to school and being a kid with her dad in his pizzeria. She goes back and forth between zooming with her classmates, making pies, and being an adorable kid. 2) Majd’s Diary: Two Years in the Life of a Saudi Girl goes inside the life of a teen living in Saudi Arabia. She wants to be a scientist, she isn’t sure she wants to get married, she feels conflicted about hijab. She so delightfully wears her heart on her sleeve, and there are so many moments (tiny things…like pointing out the bookshelves in her parents’ home) that really tell us who she is and what her life is like.
🎙️It would be such a shame if people were to underestimate one of my favorite new shows Celebrity Book Club because they’re snobby assholes who think they can’t learn anything from celebrities. Because urging people to take “fluff” seriously is all what Chelsea Devantez’s podcast, a show that breaks down celebrity memoirs, is all about. In them, we learn so much about the world, about people, about the way people present themselves vs who they actually are, and about how they deal with a very crazy thing: being famous. The conversation about Mariah Carey’s The Meaning of Mariah with Lydia Popovich was the ode to Mariah that she deserves, a thoughtful walk through the book that examines every pivot in Mariah’s life with empathy and respect, pulling out so much more insight than what is presented in the book’s pages. Unlike the Jessica Simpson book from episode one, I *do* want to read The Meaning of Mariah. The ghostwriter was Anita Hill’s stylist and some of the excerpts Chelsea read were glorious. Celebrity Book Club is very funny, too. At one point Chelsea says (I’m paraphrasing,) “Mariah was 22 when she wrote All I Want for Christmas Is You. What was I doing when I was 22? Trying to get guys I hated to sleep with me?” And I laughed out loud and keep thinking about that. Listen and find your own funny moment, this one is mine.
🎙️Pindrop is a podcast about traveling around the world, launched during a global pandemic, when it’s unsafe to travel. So it’s fitting that the episode Virtual Worlds lets us travel to virtual places, like Sea of Thieves, Fortnite, and Ultima Online, to see how people are interacting with each other and existing in a COVID world. The final story of the episode struck me—a man who lost his mother (Linda) and grandmother (Joan) created a game where he could return to his life with them, when they were alive. Players take the role of Russell, Linda and Joan, getting to experience Russell’s family and his grief. Russell says it was healing, but the idea of playing a video game that lets me visit my dead grandmother scares me so much—I’d want to do it, but I wouldn’t.
🎙️Criminal’s The Clearwater Monster drove me crazy but I kind of loved it. Residents during the late 40s and early 50s in Clearwater, Florida were reporting sightings of some kind of monster and his huge, weird footprints in the sand. SPOIL ALERT IT WAS REALLY A PRANKSTER named Tony Signorini, who went to extensive lengths to trick everyone into thinking an enormous monster was visiting their shores, probably plotting to eat them all alive. This story is fascinating and Phoebe talks to Tony’s son, who treats the event like some light-hearted, boys will be boys, totally harmless joke. I must be turning into a curmudgeonly old lady because I do not think this prank is funny and if I had been a Clearwater resident in 1948, I would have been furious and given Tony a piece of my mind!!!!!
🎙️For Wild Thing’s You Gotta Have Faith, host Laura Krantz takes us to Colorado’s UFO Watchtower, a place where there have been a high number of UFO sightings, but it’s also become some sort of pilgrimage experience for believers, who want to come and leave something behind for aliens, or even for loved ones who have died. Because what’s the difference, really? It all comes down to faith. (I recommend you take a gander at these photos of the Watchtower from Roadtripper—they are beautiful and give you a good sense of the place.) I am loving this series of Wild Thing and this episode beautifully demonstrates one way that religion and science can be closely intertwined.
🎙️Labyrinth (Amanda Knox’s podcast about getting lost that never ceases to surprise and delight me) interviews Samantha Geimer, who was raped by Roman Polanski when she was thirteen. I started this episode assuming I knew what it’d be like, but Geimer’s story shocked me. Polanski’s trial, she says, was worse than the actual rape, and she’d rather be raped again than have to repeat the trial. This is one survivor’s story that’s important to add to the catalogue of survivor stories. It’s a reminder that everyone processes trauma in ways you might not imagine.
🎙️I just discovered Words to That Effect, a podcast about the impact literature has had on pop culture, and when I went to the episode list, I was nearly overwhelmed by the fact that I wanted to listen to every episode at once. The host, Conor Reid, is super knowledgeable and has smart guests, experts in their fields, for discussions that will deepen your love for literature, and maybe even get you to turn your podcast off and pick up a book. I first listened to The Golden Age of Piracy because I always go straight to a podcast’s pirate content first. It was a thrilling history lesson and a fun spin on traditional book podcasts.
🎙️New Hampshire Public Radio just launched a new investigative reporting project called Document, and the first series, The List, is about the secrecy that surrounds police misconduct in New Hampshire by taking a look at The Laurie List, which is the once private and sort of random list of police officers who have committed infractions. (The New Hampshire Supreme Court recently ruled that the list should not be confidential.) Residents who can’t see the list wish they could, and cops on the list say it’s too easy to get there, and that it ruins their careers. One cop interviewed got fired for a small booking error and was then rehired but put on The Laurie List, which was surprising to me because I literally did not know that police officers could be fired.
🎙️New from Wondery, Do No Harm. Melissa and Dillon Bright’s infant son innocently fell from a lawn chair, and when they rushed him to the hospital, authorities accused them of child abuse and took their son away from them, setting them up for a years-long battle to get him back and clear their name. The system has accused innocent parents of child abuse before, and this story exposes the cracks in the system that encourage this to happen. Melissa and Dillon seem remarkably cooperative throughout the excruciating process, and do not seem mad enough (maybe anger got lost through editing?) If I was the subject of this story, you wouldn’t be able to understand the episodes because so much of my audio would have to be bleeped out for saying terrible things.
🎙️Oh shit! Speaking of swear words! Helen Zaltzman released a lyrical episode on the etymology of swearing in the form of the Swearlusionist Swearalong Quiz! I love everything that comes out of Zaltzman’s brain and her sharp and charming way with words, and this episode was stress-relieving, informative, and a lot of fun.
🎙️On Imaginary Worlds, Eric Molinsky shares three vignettes about what is lost and gained when science-fiction is translated into other languages. There’s a fascinating story of Israeli pilots translating The Hobbit while in captivity, a woman remembering the Soviet version of The Wizard of Oz, and the nuances of translating Chinese science fiction. I felt like I was listening to a great episode of Rough Translation. Eric used sound effects from old Disney Read-Along books on tape, which made me both overcome with nostalgia, and feeling like I was being red three bedtime stories from across the globe.
🎙️The Cut had a story about “long haul” COVID patients—people who have symptoms for months but fail to test positive. (Also called post-acute COVID-19 syndrome.) Chimére Smith talks about suffering, going to the hospital ten times, testing negative for COVID, and not being believed by doctors. Made to feel crazy by doctors. (“You’re not sick, you’re stressed!”) Chimére did feel crazy until she found a community of other long haulers online (mostly women and women of color,) where she could learn to feel justified, and about this strange version of the disease.
🎙️When Tess Barker and Barbara Gray launched Britney’s Gram in 2017, it seemed like it was going to be a fun exploration of a pop icon’s strange Instagram account and nothing more. As it turns out, Barbara and Tess were among the first to detect something unusual at Britney’s house, and that her Instagram posts may be a cry for help. They have been seriously reporting the ins and outs of Britney’s conservatorship ever since, and the podcast has taken on a more urgent tone. The Whole World Is Watching is the podcast’s last episode (Tess and Barbara are moving on to a larger project that I believe is related to Britney) and it’s a reaction to the recent news that Britney’s father, Jamie, almost lost power as conservator. (Bad news, he didn’t.) But it’s still interesting to hear attorney Katerina Perrault explain the power dynamics going on here, and how wrong it is, and how it could possibly be. I was about to say that if this all sounds too confusing, don’t worry about it. But do worry about it. It’s fucking crazy. We will look back and see Britney’s story as one of the biggest celebrity tragedies of our time. Hopefully there will be an episode of You Must Remember This to pick up the pieces.
🎙️I LOVE Britney’s Gram for the hosts and the what feels like hard-hitting journalism. But if you are just dipping into this conservator stuff, you might want to listen to Even The Rich’s miniseries on Britney, which details all of Britney’s high highs and low lows. (Start here.) It’s from Wondery, so heavily produced, but I think it’s pretty valuable in understanding how we got here.
🎙️When I think of suicide, I’m often thinking of angsty teens or mid-life adults. The episode of Last Day We Don’t Want To See Our Parents Unhappy shines light on the fact that seniors are in fact the most at risk for suicide. Stephanie boldly opens up the episode talking to her dad candidly about it. His health has been declining (he’s almost 80) and admits he has thought of dying. But what makes elderly people go from thinking of dying to making themselves die? Stephanie also talks to Marguerite Reynolds, who lost her elderly mother to suicide after some health setbacks, and gets real about Marguerite’s mom’s last day, and what may have been going through her mind when she decided to end her life.
🎙️I was disappointed with the lack of Kamala Harris content on podcasts this week. Her win was historic in so many ways, I wanted to bask in Kamala stories! Code Switch came in with some, an interesting dive into how being biracial has impacted the way people, particularly in the Black and Indian communities, have seen her. Being bi-racial is one thing, but the complications start getting exponential when one of those races isn’t white. Why do Black people feel more loyal to her than Asians? How has she been able to thread the needle, appealing to Americans and break through the glass ceiling with so many things that other her?
🎙️The same year Donald Trump was elected our president, JD Vance published Hillbilly Elegy. A lot of liberals looked to JD and his book as some sort of Rosetta Stone of Appalachia, hoping he could explain to them in their own, more privileged language who these poor people were who voted for Trump. JD’s message is wrong and was later criticized (he’s a big believer in pulling yourself up from your bootstraps and puts a lot of blame on the people of Appalachia for their hardships,) and some have called him “The False Prophet of Blue America.” Four years later, Trump is on his way out and Hillbilly Elegy is being turned into a film. (Starring Glenn Close and Amy Adams!) On Citations Needed, Nima Shirazi and Adam Johnson, along with the hosts of Trillbilly Worker's Party (another great show) give a thorough critique of what JD got wrong, and why we interpreted his book the way we did. The fact that this film is being called “the worst film of Ron Howard’s career” makes me want to watch it more.
🎙️A publicist from Yelp emailed me a press release for Behind the Review, and she was probably confused by how excited I was in my response. (“This is the show I have been waiting for!'“) I obviously didn’t read the press release carefully enough and assumed it was going to be more Beach Too Sandy, Water Too Wet, and less Inside Trader Joe’s. You know, more pointing-out-the-absurd with humor, less public relations-y. I should have known it wouldn’t be a critical, jokey take on Yelp, it’s run by Yelp. But I did enjoy it, and I think I know why. I love when people take mundane things very seriously. It is why I love Awesome Etiquette. Behind the Review talks to Yelpers and small business owners about their Yelp experiences. The reviewer in the episode It’s In The Details, Marla Frezza, (“full-time foodie, part-time cook,”) said she felt it was her duty as a consumer to leave as many Yelp reviews as possible. Her duty!!! I love this shit. She wrote a great review for this flower shop, and then we got to hear from the flower shop guy. This show was not what I expected but I think I’m in.
🎙️For All Eyes On US, The Rough Translation team challenged themselves to cover 25 countries in 25 minutes, taking a look how each one reacted to Joe Biden’s presidential win. They did a little bit of cheating (covering several countries at one time in places) but I’ll allow it, this felt like a whirlwind blast, full of slowed down, personal moments. The best: a NPR journalist went to a diner in Bejiing that Biden visited years ago, and asked the locals what they thought of his win. (While eating “The Biden Special,” which is Coca Cola, buns with pork and onion, noodles tossed with bean paste, and cucumber salad.)
🎙️I love you!