👕 Tee Time 🎙️ EarBuds' Arielle Nissenblatt 👂
💌Podcast The Newsletter is your weekly love letter to podcasts and the people who make them.💌
Bonjour!
Tee Public is a company that podcasters often use for their merch and I am their DREAM consumer. I have enough podcast t-shirts to take me through a 10-day Disney Cruise with multiple wardrobe changes per day. I have reached out to Tee Public a few times (does anyone know someone there?) because I want them to sponsor me. I will pimp the hell out of these products.
(Clockwise from upper left: The Daily Zeitgeist, Ethnically Ambiguous, Doughboys, The Bechdel Cast)
Why? 1) Shopping is my cardio 2) Wearing a t-shirt with TEAM WET SCABS written on it makes the medicine go down 3) Tee Public allows you to order your tee in a variety of styles and colors, oh wow I am straight up advertising now 4) When I spend money on Tee Public, I tell myself I’m not even spending money at all!!!! It’s going to a good cause, my favorite podcasters!!!!! (This is what I tell myself.)
If you feel you need to treat yourself (I know of my summer travel plans have been postponed and that money has to go somewhere) go to Tee Public and search for your favorite podcast. Buying a shirt or mask or whatever will make you happy and show your podcaster friends a *tiny* amount of support.
Also Tee Public, if you are reading, #SponsorPodcastTheNewsletter. (Feel free to use this hashtag on your social media channels.)
xoxo lp
ps If you are pleased with Podcast The Newsletter, please spread the word.
👋q & a & q & a & q & a👋
EarBuds’ Arielle Nissenblatt
Arielle Nissenblatt is the founder of EarBuds Collective, co-creator of Outlier PodFest, and co-host of Counter Programming. Follow her on Twitter here. Follow EarBuds Collective on Twitter here.
Kindly introduce yourself and tell us what you do!
My name is Arielle Nissenblatt and I am all about the podcast world. I started in this space 3.5 years ago when I began my newsletter, EarBuds Podcast Collective. EarBuds is a weekly email that contains a theme and 5 podcast episodes on that theme, and each week is curated by a different person. Throughout the years, EarBuds continues and it's been an amazing entry point for me into the podcast world. I've gotten to go to podcast festivals to speak on podcast newsletters (and a variety of other topics), meet people all across the industry, and to become immersed in this exciting space! While running EarBuds, I also managed a podcast studio in a co-working space, which also included helping businesses start podcasts for their brands. I am also the co-creator and MC of the thrice-yearly Outlier Podcast Festival, which has been another amazing way of meeting podcast folks. Currently, I am the marketing and business development manager at Castbox, where I help creators find audiences through our platform. I also produce and host two weekly podcasts, Feedback with EarBuds and Counter Programming with Shira & Arielle. Podcasts are my life, really and truly.
Why did you start Counter Programming?
It started as a joke on Twitter. At the start of this pandemic, I tweeted "a podcast called Counter Programming but it's only about kitchen counters." Then, I went for a walk and it struck me that this could be a real podcast, so I called my friend Shira, who is always down for my weird ideas and she said "you're a nut, but I'm in." The idea behind Counter Programming is to give listeners some respite from the grim COVID-19 news, because it was truly dominating the news cycles from March to late May. It's a distraction-cast, wherein we acknowledge the existence of the pandemic but then give listeners a 30 minute break from it all.
What was your original goal for Outlier PodFest, and how has it evolved?
Ever Gonzalez is the founder of the Outlier PodFest series. I spoke at the first-ever event, which took place in St. George, Utah. Funny story, actually. I like to keep on top of all things podcast -- events, networks, new shows, drama. I saw a notice for Outlier PodFest in February 2018 and reached out to Ever to see if I could get a press pass to attend... and to tell him that it looked like there were mostly white men on the speaking schedule. He responded by inviting me to speak. We've been buds ever since. I usually MC the show, facilitate panel discussions, and do some pre-show marketing and community work. The goal is to engage with a local audience and to find and showcase talent from that city or town. The goal is also diversity of thought, opinion, and background. We try to show off BIPOC, women, and non-binary creators as much as we can. We also try to encourage speakers to go for the weird, even if it fails. Outlier is a risk-taking festival. We moved it online for COVID in May and it was actually extremely successful. We'll be doing the same in September.
You are constantly coming up with new ideas, I'm always so impressed. And then you execute them! What's your process for brainstorming ideas, and what drives you to follow through?
Thank you! You rock. Most of my ideas come to me right as I'm about to fall asleep. Sometimes I remember them in the morning, but more than once I've lost them overnight. Because of that, I am pretty used to waking myself up before drifting off and writing down the idea on my phone. When I was in high school and even college, I didn't think I was very creative. I admired creative people -- artists, poets, writers. I also lowkey thought that creative people were only artists, poets, writers, and other "makers." I learned post-college that problem-solvers are also creatives. With that flexibility, I felt a sense of freedom and most of my projects -- EarBuds Podcast Collective, Village Podcasting, and others, have filled a need; they were solutions.
Do you think podcasters should read their Apple Podcast reviews?
Only if it's part of their shtick. For an audio drama, reading reviews may distract from the overall tone of their show. But for an improv show, go for it. And make me laugh. I also think it can be an effective tool for new-ish podcasters who are in the business of giving shoutouts to newbie listeners. I instruct podcasters to keep in mind that they can change up the format or segments of their show. If you're someone who's been reading reviews episode after after and now you feel like it's not your thing anymore, you can stop. Just let your listeners know that you're changing things up and that maybe you'll do this quarterly rather than weekly. What podcasts do you listen to?
Can you shout out a podcaster? Who should we know about?
Everyone should know about Scam Goddess AKA Laci Mosely. Scam Goddess is an Earwolf show that I discovered during quarantine that makes me laugh out loud every single time. In each episode, Mosely invites a comedian friend onto the show and they go through a few segments together, making jokes along the way. The funniest part of this show is that Mosely and her guest essentially glorify scammers and con artists, while also teaching listeners how to not get duped. This is a must-listen!
🚨If u only have time for 1 thing🚨
This American Life takes us to amusement parks across the country in a time we cannot go to them ourselves. The first story in this series is I story I can see myself re-listening to every day—it’s sweet and hilarious. Cole Lindbergh is a 25-year-old who has been managing teenagers in the games department at Worlds of Fun for eleven years. His passion for his work is endearing—he cares more bout it than most people care about anything. He inspires his team of teenagers to have so much fun working they blow through 16-hour shifts without a break. (Is this legal?) I cannot imagine that even the best business people could do a comparable job making money for Worlds of Fun’s games. But how long can this go on? A grown man working at an amusement park. Can Cole carry his skills onto a more adult job? Is everything downhill from here for Cole? I recommend you join me in watching all of the nerdy-adorable training videos Cole has made for his employees. The rest of the episode is equally delightful—Jane Marie (of The Dream) shares listener letters that seem mythological, and Storytelling Connosoir Jonathan Goldstein (of Heavyweight) tells a story about working at Wildwood in New Jersey.
💎BTW💎
🎙️This Citations Needed episode on HGTV’s House-Flipping shows is nearly an hour and a half long, but was so fascinating that it felt like fifteen minutes. Nima Shirazi and Adam Johnson, who use the show to take us through the intersection of media, PR, and power, bring on two guests to expose some troubling insights into HGTV, the highest rated entertainment network in the US. On shows like Flip or Flop, Good Bones, and Flipping 101, the premise is basically the same: the host(s) buy a neglected house, that’s usually in a gentrifying neighborhood, for almost nothing, and turn it into something “beautiful.” Nima and Adam point out that these shows basically serve as a gentrification instruction manual for viewers. They seem fluffy and light on the surface, but if you dive a little deeper you’ll learn a lot of unsettling things about capitalism, our desire to get rich quick, and the racist nature of real estate. (They even tie it in to the death of Breonna Taylor, who they suggest may not have been murdered if it weren’t for gentrification.)
🎙️If you told me a white man was going to have a show where he just talked about things he thought were interesting, I wouldn’t think it sounded very promising. But white man John Green (author of The Fault in Our Stars) has a show that is sort of like that, The Anthropocene Reviewed. John reviews “facets of the human-centered planet” on a five-star scale. It’s interesting-talk. (The only reason I gave it a chance is because one of my beloved Bellos recommended it and I’d trust them all with my life.) On Mortification and Civilization, John reviews the history of mortification and shares some of his own embarrassing moments (and how he cannot forget them) and an interesting myth about Margaret Mead that became popularized and reveals to us something about humanity.
🎙️Truth Be Told’s Deportation Wounds features a tragic story from show producer Isabeth Mendoza, whose father was deported as a teen, and Isa’s struggle to communicate with him throughout her life. This is a reality that seems too dark to be true, being separated by your family because of immigration law. And it’s bleaker than you could even imagine. Host Tonya Mosley talks Isa through her frustrations and anger, and we get to eavesdrop on a vulnerable conversation Isa has with her dad. Ugh, my heart.
🎙️One from the Vaults is a trans history podcast by Morgan M Page, and the most recent episode talks about a fascinating person who is NOT getting enough air time. Romaine-la-Prophetesse was a complicated, gender non-conforming free black Dominican coffee farmer/mystic who lived in the late 1700s, dressed in women's clothes, claimed that the Virgin Mary was their godmother, and was one of the most successful leaders of the Haitian Revolution. Romaine has basically been erased from Haitian history, probably because of their gender non-conformity. Episodes like this (and this great episode of The Allusionist) remind us that trans communities have existed in other cultures and time periods for centuries in robust and different ways. And this episode also taught me some really interesting things about Vodou and its relationship to Catholicism. If you’re a regular reader of this newsletter, you know that all you have to do to get my attention is throw in a Jesus story.
🎙️Through personal stories and an incredible history lesson, Throughline’s A.D.A. Now! focuses on a civil rights issue that gets overlooked—the Americans with Disabilities Act, exposing the injustices the disabled community has been facing for decades, despite the fact that the ADA just celebrated its 30th birthday and is considered the most important civil rights law since the 1960s. Our shameful history of treating disabled people in America includes barring disabled people from appearing in public, refusing to accommodate for them in schools, and forced sterilization. We’re fighting for racial equality while there’s another silent battle being waged on people with disabilities, who are fighting back, for even the smallest humane things. But Jesus H Christ they must be tired of fighting. BTW if you didn’t listen to the #DisabledAndCute episode of There Are No Girls on the Internet, it is my favorite episode of Bridget Todd’s new show.
🎙️If you’re a fan of The Heart or Mermaid Palace, you’ll have to tune this episode in The Heart’s Swelter series, A Steam. It’s a piece from Audio Smut, which was The Heart before The Heart was The Heart the podcast, and you can’t find it anywhere else on the internet. It’s lush and raw and naughty and all of the wonderful things that The Heart has always been.
🎙️Forgotten: Lost Women of Juárez is one of my favorite series right now, and if you aren’t caught up, start now. Forgotten started weird an ominous, planting the idea that women who were being found murdered and maimed in Juárez might be the result of a serial killer, organ traffickers, or a Satanic Cult. But the real story is much more horrifying. The last episode connects many of the murder victims to Juárez's foreign-owned factories, also known as maquiladoras. Spoiler alert: it’s not organ traffickers murdering these women, it might be rich business men who kidnap them for sex, kill them, and then dispose of their bodies. And the United States is a big player in this sport.
🎙️On They & Us, Wil Fundal takes us on a ‘gender identity’ journey, talking to non-cis people about their preferred pronouns, the uphill battle to be correctly identified, and trans rights. In important medical situations, does it matter if a doctor calls you a “she” when you don’t identify as female? What is your medical experience like if you have Ovarian cancer but don’t identify as a woman? It’s the exploration of these seemingly teensy issues that are actually absolutely huge that make this podcast roar. Episode 3, Riot for Your Rights, goes through the history of gay and trans rights, and why it’s so important to preserve the memory of what LGBTQ people have had to do to get where we are today. Kids these days are incredibly open to queer folk, which is good. But if they take LGBTQ rights for granted and don’t understand that these rights didn’t always come so easily, we may end up losing the fight in the future.
🎙️Reveal’s American Rehab has been taking its time going through the history of a rehab place called Cenikor, but a new episode, The Work Cure, talks to Chris Koon, a man who endured two years of back-breaking labor, unpaid, as part of Cenikor treatment. It’s the episode I have been waiting for, hearing what the treatment (“treatment”) is really like there now. We get to see what recovery looks like for a real person who goes through the program, and what they are left with when they leave.
🎙️Blood River is a twisty true-crime murder/corruption investigative story set in Honduras, a city that is extremely dangerous, particularly for environmentalists, who are murdered at shockingly high rates. Berta Caceres was one of these activists, whose murder can be tired to the grassroots campaign she started that forced the world’s largest dam builder to pull out of the Río Gualcarque. The podcast tells the story of Berta’s murder and the government corruption that allowed it to happen. The blatant fraud demonstrated by the authorities is beyond belief, and it’s a terrifying look at what happens to a community of people who truly can’t trust the police or judicial system.
🎙️I know that I love California City because each time I see it in my feed I get a wave of excitement. It documents a city in the Mojave Desert that real estate developers have been selling to people for decades, with the promise of incredible, empty dreams. The people being duped are mostly hard-working immigrants trying to get a piece of the American Dream. Soldiers of the Sale talks about the sales team that was built by Nat Mendelson to sell the empty desert land, and Ralph Nader’s effort to take Nat down. Emily talks to Don, one of Nat’s sales people, who shares his business secrets, so we get a good sense of the whack strategy. This series is a must-listen, start with episode one.
🎙️I had been on a kick of listening to “meh” shows (I bet you think I love everything, don’t you? It’s not true!) and I stumbled upon this piece from The Kitchen Sisters, French Manicure: Tales from Vietnamese Shops in America, and to be completely hyperbolic about it, I felt like I was a dehydrated person in the desert who had just been given water. It was like, “ahhh, yes. Quality!” I guess what I’m saying is, if you are ever find yourself in a podcast dry spell and need to be invigorated, let The Kitchen Sisters bring you back. French Manicure gives us a “soundtrack of new citizenship,” presenting audio artifacts of Vietnamese immigrants (as most nail salon technicians in America are) about their journey to American and their lives. It’s a window into the hearts of the real people who don’t often get their stories told. (Though they have such interesting stories.)
🎙️I hate hearing about finance and when someone starts talking about money I run and hide under the nearest table, so the fact that I like Barron’s Streetwise is something. It really uses fun conversation and storytelling to make the stock market interesting, Barron’s columnist Jack Hough seems to scour the market for stories that are shaping our world. So it’s not just about the money, it’s what the impacts the fluctuating financial world will have on us. Disney After Coronavirus talks to Bob Iger about what the pandemic is doing to the movies and theme parks, and how Disney plans to adjust. (This is extremely important information for me.)
🎙️Things That Go Boom is a fun way to learn more about kind of scary foreign policy stuff via excellent story-telling, taking an unconventional look at national security issues like nuclear weapons, diplomacy, and veteran experiences. Host Laicie Heeley has an interesting perspective, her views swing both left and right, which makes this a validating and challenging show. I leave each episode with something new to think about. I particularly enjoyed What Shakespeare Can Teach Us About PTSD, which introduces us to Stephan Wolfert, who uses Shakespeare to help vets emotionally heal when they’ve returned from service. Stephan finds that much of Shakespearean text is specifically addressing veteran issues (the ideas of honor and PTSD) and he’s so knowledgable and passionate about it that he’s able to make a compelling argument. I always love it when people find unexpected magic and power in literature.
🎙️When I first started listening to Pessimists Archive, a show about the history of innocuous things we have once feared (like birthday parties and mirrors,) I wondered how host Jason Feifer would be able to continue to come up with episode topics. But the more I listen, the more I realize there are an infinite amount of things we looked at skeptically in our past that we embrace now, and that many of the things we fear today will look silly in the not-so-distant future. But What Will We Fear Next? This episode discusses modern technology and looks into the future, what people will be afraid of in 5-10 years. (AI ranks high.) Jason also gets into why it’s important to look into the future and predict things we will be scared of. This is a fantastic, hugely under-appreciated show. Jason is a brilliant, personable, and funny interviewer. He brings himself into each episode, and it always feels personal.
🎙️American Skyjacker covers “the golden age of plane hijacking,” a span between 1967 and 1972, when over 300 commercial airplanes were hijacked worldwide. The show interviews Martin ‘Mac’ McNally, who started as a small-time crook but ended up making hijacking his full-time job. In The Golden Age of Hijacking, hijacking was easier than you could possibly believe, and hearing Mac’s accounts of hijacking planes feels too strange to be true.
🎙️I don’t always listen to The Daily, but when I do, I make sure it’s one of the most exasperating episodes. The Mistakes New York Made brings us back to the beginning of the pandemic in New York, inside the community hospitals that were three times more likely than private hospitals to fail its patients, to divulge the silly reasons community hospitals weren’t able to be more effective. Plus a look inside a temporary hospital that cost more than $52 million (the final number is probably closer to $100M) and served only 79 patients.
🎙️Red Web investigates true-crimes and conspiracies on the internet, kind of like Reply All and Endless Thread. Episode one, Lake City Quiet Pills, tells the story of an anonymous Reddit user who passed away, and his friend made a posting to announce the death. Redditors started digging into the digital histories of the two to discover a mysterious website, which led to a trail of espionage, hacking, and military conspiracy.
🎙️Tig Notaro is one of my favorite comedians, and she now has a new advice show, Don’t Ask Tig. I would listen to Tig talk about anything, her humor is razor sharp, and it flows out of her in even the most mundane things she says. I was super excited to turn on her interview with Sarah Cooper (this Sarah Cooper) but honestly, the interview was kind of awkward, and the Will Ferrell episode was much funnier. Anyway. I’d like to take this moment to promote Tig’s first podcast, one of the best podcasts of all time, Professor Blastoff. I seriously injured myself during a kettlebell workout listening to this show. I had laughter-tears in my eyes.
🎙️Since the lynching of George Floyd, white people have been facing their racist demons and finding how racist they can be in the attempt to be anti-racist. So the timing of Nice White Parents is uncanny—it zooms in on school segregation in New York City (still alive and well!,) revealing how white, well-meaning liberal parents are perpetuating it. This American Life producer Chana Joffe-Walt investigates the School for International Studies (SIS), a New York City public school that used to be made up of mostly students of color until it was hit by a wave of white students who couldn’t get into “better” schools. But instead of a story of integration, this is a story of a school battleground where tensions are high, as the white parents basically gentrify the school in an attempt to make it a better place for their own kids. The conversations that Chana has with some of these white parents is truly cringe-worthy. She interviews people who voted to integrate NYC schools years ago, but then ended up taking their kids out of the schools. We get to hear these parents thinking aloud and being made aware of their racism, realizing that by painting SIS as a “chaotic” place full of under-educated kids not good enough for their white kids, they’re making the problem worse. I live in NYC and my husband and I don’t have kids yet, and this show is confirming my wildest fears about the NYC school system. But the narrative is so gripping and personal that non-NYC people will want to hop on the ride.
🎙️I have been refreshing my feed constantly since the end of June, waiting for the next episode of Everytown to drop, and it finally did. It’s about a group of wealthy, white people in Southampton, New York who are trying to kick out the town’s immigrants, even though these are the people who make up a good deal of the work force. Much like Nice White Parents, Everytown exposes community racism that’s fueling a town. We get to hear uncomfortable phone calls and see dogged reporting by Charles Lane, who is attempting to nail down who is behind the campaign to get rid of the residents and share the stories of the people who are being threatened to get pushed out.
🎙️On Inside Podcasting, Sky Pillsbury interviews podcasters about podcasting. I loved this conversation with Wil Williams, which gets to the heart of what goes into making excellent audio fiction. Skye even included a question I submitted for Wil about writing podcast criticism.
🎙️I love you!