🙋🏼♀️ The lives of girlbosses, saints, witches, and Blackbeard 🗡
💌Podcast The Newsletter is your weekly love letter to podcasts and the people who make them.💌
Bonjour!
Today is Monday, September 27. There are 247 days until I go on my next Disney cruise. If you don’t have time for the whole newsletter: Please read Rebecca Lavoie’s full interview—it’s fantastic, everyone is excited that this is back, and I made this.
This week we’re getting to peek into the listening life of Giancarlo Bizzarro, the Vice President of Sales at Crooked Media. He joined Crooked in early 2020 with over twelve years' experience in the political media, advertising, and entertainment industry. Prior to joining Crooked Media, Giancarlo was Director of Sales at Endeavor and Cadence13. Before that he oversaw podcasts on the advertising side at Oxford Road, and a long time ago was a humble field-organizer on the Obama campaign. Giancarlo has been on nearly every side of podcasting and can holistically speak to how how brands can successfully grow within the space.
The app I use: I personally have been an Apple user since the first iPhone and live and breathe within iOS so I use the Apple Podcasts app. I still have the Overcast app, and the other platforms for exclusive content.
Listening time per week: I listen to ~10-12 hours per week depending on how busy the schedule is. I’m not counting all of our ad sessions, which is probably the best part of the job, besides when Jon Lovett blasts our edits on twitter.
When I listen: It used to be during my commutes to and from work, which in LA traffic could be 2-3 hours per day. During the last 18 months my main consumption has been in the mornings while I work out. For limited series like Edith, Wind of Change, This Land, Up and Vanished, Floodlines, I like to binge them on road trips or flights. It’s a great way to pass time and catch up on new content. When it comes to more current events based pods like Pod Save America, What A Day, or some of the football (otherwise none as soccer) pods like the Guardian Football Weekly, I prefer consuming those during shorter commutes or working out. If I’m doing household chores like cooking or laundry, I’ll generally listen to something a bit more light hearted and fun like Lovett or Leave It, Keep It, or Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me.
How I discover: I subscribe to HotPod (congrats to that team on their sale to Vox), Sounds Profitable, I Hear Things, and various other industry newsletters. Also shout out to Arielle Nissenblatt from Earbuds, she is someone whom I greatly admire and who has consistently introduced new pods to my list. Also, what you are building with Tink Media and Podcast the Newsletter is a great way for shows to leverage existing relationships in order to promote themselves. I’m also lucky enough to work or have worked with a lot of publishers, and sometimes get an occasional heads up on content from other peers in development. Discoverability has consistently been a challenge for our industry, but through efforts like this newsletter and what distribution platforms are doing in featuring new content, I hope it’s something we can solve to help people continue find good content to consume.
Anything else? Yes, while we are on the topic of discoverability, I’d like to make some shameless show plugs for our new fall launches. Jason Concepcion is back with a new podcast X-Ray Vision that transcends pop culture and entertainment. Also, we have a new season of This Land where host Rebecca Nagle investigates how the far right is using Native children to quietly dismantle American Indian tribes. Lastly, Jon Favreau, our founder who I probably should’ve led with (sorry Favs!), will be hosting a new show called Offline this fall. The show explores the question is the internet slowly breaking our brains, and what can we do about it. Thank you so much for everything you do, it’s always great working together.
xoxo lp
ps If you are pleased with Podcast The Newsletter, please spread the word.
👋q & a & q & a & q & a👋
Rebecca Lavoie
Rebecca Lavoie is Digital Director at New Hampshire Public Radio, lead audio editor for the hit podcast Undisclosed, the host of the Netflix podcast You Can’t Make This Up, and co-host of Crime Writers On… Follow Rebecca on Twitter here, Crime Writers On… on Twitter here.
What makes the chemistry between you and your co-hosts so great? What do each of you bring to it?
Well, we've all got some background in journalism, but Toby is a cynic - and a novelist - so his sensibilities lean toward both the pragmatic *and* the plot-creative. Lara, meanwhile, is a free spirit who is willing to give anything a try, but at the same time, isn't afraid (at ALL) to say when something sucks, or to defend her love of something really trashy. She's also a private investigator who used to work in the legal system, so she KNOWS her stuff. Kevin is a former broadcaster (TV and radio), so not only does he bring an understanding of the medium, but he's also the humorous heart of our show, because he might be the funniest person I've ever met. As for me, I'm the anchor, but I also see myself as the harshest critic on the show much of the time.
What do you do while you are listening to podcasts?
I walk. Seriously. I walk around 3-6 miles a day, which is when 99% of my listening happens. The other 1% is while I'm in the shower. I would listen more in the car but most podcasts are mixed terribly for car speakers. (Shout out to Spotify originals, which seems to have worked this issue out!)
When you're listening to something you are going to cover, how do you take notes? Do you listen several times?
I don't take notes for myself except when something really exceptional sticks out at a certain time stamp and I know I'm going to want to pull a clip. Kevin, Lara, and Toby all take solid notes and those get added as bullet points to our script. I use those notes to ask questions on the fly. I used to script questions based on their notes, but found the organic conversation sounds a lot more engaging in the final edit. And I'm definitely smarter when I'm winging it.
What is your fan feedback like?
Oh man, our fans are THE BEST. When we first started our Facebook group and it grew into the thousands, I became convinced I'd have to hire someone to moderate it, and for a time, we did do that. But our fans...they are so great and there are SO few assholes among them. That might be because I'm not afraid to lose fans by being radically honest on the podcast and on social...like, I will call someone out if they deserve it.
What has worked in helping you grow the show?
Honestly, the best tactic for us is doing direct appeals to our core listeners (the folks on our Patreon, our Facebook group, and our newsletter list) to recommend our show to others. We also have a couple of well-known fans, so of course it helps when they tweet about it!
Have you ever totally changed your mind about a show you reviewed?
ALL THE TIME. Sometimes we review a show or podcast too early in its release, like The Undoing on HBO, which turned out to be a real stinker. I look back on some of my podcast reviews and really wish I could take them back. And it's NEVER because I said I didn't like something that turned out to be great...always the opposite.
Are there too many true-crime podcasts? Do you think the genre will ever die down?
There are too many true crime friend chat shows for sure, and far too many podcasts that say they "cover" a crime but are actually just relying on newspaper articles and Wikipedia. But no, there are FAR too few deeply-reported true crime narrative podcasts.
Why do women really love true-crime?
Women don't love true crime any more than men do. Don't buy the hype. Seriously!
If you were going to create another podcast, don’t worry about the logistics or whether or not anyone would like it, what would it be?
I had a show called HGTV & Me that I LOVED making. I'd like to make something similar about Selling Sunset, and also something about all the weird basic cable shows we all watch, whether we admit it or not...things like Storage Wars and Zombie Flippers and Dance Moms and Catfish. I LOVE interviewing/talking to people (regular people and celebrities) about C-list pop culture stuff.
Do you think there are any rules all podcasters should adhere to?
Yes: Don't plagiarize. Don't buy downloads or pay for reviews. Don't expect people to work for you for free or close to free. Respect your audience. Don't be a jerk in the world or on your show or to your producers. And try not to make a crappy podcast if you can help it.
What shows do you love?
Anything made by Dan Taberski, Connie Walker, the In The Dark team, and a lot of random shows where smart people are talking about pop culture things they know more about than I do and are way funnier than I am. My current favorites in that genre are 60 Songs That Explain The 90s (Spotify) and Keep It! (Crooked Media). I also LOVED the universe-expansion podcast spin-off of HBO's Insecure, the true crime parody Looking for LaToya (HBO and Tenderfoot).
🚨If u only have time for 1 thing🚨
Saint Podcast is a history podcast focusing on the lives of saints—the first series is focusing on martyrs. If you love history I don’t see how you couldn’t be transfixed by these ancient, gory, magical stories that have shaped our culture and world. I pride myself in being someone who knows a bit about the saints (when I was confirmed in the Catholic Church, I chose Lucy, the patron saint of eyesight to protect me—she is imagined to be holding a platter of her eyeballs because she was so dedicated to Christ she gauged her eyes out so she didn’t have to lay eyes on a man,) but I found this podcast filling in so many gaps, making ties between familiar and new Bible stories. It’s thorough and easy to understand for the people less familiar with saints, but packed with so many things I didn’t know. Start at the beginning with Saint Stephen and keep going until you’ve received the mark of the stigmata.
💎BTW💎
🎙️I launched my first issue of Podcast Marketing Magic last week—read it and subscribe. The marvelous Ms. Arielle Nissenblatt edited it and gave me lots of advice.
🎙️I made a Harklist (which is like a podcast mix tape) about The Rise & Fall of the Girlboss. It includes smart conversations about her rise and fall from shows like Public Intellectual and Vox Conversations and interviews with Sophia Amoruso and Leandra Medine. Hear the backstory of girlbosses who we lauded in scorned, like the women behind The Wing, Glossier, and more. I think if you listen, you get the full story of exactly who she is, and why we can feel sorry for her. This took me one billion hours to make (with the help of Courtney E. Smith) so please listen for at least 10 seconds.
🎙️Reminder that I recommend following Arielle Nissenblatt and reading her EarBuds newsletter and listening to her podcast Feedback with EarBuds. This week her show spotlight was Bodies, a podcast I recommend below.
🎙️When I saw a drop for Because of Anita in the Undistracted feed my phone almost fell out of my hand, I was so excited to subscribe. Because of Anita is a four-part series from The Meteor and Pineapple Street about the legacy of Anita Hill’s testimony in the Justice Clarence Thomas hearings exactly 30 years ago this fall. Guests will include Tarana Burke, Kerry Washington and goddam Anita Hill herself, in her first-ever public conversation with Dr. Christine Blasey Ford. Subscribe now.
🎙️If I Go Missing The Witches Did It is a fun, occulty/true-crimey audio drama voiced by Gabourey Sibide that tells the story of Jenna, a Black writer who goes missing in Westchester where she was staying with her boyfriend. Through interviews with people in the town, voice memos, and Jenna’s narration, we find a group of witch influencers who may have been involved with her disappearance. One well-meaning white woman, Elise Edgerton, is outraged that nobody seems concerned enough about Jenna, and takes it upon herself to get to the bottom of things. (Funny this is coming out as #CrimeTok is trending on TikTok, surrounding the murder of Gabby Petito.) Will Elise do more harm than good? You know that feeling of starting a big book that is totally rewarding and everything you’re looking for? That’s how I felt jumping into this show. The white women are hilariously one-dimensional, the way the memos and narration are pulled together is perfect, and Gabourey is a great voice actress.
🎙️I could hear the podcast world cheering when I saw that the new season of Everything is Alive dropped. Ian Chillag is back to interview his inanimate object friends, this time, a vending machine. Everything Alive is funny and always leaves me feeling differently about my life. It’s an example of what the best fiction can do—increase your empathy, allow you to escape, take a few moments of self-reflection, and notice something new you’ve never thought about before. I had to go to a meeting I was really dreading and listened to this vending machine episode beforehand and was in such a good mood the meeting was fine. Listen to Everything is Alive to brighten your world, I think my my life is going to be a bit friendlier this fall.
🎙️If you’re into Everything is Alive, you might get a kick out of Nice to Meet You, a fictional comedy show from Gen-Z Media that’s catered more toward kids, but I found it amusing and insightful. Your host is Professor Burkhead, who each week beams one human and one animal onto his space station in his “Unifier” machine to see what they have in common and what they can learn from each other. It’s like Everything is Alive because you get into the head of the characters, the added element is you hear a conversation between them. It makes you think hard about what it’s like to be a wombat, or what life experiences does a shark have in common with a dentist? It’s not just a comedy schtick, it’s an exploration of the human (and animal) experience.
🎙️Sportsland, the spinoff of Disgraceland, premiered its new season last week with two episodes—one on Mike Tyson, another on Oscar Pistorius. The episode on Mike Tyson was a gentle reminder for me to stop watching my favorite television show, Mike Tyson Mysteries. I’m totally not going to, but listening to this episode gave me pause. Getting into the muck of Tyson’s history of crime and violence does not sit well with the cartoon image of Mike Tyson that I prefer—Tyson in a sweat suit solving dumb mysteries with his pet pigeon and a gay ghost. But did Tyson’s agent set this up because he needed money? Was he coked out of his mind when he was doing the voiceovers? I might never be able to watch Mike Tyson’s Mysteries in the same way again. But this is supposed to be a review of a podcast that I enjoyed, and I’m particularly looking forward to the Tonya Harding episode, which I have been promised is coming up. I told you I love sports podcasts without the silly stats. The worst parts of sports are my favorite parts of sports, and Sportsland is telling those stories in a unique way.
🎙️I found myself laughing through almost the entire episode of The Guilty Feminist entitled Hags. When I wasn’t laughing along (Felicity Ward is hysterical) my mind was blown by the conversation Deborah Frances-White had with Mari Elen Jones, who is host of the Welsh-speaking podcast (which I believe to be called) Gwrachod Heddiw, which is all about modern day witches. Mari invites women on her show to talk about ways they might be witches, and defines a witch as a woman with power. This idea forces you to think about witchcraft in a whole new way, and suggests that we tap into witchiness any time we speak up for ourselves, do something freeing, or even just anything unexpected. I’m tempted to learn Welsh just so I can listen to her show, but even if you aren’t fluent in Welsh, hear her sparkling conversation with Deborah on The Guilty Feminist.
🎙️I told you I have been thinking about girlbosses a lot lately, and now I keep seeing them everywhere, like that scene in Pee Wee’s Big Adventure when he keeps seeing bicycles after his is stolen. Jennifer Palmieri’s Just Something About Her had an interesting conversation about girlboss culture with so many ear-tingling moments. Jennifer talked to writers Koa Beck and Leigh Stein with sympathy for the girlboss, speaking about the culture that she rose in, and why the standards we held them to was nearly impossible. Stein’s perspective was particularly interesting—she was cofounder of the group Binders Full of Women, a group that was protested by feminists who didn’t think Binders was inclusive enough. And she’s since written a novel lampooning the girlboss, Self Care, that I want to read.
🎙️Short History Of… has an episode about pirates (the original girlboss? jk I am just obsessed with girlbosses these days) that made me feel like a little kid, gobbling up facts about Blackbeard (Edward Teach,) booty, and maritime law. This episode is packed with the history of privateers and how they led to just two years (only two years!) of heightened pirate activity, pirate involvement in the Slave trade, Blackbeard’s beginnings and his last days, and why pirates looked so fancy when they were looting other ships. It’s really all the stuff you want to know about pirates but might not. I talked to my dad about this episode for at least a half an hour.
🎙️Bodies is back for a new season. The first episode, Something Extra, tells the story of Kelly, who in the 80s when she was in her 20s found out she had Herpes. We go through her entire history of sexual activity, how the shame of having an STD shaped some of the major moves of her life. She marries someone because she thinks they will accept her, and when that marriage doesn’t work out, balks at finding love for fear of being rejected by someone who she assumed would want nothing to do with her. She tells her kids. It was interesting to hear from someone so impacted by their Herpes—1 in 6 people have it. It’s impossible not to wonder what Kelly’s life would have been like not if she didn’t have herpes, but if she hadn’t felt such shame.
🎙️I have been gobbling down episodes of Wicked Words (I recommend this episode with Piper Weiss,) a series from the podcast Tenfold More Wicked, which was a collection of true-crime stories presented with narrative nonfiction storytelling mixed with enough investigative journalism that gave you a vivid image (like it or not) of each case. On Wicked Words, the true crime storytelling is mixed with in-depth interviews with journalists who worked on a creepy case and can speak to the research and reporting that was involved. Each of these stories deserves their own spin-off podcast, and I love the variety of getting to hear from a different writer each episode. There is so much true-crime poorly reported—these are the stories worth listening to.
🎙️So sad that season one of Sound Deals is over, but happy that it happened. I listened to this final episode with Jake and Amir, co-founders of Head Gum, who tried to sell String Wipers. (On Sound Deals, people improvise fake items in the style of the Home Shopping Network. Poor Ivan, one of the hosts, is always left to test all of the terrible products but his enthusiasm and optimism for them is unparalleled.) My husband and I listened to this together and were laughing out loud.
🎙️On This Is Americans Live, improv comedians Aristotle Athiras, Andy Harris and a guest spoof This American Life. Using prompts from a random sentence generator, they improvise on real-sounding fake stories with real-sounding fake people. The stories are well-produced and very funny, and perfectly capture the essence of your favorite show from a certain public radio station. (Down to the voice of the host, who is nailing “The Ira Glass.”) Listen to Partnership with Scott Palmason.
🎙️The Alarmist is a podcast that tackles thing that have gone wrong in history to decide who’s to blame. It’s a funny show that gives things both serious (the Flint water crisis) and funny (The McDonalds hot coffee lawsuit) the “you’re wrong about” treatment. The last episode on the demise of Quibi (the short-form streaming platform intended for mobile devices) was ridiculous because Quibi was ridiculous. But host Rebecca Delgado-Smith also hosted a smart conversation about technology in the pandemic, media and content, and what Quibi founders got so wrong. (Without any editorializing from the show, the story feels a little Silicon Valley-ish.) The After Math episodes, where they speak to an expert about their own findings, are always great, and this one points to a great example of where things took a turn—the Golden Arm incident, a clip of a Quibi show that was shared on Twitter and is so bad that it goes past bad and back to good, and made Quibi the butt of jokes across the internet, which did not install confidence in the few people who may have been considering paying for Quibi services. (If there were any.) The story is full of funny anecdotes and exposes what people are willing to pay for, how they like to experience their entertainment, and it’s basically a blue-print for how to blow money and stay out of touch with your potential customers. If you’re thinking of starting a product, a blog, a podcast, anything—there are surely some tips in here for you. And if not, you’ll enjoy basking in schadenfreude as you watch Quibi disappear as quickly as it came.
🎙️There are a few series that I am hardcore into right now—This Land, South Lake, and Suspect—that last one is about a woman who was murdered at her own Halloween party, and trying to piece it together is like trying to solve a game of Clue. In the most recent episode, the team consults psychic Alison Dubois, and god bless the hosts for thinking I know her from the TV drama Medium and not what I really know her from, one of the most outrageous episodes of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, “The Dinner Party From Hell.” Please tell me I’m not alone.)
🎙️Spooked is back for a new season with a ghost story that is so frightening because a) the sound design is so good I nearly peed my pants and b) Jen, the storyteller, was so scared herself that she actually did pee per pants when she was working at an old haunted museum and saw a ghost. Whether you believe in ghosts or not, you can’t help but assume Jen experienced something spooky. The story of the haunted house is a delicious piece of history—it involves a brother and sister who were not fond of each other and have been seen often by the staff of the museum.
🎙️There have been so many conversations about Gabby Petito, and conversations about conversations about Gabby Petino. I was listening to them for work and found myself feeling pretty gross. But there was one super smart conversation between Rachelle Hampton and Madison Malone Kircher on ICYMI. They talk about missing white woman syndrome and the problem with all these random non-reporters reporting on the case, and interview a true crime reporter about how she’s been using Gabby’s story for her content. (And not deleting content that she later finds to be false.) Madison and Rachelle aren’t afraid to be upfront with her—is she doing damage to Gabby and her family? In real time, you hear the true crime podcaster develop a conscience for what she has done.
🎙️I love you!