💰 The people of pyramid schemes, European prisons, grudges, ghosting friends 👻
💌Podcast The Newsletter is your weekly love letter to podcasts and the people who make them.💌
Bonjour!
Today is Monday, September 20. There are 254 days until I go on my next Disney cruise. If you don’t have time for the whole newsletter: I can’t believe I didn’t know about this, this made me laugh and feel sad and pessimistic about humanity at the same time, and you can get out the popcorn for this shit show.
This week we’re getting to peek into the listening life of Phil Surkis, an Oakland based producer who stumbled into pod-life 7 years ago when a pre-Emmy winning W. Kamau Bell invited him to produce his live show/podcast, "Kamau Right Now!" Phil never looked back, and has been producing, consulting and even writing podcast theme songs ever since then. His current slate includes “Lady Don’t Take No with Alicia Garza” and Slate’s “Big Mood, Little Mood with Daniel M. Lavery.” Also, Phil’s teenage dreams have come true as producer of ZappaCast, the official Frank Zappa podcast. Check out all of his work at philsurkis.com.
The app I use: I mostly listen using Apple podcasts and Spotify. People share pods with me, and that's how they do it.
Listening time per week: Like many producers who also edit, I spent a lot of time in critical listening mode, doing quality control. So, I try to let my ears rest outside of my projects. I’m lucky to get in 2-3 other pods per week.
When I listen: Twice a day, while walking my beagle/dachshund, Marty. It’s an agreement I have with him, since he has to stare at my back all day.
How I discover: A few different ways. 1) My girlfriend is a very active pod listener, and she shares her cool finds with me. 2) Whenever someone finds out what I do for a living, they first ask me what I listen to, and then try to sell me on their faves. 3) Sometimes I happen across clickbate-y articles in my news feed proclaiming things like “10 Podcasts That Will Save Your Life Now”. Click.
Anything else? This week marks the return of a podcast called "o.k land", which I co-host with writer/comedian Abas Idris. We do sketches, talk about our feelings, and about living in Oakland. The episodes are short, just like my dog.
xoxo lp
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👋q & a & q & a & q & a👋
Maria Blasucci
Maria Blasucci is the co-founder of Earios, co-host of The Big Ones, and you can hear her on a personal favorite, The Complete Woman, and Web Crawlers. Follow her on Twitter here and The Big Ones on Twitter here.
Fill in the blank: You will like The Big Ones if you like ______.
Sitting on a front porch in the summer, drinking some lemonade with friends. My co-host Amanda Lund and I were once told we have “front porch energy” and I think that’s correct.
How has Earios changed since you started it? Is it different than what you imagined?
Earios is constantly changing. We are always looking for new ways to grow. Earios is better than I could have ever imagined, honestly. We have wonderful people with such unique and infectious voices doing awesome shows. Every show on Earios is so different from anything else I’ve heard and that is because of the hosts. They all bring such a strong energy that you can’t manufacture. I’m so grateful to be working with so many talented people
If you were going to launch a new show on Earios, don't worry about the logistics or whether or not anyone would like it, what would it be?
A musical comedy. I think that would be so much fun!
How would you describe Earios listeners?
The most awesome group of people who are down to get a little weird and love to laugh and learn. They also have really big hearts.
What podcasts do you listen to?
Some of my favorites are Song Exploder, You Must Remember This and The Memory Palace.
Do you think podcast hosts and producers should listen to podcasts? Or does that mess up their own style?
I think it depends on the individual. I personally think it’s so important for myself to hear what’s out there, see how people are using the medium, listen to what stories are being told. Podcasts as a medium are constantly expanding and growing and changing and that all inspires me to come up with new ideas of my own. They are also just fun to listen to!
🚨If u only have time for 1 thing🚨
Harvard professor Khalil Gibran Muhammad and journalist Ben Austen are best friends who grew up together on the South Side of Chicago in the 1980s, and on their new podcast Some Of My Best Friends Are, they invite listeners into their conversations about race, culture and politics. It’s an interesting idea. Can Khalil and Ben, with their strong friendship and academic training, have better conversations than what we are all having in our own lives and online? On episode two they talk about their observations visiting European prisons, and it’s pretty eye-opening. One prison in Norway allows prisoners to wear their own clothes and live in cells with privacy, and have access to real kitchen tools like knives. They aren’t being punished in the same way that we punish inmates in the states. They aren’t being punished simply to be punished. They are being conditioned to learn how to live together. You know how every time you take the subway in another country, or fly from another country’s airport into Newark, and think, “oh, airports and subways can be like this? They don’t have to be complete shitholes?” That’s what it felt like going into these European prisons with Khalil and Ben. It’d be nice if we could adapt even one of these small improvements, but even giving prisoners the privacy to go to the bathroom seems it would go against everything we’re trying to do in US prisons. The US system’s aim seems to be: eliminate all dignity.
💎BTW💎
🎙️LWC Studios’ (Peabody-nominated, NBD) 70 Million documents the impact of local jails in communities across the country using open-source criminal justice solutions, and it’s back, this time focusing on how unattended and forgotten Americans wind up in jails and prisons at a disproportionately high rate. Each episode is a window into a new place that’s tackling big questions with radical solutions. It’s not only a fantastic storytelling show and a way to humanize the forgotten, it’s a guide map to how we can do better—how doing better is possible. Episode Ones’ focus is on The Loft, a place in St. Johns, Arizona, where teens who have had encounters in the law can be kids—play music and pool, hang out. Take the 70 Million train to St. Johns to see place that gives kids the support they need.
🎙️On Terrible, Thanks for Asking, Nora McInerny has a roundup of listeners sharing the grudges the are holding, and while I’m glad I listened to it, I’m still not sure how it made me feel. Some of the grudges were serious—real family wrongs that people are unable to move past. Some are incredibly petty and made me worry about humanity. Some are funny—one person has sworn off a friend because of a comment they made about cargo pants. (Sounds like there’s something else going on there.) They will all make you think. The benefit of listening to the silly ones is that it makes you realize you probably have silly ones, too. The physical way Nora describes having a grudge is perfect. You hold it in your hand so tight it cracks your knuckles. And letting go of a grudge is probably the best thing you can give yourself. (I said probably—I am a vendetta-driven bitch.)
🎙️Invisibilia is back with a new season on friendship, something I need so much right now. My friendships have drastically shifted since the pandemic. Almost all of my friends have moved out of New York City and I find myself inept at keeping in touch with the people I love whom have carried me through every step of my life. That’s a huge loss. But those are changing friendships because of a momentous, global pandemic. That’s different from the times I have been ghosted (and I have also ghosted on friends.) On the premiere episode of the season, Yowei Shaw invites a monsterologist to talk about what ghost stories can tell us about ghosting friendships, something that happens more than in romantic relationship. A friendship that ends without an ending or explanation is a real, painful thing. This episode includes a worst-case scenario ghosting story that made me examine all of the ex-friendships I’ve had in my own life, and includes an explanation for why they happen and hurt so much.
🎙️I’m Sorry is a new show from Lemonada about apologies. The Worst Apologies of All Time is like an awards show of terrible apologies, all punched up by the comedy genius of hosts Hoja Lopez, Mohanad Elshieky, and Kiki Monique. I cherish any opportunity to reminisce about the apology faux pax of Miya Ponsetto, the woman who falsely accused a Black kid of stealing her cell phone, and then, in a “Daddy” baseball cap, went on TV and dared to put her hand in Gayle King’s face to say, “Enough!” I’m glad that this moment is being documented in a podcast, I will one day force my grandchildren to listen to it. But there were apologies that were new to me—the model who said trans women were not women on Twitter, and then to erase her mistake falsely claimed she was a transgender woman. And I had no idea that Shia LaBeouf was brazen enough to word-for-word plagiarize a comic for his short film. This was a fun romp through the missteps of the people who have already misstepped. Laughing at them is the least we can do.
🎙️Why didn’t anyone tell me that there was an entire podcast dedicated to bickering over which is better, Walt Disney World or Disneyland? (For the record, Orlando’s Disney World is better.) The Supreme Resort Podcast is like a mock trial that debates which park has better castles, Frontierlands, snacks, and drinking culture. The episodes are packed with facts about the parks, and in the end, a ruling for which park triumphs. I love the seriousness given to the debates. For some people, these arguments don’t matter at all. But for those whom it does matter, like me, this podcast feels like a necessary part of our cultural discourse, and is filling the void I have in my heart right now for a place I haven’t been in almost two years. A listened to an episode about the battle of the Disney castles, which had me shouting along with my own strong opinions like an unhinged person.
🎙️It’s football season again, a time that always leaves me feeling conflicted. I am the product of two diehard Kansas City Chiefs fans, my husband loves The Bengals, and my grandmother just FUCKING hates Tom Brady. (Which is a fandom itself.) One of my favorite things to do on a lazy winter Sunday when snow is falling (if I’m in Ohio there is a fire) is to curl up and fall asleep between the time the NFL theme song begins at the start of the game and its finish. I swear that song, the best backdrop-to-a-nap song, just puts me to sleep immediately. It is my lullabye.) Yes, football can be beautiful and interesting, but does that outweigh the violence and damage it does to the players? It seems to be going to terrible places. And don’t get me started on college football. I can’t even fall asleep to it—I lay there twitching with disgust. So how do I take my football naps and still feel like an ethical person? On The Argument, Steve Almond (author of Against Football: One Fan's Reluctant Manifesto and co-host of Dear Sugars) and The Ringer’s Kevin Clark go back and forth arguing whether or not it can be fixed, whether or not it’s getting better, and Steve shares some troubling facts about what the NFL has known (for a very long time) about what head trauma does to people. It’s hard to listen to this and think football is harmless and that the pros outweigh the cons. But then again, when the Chiefs won the Super Bowl in 2020, my mom was (I suspect) happier than the day I was born. So there is that.
🎙️I always say that I hate sports (like the NFL) but I love the stories behind sports. I loved sport podcast coverage during the pandemic when there were no events because the reporting focused on the people. NFL Explained seems to be for like someone like me, who doesn’t want stats or replays. From things like the history of the goal post to a two-part episode about the origin of NFL team names, this podcast offers sports stuff for the people who don’t care who won but are interested by the culture around the game.
🎙️Conan O’Brien had a special episode of Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend with Andy Richter and longtime Conan show producer Frank Smiley, all about Norm Macdonald. If you’re sad about Norm’s passing, this episode is your memorial service, your quiet time to think about Norm, the comedian’s comedian, and appreciate all the things he was underrated for. (The #1 thing I think he is underrated for, which nobody is mentioning, is his role as the voice of Mike Tyson’s pigeon in my favorite TV show Mike Tyson’s Mysteries.)
🎙️Lucille Ball hosted a radio interview show back in 1964, Let’s Talk to Lucy, which aired on the CBS Network, and now the tapes have been pulled from archives for a podcast of the same name. As I’ve mentioned before, it’s incredible how much Lucy sounds like a podcaster of the modern age. This podcast is comforting and will take you back to your parents bedroom in 1994 when you used to watch I Love Lucy on Nick at Night, or wherever you happened to be when you met her. I loved the episode with Vivian Vance, where we get to hear about their friendship and their personal lives. Lucille and Vivian are so iconic they feel like characters in fables, but in Let’s Talk to Lucy, they become people, friends, working women, mothers, and podcasters.
🎙️Tell Them, I Am’s Misha Euceph has a new podcast called Hello, Nature, where she documents her American road trip, exploring its National Parks. It’s a fish-out-of-water scenario‚ Misha wasn’t the biggest nature person to begin with, so it’s funny and endearing. She’s trying to figure out why these public places don’t seem to be open to everyone. (Anyone who is not a white man.) (This idea was covered in this week’s episode of Short Wave, and you can listen, if you’re interested, to the hilarious FOMO, Ivy Le’s exposé of being an Asian woman trying to get along with nature.) We get audio that makes us feel like we are in the passenger seat with her—scrappy, unfiltered moments where we hear the tent zipping, or Misha waking up after a night of not very much sleep outside. These anecdotes are paired with education. In episode one we hear about how Chinese immigrants built Yosemite. It’s a new look at not just the parks, but America. And we are in good hands—Misha is a beautiful storyteller who is able to bring herself in yet sit back enough for us to experiences the places she takes us on our own.
🎙️Life After MLM collects stories from people who have left multi-layer-marketing clubs (“pyramid schemes,”) and is brought to you by a former LuLaRoe member Roberta Blevins. (I believe she was featured in the documentary LuLaRich.) Roberta interviews people about their entire journey, from being hustling girlbosses dedicating their lives (and sacrificing their marriage and families) to raising in the ranks of LuLaRoe and Airbonne, to becoming disillusioned and eventually leaving. All these stories paint portraits of a sea of victims that grows and grows, and proves that many of these women (and men) end up hemorrhaging money to be a part of something they believe in. These episodes are funny, fascinating, and sad. That LuLaRoe friend of yours may have seemed annoying and invasive when she was trying to get you buy several pants of yoga pants (with a pattern of something that may or may not have looked like a penis,) but after listening to this, you just might feel bad for her.
🎙️On the 11th day of every month, Pineapple Studios drops something (cue mysterious music) into the feed of The 11th, a podcast that features a wide variety of stories with different shapes, lengths, and styles. August’s three-episode series was one woman’s story of being accused of harassment at her university. In September, a beautiful two-sided cassette tape (sort of) with a tribute to the Fugees album The Score, brought to you by music writer and poet Hanif Abdurraqib. When Hanif was 12, The Score was the soundtrack to his summer. He brings you back to Columbus Ohio, where he could be found riding his bike to the atmospheric sound of Lauryn Hill, Prakazrel Samuel Michel, and Wyclef Jean, before digging into the album’s history, and the story behind that unforgettable cover. It’s a beautiful love letter to an album and a portrait of one man’s relationship to it.
🎙️The Supply and Demand episode of This Land locked in my attention for the entire 35 minutes. It’s all about the private adoption industry, exposing all those Dr. Phil episodes that falsely sensationalized the case of Baby Veronica, an infant who was adopted by a white couple who ended up losing her to her father, an Indigenous man who was protected by the Indian Child Welfare Act. I can remember everyone freaking out about this case (my mom was a Dr. Phil mom) but so much of this story has been left out. Often the problem is foster parents “losing” custody of the babies in their care. But the goal of fostering is to parent children until their biological parents can care for them—foster parents shouldn’t be rooting for the biological parents to fail just so they can adopt the child. It’s stories like these that exposed a shady industry that looks at Native American adoption as a supply and demand problem. There are parents hoping to adopt than there are babies who can be placed in their homes. We’re getting closer to figuring out why lawyers have been coming out of the woodwork to fight the ICWA. But at this point in the story we can be sure that it’s not about the kids.
🎙️On Christine Blackburn’s Storyworthy, Josh Gondemlan tells a story all Josh Gondelman (and Maris Kreizman) fans have been waiting to hear—how they got their adorable pug Bizzy. Josh and Maris had a hard time finding a dog to adopt but were connected with a guy who said he was a comedian and had a dog for them. They thought they had hit the jackpot (and they kind of did, Bizzie is great) but they later found out that the comedian wasn’t a comedian and had been using his dog connection to climb the ladder in the comedy world. When he realized he was caught, he dropped off social media and Josh hasn’t talked to him in years. Josh and Maris realize this guy’s a grifter, but they still aren’t totally sure what the grift is. Did he just want the ability to engage with Josh on social media? Was he hoping for a writing job? I’m not sure you can consider Josh and Maris bamboozled, they got a great dog. But the story is unsettling.
🎙️Legally Judgy is catering to the sharp followers of reality TV shows. Is that you? On their show, Alexa and Nicole take a look at reality TV and pop stars and their legal troubles, like the many legal issues of Lindsay Lohan (should that be the name of a documentary?) to Nicki Manaj sampling music without permission, to the most recent episode I listened to, about someone I knew nothing about but was quite interested, anyway—Jen Shah, a housewife of Salt Lake City who was stupid enough to illegally bamboozle a lot of old people in the cruelest way possible (not the cruelest—I saw I Care a Lot) and then go on a reality TV show, seemingly unaware that they may be exposed. Alexa and Nicole are fun to tag along with (although one of them seems to not love Disneyland but the show is good so I’ll allow it.) They’re on a teensy break but will be coming back in October. Catch up now.
🎙️In Arielle Nissenblatt’s EarBuds podcast and newsletter, she’s spotlighting Where the Red Cedar Grows, which explores the damming, land grabs, and dirty deals of Minnesota’s Cass Lake, why white people ended up living there, and how Ojibwe-owned land on the Leech Lake Reservation looks like a checkerboard. Listen here.
🎙️Anoop Tiwari worked in Finance IT-project management for 15 years, which is not the resume you’d expect from someone hand-making a beautiful, immersive storytelling podcast. But when I talked to Anoop, it seems his ability to work in 2 week sprints (time-boxed periods of time that product owners, scrum masters, and a scrum team use to manage their assignments,) along with his creative and curious nature, has allowed him to pull it off. On his show A Walk Within, he tells short stories from around the world, shares personal memories, and analyzes the themes, parallels and learnings from both through human psychology and philosophies. What can we learn from these stories and where they overlap? (A man’s search for “Elixir of Life” has parallels with aspiring students pursuing professional studies.) The stories are unexpected, the audio is rich—Anoop does all of the voices himself. It’s a labor of love and it feels like it.
🎙️I love you!