🍭 The Real Willy Wonka, Tig's C-Diff, Why Are Dads? 👉 You Are Good, records in Space 🚀 Alex Steed 🍿
💌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 Manuela Bedoya, Ad Operations Lead for Lantigua Williams & Co. and curator of the Podcasting, Seriously newsletter, a weekly newsletter centering creators, and erasing margins by highlighting work that focuses on underrepresented voices. She also hosts weekly Clubhouse sessions with Juleyka Lantigua-Williams and monthly workshops. Stop by and say hi!
App I Use: Spotify, since all my music playlists are also on there. It's super convenient because I can switch back and forth. I've tried using other apps but always come back to Spotify.
Listening Time Per Week: 5-8 hours. It's funny because sometimes I tend to read transcripts instead of listening to an episode, is that weird?
When I Listen: Usually in the mornings before starting my day. Sometimes while working out and cooking dinner. And, on Sundays when I'm winding down.
How I Discover: Everywhere. Due to the nature of my job, I'm always hearing about new shows and always on the hunt! Apple, Spotify and Chartable trending charts, newsletters (including this one!), Twitter, recommendations from other podcasts, word of mouth, and even when setting up cross-promotions with other shows.
Anything Else? Our team at Lantigua Williams & Co. has partnered with the amazing people at AIR, Pacific Content and Acast to support independent BIPOC, Queer and Trans audio producers in submitting work to media and journalism awards. We're giving out $$$ to cover submission fees for applications. I encourage everyone to apply, and let your friends know. Let's work together to create a more inclusive industry!
xoxo lp
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👋q & a & q & a & q & a👋
Alex Steed
Alex Steed is the co-host of You Are Good (formerly Why Are Dads?) Follow him on Twitter here. Follow You Are Good on Twitter here and Instagram here.
How do you describe the show to people?
Friends, and often a guest, talk about feelings by way of discussing movies.
Do you consider yourself a film podcast? A friendship podcast? A relationships podcast? If you could pick any category in Apple Podcasts to put it under, what would it be?
This is such a great question, Lauren, because I don’t think we even know. I think Sarah is less bothered by the not-knowing than I am, but I am in marketing by trade so I sometimes freak out a little bit because it is not immediately clear what we are. And a lot of people see “dads” and they’re like, yeah, no thanks for a number of different reasons from the personal and cultural. We wanted to have an excuse to have a podcast and we both used to talk about our dads to each other all the time. It is this thing we had in common, and we realized it was a lens through which we looked at a lot of things and we thought that might work as a lens for a podcast and somehow it did. But of course we talk about movies, and that gives us an excuse to talk about all sorts of stuff broadly, but it really works because we are naturally friends. Sarah and I have been friends for a decade. We communicate all day every day. I am always genuinely interested in sharing shit with Sarah, sharing in stuff we’re stoked about. It’s always been that way. We’ve just been in each others’ lives — we genuinely love each other and we are genuinely family — and I think the mix of all of those things just works. And when we bring people in as “guests”, we see it as more than that. For us it’s about bringing somebody into the fold so we can all be excited about something together.
Another thing that strikes me is I don’t really think of us as a “film” podcast because that concept has such specific baggage, right? You just imagine a couple of guys in their mid 20s yelling over each other. You imagine if being critical or heavy in theory or whatever. We use movies to consider how we feel and what we’ve experienced, and for whatever reason—and I aim imagining that reason is likely related to the patriarchy—I didn’t consider what we do a film podcast for a while. But honestly, I think that what we do and are interested in is much closer to the way most people watch movies. People watch movies and they feel feelings. We examine and navigate the feelings that are associated with the movies. There is no reason, beyond cultural baggage, that we are not.
But really, we’re friends who talk about feelings and we hope we give listeners a safe space to feel those feeling with us.
How are you and Sarah different? What do you each bring to the show as hosts?
Both Sarah and I are not only Taurus birthdays—we were both born on April 22, and we do share a lot in common. We have a similar outlook and sensibility. We have a similar intensity, though it goes in different directions. We are both extremely engaged in whatever we’re fascinated by. We both have severe forms of ADHD and it often shows in our day-to-day lives. I write all the time but Sarah is very much a writer and it shows in the way she talks. Sarah speaks in fully articulated paragraphs. She rarely needs editing, at least as far as the show goes. She brings that. Sarah brings brilliance. We both bring an open heart. That’s this other thing we share. We are eager to make space and share in stuff we love, and share that with other people. I bring that and in our conversations I am there to help facilitate that. I am much more of an “everyman” in our conversations, and I try to imagine what the listener is going to be looking for and I try to shape the conversations accordingly.
Have you changed your mind about any of the movies after recording the episode with Sarah?
I’ve joked before that Sarah is just like… she’s Sarah. She’s such a specific and brilliant person and personality and she always has something incredibly thoughtful to say at the drop of a hat and that’s her role, and I am her bewildered friend and that’s my role. And so I am always learning something new or seeing from some new perspective that I hadn’t seen before. For example we recently watched Guardians of the Galaxy and our wonderful guest Fangirl Jeanne brought a beautiful and thoughtful critical lens and she caught a hundred things I had not originally caught. I can safely say that I look at all the movies we watch differently after we watch them together. And this is a thing that I love. Each movie provides this point of reference for some new way of looking at a bunch of feelings and ideas, and so that transforms each of the movies we watch.
We recently watched The Silence of the Lambs with Harmony Coangelo, who I just adore so much. I love her and her wife BJ to bits. And Harmony talked about how Silence of the Lambs, a movie I like so much, made her life hell as a young trans person because it shaped folks’ images of trans people for the negative. I look at that movie differently now in a way that I love. The show helps me to see through other folks’ eyes and feel through other folks’ hearts. I am made better for that.
Why the change in name? How did that conversation start?
We announced and discussed the rationale at length in this week's Beauty and the Beast episode, and I was surprised by how cathartic and clarifying the conversation was. You Are Good is, by the way, a reference to one of our favorite moments from the show and at the end of the day it’s a Young Frankenstein quote.
You Are Good is, as Why Are Dads has been, a feelings podcast about movies and that's what we're going to do here. As Sarah noted in our most recent episode, "the dads theme is where we planted our starts and they're ready to be transplanted to the garden." And as I noted, folks often ask "Well, what is the answer to the Why Are Dads question?" and in a way the answer is "You Are Good." We're all, in one way or another, navigating a relationship with yearning to be told as much (and/or hoping that it's true).
Basically, we came to the conclusion at the same time. On my end I see almost all of the interaction on social because I run those channels and we’d heard from so, so many people who we know would be into the show who just couldn’t get beyond thinking this show was strictly about dad stuff, or getting into really heavy baggage. And it is, you know, but it’s not entirely what we do and we really wanted those folks at the table because we also hear from folks who put it off for a long, long time thinking the same and when they finally gave it a shot they were like, Oh, this is very much for me. That’s where it started, but then we tried on about 50 or 60 new names before landing on You Are Good. I’m glad it’s where we landed.
🚨If u only have time for 1 thing🚨
🎙️In 1977, NASA sent the Voyager into space with two records known as the “Golden Records” that contained sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth, with the intent of providing aliens with Cliff notes for earthlings—who they essentially are and what they have made. Comedians Caleb Hearon and Shelby Wolstein have created the perfect podcast to reflect this, Keeping Records, which asks guests: what items of culture would you put in the Golden Records? In the year 2021, what do you think aliens should know about us? It ends up being a podcast about celebrating good (and pointing out bad) culture. If you like Las Culturistas, it was made for you. The guests are great but the best part is feeling like you are hanging out with the very funny Caleb and Shelby. (I even laughed when they were doing their ad reads for Galaxy Brains, and I just listened to the Chris Gethard episode and was laughing my butt off. It’s a good place to start.) For the record, I would obviously put this podcast in the Golden Records.
💎BTW💎
Tweet of the week
🎙️Comedy Trio Big Big Big (Ella Lawry, Madi Savage and Millie Holten) have a six-part scripted podcast series investigating the events of Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory called Candyman, giving the film a comedic Dateline investigation-treatment. I love when ridiculous things get treated with such seriousness—the results are hilarious. Is Willy Wonka kooky or sinister? Is Uncle Joe selfish? Why the fuck does Veruca Salt want a “bean feast?” The sound production is just as good as the story—you get to slip back and forth between whispers, conversations, clips from the movie, and top-notch improv that drag you directly into the story to think about it in a new way. I kept on re-listening to funny one-liners from the hosts, wanting to point them out to the people around me (my husband and cat,) who were not listening. This show is a blast. Hear a clip here.
🎙️The most recent episode of Flash Forward was maybe my favorite—and that’s saying a lot. Rose Eveleth explores the underground world of tunnels and the circumstances that might lead us to live there, and what living underground does to the human psyche. She talks to people who have literally been living in underground caves, and others who have thought a lot about it. We are introduced to nuclear winters, earth scrapers, The Mouse Tribe, and more. And it’s like Rose says at the end, we might not want to live underground, but depending on how we handle global warming and if we are able to survive a nuclear war, we might have to. This piece is beautiful, like all of Rose’s work, and it will really twist your brain.
🎙️My mouth was all twisty and my brow was furrowed when I heard the opening to Day X, a new project from The New York Times. In 2017, a maintenance guy at the Vienna airport finds a loaded gun in a single-person bathroom. The police set a trap to see who it belongs to and finds that it’s someone in the German military. But when they do some digging, they find the man, publicly known as Franco A., was leading a double life as a serial refugee. He had been planning a political assassination to spark a national backlash against refugees and civil unrest within. WHY? Katrin Bennhold tells a story that starts in a bathroom, unearths a far-right network inside the military, and gets bigger and bigger as it goes, all revealing what happens when the threat is coming from within. If this story is real, which I think it is (after the whole Caliphate thing, I think the mood right now is very “hope you’re crossing your t’s and dotting your i’s, New York Times! ) we’re in for a wild ride.
🎙️The Turning: The Sisters Who Left has gotten nuns within The Missionaries of Charity to share appalling stories of their treatment behind the walls of the congregation. Detailed stories of abuse and abstinence to essential human needs paint a picture of a cult, not a loving religious following. These sisters get completely candid, fleshing out a story of Mother Theresa that I’ve heard about, but was never able to confirm. I thought about becoming a nun when I was younger (I love Jesus!) and for months in my 20s was being stalked by an elderly nun who was convinced I was destined to take per place. (Should this be my podcast?) When I was in 7th grade I wrote an angry letter to 20/20 sharing my disappointment that the death of Mother Theresa got less TV coverage than the death of Princess Diana, which happened in the same week. (The eerie similarities between the two is covered in the episode Mother.) It was reading a book about Mother Theresa that totally changed my mind. The mission of The Missionaries of Charity often seems out of line with What Jesus Would Do, and instead seems set out to belittle and even torture its members for the sake of appearing to live simply. These episodes have sent chills down my spine, each tiny story an image burned in my brain.
🎙️On Imaginary Advice, Russ Sutherland produced a piece called How to Write Badly Well, written by Joel Stickley. It’s all taken from Joel’s book of the same name, but it’s interesting to hear an audio great turn this into something for your ears. It goes through a few of the rules (Start your novel at least three chapters before the first significant event, include unnecessary redundancies of language) with examples of bad writing. And each example pushes the envelope and takes us to places we never would dream of going, It’s a celebration of breaking the rules.
🎙️I’m assuming you all listened to every single episode of The Daily Zeitgeist last week like I did, because I am always telling you to do it. But if you did not, check in at about 58 minutes of the episode featuring Miles Gray, guest Chris Crofton, and guest host Joelle Monique, who goes off on her recent obsession, Olivia Rodrigo. (The 18-year-old behind the song Drivers License.) It’s an interesting conversation because the roundtable discussion offers three wildly different perspectives—Joelle believes that songs by young women like Olivia, no matter how literal or seemingly inane, are important. Chris Crofton, who is older, thinks the music under-delivers. And Miles comes from his own place of appreciating music, but still being jarred by the popularity of this new kind of sound, driven by someone ignoring traditional rules of music and lyric writing. I think this discussion illustrates the basic confusion (that at least I have) over Olivia Rodrigo, and whether we should be interested in what she has to say. This is basically the whole point of a podcast I love called The B Sides, which is a smart look at pop music. Everyone knows that teenage girls are powerful when it comes to fandom, driving music sales, and molding the musical zeitgeist (The B-Sides just just dropped a great episode about the heaviness of fandom) so this side of the argument is definitely necessary, and I’m taking it all in. The B-Sides forces me to ask myself “if I don’t like Olivia Rodrigo, why? What is behind my dismissal of her, and what does that say about me?”
🎙️Sounds Like Hate is one of my favorite shows (I wrote about it for the Bello 100,) but it’s never easy listening. A recent episode on monuments had me RAGING and wanting to tear down every confederate statue with my bare hands. (I’m surprised I didn’t burst a blood vessel in my eyeball, which is what happened the last time I went to Disney’s Hall of the Presidents.) In Monumental Problems, Sounds Like Hate travels to the town of Florence, Alabama, a place that would like to forget the history of slavery. It was the conversation with the sheriff that had me all amped up—he has lost track of how many lynchings has occurred in Florence, and seems to believe that 3 is “only 3.” Actors read the dedication speech that was delivered when the monument was constructed, proving how precious these racist symbols are to some, no matter the pain they create for minorities in Florence. Listen to a clip here.
🎙️Sean Hayes and Dr. Priyanka Wali are exploring the health of celebrities with their newish show Hypochondriactor. (Wali is a licensed and practicing physician who specializes in Internal Medicine and is also a stand up comedian. Sean Hayes is NOT a doctor but is very funny.) I have been listening for awhile but truly enjoyed this episode with Tig Notaro. (I will listen to anything featuring Tig Notaro.) Tig has been through some hellish health problems, but here she details her experience with C-Diff, which sounds terrible. Tig talks about how she was diagnosed, how it felt when she was going through it, and exactly what C-Diff was doing to her body. This show is a way to get to understand someone like Tig a little more, but also to get a sharp mental image of exactly what something like C-Diff is. It’s very gross, but hilarious, and even hopeful. If Tig can get through this (and still be funny) I feel like I can get through anything. Tig has been through so much she could probably be on a few more episodes, and I hope that she is. (Listen to Tig get into the gross details here.)
🎙️One Click (narrated by Elle Fanning) is telling stories about lives that are changed with a single click on the internet. I love this idea and all the different places this concept can take us. Season 1 tells the story of DNP, an explosive chemical originally used in WWI-era munitions factories that is now being sold on the internet as a diet pill. What happened to the people who clicked to buy? It isn’t pretty—many of them were basically cooked alive from the inside, and hallucinating in pain as they sunk into their deaths. The show, so far, is about the internet and beauty landscape, and how both have played a part in people taking a pill that kills them.
🎙️I love Celebrity Book Club for so many reasons, but one of them is the way Chelsey Devantez talks about the role ghostwriters play in the writing of celebrity memoirs. They really impact the outcome of a memoir. In a recent episode Chelsey talked to real-life ghostwriter Hilary Liftin, who has worked with Tori Spelling, Miley Cyrus, and more. Being a ghostwriter is such an interesting profession, we consume their work but rarely hear from them, so I loved hearing this peek behind the curtain. Hilary talks about falling in love with everyone she’s writing for and becoming their therapists. And she explains how these stories really get made. If you’re interested in dishy celeb stories or publishing, this is a great episode for you.
🎙️If you don’t listen to You’re Wrong About, listen to it. If you enjoy You’re Wrong About and don’t listen to Sarah Marshall’s spin-off show with Alex Steed (above) You Are Good (formerly Why Are Dads?,) listen to that. (And if you don’t listen to Michael Hobbes’ spin-off show Maintenance Phase, listen to that.) The recent episode of You Are Good is a must-listen for so many reasons. Dana Schwartz is on to talk about Disney’s 1991 Beauty and the Beast. Dana is a great guest, wherever she goes (and a great host. If you do not yet listen to her podcast Noble Blood, Dana just released a good gateway episode, Historical Mythbusting Spectacular!, which I think will pique your interest.) I learned so much on this episode…Sarah is a Disney nerd (proving that even smart adults can be powerless against the power of Disney storytelling,) Beauty and the Beast it is basically the film Pretty Woman, and the impact of Howard Ashman on Disney songs before he died in 1991 of AIDs. Alex and Sarah also get into the reason they changed the name of their show to You Are Good (a Young Frankenstein reference,) which is now “a feelings podcast about movies.” BTW I hear the “Why Are Dads?” t-shirts are flying off the shelves, so if you want to own a piece of the show’s history, but now.
🎙️I have heard great things about To Live and Die in LA, but I must confess I’m behind on season one, which covered the disappearance of a 25-year-old aspiring actress and model named Adea Shabani. But the new season has launched, and I listened to episode one of that, where we Meet Elaine (Park,) a twenty-year-old college student and actress who disappeared in host Neil Strauss’s neighborhood of Malibu, California.) I’m not a true-crime head but this is really good storytelling that is so personally reported, it feels up-close. And I’m already eager to see what happens.
🎙️Journalist Ben Baskin is donning a detective cap for Lost in Sports, an adventurous mystery podcast that unearths and unravels wacky, little-known sports stories. I don’t know anything about sports but I love reading about the people and all the drama. So the first episode Masters of the Gridiron, which I loved for too many reasons (I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio) might not have been exciting for someone who follows sports closely, but it had me on the edge of my seat. If focuses on a 1986 time-traveling, warrior-fantasy video movie you’ve probably never seen if you live anywhere other than Cleveland that was filmed in 1986 as a sort of manifestation exercise in the hopes it would aid in the Browns winning a Super Bowl. (They didn’t, and never have.) It’s “the weirdest thing ever done by a pro-sports athlete and the most Cleveland thing ever seen." This movie contains a guy named Tiny Tim, ninjas, sword fighting, a castle, The Michael Stanley Banda shotgun, and a trained black bear. I just watched part of the movie, and I felt like I was in the Twilight Zone. These people committed! I appreciate their effort.
🎙️Are we addicted to technology? Jason Feifer of Build For Tomorrow doesn’t think so, and has put together an interesting piece about what addiction is, how we misuse the phrase, and other things in history we’ve claimed to be obsessed with. (Women be readin’ books! Gross!) He reminds us that if we’re addicted to something behavioral like checking Twitter, it’s probably because the thing is too good and engaging. It’s easy to blame it on the thing. But maybe it’s us. When does something go from engaging to addictive? How do you know if something is genuinely addictive? This is a good piece to listen to if you’re someone who gets enraged when people say they are “a little OCD” but aren’t really.
🎙️Danny M. Lavery is still answering questions for Slate, but no longer under the Dear Prudence podcast. Now his show is called Big Mood, Little Mood. This first episode is where Danny introduces himself as Danny. (“If you had told Mallory Ortberg that one day she would be a fat guy podcasting from Brooklyn, she would have run for the hills.”) This episode also features Aubrey Gordon of Maintenance Phase, who helps Danny offer some advice.
🎙️Rrrrrl quick: One of my podcasting heroes, Skye Pillsbury, was on an episode of Sound Off. The King of podcast marketing, Jeremy Helton, was on another show I love, Pod People’s Podcast. (An interview with another hero, Rachael King.) Spike Lee was on New Yorker Radio Hour talking about the NBA and the Knicks. I loved hearing Tiffany Haddish on A Slight Change of Plans. The Disappearing Spoon’s When a Hole in the Head is Good for You tells the story of a stolen skull that proved that ancient people practiced neurosurgery. Frugal Living had an episode on Dumpster Diving. Wireframe talked about the new Aunt Jemima logo. And I did not listen to Dave Chappelle on Joe Rogan, but my husband did so we don’t have to. I guess they kind of stayed away from politics (there was some light “cancel culture” talk) and Dave asked Joe about MMA and talked about coming together with Talib Kweli, yasiin bey for The Midnight Miracle, mentioning that the podcast will be turned into vinyl.
🎙️I love you!