1 trainwreck, the only podcast I'd never heard of, what you've all been waiting for, literally unbelievable
đ đI would love to find out that I was inhaling something that was making me dumb, and itâs not my fault. đ đ¤¸ââď¸
Bonjour.
Today is Monday September 22, 2025. This email is too full for more links, so I guess youâll just have to skim for yourselves!
xoxo
lauren
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Immigrantly is an award-winning podcast that challenges the rulebook on immigrant stories. Hosted by Saadia Khan, a rights activist, social entrepreneur, and unapologetic truth-seeker, this show unpacks the complexities of identity, race, and belonging through unfiltered conversations with artists, academics, culture shifters, and everyday disruptors. Whether unpacking generational trauma, challenging labels, or exploring cultural mashups, Immigrantly invites you to rethink what it means to belong in today's world.
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đ¨the one thingđ¨
Hold onto your butts with both hands, Heavyweight is back! We have been waiting for this moment and although I may have been one of the few Americans listening at 430 in the morning, I felt like listening was a communal experience. I have listened to all of these episodes multiple times, so to hear Jonathanâs voice and the showâs cadence as Iâve always known it, but with different stories, was trippy. And get this, itâs not just Jonathan thatâs back, itâs Gregor, from episode two I think, this time heâs brought his family. Itâs really about his mom, Etta, an artist and collector who was dying (arenât we all.) Gregor wanted to move Etta and his dad out of the house but they donât want to do it. The weight of this Heavyweight episode was less tangible than normal. When you start thinking about what itâs really about you start feeling like youâre on drugs. What do we do with all this stuff we have in our lives when we die? What is important? Where are we going what do we leave behind us? What are we even doing here? This episode was full of humor (Gregorâs family is really funny in a quiet way) and sweetness and loss. And milking stools, antique rolling pins, colorful bottles washed up from the bottom of the ocean, bisque nodders, antique egg beaters, medieval scythes, 19th century weaving looms, and handmade baskets. I wrote down, I think because it was said: Itâs all just stuff, all important matters are invisible. I heard some future episodes and all Iâll say is, damn. Even better stuff to come.
notes
â¨Tomorrow at 11am ET Iâm going live on Captivate Growth Labs to share podcast marketing tips. Bookmark the link.
â¨The Audio Fiction Convention recently kicked off their Kickstarter campaign for the very first one-day event on June 14th, 2026 in Boulder CO. They INSTANTLY reached their goal which is all the more reason to contribute. The convention is also actively seeking sponsors, with sponsorship packages starting at $50.
â¨Yesterday, Arielle featured podcasts for kids that adults wonât ind (curated by Zoe Goldman ) in EarBuds.
â¨Over on Castbox Tink has curated an amazing collection of podcasts for people who want the story behind the story. Check it out on the Castbox app and here. (And let me know what I missed / which your favorite is.)
đq & a & q & a & q & ađ
Zoe Goldman
Zoe Goldman is the producer of If Objects Could Talk.
Shreya Sharma: Tell us about If Objects Could Talk in ten words or less.
Museum objects come alive to talk about themselves.
SS: Why did Getty decide to make podcasts?
From the start, Gettyâs mission has been to make art more accessible. Podcasts are another step toward that goal. And for art nerds it is so cool to get to hear from artists youâve only ever read about in their own words and voices.
Podcasts are a great way to meet people where they areâin their homes, their cars, the gymâand bring an appreciation for art into their daily lives.
SS: Who should listen to If Objects Could Talk? (Itâs a kids show, yes, but who else can tune in?)
People who want a podcast that is light hearted and silly, but still want to learn something new. Each episode covers how art and artifacts were made, used, and enjoyed a really long time ago.
Itâs for people who love dropping fun facts into every conversationâI learned about Egyptian cat mourning rituals, ancient dice games, and organ divination while making this show. I have been borderline insufferable for months sharing everything Iâve learned!
SS: Whatâs a moral from a story that stuck with you the most? Why?
Itâs not a moral, per se, but after sharing the episode on our feet-shaped lamp with my son, weâve been doing regular shadow puppet shows. One of our writers, Tocarra, also does bedtime shadow puppets with her daughter now, too.
I learned about the history of the mediumâlike why it probably became more common with the advent of the oil lamp since you canât get crisp shadows from a large fire, or how early 20th century performers did finger exercises to perfect their art. Shadow puppets also span cultures; seemingly every society has its own history telling stories using shadows. Light and shadow are universally fascinating.
SS: What has surprised you most about making your show?
That there arenât more art podcasts for kids! There are dozens of science shows, history series, and storytelling podcasts, but not much in the way of art. Kids love artâfrom very young ages theyâre trying to draw and sing and express themselves. So Iâm hoping this starts a boom in art podcasts for kids, too!
đpodcasts i texted to friendsđ
đOn the Bone Valley feed youâll find an another incredible story from the Lava for Good team, Graves County, hosted by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Maggie Freleng. Maggie spent months in Graves County, Kentucky tracking the murder of a young mother, Jessica Currin, and the bungled case that put Quincy Cross, the wrong person in jail for killing her. Thatâs all pretty normal when it comes to the true crime genre, which should probably just be renamed âpolice incompetenceâ at this point. But hereâs where things get nuts: the reason Quincy is still sitting in prison is because a local busy body named Susan Galbreath, for seemingly no reason at all, was dead set that he did it, and the police department entertained all her ideas and followed up on all her tips, basically letting her run the case although she had zero experience. Then, she paired up with this BBC journalist who completely amplified her fake story. He seemed to love every moment of it before realizing how wrong they were then disappearing, like Homer Simpson backing into a bush. Susan, as it turns out, has a motive for all this after all. Maggie uses Susanâs correspondence, tape recordings, court testimony, and her own dot-connecting to tell this story with a gentle hand, curiosity, and obvious passion. Donât miss the conversation on the feed she has with Bone Valleyâs Gilbert King, where she talks about why she loves audio and the larger things this story is about. She makes an unexpected but appreciated Gossip Girl reference to illustrate how in a small town especially, rumors can easily turn into conviction. I mean, an 18-year-old mom was murdered and people wanted justice. I was going to take a break after episode three but was unable, I listened all at once. Graves County has a great sense of place and will probably stay in my mind forever. Oh and cool thing about it!: they have a little glossary of names in the show notes for every episode which is an idea other podcasts should steal. Listen to the first episode of Graves County here.
How I discovered it: Subscriber
đI just listened to the most blazingly beautiful episode of Country of Dust, a show I just learned about that tells stories of Armeniaâs people and history. âDaughter of the Crying Manâ made me teary eyed myself, my dad too. I texted it to him immediately. Iâll tell you why in a sec. Here, Nyree Abrahamian tells a multi-generational story that starts with Nyree finding a VHS tape that hadnât seen the light of day for 60 years and ends in her returning to the mountain where her ancestors resisted the Armenian genocide and the home that they had to flee. I wrote down so many details of this story, it is so well-written. (Picturing Nyreeâs grandmother, whom she had never met but was captured on this VHS tape, dangling her feet off the side of a bed, singing a made-up song about how she misses her family, has stuck with me.) And there is real sound here, the kind we all miss. We hear Nyreeâs tough crazy mountain family, and their tough crazy mountain dialect. And VHS tape footage and the wind blowing through the mountains where Nyreeâs ancestors resisted the Armenian genocide. Nyree is exploring so many things, among them what it means to go back when you canât, really, and what home means. I hadnât clocked the title of tihs episode, I was sent an email about this show and chose this episode randomly, but I find it magical that I was drawn to it. The episode is called âDaughter of the Crying Man,â which is why I texted it to my dad without realizing why I wanted to. My dadâs family are tough crazy people from the mountains of Bagnoli, Irpino in Italy. My grandfather was a scary-level of tough. But he would break down in tears when it came to his family, just like Nyreeâs dad. Immigrants are so, so tough. But emotional, too, and Iâm thinking of why. Do they allow space for emotion or is it so overwhelming that they cannot stop it? Iâm the daughter of the crying man, and I guess my dad is too, and maybe so are you, if you come from immigrants, which is all of us, really. Listen here.
How I discovered it: Really nice email that didnât feel like a pitch letter at all
đOn Thursday I went to an event at P&T Knitwear for Sean Malinâs new book The Podcast Pantheon: 101 Podcasts That Changed How We Listen with Ira Glass, Pam Grossman, Negin Farsad and Dan Taberski. Flipping through the book I made note of the shows I havenât heard of, there werenât many. One was Lecture Hall, where Dylan Gelula and Broti Gupta offer a unique twist on the âletâs educate each otherâ podcast format and the unique twist is that the jokes and giggling are more important than the bulk of what weâre all learning. Dylan and Broti are so funny I almost fell off the treadmill listening to them. I did some reading about them, mostly Seanâs stuff in Vulture, and some of his writing is literally quoting them. But like, I get it. What more is there to say? Some topics: Grey Gardens, Lower Merion Laptop Scandal, and RFK Jr.âs brain worm, it doesnât matter. Between the facts (you DO learn a lot!!!) their jokes had me just, well, wanting to write everything down. I am not going to do that here, for some reason it reminds me why people donât want to take a lie detector test. What if I donât communicate the jokes correctly and you discount everything Iâve ever said? (I will quote this line that wasnât supposed to be funny, really, but left me with some questions: âShould I reach back out to Sully Sullenbergerâs publicist that told me to stop talking about him and ask if he knew Flat Stanley was on board the plane when it crashed into the Hudson?â) The best episodes I have found so far were about individual fictional characters like Daffy Duck and Flat Stanley, Chuck E Cheese and Ramona Quimby. The Wizard of Oz episode had me dying. Patreon only, itâs worth it. Listen to Lecture Hall here.
How I discovered it: The Podcast Pantheon
đDirtbag Climber is a story about a scam artist with so many names it hardly matters. He was born Andrew Britt Greenbaum, I think. And I get why they called it Dirtbag Climber. Andrew was a climber, climbers identify as dirtbags, dirtbag is a double entendre for a scammer. But if you think this is a podcast about a scamming climber you are wrong-o dong-o. They also could have also called this Dirtbag Penis Enlarging Pill Seller. Because thatâs another thing this guy did. Itâs mind-boggling how Andrew was able to stumble into so much success before, spoiler alert, being murdered. The problem is when you piss off so many people under so many different identities, itâs hard to track down who did it. There are people who loved Andrew, but it doesnât seem like much work from the authorities went into finding out what happened to him. So host Steven Chua uncovers some telling thingsâthe books he asked his parents to buy him before he died, the fact that he was murdered with a rifle, the legend that follows his death and where the people who think he is still alive imagine him living. This is a guy who scammed, failed andâŚseriously props to himâŚlearned from his failures to craft a new and better scam. My notes literally are screaming back at me: No experience is wasted!!!! He learned about internet marketing from being a digital nazi!!! He sold nazi trinkets!!!â Did I mention he was Jewish? In his first identify, anyway. Do you see how far weâve strayed from climbing? But it does start there. Lots of climbers enter that community because they donât want to answer a lot of questions, and itâs kind of respected that you donât have to. It ends there, too. Andrew was found murdered in the van he was living in during his dirtbag days. But was it a climber who killed him or someone he pissed off earlier? His old high school classmate said, âIt does not surprise me that he provoked someone to murder him, whoever killed him was first in lineâ and an anti-racist journalist said, âpeople like that wind up dead.â (Which sounds like the kind of statements that are getting journalists fired right now. Iâm not going to get fired for saying THAT I own my own company.) For this addictive show, Steven Chua talks to Andrewâs family, and really tries to figure out now just what happened to Andrew but who he was, because figuring out that second part might help explain the first. Listen to Dirtbag Climber here.
How I discovered it: Press release
đA lot of the podcasts I like are about something else but are really about capitalism, domestic gender equality, politics, or some combo of the three, using the something else as a vessel. Like Clotheshorse is about clothes technically but if you wanted to hear about the latest fashion trends or something youâd be disappointed. Itâs about slow fashion, small business, how our clothes are really made and sold and the work we have to do to change it. Busy Body is one of those shows. On its surface it fits into the category of health, I guess??? But itâs actually conversations about how to pull ourselves through the world in a body. Episodes include philosophical conversations about what body image is, narratives we have about snacks, the straight jacket of fat phobia. I forget how I discovered it. Itâs hosted by writer Cadence Dubus, founder of Brooklyn Strength, a 14 year old body inclusive fitness and wellness studio. Sheâs so smart and is able to tie big ideas to small relatable specific things, like moments in pop culture, and sheâs a sharp communicator who can keep up with her insanely smart guests. (Fun fact her brother is Andre Dubus III, who wrote Dirty Love and a bunch of other books Iâve loved.) Most podcasts talking about bodies are very very bad. If not harmful just boring. Busy Body is never boring and in fact sometimes I have to slow down the speed on my app to absorb it all. I could put the episode âGhosts and Living: Eating Disorders as a Cultural Illness not Individual Sickness with Writer, Emmeline Cleinâ in the âepisode made me buy the book category.â Emmaâs book Dead Weight is âa personal and cultural look at the dark underbelly of Western beauty standards and the lethal culture of disordered eating they've wroughtâ and thatâs what this conversation was about. And I was like, WHY is everyone else skipping this part of the eating disorder conversation? The social part, the cultural part? The different way we treat bulimics and anorexics, how corporations benefit from people having eating disorders, asking: who built the pedestal those starved (not skinny, starved) girls are standing on, what is the pedestal made of, and doesnât she look sad and faint up there? Have you ever thought of an eating disorder as political suffering? Ozempic as a dulling tool built to erase pleasure from our lives and make us less human? And how would it break all the structures that weâve built if we had to all start thinking that way? Because now I do. The world wants us to think all of our problems are our fault and Iâm consistently reminded how wrong that is. Emmeline is a beautiful speaker (her goal of the book is to âharmonize with a ghost choir of people who want to feel beautiful and lovedâ) with so many thoughts that youâve probably never heard and will want to write down. Let me know if you buy the book, too. Listen to Ghosts and Living: Eating Disorders as a Cultural Illness not Individual Sickness here.
How I discovered it: Donât remember
đStop Rewind: The Lost Boy tells the story of Taj, a child who was born in India and adopted by a family in the US. He had an abusive childhood, was raised in complete poverty, and had some memories of that time, including some hazy ones about how he was brought to the US via kidnapping. He spent his life trying to forget this, purposely or not, and carve his own path as a human being. One day finds an old cassette tape in his house with recordings of himself as a childâhis mom recorded it when he first arrived, knowing he would eventually forget his language. As an adult, long after he could understand what his own voice was saying, he met someone who spoke the language, and the transcription reveals what really happened to him. This is a jaw-dropping story, especially perfect for a podcast, âtold through rare original recordings, immersive sound design and unforgettable first-person testimony.â Youâre dying to hear the tape, right? The credits mention that itâs based on a book and when I looked up the book I learned it was a novel based on a true story. I got into a Slack conversation so lengthy with my Tink team (it was 100% Anne) that it is embarrassing because I was so suspicious that this story could not be real. (Anne was arguing with me and they were right, I think they wanted to murder me by the end of the conversation.) I just want to make this clear in case anyone is confused like I was: while there are things Taj doesnât remember, liberties he had to take, this is his life story and the tape is actual footage. I went from feeling manipulated to very invested in this cool project. The narration felt a little sterile to me, but Iâm in. Listen to Stop Rewind: The Lost Boy here.
How I discovered it: Apple Podcasts feature
đIâm not the only one who loves off-the-rails interview with flailing CEOs who seem intent on digging themselves into graves of their own making. I donât like that about myself, but thatâs clicky shit. ADWEEKâs Adspeak interview with Madwellâs Chris Sojka was that way, so much so I almost felt worried and bad listening. (Is this guy OK?) I discovered this show, I think in Podnews, but didnât start with that episode. (You never start with the interview episode on a episodic show, right?) I started with the episode on Madwell, because I almost worked there and met Chris in the then small Brooklyn office. (I almost got into advertisingâI was accepted into Miamiâs ad school the same day I was offered a full time job opportunity at Barnes and Noble, and I was standing in a crowd at Lollapalooza when I decided to go to B&N. A girl in a sundress was barfing on the cement right next to me.) I had friends that worked with Chris a lot and said he was a nice guy. I havenât been paying attention the company but if you have you know that it collapsed earlier this year due to financial mismanagement, hidden debt, and leadership conflict. Itâs one of those stories you'll love if you like business failure or disasters of any kind, like if you love hearing about a CEO who buys a private jet for his bankrupt company because he thinks it will get things out of the red. At the end they mention the interview, and that is what I lined up next in my queue. Itâs so cringy. Chris doubles down on everything, including the jet thing! In the Madwell episode it seems too crazy to be real but in the interview episode you get to hear him try to justify it. By the end Chris is screaming at the host, ADWEEK editor in chief Ryan Joe (âWhat did you expect me to do?!â) Ryan doesnât shy away from askingâŚnot âgotchaâ questions, at all, things like, âso you bought a private jet even though you could not pay your employees?â There were other wild things other than the jet but thatâs all I can fixate on right now. I texted this episode to my friend who worked with Chris and said OH MY GOD CHRIS IS SCREAMING ON THIS PODCAST. I must remind you this is not what the podcast is about at all, itâs about advertising and marketing. I listened to an episode about digital marketing and why people are mad at Walmart and another fascinating one about why Nike changed its tagline to âWhy do it?â that I have texted to about 10 people. I heard Nike did that but was like âthatâs stupidâ and moved on. The reason is fascinating. Who would have thought Iâd be texting multiple friends multiple episodes about a podcast from ADWEEK? Itâs made by Rococo Punch, which is the only indication you need to know itâs well-done and nice to listen to. Iâll have you start with Inside Madwell's Mayhem because that was also my journey.
How I discovered it: Was it in Podnews or something?
đWe Are North Nashville is one of those podcasts that stays with you long after you're done. It tells the story of how one historic Black community endured when a federal highway split it in two - an all to common occurrence in our US history. Homes were demolished, families displaced, and gentrification on top of loss. But the elders stayed, determined to keep their neighborhood alive. These are their stories. And as history is being rewritten or erased, this show is a reminder of why these stories matter now more than ever. The first of two bonus episodes (out Friday, September 19) is a love letter to the North Nashville of the â80s and beyondâwhere children and grandchildren of the communityâs OGs reflect on the neighborhoods legacy and the children being raised by the OG residents. The second bonus episode (out Friday, September 26) looks at what it means to be a good neighbor, and how simple acts of neighborliness can bring people together. This beautifully intimate podcast will break your heart open and stitch it back together better than it was before.
How I discovered it: Tink client
đI ran into Najib Aminy at RESONATE last year and remember him mentioning he had a podcast called It Is Your Birthday, and I finally listened to it. Najib interviews people about their lives on their birthdays to find out how theyâre feeling about what theyâve learned. (He took this concept from a set of âbirthday questionsâ his friend Kelsey asks people on their birthdays. She says, âbirthdays are about wisdom not wishes.â) Itâs a worthwhile pursuit. I think a lot of you would like it because the guests are audio people you knowâAvery Trufelman, Mia Lobel, Al Letson. The first episode is with Earlonne Woods, whom you may know from Ear Hustle. Earlonne spent many of his birthdays incarcerated, how does that impact how he thinks about his birthdays now? Shereen Marisol Meraji (Code Switch) grew up with immigrant parents who didnât give much of a shit about birthdays, and she talks about losing it when she turned 40 because for the first time she wanted something from her mom and it was a homemade cheesecake and she didnât get it. Listen to It Is Your Birthday here.
How I discovered it: RESONATE but Najib recently sent an email about it to a listserv Iâm on, which reminded me to listen.
đI love you!
Lolled reading your description of Lecture Hall
Thank you for the shout out!