🤳 10 podcasts I texted my friends (doom list, friends with Mickey, abandoned school)

🍭 👂 It’s time to podmax. 🌈 🤸‍♀️

Bonjour. Today is Monday, May 4, 2026. I have been dreaming of Podcast Rats for YEARS and here it is. Thanks for playing along Arielle Nissenblatt🎧 and Ronald Young Jr. (via Podcasts We Text About)

Introducing PODCAST RATS: A Recommendation Challenge🎧⚡️

xoxo lauren

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🚨the one thing🚨

It might either seem extremely intuitive or extremely counterintuitive to listen to a NPR podcast called Are We Doomed?, a podcast that highlights all of the ways that the world could very well end. Like, do we want to lean into doom or is it all too much to bear? I wasn’t sure what I’d think, but I trust the host Ben Bradford (of Landslide and Of The People, and whose ongoing list of the ways the world could end is 141 lines long, in case you are worried about this show having a short run) and I have listened to a few episodes and I must say, you should listen to matter what camp you fall in. This show is about what it means for humans and culture to live amongst big threats like climate change, pandemic, nuclear weapons, and AI (the big 4) and more niche threats like something called “grey goo.” Can these threats be fixed? I doubt Are We Doomed can save the world but it’s about a lot more. It’s about what we are scared of and why we are alive, like from a technical / historical standpoint. (The show opens with a story that paints a picture of an extremely close call from the past.) But also, I kept thinking about philosophically why we are alive. There is a world where you listen to this podcast and you have a new zest for your entire living day. If you are a regular reader of this newsletter you know that I often say shows I love make me think of Disney. It’s a compliment when I say it. This podcast makes me think of specifically EPCOT. It’s informative but also packed with Ben’s personality, it’s funny and irreverent and playful. It holds a sense of optimism, wonder and magic. (The sound is great.) It’s well-made, it’s excellently-made. It takes you to another world. (In defense of my Disney comparison, Ben told me there is some sound from an old EPCOT ride in episode four, it's what inspired the guest on the super volcanoes episode. In the AI episode, Ben uses the story of Sorcerer Mickey losing control of his brooms in Fantasia to talk about how AI isn’t programming intelligence, it’s growing it to do something we might get in the way of to the detriment of our existence.) I took so many notes and had so much fun listening to episode one, about nuclear war. (“The most embarrassing way to end the world.”) Ben looks at two ways to start a nuclear war, the “oopsie” and the “screw it,” and the fixes that would have to happen to eliminate this fear. One of those fixes is to put the launch codes inside someone’s chest cavity and the president would have to kill them to get the code out. The other is to just get rid of nuclear weapons all together. Let’s really think about that.

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notes

📌Tribeca is full of of incredible live events including Fashion Neurosis, Marc Maron with Kara Swisher, and one (1) Audio Flux. You can buy tickets here. (Let me know if you’re going to any, I’d love to meet up. I’ll be attending as many as I can.)

📌My Radio Boot Camp workshop with YouTube expert Bessie Fong, YouTube for Podcasters, is scheduled for 5/13. Sign up here, spots are limited.

📌Yesterday, Arielle featured 5 podcasts on grief, loss, and community in EarBuds.

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Your Optimistic Friend: Adam Becker

Adam Becker is the host of Dreaming Against the Machine

Describe the show in 10 words or less.
Thoughtful conversations about what a good future could look like.

Why Dreaming Against the Machine? Why now?
It’s a scary time, and we need hope. Building realistic hope means seriously thinking about what we want the future to be. Right now, the conversation about the future is dominated by the nightmares of tech oligarchs like Elon Musk and his plans for space. We can do much better than that, but first we have to dream it.

What would you want your listeners to take away from Dreaming Against the Machine?
That a better world is possible, that we can work together to get there from here, and that we can have fun figuring out what that might look like. Also that it’s a good idea to go off into the mountains to see the night sky properly.

You’ll love Dreaming Against the Machine if you like ____.
Listening to extremely earnest nerds talk about ideas, having hope, science, history, the history of science, being a small part of the vastness of nature, Star Trek, being a human being in a human body, or hating on tech bros.

What does a good future on planet Earth look like to you? Has this answer changed over the course of your life?
I don’t have a wonderful answer to this, which is part of why I started this podcast – so I could ask people who are smarter than me about this and think about it with them out loud. And yes, my answer to this has changed dramatically over my life. I used to think that the best future would be off Earth, in space. I was wrong.

How do you keep yourself hopeful throughout the course of your work?
I stay away from screens as much as possible. I keep my phone off a lot. I also spend time looking at trees, hiking in the mountains, and reading paperback books. I’m particularly fond of books by Annie Dillard, Michael Chabon, Ursula Le Guin, and Richard Powers.

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💎podcasts i texted to friends💎

✨abandoned: The All-American Ruins Podcast is back with a new season, an episode that talks about ghosts and transmissions. A note on the new season: It features three guest hosts who will be telling their own stories, still produced a la the All-American Ruins sonic landscape. And multiple episodes will be performed, mixed, recorded, and turned into much by robust audio theater pieces, live for an audience. (The first episode is a good example of this.) Everyone has been told to pivot to video and I’m constantly looking for people who are doing this in interesting ways. What Blake is doing is not easy, but it’s great. The audio, as you will hear, is fantastic. And completely separate from the very cool stuff Blake is doing for video. But back to this first episode Yes, it is about ghosts and transmissions. Blake takes us to an infamous abandoned school in Kansas that was once the Sumner School, the school that refused 3rd grader Linda Brown and sparked Brown v. Board of Education. He uses it to paint a portrait of history, what we try to abandon and what refuses to stay lost, what these physical places can mean to us, and a part I really liked about why Blake is drawn to these abandoned spaces. You can hear it in his voice. Listen to “Fading Transmissions from The Sumner School (Topeka, KS)” here.

How I discovered it: I met Blake awhile ago and have been following his work ever since

✨When I wrote that Ed Elson was talking about “videos of Clavicular smashing his face with a hammer or whatever he’s doing over there” in my Galaxy Brains review (below,) I honestly didn’t know that was something literal Clavicular did. You might not be surprised to hear that he literally breaks the bones of his face to change its structure but this has not been something I’ve been following. Wow, did I have a lot to learn about Claviular. Maybe it’s because all of the conversations around him have been the same. “Oh my god what a freak show, can you believe this?” Could the media, and the way media is reporting on Clavicular, be to blame for me not truly understanding Clavicular? According to Matt Bernstein, the media has been looking at him all wrong by poking fun at him and acting incredulous about his existence as opposed to focusing on the fact that a generation of men are responding to him and whether or not there is a real reason why. There is. On A Bit Fruity, with guests F.D. Signifier and Kat Tenbarge, he presented the Clavicular argument I haven’t seen anywhere that explains the manosphere in a completely revelatory way. He outlines everything from Clavicular’s fast rise to fame (which is important context that most people don’t know) to how the media treats him and why disillusioned young people who lost some of their childhood to COVID and know they won’t be able to get jobs might see a brighter future in looksmaxxing than drawing in student loans to become a doctor. Matthew watched hours upon hours of interviews with Clavicular. (Why so many interviews with someone who has nothing to say? This is dark but some of these outlets might be ambulance chasing—things likely won’t end well for a guy who is addicted to all sorts of drugs and living life to the, sorry for the pun, max.) Interviewers miss the point by gawking, they ignore the world Clavicular’s followers are living in. What a crazy notion that young people would believe their looks matter and that wealth is the only thing important! Clavicular “is the symptom, not the cause.” That’s something the media doesn’t want to talk about. There were so many mind blowing side tangents in this episode I could listen to the entire 100+ minute episode again right now. I listened to it on my walk back from getting my Wawa coffee to write this after my Monday issue was locked and ready to go just so I could slide it in on time. Listen to “Clavicular Is a Symptom, Not The Cause” here.

How I discovered it: Subscriber.

✨I am loving Jacob and Reed and Me, where for each episode, host Jacob Reed finds other Jacob Reeds in the world (there are a lot of them) and go down their rabbit hole with them to ask questions about the world, and to learn about both of the Jacob Reeds. I have written about it twice already, but it really is just so excellent made, so fun and surprising, you can tell that each episode is a separate labor of love. (The Jacobs have been a porn star, an economist, someone who experienced a brain injury, and more.) I had queued up the episode “The Heavyweight” but was in no hurry to listen to it, figuring I wouldn’t write about another episode this week, but then I saw an update in one of my listservs from Jacob about something really cool about it—it’s testing a first-to-market ad format called REDACT-O-RAMA, in which he advertises a product with all references to its specific features and brand name redacted, followed by a sign-up form that lets listeners send copies of a ransom note to the advertiser. I was just lamenting the lost art of good audio ads after listening to this great episode of (it’s a must-listen) and this made me really happy. The episode “The Heavyweight,” by the way, is a really honest and sweet piece about Jacob trying to lose weight so he stops snoring. It takes him on a path to fitness with a trainer named Jacob Reed, and has him thinking about how in the past he’s failed in taking people up on the help they want to provide him with. This is such an audio-forward show, Jacob even finds a creative way to use audio to describe his current fitness, something that most people wouldn’t do for multiple reasons. #1, it’s hard and defies logic and #2 it’s incredibly vulnerable. Listen for the cool ad format (learn more here) and stay for the story. Listen to “The Heavyweight” here.

How I discovered it: Tribeca

✨Hanif Abdurraqib is one of those people who I will occasionally search in Spotify to see if he’s popped up on any podcasts as a guest. He always delivers. (Supporting my theory that poets are the best people to hear on podcasts.) I don’t think I knew he was a long-distance runner, but it makes sense. People who are comfortable with their thoughts (or listening to music or podcasts) often are. His episode of Secretly Sporty was basically a long poem about running, from the way he describes cooling down as a way to “build an altar of gratitude” to running as a chance to access a memory palace. Running as a gratitude exercise came up a few times, it’s something I will be thinking about more on my own runs. Hanif is a music guy, too, I would love to see his running playlist on Spotify that has I believe 3,000 songs. He shuffles them so they come up randomly, making each run even more different than it would be otherwise. Because every street run is different, even in a run in his neighborhood, where he is a background actor in the life of his neighbor’s movies. I texted this to my husband, this episode checks all of his boxes. He responded this morning, “Damn, let’s go to Ohio and run with Hanif.” Listen to “Hanif Abdurraqib Runs the Memory Palace” here.

How I discovered it: Feature on Apple Podcasts.

✨I weave in and out of my listening of The Prestige TV Podcast from The Ringer depending on what show they’re covering, so this is just a semi-regular reminder to you all about how good it is if you are interested in deeply following a show. (Or if you haven’t had time to scrutinize screen grabs of scenes in search of easter eggs but really want to know if someone else has.) A rotating cast of Ringer personalities like Bill Simmons, Joanna Robinson, Rob Mahoney, Mallory Rubin, and Van Lathan tackle a few different shows at a time on the same feed. Right now they’re covering Euphoria and BEEF, I’m listening to Euphoria with Joanna and Rob. I enjoy hearing Joanna and Rob’s takes even when I don’t agree and they have a vast knowledge of Hollywood in general so they layer in a bunch of context I’m missing. (Like in Euphoria, for example, who was willing to shoot with whom, who was shooting something else on the other side of the world and that’s why they weren’t in this pivotal scene, why Sydney Sweeney is wearing all those corsets.) They just notice things I would never. They research what the internet is saying, any conspiracy theories or tiny things careful watchers have noticed. And they pull letters from their mailbag that often offer reviews and observations I find more insightful than Joanna and Rob’s. For every show, by the way, they create a special gmail address for the fanmail, and the email addresses are always funny. (maddysnumberoneboy@gmail.com for Euphoria and it was lickingthedonut@gmail.com for Pluribus. Listening to this show is taking your watching up a notch. Listen to The Prestige TV Podcast here.

How I discovered it: Subscriber.

✨I wrote about Adults in the Room when it first launched after listening to a few advanced episodes. Now I’m here to just kind of stand and clap and say well done, Isolde Raftery. Isolde went back to her high school to see if she was right in high school—that a popular teacher was sexually assaulting young boys. Or if her accusations, that some think are what drove him to kill himself, were untrue. The high-stakes story could have written itself. But there are things that makes this podcast BEYOND: Isolde was so a part of the story, it was her story too, so she could go back to the people involved, which means the access she was able to get was next level. I mean it’s so personal. What if Isolde were to go back and find out that she was wrong and that she might have helped push a teacher at her school toward suicide? The fact that she was a reporter in high school and now is writing the story she wasn’t allowed to write then makes it feel triumphant. And because Adults in the Room started being released before it was finished, there were a few sources who came in late after listening to the beginning. In Isolde’s reporting, the school would often tell her that nobody wanted to revisit this stuff, that it was too old. But it’s not old for the victims, who are still working to heal. You can hear their healing happening through your headphones. I could not stop listening to Adults in the Room. It’s a tight and powerful punch. There was huge potential for it being handled distastefully but it my god, Isolde steered the ship perfectly through every hairpin-turn. If you went to a school where teachers thought underage sexual assault was just “inappropriate,” this podcast might change you. I was having flashbacks—it was weird that that one teacher did that. It was beyond inappropriate that the other teacher did that. I was talking to my husband (we met in high school, a boarding school at that!) and we had a harder time thinking of male teachers in 1999 who didn’t cross the line than did. And that’s what we saw with our eyes. Back in 1999 at Isolde’s school, kids were seeing things and saying things but the adults didn’t care. Where were they? That is one thing I’m not totally sure Isolde was able to figure out. Whatever. Adults in the Room has it all, including something you don’t always get and certainly something Isolde didn’t know she’d get: a satisfying ending. Listen to Adults in the Room here.

How I discovered it: Originally a really nice note from KUOW’s Michaela Gianotti Boyle.

✨I had a strong reaction to the Galaxy Brain episode with Ed Elson, “How Short-Form Clips Took Over the Internet,” where Ed talks to Charlie Warzel about the rise of the “clip economy,” how people aren’t listening to podcasts or consuming long form content, they’re only watching clips that they’re finding on social media, and that this has led to creators like Andrew Tate and other people who have been banned by social channels to hire clippers (for millions of dollars each) to clip spicy content and distribute it on other handles. Ed has a real “if you can’t beat ‘em join ‘em” attitude to all of this, he is prioritizing clipping because he’d rather people watch his content than videos of Clavicular smashing his face with a hammer or whatever he’s doing over there. People don’t read as much and will stop all together, nobody engages, there is no turning back, people just need to monetize their clips because that’s all anyone cares about. It’s eye-opening because if Ed is thinking this, lots of people are, and he has pretty big influence. (He is the co-host of Prof G Markets with Scott Galloway and like hot damn do I wish these guys would just stick to talking about the markets.) I wish he would recognize that there are also lots of people hungry to engage, they want community, they read, they listen deeply. What about then and why can’t we lean into their preferences? I felt like Ed was out of breath this entire conversation screaming that the world is ending. He’s not wrong about the attention economy, people are valuing attention and eyes and ears more than anything these days. But he is missing so much of the story. Listen to “How Short-Form Clips Took Over the Internet” here.

How I discovered it: Subscriber.

✨Friday morning What Was That Like’s Scott Johnson sent me an email that said something like, “Lauren FYI I released an episode about Disney today.” This happens to me a LOT—I get notifications when someone has made a Disney episode, and I always appreciate it. But in this case it was like, “Scott you bet your ass I listened to an episode called “Elaina was friends with Mickey” the second I saw it in my feed and have already started writing about it for my newsletter. (Non Disney nerds: Disney insists that if you ever wore the costume as a character in the park you tell people you “were a friend of” that character so as to not destroy the magic. It’s like explaining to kids that elves are helping out Santa.) What Was That Like often has people telling stories about hurricanes, shootings, etc, but I’m glad we’re getting something a little lighter. For this one, Scott talks to Elaina, who was the friend of a bunch of characters (we learn a lot about the TORTUROUS Winnie the Pooh costume) and answers all the questions you might have about someone who had this job, at least in the 90s. (I can confirm much of the audition process—I went through it myself and was almost a friend of Fawn, one of Tinker Bell’s fairy friends.) At the end Scott mentions that Elaina is willing to answer other questions that she didn't get to via email or on Scott’s Facebook page. I have one, Elaina: Aren’t you scared that someone from Disney is going to murder you? When I was in this audition they were doing the throat-slitting motion with their fingers when mentioning that we should ever, ever reveal any of these secrets. Listen to “Elaina was friends with Mickey” here.

How I discovered it: Subscriber / reinforcement email from Scott.

✨I love podcasts and I love Reddit, and so I got overwhelmed with emotion when I saw that Javier Leiva of PRETEND had Ivy (the creator behind @watchandlisten.ivy on TikTok) on to talk about the best podcast episodes of all time according to Reddit. Well sort of. Redditors are often ISO the best show of all time, but occasionally they seek the best EPISODE and that is when I get really tickled. That is what I want to know. Ivy flipped through hundreds of Reddit comments asking what the greatest podcast episode of all time is, then actually listened to all of them. FIrst of all, I bow down to you Ivy. I am jealous I didn’t think to do this already, but maybe I still will. Javier and Ivy talk about some great episodes that maybe you haven’t heard but if you have, you should go back and remember why they are so very beloved. (Maybe you listened to one Ivy’s recommendations, “The Living Room” from Love + Radio, because I literally recommended it last week, which is pretty rannnnnnndommmmm because it’s an episode that is more than 10 years old.) Listen to “The Greatest Podcast Episodes Ever Made “ here.

How I discovered it: Subcriber.

✨ I love you!