🤳 10 podcasts I texted my friends (fits, Etsy witchcraft, a cemetery, Satanic Panic)

🍭 👂 Ghosts don’t vomit, you’re alive. Even though you shouldn’t be. 🌈 🤸‍♀️

Bonjour.

Today is Monday October 27, 2025.

If you have ever picked up a recommendation from me or Podcast the Newsletter, I want to hear about it! I’m compiling a special issue of my recommendations that have worked and want to include you. (That means I’ll shout out your show or whatever you’re working on.) Respond to this email if you have one.

xoxo

lauren

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~sponsored~

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Every other week, Lacey chats with young professionals across industries like entertainment, finance, education, and everything in between. Think of it as an unfiltered informational interview, minus the awkward LinkedIn cold message. Guests share what their day-to-day really looks like, how they got their start, what they wish they’d known earlier, and what it’s actually like behind the job title.

No corporate-speak, just honest conversations that make the working world feel more accessible and less mysterious, whether you’re in college, mid-job hunt, reconsidering your path, or just nosy about what other people do all day.

You might like this episode about Podcast Marketing & Monetization:

⭐️Reply to this email for classified ads and sponsorship opportunities. ⭐️

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🚨the one thing🚨

Tink is working with RESONATE to co-produce a podcast called Pitch Party, which features a bunch of incredible podcast pilots from the best independent producers in the biz. We are doing this in hopes to get them in front of the right people who can offer these creators funding. If that’s you, give it a listen. But even if it’s not, listen anyway. You might hear one of the best things you’ll hear all year. The latest drop on the Pitch Party feed is…

I first met Tania Mohammad when she made Undiscarded, a beautiful podcast that featured objects that told stories of New York City. She was able to capture this city I love so much via a subway token or a very old shove. (When you have time go listen to the episode “Letters to a Hero,” it’s my favorite.) For Karachi Nights, Tania and cohost Shahjehan Khan are taking us to her birthplace, Pakistan, to make us feel like we are experiencing Karachi’s forgotten nightclub era of the 60s and 70s. This show is rich with storytelling, Tania and Shahjehan have family members that were there “dancing like lunatics.” (That’s a direct quote and god I love it.) Tania’s dad was part of The Abstracts, one of the bands making music in the City of Lights’ heyday, and we get to hear from them about what it was like. But still, we have to wonder. This is a time before all the air pollution and overpopulation of Karachi now, before Pakistan’s tilt toward conservatism. At the time it was “an ideal model of a post-colonial thriving port city on the verge.” This is a history podcast, but as I wrote in my notes, “history but it sparkles.” It feels as sparkly and lively as a nightclub. Tania and Shahjehan are trying to capture these nights for us because they are trying to keep them alive. These nights that are in their DNA. Because how else will we remember them?

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notes

✨The second edition of Good Tape is here! This is the THREAT issue, and the cover features THEE Nicole Byer, a triple threat at least. You can use promo code (TINK10), your readers will receive 10% off our new subscriptions or 10% off single purchases for The Threat Issue!

✨GAZE UPON THE BEAUTIFUL ARTWORK FOR If She Can Make It Here, a new podcast from Amplify Her® Foundation that celebrates the bold and fearless women leading across New York City.

✨Tal Minear is hosting a 3-hour workshop on crowdfunding! For $40, you’ll get a crash course from their wealth of knowledge and expertise — and half the proceeds go towards the legal funds for a member of the podcasting community in need. The event is on November 15 starting at 10am PST, and you’ll get a recording of it after.

✨Ask Us Anything! On November 14 Arielle Nissenblatt and I are hosting an Open Podcast Growth session for Radio Boot Camp. We’ll give you specific tips for your show, tell you who to partner with, who to pitch,

✨Yesterday, Arielle featured 5 business podcast recommendations in EarBuds.

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💎podcasts i texted to friends💎

👂On the first episode of Avery Trufelman’s newest series of Articles of Interest, about how and why 20th century militaria is embedded in almost all American garments, Avery admits that in talking to one expert she broke her record for interview-length. She talked to this guy for 14 hours, 10 hours, and 45 minutes. And that makes sense!!! The notes I took for episode one are loooooong. There is so, so, much, and Avery took us to places I never thought we’d go. She starts talking about how the clothing of the frontiersmen was basically performancewear that was made to look like the stuff that actual people indigenous to the land were wearing (think: fringe)...you absolutely must hear her explain this. It made me laugh so hard hearing her talk about how all this manly outdoor stuff involves a ton of shopping…and a lot of that is for clothes. Shop till you drop, boyyyyys! (Remember, step one on the Oregon Trail was to buy your supplies.) So: it’s always been a thing to shop for gear. But then we learn how the military started getting involved and this includes a long, fascinating Teddy Roosevelt tangent that explains why the Spanish American War was a significant change to the American military uniform. I texted a quote from Avery, “almost all classic menswear is based on 20th century military memorabilia,” to my husband along with a link to the episode, and pretty quickly he texted back, “the bit about men wearing buckskin suits is so fascinating and kind of funny…if history class in school was explained and taught in these types of ways I would have been an excellent student.” (Checking our texts, my response was “I cannot believe she got me to understand why we went to war in Cuba by talking about clothes.”) And that’s the thing. The research here is nuts, the topic is fascinating, but Avery is just so natural on the mic it’s magical. It’s like the mic is Avery’s world and we are all just visiting it. She ties things together I never saw coming, has funny and perfect ways of saying things, and will switch up her cadence and bring us these tiny moments of laughter or excitement that makes this all just such a pleasure to hear. Listen to “Gear: Chapter 1” here.

How I discovered it: Longtime subscriber

👂If you’ve been listening to You’re Wrong About for 150 years you remember that Sarah used to say in her introduction that she was working on a book about the Satanic Panic, and this is a book that I have been waiting for and will still wait for. But! For now we have a podcast, from the CBC, that she’s hosting about the Satanic Panic called The Devil You Know. You turn it on. You hear Sarah’s voice. But it’s jarring! This isn’t how you are used to hearing Sarah Marshall’s voice, and you have heard it a lot. And you’re like, is this going to work? Maybe we shouldn’t. Go back, Sarah! Run! But then pretty immediately she mentions that she has given one of her interview subjects the pseudonym “Diane” for privacy but also because she loves Diane from Cheers, and that calms you, because you think…this is still a Sarah Marshall podcast, and she is really good in this role. Episode one gives us the precursor to the Satanic Panic, how the world was so ripe for it. We were primed for this, we were looking for Satan in everything. The Satanic Panic is a manifestation of a belief system we already had and these episodes are about the kindling that fed the flames. Sarah explains where this obsession with Satan began and why we so badly needed some kind of threat to our children, towns, and country. Episode two is an in-depth episode about a topic usually brushed over—the book Michelle Remembers, which helped kind of kick off the Satanic Panic by claiming, without evidence, that the author had survived horrific Satanic ritual abuse. And guess who has been commissioned to read from the book! You’ll never guess, I’m telling you. It’s Jamie Loftus. I told you this is still a Sarah Marshall show! This is a hard, awful story but told to us by someone famously compassionate and funny who has been following it for years and years and years. Just like we were primed for the satanic panic to happen, Sarah is primed to tell us about it. It’s like she was born to do this. Listen to “Episode 1: Did Swayze Start the Fire?” here.

How I discovered it: Press release awhile ago will full slate of CBC shows

👂Since 2023, Julie Shapiro and John DeLore’s Audio Flux has been a place for the most innovative audio producers of our time to experiment with short-form pieces in creative ways that they just can’t for their jobs or even just longer-form passion projects. Twice a year they announce a circuit that is in collaboration with a creative partner who designs prompts, and anyone can submit a piece for consideration. The selected pieces, “fluxworks,” have been shared online, across social channels, and at live events. Before, fluxworks did not live on RSS, but say hello to The Audio Flux Podcast, which Julie and John are bringing to us with host Amy Pearl. This is exciting because I truly believe that the more people can listen to these things the better the world will be. Yes, it’s slightly, only slightly more confusing-to-grasp than your traditional podcast, but doesn’t that make it extra special? And the extra work you have to go to is worth it. Julie, John, and Amy roll it out really well in the new feed, with a trailer and an intro piece that not only explains exactly what you must know but is really fun to listen to. Because all of this is so beautiful. It might be among the most cared for seconds of audio you’ve ever heard. Yes, even the intro episode is cared for and nice sounding and fun. You COULD listen to the following episodes, which contain a single fluxwork and interview with the person who made it, knowing nothing, they are just gorgeous. But it helps to know the context. Julie calls Audioflux a “sonic trampoline, a zine for your ears,” which I prefer to John’s description, “sandbox,” which is technically accurate but for some reason makes me think of my cat’s litter box but if that helps you then there it is. Here are the rules the producers had to follow for the circuit which you are about hear: The pieces had to be three minutes long, they had to draw from the theme of “letting go,” they had to include previously unshared personal archive tape (this is my favorite rule) and they had to take inspiration from an illustration by artist Wendy MacNaughton. Remember how in grade school, open ended essays were impossible to even begin? These creative rules are obstacles that allow skilled producers to get creative but stay in a shared boundary. The fact that they can only be three minutes long means that every second is precious and necessary. You can enjoy the first fluxwork now, “A Study in Blue” by Chloe Prasinos, about Chloe’s grandmother, a bubbly painter, slowly letting go of language as dementia pulls her deeper into the shadows. Listen to “Circuit 01: A Study in Blue, by Chloe Prasinos” here.

How I discovered it: Email from Julie

👂For Gabriel Urbina’s newest audio drama The Harbingers, we meet Adam Blackwell and Amy Stirling, different-in-every-way grad students who hated each other at first sight, in a real “will they or won’t they” way. Eventually they become the first two people with magical powers, making them the most powerful people in the world. This time-sweeping, sound rich podcast kips around through time to show us how while Adam and Amy are critical of each other, they use their powers in different but equally terrifying ways. We find out what’s going on by eavesdropping on conversations with their lawyers, we know something has gone terribly wrong (something about Boston being sent to space and almost a million people dying) but we don’t know too many specifics. I love this show for the same reason I love the best fiction books, it’s so technically well done that you can focus on the huge, philosophical questions it’s asking. It is written so well, the acting is so good, the sound is so believable, that it’s not a stretch to imagine this happening now. And speaking of that! The timeline is around now, some of the events take place in November 2025. SpoooOooooky. Adam gets his powers first, and at one point Amy says, “no one has changed the world by sitting in an ivory tower, your magic is being wasted on you.” The question is what would you do with yours, and the answer is more complicated than you think. Listen to The Harbingers here.

How I discovered it: Apple Podcasts carousel?

👂Conversations with Ghosts, the new audio drama from the makers of Archive 81, lets us eavesdrop on conversations between mausoleum attendant Mal Fleming and residents of Grey Briar Cemetery, ghosts who for one reason or another are struggling to cross over to the other side. I listened to the first episode several times in a row, it is so layered, there was something for me to find each time. There is history and humor and messages of loss and redemption. Strong storytelling. Incredible sound and voice acting. The kind of fiction I was just writing about for The Harbingers—the kind of fiction so well written that it becomes nonfiction, it becomes universal and timeless. In the first episode, Mal is there to help a motorman get over the baggage that is keeping him in the Grey Briar Cemetery—in his life he caused an accident that killed people. Mal seems anxious in his new role as mausoleum attendant, a role that is more like a therapist. He’s trying perhaps a bit too hard. You can picture him sitting there asking his textbook questions, with his legs crossed a bit too tightly, sitting up a bit too straight. I have a sense that in episodes to come we will see him evolve. (At one point the motorman says, “You thought this was an easy one to get started with, didn’t you? A good one to get your bearings with?”) The first thing I thought when I heard the trailer was that this show is a little like Everything Is Alive, and I still believe that to be true. These are fictional conversations that are actually real and get to us about real human things, the realest. But I think we will grow with Mal, here. I dunno, I don’t have advanced audio, I’m guessing. We’ll see. Listen to “The Motorman” here.

How I discovered it: Nick Quah’s newsletter

👂I talked to Remoy Philip about his new podcast, Performing the Revolution, and at the time he was a little unsure when to release it. I think he accidentally released it at a perfect time, right after Jad Abumrad’s Fela Kuti: Fear No Man became available on Audible and in the middle of it being dripped out via RSS. I just wrote about Fela Kuti last week—it’s a breathtaking look at a man who changed the world with his music and explored the power of art and what makes it truly political as opposed to cosmetically political. Performing the Revolution is about not just what others who have done that around the world, but exactly what we can learn from them. (Episode one opens with the question: “how can a person be killed for doing a play?”) Host Meropi Peponides and her partner Beto are studying theater companies around the world who are doing what Fela Kuti did—spark a political revolution, but via plays performed from truck beds, factory gates, and refugee camps. In this first episode, “in India,” we hear about Jana Natya Manch aka Janam, a troupe in India set up in 1973 best known for its radical, politically left-wing street theater. Partially because the story is just great, and partially because this podcast is using amazing sound production, “in India” is a joy to listen to. We feel like we are observers of this street theater, which at the time was bringing important issues to the doorsteps of the people being impacted by them in an uncomfortably relatable but fun/absurd way in order to dodge censorship of media. (One act displayed how workers are cogs in a machine that cannot function without them.) It wasn’t unusual for these plays to be met with violence from the authorities, one of them led to the death of Safdar Hashmi, one of Janam’s founders. Fela Kuti the podcast was about Fela Kuti and all he did, it was pretty much left to us to think about how we can revolutionize our own communities with art. But Performing the Revolution is bluntly looking at these movements and asking the people who were part of them, “how do we recreate this in the states?” At the end of this episode they literally ask this to a woman named Mala, who was Safdar’s partner, and her answer is this: less selfishness, more guts. Lol, America. Do we have what it takes? Listen to “in India” here.

How I discovered it: Email from Remoy (who was sent to me via Lory Martinez)

👂I am not a YouTube consumer but every time I listen to FUN FUN FUN I wonder if I should be. (And every time Wil Williams tells me about a YouTube series they watched I wonder the same thing.) Disney Dan Becker is a YouTuber with a podcast, and it’s slightly annoying because the listener is made well aware that they are not Disney Dan’s first priority. We really should be watching. But these YouTube essayists really know their shit and they are willing to go deep. On a recent episode Dan brought on Babbity Kate to talk about all things Disney Princesses, which is something I turned on to kind of waft around in, I just wanted some comfort listening as I braved my flight to LA. I didn’t think I’d be writing about it but here we are, I think you should listen. Dan, Kate and Dan’s producer Nathan get into all sorts of illuminating thoughts about Disney princesses, including their cultural connection to the American Girl Dolls and even Catholic Saints. Kate is about to embark on a journey to Walt Disney World where she will try to meet, IRL, all 13 canonized Disney Princesses, which takes more planning than you’d think. And we learn about who these princesses are and why they have been canonized and why the ones who haven’t been haven’t been. That part is fascinating and political and all tied up in marketing and gross stuff I don’t want to think about. When I was in my twenties I was able to confidently state, “I loved Disney princesses and look at me, I turned out fine!” And as the years go by I have been able to say this with less and less confidence. In my 30s it was “I loved Disney princesses and I turned out pretty OK?” And now I have a daughter and so all this stuff feels especially important. My daughter is two and the Disney (princess + Mickey) indoctrination has already begun. Earlier this week I was carrying her to bed while she held her Mickey Mouse stuffie (that I originally bought for myself, it’s bigger than her) AND her Mickey bath toy and as the four of us snuggled I whispered over her head to my husband, “it’s working.” Wow what a tangent, go listen to “Disney Princess Deep Dive with Babbity Kate!” here

How I discovered it: Kim Winder, who was on the “Disney Nipples” episode, mentioned it when she was a guest on The Daily Zeitgeist

👂On the heels of the Heavyweight live show I attended earlier this month with Justin and Arielle at Caveat in NYC, Phonograph dropped an episode, “Hey Jackie,” tracing the career of its host Jonathan Goldstein from his early work at This American Life and Wiretap, up to Heavyweight. What struck me, seeing certain pieces under the microscope like this, watching how the experiments he was doing with Wiretap influenced his work on This American Life, was what a good writer Jonathan is. How much of his brilliance comes down to that. It’s the same thing I noticed at the Caveat event, which opened with Jonathan reading something he wrote, a retelling of the Cain and Able story. It’s something I don’t think we talk about enough in podcasting, how important the writing is. (How many times have you heard me say that the best podcasters are poets!?) But it’s so much more than that, it’s about the playful nature of Jonathan’s work, like in the Heavyweight episode “Jesse,” how Jonathan contrasts the gravity of a meeting with someone who hit a cyclist with his car, to Jonathan spinning a fidget spinner to music that sounded like, what can only be described as fidget-spinning music, to an inner dialogue that is also spinning wildly out of control. To quote Rob, “I don’t know how the interview would play if we didn’t have the fidget spinner.” Also in this Phonograph episode, we get a better understanding of Jackie, who you often hear on mic in contentious conversations with Jonathan in Heavyweight introductions. (Rob and Brita nailed it—he ritualistically starts to annoy her and then tries, every time, to win her back.) I went back to relisten to certain episodes of This American Life, like “Kid Logic,” “Buddy Picture,” and “Allure of the Mean Friend,” that Rob and Brita discussed. That last one is the episode about Jackie that should be recommended listening for any Heavyweight fan. (Jonathan actually mentioned it on the stage of his Caveat event.) Listen to “Hey Jackie—Jonathan Goldstein” here.

How I discovered it: Originally a DM from Rob

👂At the beginning of every episode of Never Post, host Mike Rugnetta states the exact time and date of the intro recording, then intros with a quick, interesting, internet-y, Never Post-y news debrief. (In last week’s episode “Practical Magic: A Witch’s Guide to Etsy Witches,” it was updates on an app that fakes your summer vacation photos, X selling inactive usernames, floppy discs, a Chicago ICE-sightings Facebook group getting suspended at Trump’s request, the Chicago rat hole, and nothing being real in general.) But that is only the beginning. At the end, Mike Rugnetta tells us that we just heard something that represents a couple hundred person hours of work by a team of six people, hand-researched, hand-written, hand-scored, hand-sound designed, hand-spoken into a microphone, and then hand-edited. (I think all podcasters should be this transparent.) This podcast is not only well researched and packed with the kind of creative segments that makes it feel like you’re holding an old school zine in your hands, the sound that connects the creative segments and decorates them (but never overwhelms them) is so wonderfully delightful. You can never get bored listening to this show. Before we even get into the biggest chunk of the content, we hear audio of producer Hans Buetow talking about how much he loves podcasts, and how you can take them anywhere like the woods (you hear him creeping into the woods) or when you’re running through the woods (now he is literally huffing and puffing, running through the woods!) or when you’re later washing your hands from stuff on ‘em (hear the washing!) or when you’re on Reddit learning how to dispose of something you left in the woods. This is like an ad for the podcast but also an inside joke that you will not truly appreciate until later in Georgia’s interview with a witch. That is an easter egg I’ll let you pick up yourself. There is an entire music interstitial that includes songs like the NES version of Beetlejuice, “Pinball Jam” by Elvira and the Party Monsters, Gauntlet Dark Legacy (The Arcade Version) and more. Do you see what I mean about never getting bored? Georgia’s interview about the business of digitized witchcraft is energized with screams and other spooky sounds. She talks with Mahigan St. Pierre about witches Etsy-and-not and forensic psychologist Alex Frampton about the image of witches today, and how digital spaces are both great environments for witches but often tarnishing their craft. It’s a thoughtful and curious interview about witchcraft, something you don’t so often get. Listen to “Practical Magic: A Witch’s Guide to Etsy Witches” here.

How I discovered it: We helped launch this show and now I just get to enjoy as a fan

✨ I love you!