š¤³ 10 podcasts I texted my friends (witches, hilariously ranked! Famous Amos cookies, and 1 v. meta true crime)
š š They killed that old woman who was just trying to live in her candy house š š¤øāāļø
Bonjour.
Today is Monday November 3, 2025.
If you have ever picked up a recommendation from me or Podcast the Newsletter, I want to hear about it! Iām compiling a special issue of my recommendations that have worked and want to include you. (That means Iāll shout out your show or whatever youāre working on.) Respond to this email if you have one.
xoxo
lauren
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Adapted from Myle Yan Tayās award-winning novel, catskull tells the story of Ram, a young man overlooked by everyone around him, as he struggles to find meaning in a city thatās forgotten him. When his best friend Kass becomes trapped in an abusive home, Ram takes justice into his own hands, donning a mask to confront the darkness consuming their lives. But when his attempt to scare her father turns deadly and he remembers his true intentions, the mask begins to call him back. From Andas Productions, the team behind award-winning fiction podcasts Temujin and Sayang, and production support on DC Comics and Realmās DC High Volume: Batman, catskull continues the studioās legacy of bold, genre-defying audio storytelling. Itās a moody, slow-burn thriller that blends noir tension with psychological depth to ask: what happens when doing the right thing turns you into the monster you fear most?
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šØthe one thingšØ
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 thatās you, give it a listen. But even if itās not, listen anyway. You might hear one of the best things youāll hear all year. The latest drop on the Pitch Party feed isā¦
If youāre here, thereās an extremely high chance you know TK Dutes, and if you think you donāt think again, youāve probably heard her workā¦Life Kit, Thirst Aid Kit, Hear to Slay, Good Words with Kirk Franklin. She hustles. Thatās what The Secret Life of TK Dutes is about, sort of. TK has forged paths and trailblazed and set a high bar for a lot of audio thatās being made today, but our industry has not loved her back and that is heartbreaking and enraging. She, a queer Black woman, is sick and tired of working for systems that donāt work for her and this podcast is an experiment in trying to figure out how to heal her broken heart and also break away from what sheās been doing in the past. She wants to be free but hasnāt been able to because of how the world treats her community. What is being free, even? To find out sheās kind of co-producing each episode with a different producer. They are the producer but they are also helping her answer this question. It takes someone who knows how to make good stuff to be able to break the rules in really cool, beautiful ways. And that is TK. I know that TK can break free because this podcast breaks free of anything youāve heard before. It is exciting because itās fun to hearāso many varied sounds and voices and textures!ābut also because itās like wow this is who TK really is. I wanted to cry but also laugh when she said: āI donāt have the privilege to have the bandwidth to report on silly things. I gotta think of ways to treat you how to treat meātalk about boundaries and resilience. Why canāt I just talk about super chill shit? I want to talk about sewing on buttons or how to get the most out of your dry cleaning experience!ā This is real shit but also entertaining and hilarious. Hopefully we get some dry cleaning content soon. Or whatever makes TK feel free. Or wherever these producers take her.
notes
āØAsk Us Anything! On November 14 Arielle Nissenblatt and I are hosting an Open Podcast Growth session for Radio Boot Camp. Weāll give you specific tips for your show, tell you who to partner with, who to pitch,
āØParty of One, the award-winning actual play podcast about getting to know brilliant artists, entertainers, and trendsetters through the shared, universal experience of play, celebrates a rare milestone in podcasting this week: 10 years on the air and still going strong. In honor of the anniversary, host Jeff Stormer and producer Jen Frank are celebrating with a week of special episodes, including behind-the-scenes interviews, special guests, and livestream celebrations. The episode that dropped on the 27th features Mike Schubert, who I happen to rave about below about something unrelated, and Iād start there.
āØYesterday, Arielle featured 5 podcasts for caregivers in EarBuds.
šq & a & q & a & q & aš
Ned and Emily Hartford
Ned and Emily Hartford are the creators of Metra, a climate change musical. Hereās the premise ā The year is 2043. The world is hot, water is scarce, the weather is unpredictableā¦and the fossil fuel industry continues to thrive. The wealthy are comfortable in their air-purified, cooled, humidified, superbly hydrated Bubble cities. But in a roadside bar on the Outside, an unlikely group of revolutionaries is about to demand a new storyā¦
Tell us about Metra in 10 words or less.
A musical fiction podcast about how we change the world.
Why Metra, why now?
EMILY: Ned and I have been working on Metra together for over seven years (it had a first life as a stage musical, and we began pre-production on the podcast in summer 2024).
I brought the myth of Erysicthon and his daughter, Metra to the table. It was a timely allegory about extreme greed, and the enraging casual violence against women that had turned me off of āclassicsā for so long. I wanted to figure out how I could break the story enough for it to belong to me.
We played around with the myth with a group of artists, and out of those experiments, Ned wrote the first songs that would be a part of Metra. We decided to build something together.
Ned and I looked at the myth: an imperious king selfishly and violently cuts down a sacred grove. So, the goddess of abundance curses him with unending hunger, and in this ceaseless craving, he decimates the resources of the kingdom. We realized that Metra was giving us a way to talk about the insidious power and wealth grab at the heart of the climate crisis. It gave us a way to talk about the myths created, and all the lies told, by those wealthy and powerful grifters.
And it gave us a way to talk about the alternative: the power of collective action, care, and working toward justice. The power to make literally any other choice for the future of the world.
What was the hardest part of making this podcast? How did you overcome it?
NED: Musical audio drama is a tough audio nut to crack. For Metra, all the dialogue and music and songs had to live in the same world and sound of a piece. The audio had to fit in the loudness ranges of streaming platforms. Plus, the songs still had to āpop,ā because thatās what people expect.
It was a daunting set of challenges, and it took about a month just to figure out the best workflow for mixing and mastering the episodes. Even after coming up with the best work approach, it still took about 160 hours per episode to mix and master each episode (this doesnāt include the almost 1800 hours of recording, sound editing, and sound design).
But the good news is that I think it really shows in the quality of the listener experience.
What role does art play in narrative change around climate action?
NED: Culture is basically a set of myths a society tells itself to explain/excuse how it got here and how it intends to move forward. Some of our mythsāManifest Destiny, White Christian Exceptionalism, Greed is Good, The Market Will Solve Everythingāare killing us. Literally.
If we want to survive, we need new myths, because if we want to survive, we need a big, bold, new approach to what our society is and what it means. And to support that new approach, we need new stories and myths that are so damn entertainingā-with absolute earworms of songs people will sing as they take to the barricadesāthat the new world we dream of becomes tangibleā¦so tangible we can see it, hear it, feel it, and know to our very core, it is within our grasp.
EMILY: Hereās a quote I love from adrienne maree brown about collective action, imagination, and reclaiming our right to shape the world:
āI believe that all organizing is science fictionāthat we are shaping the future we long for and have not yet experienced. I believe that we are in an imagination battle, and almost everything about how we orient toward our bodies is shaped by fearful imaginations. Imaginations that fear Blackness, brownness, fatness, queerness, disability, difference. Our radical imagination is a tool for decolonization, for reclaiming our right to shape our lived reality.ā
ā Adrienne Maree Brown, Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good
I want our show to be part of a wave of radical imagination, where we get brash, wild, and queer about reshaping the world. I hope it helps people feel possibility in a scary time. I hope Nedās music energizes audiences and reminds them that theyāre not alone.
špodcasts i texted to friendsš
šWhat is your relationship with Famous Amos cookies? It doesnāt matter, for Sarah Amos it is complicated. Her father Wally, a charismatic self-starting Black man who grew up in Jim Crow South and loved glitz and glamor and uh, being famous, founded the company in 1975. It came at a huge cost to him and basically anyone close to him, including his wives and children. On Tough Cookie: The Wally āFamousā Amos Story, named the Tribeca Festivalās 2025 Nonfiction Audio Storytelling Award winner, we get to know Wallyās story via Sarah and interviews with Sarahās half-brothers and people who knew, loved, were impressed by, and were hurt by Wally. At the heart of this story is the tender complexities of a family and a reminder that people are complicated, that life is complicated. And there are also cookies and lots of history and 70s and 80s nostalgia. Listening to Sarah talk about Wallyās life leading up to building this iconic American brand (a journey that does not include finishing high schoolāhe got his GED during his military service) I had to keep stopping the audio to write down more stuff. He was the first Black agent at William Morris, he signed Simon and Garfunkel and represented Solomon Burke and toured with Sam Cook. Then how did he end up with nothing, unable to afford fixing his own home which he almost lost to foreclosure? Wally made mistakes, but the world was even more racist back then and it was even harder for a Black man to raise money. I have only listened to two episodes of this show but I feel like I know Wally. The details and stories we are getting paint a strong picture. I can practically smell his Tahitian oil and hear his cookie-painted truck that blasted āLa Cucarachaā from the horn. Happy, joyful, laughing Wally wanted to have a good time and that might have been part of his downfall but his life gives us a more complete story about family, a daughter, and the American dream that is one youāll want to hear. Listen to Tough Cookie: The Wally āFamousā Amos Story here.
How I discovered it: A Tribeca event
šI have listened to part of one, count āem one, episode of Dax Shepardās Armchair Expert. (I actually see now it was actually a limited series called āWe Are Supported Byā hosted by Kristen Bell and AE producer Monica Padman, but whatever.) It was an interview with Gloria Steinem, and listen I love Kristen Bell, but her first question was from Kristenās daughter and it was āwhat is your favorite colorā and I was like Iām out. This is important context because what I say next might shock you: I am really excited about Monicaās new show Bethās Dead, a meta true crime mystery surrounding a podcast that Monica used to love years ago, Nobodyās Listening Right?, and why it went away. If you are the kind of person reading this newsletter you know the pain of wondering where a show goes when it stops making episodes. Monica went to find out and what she found wasā¦a very crazy story that deals with stalking, the LAPD, parasocial relationships and you guys not to spoil anything but Iām pretty sure that Beth dies. The first few episodes are really interesting, you hear a conversation between Monica and the hosts of Nobodyās Listening Right?, Elizabeth Laime and Andy Rosen, about some early podcasting days when Monica was a nanny with a long commute, comfort-listening to Elizabeth and Andy on long drives. (Elizabethās voice sounded familiar and I realized that I used to listen to the podcast she had even before Nobodyās Listening Right? called Totally Laime, so this is a blast from the past for me, too.) We get to hear old audio from their show and old email exchanges between Elizabeth and Monica, who at the time was just a very sweet podcast fan with an annoying job. Weāre left to wonder why Elizabeth and Andy went from having a popular podcast to basically having to go into hiding. I do not have advance audio of this, I donāt know where itās going, but I can tell this is one Iāll be racing to press play on. Listen to Bethās Dead here.
How I discovered it: Apple Podcasts feature
šI knew the Lindy West / Meagan Hatcher-Mays episode of Sleeping with Celebrities was coming out, I booked it! So I planned on listening to it for that reason, but also because I love Sleeping with Celebrities, and Lindy and Meaganās show Text Me Back, and listening to them talk about anything in general. On Sleeping with Celebrities John Moe invites people to come on and kind of try to bore you with topics like pies or picking up stuff at the drugstore, but itās really just an opportunity to hear celebrities talk about things they arenāt used to talking about. That means they arenāt bored talking about those things so you wonāt be bored listening and you probably wonāt fall asleep. To try to ease you into slumber for this episode (again, seriously doubt youāll stop laughing long enough to fall asleep) Lindy and Meagan rank their 10 favorite witches, from Practical Magicās Dianne Wiest and Stockard Channing at #10 to āpowerhouse of the witch community who just wants to pop off some spaghettiā Strega Nona at #1. JK Rowling witches are not eligible for ranking because Lindy and Meagan have moral standings. I knew this episode would be funny but itās actually a smart look at why we hate witches and godā¦WHY DO WE HATE OLD WOMEN SO MUCH???? At one point Lindy says āevery witch is a good witch until sheās pushed too far.ā John disagreesātrapping and eating children is bad? (see witch #9, the witch from Handsel and Gretel) but Lindy says that comment is āinsulting virtue signaling,ā and it sparks an interesting debate. Meagan made me slap my knee when she said that John was āgiving real Big Anthony vibesā and if you get that reference you will super love this episode. Youāll love it either way. Listen to Letās Rank Witches with Lindy West and Meagan Hatcher-Mays here so I donāt have to just keep transcribing all the funny things that were said (oops one more: āis it witchcraft to have healthy boundaries?ā) then RUSH to go listen to Text Me Back, any episode, all episodes.
How I discovered it: I listen to all MaxFun shows
šIn 2020 Zak Rosen launched The Best Advice Show, a short delightful podcast that, 3 times a week, offered interviews with people about their best advice. Zak is a great producer and one of my favorite people in podcasting, this show was always a treat. Zak has been running the show ever since, though the cadence has gone to less than 3/week (truthfully a psychotic rate to produce this thing in, actually.) But! Zak noticed a problem with this showāthe word āadviceā is intimidating. People feel like they donāt have any. And ābest?ā What is best? So this week he relaunched the show with a slight tweak that makes a huge differenceāitās called Weirdly Helpful. Listening to him talk about it on the first episode with the new name, I realized that this show was never about advice, it was always about the weird things we do. (Search for my episode about Shower Belly or listen to it in the trailer of the new show. Other pieces of āadviceā were howling when youāre despondent, eating oranges in the shower and metaphorically flushing your adversary down the toilet. Thereās lots of bathroom-related advice.) In hearing other peopleās weird thingsāthe rituals and the practices we do, the habits we haveāwe get a personal portrait of them. And that is much more interesting than a piece of life advice. In the first episode he talks to Laura Hawley, who helped him shepherd in this distinction with a good example. When sheās on the bus she puts away her phone and makes sketches of people she sees, and embraces the āmistakesā that she makes from the jerkiness of the ride. Because, and I wrote this down, āour mistakes are the best things about us, letās keep them in.ā I wrote down one other thing while I was listening: āI am so glad Zak Rosen has a mic.ā Listen to the first episode of Weirdly Helpful here.
How I discovered it: I first discovered The Best Advice Show via Bello Collective years ago but have been talking to Zak about the refresh!
šYikes did I go down a rabbit hole to figure out what the fuck the Guaranteed Audio podcast is. My first google search was āguaranteed audio podcast what is redditā which led to the Lemon Demon subreddit which mentioned that the lead singer Neil Cicierega had a podcast with Kevin James and Ryan Murphy and that led me down more rabbit holes which led me to discover that Kevin Ryan and Neil are YouTubers. I should have known! I wrote about this last weekā¦I donāt necessarily love it when these YouTubers just throw up their audio on RSS but I doooooo enjoy their deep dives. Unfortunately for me the Guaranteed Audio podcast hasnāt put out an episode in a long time, and there are only 28 to begin with. The one that drew me in was a nearly two-and-a-half hour episode about The Chipmunk Adventure (the 1987 film where The Chipmunks and The Chipettes are racing around the world in balloons as diamond mules for criminals.) Thatās a long time to be laughing, two and a half hours, but thatās pretty much what happened to me. Neil Kevin and Ryan give the filmās history and capture all the movieās weirdness by pointing out large discrepancies, strange writing, and blatant racism. (And the funniest character who never gets enough credit, Miss Miller.) Listen, Iāll stop talking about it because there is only a 1% chance that you love this movie even 1/20th as much as I do, so even if you donāt LITERALLY THINK THE SONGS āGIRLS OF ROCK AND ROLLā AND āDIAMOND DOLLSā ARE BANGERS, surely one of the other episodes will entice youāGood Burger? Rockoās Modern Life? Animorphs? Coneheads? Mighty Morphing Power Rangers/ Ghostbusters? Pop punk bands from 1999-2004? Go have yourself a good time and listen to Guaranteed Audio here!
How I discovered it: A Reddit thread about diamond-in-the-rough podcasts
šIlluminated is a completely underrated podcast from the BBC that spotlights the beautiful work of some of the most creative audio producers via mini documentaries. Theyāre always such a treat, but I really loved Talia Augustidisās āProblems with Julia Masliā piece, which lets us listen in on a live performance called āha ha ha ha ha ha ha,ā where Estonian clown Julia Masli goes to the audience and, with a mic taped to a mannequin leg, asks them to name their problems. And then she tries to solve them. Sheās finding that people are scared, stuck, unsure of their purpose, confused, unsure about the point of life or why we are here. Someone wants a partner who is single and kind and honest, and Julia goes around through the crowd and asks people āare you single and kind and honest?ā I think if you attend one of these things, which must attract similarly-minded (brave*) people, you have to be prepared to participate, and it makes sense that Julia keeps a database of people hoping to find a partner to match them up. (*One woman strips naked on stage because itās something she had always wanted to do and Julia joins her to make her feel less alone.) Even if you are not brave enough to admit your fears or strip in front of strangers, you have to be moved to know that one person is earnestly trying to help people through art. Two weeks I wrote about Fela Kuti: Fear No man, last week I wrote about Performing the Revolution. I have been thinking about this a lot, what art can do and when things feel so bad and you feel so helpless. What are your options? You can do something small like create something or make someone laugh. Julia got here via a manic episode where she thought she could help everyone that landed her in a psychiatric hospital before realizing that she doesnāt have magical powers, sheās just a clown with bi-polar disorder. Listen to Problems with Julia Masli here.
How I discovered it: Longtime subscriber but Eleanor McDowall specifically emailed me about this one.
šMolly Lambert used to write for Grantland but I first heard her voice on Night Call, a show she cohosted with Tess Lynch and Emily Yoshida until 2020. It always felt like I was catching strange radio waves on a nighttime drive on a deserted road. They talked about strange things in smart ways. Molly returned in 2022 to make HeidiWorld, the story of Heidi Fleiss, which featured voice actors reading real-life quotes and her own narration. She just dropped the first episode of Jennaworld: Jenna Jameson, Vivid Video, & The Valley, which shares the same format as HeidiWorld, but this seems like a bigger story. Yes itās about Jenna Jameson but so much more, itās tracing the history of adult film and media (including how the formats of adult film are shifting,) telling us so much about American culture. This is a story about Jenna and media and America and us. Molly grew up in the San Fernando Valley, this town is in her bones, and you can tell by her storytelling that this interests her so much. That feeling is contagious for the listener. Sometimes shows about a personās life or a single subject can feel like a dry book report, but listening to Mollyās storytelling feels like youāve entered a pop-up book full of tiny footnotes, weird rabbit holes, and voice acting that makes the whole thing feel alive. (Right off the bat, you get to hear Miles Grey of The Daily Zeitgeist as Kid Rock.) Listen to Chapter 1: Enter JennaWorld
How I discovered it: One of the producers emailed me asking if I could connect the show with someone to contribute as a voice actor
šWhy did the world go ga-ga for Normal Gossip? Because we love to hear about stuff that is none of our business. On the new podcast None of My Business, hosts Sophia Benoit and Kelsey June Jensen interview people about their sex lives but ensure them it will be anonymous, so they get super detailed and honest stories and confessions that a guest reads aloud. Itās a smart idea and a fun listen. Sophia and Kelsey are really funny and dive into the NSFW stuff. The first few lines of episode one, āFormer Gifted Kidsā are āI just recently made my boyfriend let me hold his penis while he peed and I was like, this is funā¦I wrote my name.ā The rest of the conversation was fast-moving and fun, plunging headfirst into pegging and humping, charlie horses in your buttocks, and why 69ing is like when youāre trying to take too many bags in the from the car grocery shopping. Listen to āFormer Gifted Kidsā here.
How I discovered it: I was listening The Ringerās reality TV podcast and one of the hosts casually mentioned it
šI GASPED when I saw that Meddling Adults, one of the most creative and underrated shows, dropped an episode after almost two years of silence with Demi Adejuyigbe and Rivkah Reyes. For the unacquainted, Mike Schubert (of Potterless and The Newest Olympian, which he is more famous for) makes guests compete to solve childrenās mysteries from the Encyclopedia Brown and Scooby Doo universes for charity. Since both Demi and Rivkah opted to give their winnings to the same charity, Trans Lifeline, the winner (Iām NOT going to spoil who) just got bragging rights. This show is a blast and Mike is just neverendly hilarious and sweet. During that episode Mike mentioned his new show, Professional Talkers, whichā¦I cannot believe I did not know about. On Professional Talkers he and co-host Sequoia Seimone help people with lifeās awkward interactions, like telling your hot neighbor to be quiet or going to a party where you donāt know anyone. Gen Z introvert Sherry Guo comes on at the end for a āGen Z Introvert Check,ā giving Mike and Sequoia, extrovert millennials, honest feedback. I found these episodes to be a weird combo of funny and actually helpful. Real advice from two friends with great chemistry who are able to see that these potentially-awkward situations can be pretty amusing. Listen to the newest episode of Meddling Adults but also listen to Professional Talkers here.
How I discovered it: Longtime Meddling Adults fan and Mike mentioned Professional Talkers on the new ep