💖 5 Recommendations from Nichole Hill 💖
🍭 👂And now for something a little bit different 🌈 🤸♀️
Bonjour.
Today is Monday, November 18. I think we need, just like, beautiful podcast recommendations from the inimitable Nichole Hill. Here they are, thank you Nichole. We’ll be back for a regular issue next week, let me know if you have anything I should add to my queue.
xoxo, lauren
Nichole Hill is an award-winning audio showrunner and creator of the podcasts The Secret Adventures of Black People and the upcoming series Our Ancestors Were Messy, a 2024 Official Tribeca Audio Selection. Her most recent work includes showrunning for the podcasts I Am America with Tracee Ellis Ross, She Has a Name with Tonya Mosley, Vox's Land of the Giants: Dating Games season, and The Qube and PRX's Second Sunday podcast. Back in the day she worked as Associate Producer (and voice actor!) for the audio fiction podcast The Truth with Radiotopia. Her work has also appeared on podcasts for Audible, NPR, PRX, Snap Judgement, and New York Magazine. She lives in LA, is from VA, and reps DC all day!
These are some mainly old school recs out of the CBC which is a company I like to keep my eye on because of their willingness to be experimental.
Limited Capacity. This is a beautifully acted and cinematically scored fiction series. It’s very Twilight Zone-esque. You will ask yourself “what would I do,” with every episode, especially the first one titled “We All Hate Greg, Right?”
Alone: A Love Story. A podcast memoir by Michelle Parise about her unexpected divorce and transition to part-time parent/part-time partier. It feels like listening to someone read their diary and there are moments in this story that have stayed with me for years. The umbrella!
Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud. A Canadian pop culture podcast whose host Elamin is so charming, compassionate, and unapologetically wears his heart on his sleeve. My favorite episodes are the "The Group Chats" where guests debate something in the zeitgeist. Check out the Kendrick Lamar v Drake commentary. It was a tough time for our Canadian cousins.
Love Me. A beautiful narrative anthology series about human connection. Each story is told in an artistic and totally unique way. They're super experimental and have a masterful grasp on what makes a story sticky, and goosebump inducing, and splendid. I still remember exactly where I was when I heard the section in ep. 1 about untranslatable words. Chef’s kiss!
Love, Janessa. A true crime series about a woman whose image is used to catfish people around the world. Host Hannah Ajala finds the woman in the picture and the catfishers. Surprises ensue! If you like this, you will love Saidu Tejan-Thomas Jr.'s piece for This American Life called “Love and Other Exports.”
Oh, and: The BBC and The Truth partnered to make a fiction podcast called The Missed Lives of Max and Judy. If you like Hallmark movies, you will ADORE this two-parter featuring some of the most iconic needle drops ever heard in podcasting thanks to BBC's licensing rights, I guess?
notes
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SPOTLIGHT: THE BLACK PODCAST COALITION
Contributor: Adell Coleman
The Black Podcast Coalition is an initiative to make sure that brand safety & suitability tools are working equitably for Black podcasters, while giving brands a streamlined process to reach Black audiences at scale. BPC is a large collective of influential networks and independent shows that cater to black audiences. The coalition sells ad inventory for the shows and helps facilitate cross promotional marketing opportunities between members.
Meet a member: Anna DeShawn, The Qube and E3 Radio
“I believe that storytelling gives us a window into someone else's humanity, and I'm called to not only bring those stories to life but to amplify them.”
That’s Anna DeShawn Host, CEO, and Creator for her two media companies E3 Radio & The Qube. Both entities produce award winning podcast content that center and celebrate the intersections of race and sexuality. Anna DeShawn and The Qube are a part of the Black Podcast Coalition (BPC). So, with that there’s more opportunities to work with brands. Like one of Anna’s favorites: The Legacy Project. The Legacy Project is a Chicago-based cultural and educational non-profit dedicated to researching and promoting the contributions Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) people have made to world history and culture. They are home to the largest outdoor LGBTQ history museum in the world. She had the opportunity to partner with them for LGBTQ History Month and loved it.
Fun Fact: The name The Qube originated from E3 Radio. I was in the shower racking my brain about the name for this new podcasting entity I wanted to start. Then it hit me. E to the power of 3 is to cube something. Then I thought, what if I put a "Q" on the word and make it queer. Boom. The Qube was born.
Would you like to advertise to over 500K Black podcast listeners? Would you like to add your show or network to the Black Podcast Coalition? Email us at sales@dcpentertainment.com
Thank you for the shoutout!
And Nichole's work is so great! She's worked on a lot of shows I've enjoyed.
I ALWAYS have eyes and ears for Nichole's takes <3