🛻 🔥"9 monster trucks and every single one of them in flames"🛻 🔥
🍭 👂 Finally! Jane Marie is back, where's the Caffeine Free Diet Dr. Pepper?, a podcast that made me feel sick 🌈 🤸♀️
Bonjour.
Today is Monday, March 18. In case this issue is too long…Finally! this!, a must-listen about another (controversial) podcast here, a celebration for the best podcast of all time here.
xoxo lp
👋q & a & q & a & q & a👋
Petra Barra
Petra Barran is a pavement pounder and juice seeker whose life and career has been driven by her love of people and following her gut. From sailing the seas as a stewardess on superyachts to exploring the UK in her choc-mobile; geeking out on cities via an Urban Studies masters to creating the UK’s first street food collective. She then founded street food organization, KERB, in 2012 and stepped away in 2023, following a pull to get closer to the ground. She is the host of Lowlines, where she is building a place to explore this.
In 10 words or less, what is Lowlines?
A sonic scrapbook that tunes into the pulse of place
If you could describe your emotion before Lowlines in one word, what would it be? What would it be like after the show?
Before making it/getting back out there in the world? Hollow
After making it/releasing it? Reconnected
What was the most challenging thing when making this show? How did you overcome it?
Making it reality - before I found a team, trying to do it alone, just my own sense of wanting to share these stories in a natural and immersive way and realizing how tenuous that was with nobody but me expecting it. But I didn't want to be that guy who had gone round and given it the biggun to all my interviewees and hadn't come through. I doubled down and found my team and then the opportunity/challenge was shared/alive! Moral of the story: isolation is a dream killer
What are you hoping listeners take away from Lowlines?
A feeling, a reverb, a reminder of the joy of strangers and of following what magnetizes you
Who would your dream podcast collaborators be?
Sophie Strand, Emma Warren (author Dance Your Way Home), author Hanif Abdurraqib, urbanist Richard Sennett
What are you listening to, that you’d like to recommend to our readers?
Honestly, I'm in a bit of a podcast lull right now. I need recommendations! I'm longing for more Home of the Brave installments - or Bottom of the Map with Regina Bradley. I keep an ear out for interviews with any of the people in the previous question. I love the spaciousness of the interviews Rick Rubin does. On audiobook, I enjoyed Questlove's Creative Quest for a dynamic listen. Currently I am eating up Humanize by Thomas Heatherwick.
🚨If u only have time for 1 thing🚨
I always say that answering the question “what’s your favorite podcast” is hard, but it isn’t. Imaginary Advice, it’s you and it’s always been you. Ross Sutherland is a poet (and poets are always the the best audio creators IMHO) and creative who thinks about podcasting in a way so different I’d say you could pluck a single episode from his archive and not find anything like it anywhere. Pieces are experimental, playful, funny, and beautiful. Ross was gone for a year because he became a father (yay!) but also because he lost hearing in one ear. Now’s the part where I confess that when he made a two-part audio piece about that, I thought he was fucking with us. Imaginary Advice does that sometimes, as you will see in a moment. It was just, the other day, reading in Nick Quah’s newsletter that I found out the hearing-loss is real. ANYWAY happy 100 episodes to Ross. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again—every single time he drops an episode I’m like “that’s it, Ross has thought of everything. How can he make something this unique every time?” And for his 100th episode, he did it again, by interviewing other podcasters like Avery Trufelman about their favorite moments from the first 99 episodes, and their favorite moments were…nothing I remembered! And I’m a dedicated fan! But it’s because they never happened! Ross plays along, running clips of new things to satisfy their desires. Listening to Ross earnestly review a monster truck rally truly made me happy to be alive. (There was a follow up episode with more, real highlights and an explanation for the show’s name.) This episode was a clever celebration. Support Ross on Patreon here.
hell yeah
✨Read Wil’s How to Listen Like a Marketer in Podcast Marketing Magic.
✨Read my Lifehacker piece The 10 Best Podcasts for Pet People.
✨Read my Lifehacker piece 10 Optimistic Podcast to Make You Feel Less Bad About Existing in 2024.
✨Oh also, I wrote about Disney cruises for Upworthy!
✨Arielle Nissenblatt spotlighted Hazard NYC in her newsletter and podcast.
💎BTW💎
🎙️Jane Marie launched the first few episodes of Finally! A Show (About Women That’s Isn’t Just a Thinly Veiled Aspirational Nightmare,) a show that lets us eavesdrop on the ordinary lives of ordinary women. The well-produced, unfiltery pieces offer us glances into the lives of, so far, a fish-thrower at Pike Place Fish Market and an 83-year-old calendar girl, to let us mine for different pieces of advice or thoughts to take away with us. In Jean’s episode, for me, it was “Figure out how to not do, as best you can, what you don’t want to do.” I’m almost shocked this hasn’t exactly been done before, though I think City of Women is similar. It’s a great idea. Jane Marie always does things a little differently so I’m wondering where she’ll take us. The first two women were lovely, maybe we’ll get some unlikeable ones? Listen here.
🎙️The Deep Dark Woods offers deep dives into the Brothers Grimm tales before they were Disneyfied, and even before they were Grimm stories, by looking at how the stories traveled and spread between storytellers across the globe and ages. Miranda Hawkins explains what changes in the stories mean, and what different lessons were being shoehorned in. Start with Cinderella, you’ll hear versions of the story you’ve never heard and find new meanings. Listening to these episodes made me wish I had studied folklore in school. (I went with Biblical studies, which is close.) Listen here.
🎙️Celebrity Book Club is always funny but they were able to really punch up Ariana Madix’s cocktail book (Single AF: Drinks for Bad B*tches) in a way I didn’t think possible. It’s probably because they were previously unschooled in Vanderpump Rules, something I cannot fault them for, and it seems like watching a few episodes to prep for the episode see was a jarring experience. (At one point Steven says, “it’s enough to make a woman go mad!”) I know too much about Vanderpump Rules, so hearing someone whose brain isn’t warped try to explain it was fascinating. I loved this episode and I think you will too, whether or not you’ve seen and / or give a shit about Vanderpump Rules. Steven and Lily have perfect chemistry, some reaaaal zingers, and are able to squeeze comedy out of almost anything. Listen here.
🎙️It feels like centuries since we had a new Lost Notes episode! But it’s back with a season about LA’s soul and R&B scene of the 1950s-1970s, hosted by Novena Carmel and Michael Barnes. One of my favorite podcast episodes of all time comes from Lost Notes—have you listened to the very first episode about The Kingsmen’s Louie Louie? (The Kingsmen pop up in episode two of this new season, which is about the cutthroat Ruth Christie, who sued Muddy Waters for using the word “mojo.”) Episode one is the tribute to Gloria Jones that Gloria deserves after being mostly unrecognized for writing the song Tainted Love, a song that had to go on a long, winding, tragic and surprising journey before it was popularized. Who knows where it’d be today had an English DJ not found it on the floor of a warehouse and brought it to listeners hungry for “Northern Soul,” which is just Black American music played by white DJs in northern England, for a viral moment that spawned cover after cover after cover. These stories take you everywhere. Listen here.
🎙️Hot and Bothered is my go-to for anything romance culture-related, and usually they’re talking about books. This new season, How to Watch Romance Movies, is a surprise and delight. Host Vanessa Zoltan has asked ten scholars to watch How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days to do it. She’ll be using these conversations as a media 101 class, so she can later talk to professor Hannah McGregor about romance movies as a whole. She starts out this challenge with her friend Kimberly, who she’s known since she was five. It doesn’t matter if you like or hate or haven’t seen this film, it’s, to quote Vanessa, a “rich text.” This project feels ambitious and too good to be true. It’s a comfy smart fun sleepover and I’m wearing my pjs. Vanessa, if you are reading this please listen to Butt Out, Baby! Or someone who knows her pass this along! Podcast the Newsletter readers, listen here!
🎙️I haven’t known what to say about Shocking, Heartbreaking, Transformative. I was certainly shocked—before I listened I didn’t know a podcast could make you feel sick. I write from the perspective of a super listener, and I can say I did not enjoy the listening experience. I think you should listen to an expert opinion, so please listen to Rebecca Lavioe and her crew (Kevin Flynn, Toby Ball, and Lara Bricker) on Crime Writers On… Rebecca says what I wish I had said, and I’m going to quote her twice:
“I feel like people are going to walk away from this thinking they're going to be learning something about ethics, and they're going to be learning the wrong things about ethics. In my opinion, the use of very vulnerable people in an experiment is troubling, especially when the experiment starts to fall apart and that becomes incredibly visible.”
“I really feel like it was created in some sort of silo where other media does not exist because there are so many great pieces of media being made where people are being represented fairly, while good journalism is still happening.”
She also points out that this very thing is exactly what Bear Brook is all about. I think this is a really important conversation about Shocking, Heartbreaking, Transformative and anyone interested in journalism, storytelling, podcasting…should hear it. Listen here.
🎙️If you aren’t listening to Never Post, Mike Rugnetta’s stab at tackling the enormous subject of the internet ,you are missing something really, really good. Episodes feel like a zine with a variety of editors and hosts, and the audience is already large enough that they can solicit questions. (This is an impressive fact.) Hans Buetow’s ongoing attempt to find Caffeine Free Diet Dr. Pepper keeps on popping up, streamlining the whole thing. The latest episode had me jotting down tons of notes a out “critical ignoring,” something we must do if we want to maintain our sanity while living in a world that is increasingly more online. I believe it is cognitive scientist Stephan Lewandowsky who teaches us how to “ignore interesting trivialities” and decipher between good news and bad news. There was also a fascinating conversation about how much weight different generations put toward email. (Millennials, a LOT—we grew up along side it. Gen Z, almost none and it shocked me to know that a lot of Gen Zers don’t even know their friends’ email addresses, because they don’t need to.) They also ask: if you have an important email to send on-the-go, would you write it on your phone? Or would you wait until you were back at. your computer? Listen here.
🎙️Ever since Into It ended, I’ve felt like like I need to send out an emergency alert every time Sam Sanders appears on another podcast. We are starved for his presence. Well, here’s one! He was on You Are Good to talk about My Best Friend’s Wedding, a movie I’d heard him mention before. And it’s a funny and sharp conversation about the emotional labor gay men do for the women in their lives, the whitewashing of Dionne Warwick’s “I Say a Little Prayer for You,” and the scheme / manic episode of the movie that never would have happened, Cameron Diaz asking Julia Roberts to be her Maid of Honor. This episode was dedicated to Rupert, and unlike any other My Best Friend’s Wedding conversation you’ve heard—she’s got moves you’ve never seen. Listen here.
🎙️I get jealous of anyone who hasn’t listened to the first season of the reality dating show Hang Up, where our friend ‘Maxine’ was matched with several potential dates who go through the ringer to win a trip with her in the end. This podcast feels exactly like the cover art. Bright, a little chaotic, a little retro, and a lot of fun. Season two is in the works, but we got a drop of something recorded at On Air, a mini-round of Hang Up with Tuck Woodstock of Gender Reveal in the hot seat. Tuck sparkles and there is a pretty surprising ending. I was at On Air and making this live performance was maybe my only goal of the entire event, and even though I was inches away I missed it for something better, talking to my friends Angela and Corey. (That’s the best part of attending these things!) So I’m glad I got to hear with with my earrrrrrrs. Listen here.
🎙️I would listen to anything Justine Harman (Broken Harts) makes. For Three, she joined forces with Holly Millea to tell the story of Skylar Neese, who at 16 snuck out of her house only to be murdered by two people she thought were her best friends. Because—they didn’t like her? This story haunts me and I’m devouring this podcast and every detail about Shelia Eddy and Rachel Shoaf, wondering about the existence of pure evil and teen girl friendship. Listen here.
🎙️I love you!
Or What You Wil*
*Wil did not suggest or approve this title…respond to this email with other ideas!!!
💖 From Hartlife NFP (Our Fair City, Unwell) comes a new absurdist audio drama, World Gone Wrong. This friends-with-a-podcast pastiche is set to be an advice show for people struggling to adjust to their new lives in a post-apocalypse of weirdness; their first pressing question to tackle is how to manage a pekingese infected with a werewolf bite, now that everyone knows lycanthropy can affect animals as well as humans. This goofy show is one part Dear Prudence, one part Adventures in New America, and like five parts largely forgotten Soup2Nuts Noggin TV show O'Grady. Needless to say, I'm already in love.
💖 I've been obsessed with celebrity culture and parasocial relationships for about five years, and the BBC + CBC Who Replaced Avril Lavigne? is scratching that research in a such a funny, different way. Deeply self-aware, this podcast investigates a long and storied conspiracy theory that pop punk princess Avril Lavigne was replaced by a double after dying in 2003. There's a lot of analysis and commentary to pull out from each episode if you want it, but honestly? It's mostly just really funny and really fun. I'm always happy for more deep dives into celebrity culture that address and face the strangeness head-on.
💖 Want to give a quick loving shout out to Terrible, Thanks for Asking, which is going on an indefinite hiatus. Over the last seven years, this podcast has been such a beautiful, real, intimate dive into the worst moments in peoples' lives and darkest days of their mental health. It's been a lovely listen for those seeking community and validation, for those of us who find comfort and catharsis in digging into the hard shit. Thanks for being there, TTFA! We'll miss you, and we'll look forward to whatever comes next!
📦 From the Archives 📦
[From December 14, 2020] Brought To You By…has ended, and ran a final episode where people called in to talk about brands that had an important impact on their lives. I cannot believe how sad I am this show is ending. If you would have told me that Business Insider was going to start a podcast about brands that tugged at my heart strings and taught me new things and made me laugh aloud, I would’t have believed you. These beautifully done episodes always found completely strange, often touching moments in brand stories, bringing out the humanity of the brands, reminding us that they were built by flawed, funny, hopeful people. I have been listening to this show since it began in 2018 and will miss the host Charlie Herman. (Re)visit some of my favorite episodes—Pan Am in Vitnam, All That Jazzercize, The Marlboro Women, Donald and Ivana's Affair (with Pizza Hut), Sears: There Was More For Your Life, and Kentucky Fried Christmas.