Better angels👼🏻Bathtubs Over Broadway🎭and um, bombs!💣
🍭 👂 TRUST US! 🌈 🤸♀️
Hi hello! Wil Williams back here spearheading Podcast the Newsletter before the long-awaited return of our triumphant leader Lauren next week! If you didn’t read the last edition, you missed out on the VERY exciting explanation for where she’s been this whole time, so don’t miss out!
This week, we’ve got some great releases from some tried and true favorites, plus a new must-listen I’ve been waiting on forever!
xoxo ww
🚨If u only have time for 1 thing🚨
🎙️NPR’s new political history podcast, Landslide, is a fascinating look back on how the American Republican party got to be what it is today. Specifically, it’s looking about one of the closest primaries in American history: Gerald Ford vs Ronald Reagan. In this well-edited, well-told, well-designed first episode, “Trust,” go back to the 1970s and hear how the Republican party made it back from the brink of collapse. For, um, you know. For better or . . . worse. For better . . . or worse. For better or worse. (Just losing my mind about being a multiply marginalized person in the States, no worries 😇.) I really enjoy host Ben Bradford’s mix of candor and professionalism. It’s a really nice mix of tone that works very well for the subject matter, and it feels like a shift for NPR — instead of a casual chatcast or serious reported piece, the tone here reminds me of something like The Ringer’s 60 Songs That Explain the ‘90s. I have a feeling this is going to be a vital listen this (😭😬😒🫠😰) American election year.
🧚♀️recs from Lauren🧚♀️
✨On Kelly Corrigan Wonders, part of her Rupture + Repair series, Kelly Corrigan had an incredible conversation about reproductive rights with April Lawson, a pro-life conservative. Kelly’s a pro-choice liberal. It’s a respectful, constructive, eye-opening (and occasionally it was jaw-dropping for me) conversation about people with different opinions about a literally life or death thing—so rare. The reason Kelly is doing this because she wants to give people a blueprint for how to have tough conversations, to show how it’s possible. In that way, this episode could change the way you talk to people, it could change your relationships. But if not, it will be one of those podcast episodes that will stick with you for a long time (some of the things April said are burned into my brain) and it will be one you send to other people. It is one that should win an award. Listen here.
🎙️Devin at Tink agrees!: “The final episode of Kelly Corrigan Wonders' Rupture and Repair series dropped last week with a striking conversation. The series explored how to have productive discussions about the most contentious issues, so it only made sense for it to conclude with Kelly having her own difficult conversation. The episode featured a discussion between Kelly, a pro-choice liberal, and April Lawson, a pro-life conservative. With their opposing views on abortion, most people would just avoid talking to each other about that topic. Instead, Kelly demonstrated how to have a friendly dialogue with considerate word-choices and without 'cheap shots'. It truly challenges our impulses to get defensive and reminds us that talking about difficult things can be so helpful.”
✨An episode of In Retrospect has me convinced that Miranda Priestly isn’t the villain in Devil Wears Prada, but a walking example of the problem ambitious young women face, and what kind of deal they have to sign to have it all. (Something I was told I should want…something that was pounded into my brain when I was working in NYC at a magazine just like Anne Hathaway in 2007. And although it was a parenting magazine, the vibes were very, very Devil Wears Prada. (Every morning the EIC needed someone to print out Page 6 on special paper in color and have it stacked neatly on her desk before she got there.) This episode covered a lot of stuff about the film and girlbossing too close to the sun, but it also just struck me so hard because I’m a woman in media. If that’s you, too, you’ll have to listen multiple times like I did. Listen here.
✨Playing With Marbles, a podcast about the complicated interplay between the brain and the rest of the body, is back with a new season about youth mental health, with six episodes that feature six mental health conditions and six people with lived experience. It features stories about incredible research being done in Canada and around the world, and a healthy dollop of incredible sound design! The first two episodes about Depression and Anxiety are out now, with ADHD, DID, BPD, and OCD still to come. I wish I had a time machine so I could send this to a younger lp. Listen here.
🔥hell yeah🔥
🎙️Pod the North shares the state of play for Black Canadian podcasters. Related, be sure to check out the Northern Voices newsletter leg of BlkPodNews.
🎙️The Podcaster’s Digest also shared an edition all about the Black Podcaster Association.
🎙️The International Women’s Podcast Awards are open for 2024 nominations! Be sure to check their FAQ before entering, and good luck!
🎙️The Podcast Marketing Trends 2024 Survey is wrapping up at the end of this week! Please go take the survey — we always need more census data like this.
Have more exciting news and updates? Want to talk up your new release or project? Leave us a comment!
💎BTW💎
🎙️Cool Zone Media’s Better Offline is here! Their most recent episode focuses on the “rot economy,” also sometimes called “enshittification.” If you’re unfamiliar with these concepts, think about the last few Google searches you did. They sucked, right? This is why that’s happening — not just to Google, but to almost every digital corporation. Listen here.
🎙️The Recipe with Kenji and Deb is also here! I’ve been waiting so long, y’all, and it literally dropped this morning FINALLY. We’re talking mac and cheese with some of the most beloved home cooks, J. Kenji Lopez-Alt and Deb Perelman! Listen here.
🎙️Every episode of If Books Could Kill is my favorite episode of If Books Could Kill, and this most recent episode on Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature is no different. Listen as Michael, in an illness-spurred stupor of research, dissects what makes this 900-page book so . . . goofy. Listen here.
🎙️You’re Wrong About is back with an episode on a strange figure from post-9/11 America that changed a fundamental part of many of our lives: security checks at airports. This episode on the shoe bomber details American anxieties after 9/11 and proposes that maybe the most lasting impacts are the ones that are sort of just annoying. Listen here.
🎙️I looooooved this episode of Twenty Thousand Hertz on industrial musicals, an absolutely baffling and previously secret type of full Broadway-style musical productions . . . for employees of corporations. We’re talking musicals about toilets and tires and tissues and so much more. I was first introduced to these musicals with the deeply charming documentary Bathtubs Over Broadway, mentioned in the episode, and I loved this additional deep dive into such a ridiculous art form with some star-studded casts and crews behind them. Listen here.
🎙️I love you!
📦 From the Archives 📦
I’ve been thinking about The Shadows, a fiction podcast by Kaitlin Prest and the CBC so much lately. This podcast follows a fictionalized Kaitlin Prest making her way through some painful, messy, delicious relationships. The Shadows asks questions like “is love real?” and “is monogamy real?” and “should i make this decision that will explode my life because my heart really wants to?” It leaves you feeling twisted, ambivalent, and sort of distressed in a way that is very intentional and very satisfying. I wrote about this podcast back in my Discover Pods days, and it’s stayed with me ever since. Only Kaitlin Prest would have the gumption and the creative brilliance to have an episode entirely narrated by a sweater — and make me cry about it real hard.
Thanks for shouting out Pod the North!!