Cracker Barrel but the store part only, oddly a lot about money brands shoppng & stores, something super personal about me

🍭 👂Up your nose with a rubber hose 🌈 🤸‍♀️

Bonjour.

Today is Monday September 15, 2025. I didn’t have space in this newsletter for extra links so I guess you’re just going to have to skim the whole thing? OH WAIT FIRST:

1. 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.

2. I have received more positive feedback about Wisecrack than anything else I’ve ever recommended. Go listen to it now.

Now on with the show…

xoxo

lauren

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~sponsored~

Immigrantly is an award-winning podcast that challenges the rulebook on immigrant stories. Hosted by Saadia Khan, a rights activist, social entrepreneur, and unapologetic truth-seeker, this show unpacks the complexities of identity, race, and belonging through unfiltered conversations with artists, academics, culture shifters, and everyday disruptors. Whether unpacking generational trauma, challenging labels, or exploring cultural mashups, Immigrantly invites you to rethink what it means to belong in today's world.

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

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🚨the one thing🚨

Leon Neyfakh does some of the best history storytelling. He is the one behind Slow Burn and Fiasco and and a bunch of other stuff that I don’t write about because some of it is behind an Audible paywall, but I’m starting to rethink that no-paywalled stuff now. Anyways last week two episodes of the new season of Fiasco about Benghazi dropped and after listening I immediately emailed Leon and said please send me moreeeee. I dropped everything to finish it—it’s a very detailed and contextualized look at something I know embarrassingly little about. Leon mentions at one point that to him Benghazi wasn’t a place but a scandal, and…exactly. Others think of it as an overblown distraction or sinister conspiracy. We all have been, and still are, sorting through its aftermath and how Benghazi explains what’s been happening re: political warfare over the last 20 years. What was America’s mission in Libya, anyway? What are we missing from this story? How did it impact the 2016 election? Why did Chris Stevens have to die that night? I don’t know a lot about good podcast reviews but I do know they don’t just have a list of questions, but these are all questions that I felt too stupid to ask before listening. I was worried I’d be overwhelmed by this subject. But these are questions Leon is able to steer us through using really good storytelling and interviews with not just experts but primary sources. Now I feel like a GENIUS. How’s that for a podcast review? I blew through episodes one and two but episode three gripped me by the throat. I was holding my breath during Leon’s interview with Special Agent Scott Wickland about the night in question. (He remembers saying, “If they blow the locks off I’m gonna start shooting and when I die I want. you to pick up my rifle and keep fighting.”) In an interview with woman who risked her life for the revolution, she describes her chants for Libya as a poem, a love song to her country which she loves and is willing to die for. And for the first time I thought, that is a bravery I never thought I’d have to have in the US but now I think of it as a privilege I’m not sure I have anymore. At a certain point people have nothing to lose and they become impossible to ignore. Brace yourself for hearing ads read by Malcolm Gladwell, if anything he’s said lately has upset you.

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notes

✨Sign up here for my Podcast Marketing 101 Radio Boot Camp 9/22. I’m going to be sharing everything I know.

✨The Audio Production Awards are open for submission until Wednesday, September 17th! If you haven’t submitted yet, now is the time!

✨Yesterday, Arielle featured 5 niche history podcasts (curated by Tara Jabbari) in EarBuds.

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~sponsored~

What’s Next? With Lacey is the career podcast for anyone who’s ever Googled “What does a marketing coordinator actually do?” or “How do people even get jobs in health tech?” Hosted by Lacey, it’s your backstage pass into the careers you’ve heard of — but don’t fully understand.

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.

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👋q & a & q & a & q & a👋

Jonathan Goldstein

Jonathan Goldstein began his radio career reading audio essays on the CBC. In 2000, he became a producer at This American Life. In 2003, he began his podcast, Wiretap which ran for 11 years on the CBC in Canada and PRI in the US. In 2016, he began Heavyweight which is currently going into its 9th season.

What are the ingredients for a perfect Heavyweight episode?
Stakes and jokes and a person I like as the subject and some ideas and sadness and good music and a listener who is sitting in the virtual driveway unable to virtually click off the virtual radio knob

What is the throughline of all the audio you have made throughout the years?
It’s all pretty much been dictated by my own whims and interests which is a very fortunate thing.

How has the show changed over the years?
I worry that maybe it hasn’t. But having my producers in front of the mic has been a nice change for me. I do know that when the show started it was just me helping friends and family and then after exhausting all that, I moved on to helping strangers.

How have you changed over the years?
Again, I worry maybe I haven’t. Or not enough. I think becoming a father has changed the stakes of personal growth. A child reflects everything about you back at you. It’s like a heavy-handed ironic Twilight Zone episode every day. Your personal style of interaction, that in some ways you can remain kind of philosophical about, becomes very consequential when you’re raising a child.

What did you want to be when you were eight?
When I was eleven, I wanted to be a comic book artist. Maybe own a candy store?

Can you remember the first time you realized you were funny?
I really don’t know how funny I am. In my performance, I think I’m always straining after something that would make things funnier and never getting there to my satisfaction. I’ve really enjoyed writing for funny people. It’s so much more satisfying. I think it’s like that ridiculous line about how if it bends it’s funny and if it breaks it isn’t. I think there’s something about me that is always breaking. Or, I don’t think I have enough funniness in me to counterbalance all the less good qualities, that is, the anger, the depression, etc.

Are there any memorable interactions with fans you can share?
The thing that comes to mind is a little hard to easily explain, but I was recently in a Target and was trying to bargain with the cashier… the whole thing was beneath my dignity (and there aren’t a ton of things I can say that about) and when I was done, the guy standing behind me in line said, “good luck with the new season.” So, he was listening to that whole petty exchange, judging me but good.

Pretend someone hasn’t listened. Which episode should they start with?
I always say the first one because it was organic. It was me trying to help my father reconnect with his brother and that became the blueprint for the show.

What do all these stories have in common?
They’re all stories that I strongly believe in. They probably share a stylistic something. In the best of cases, they’re the right mix of funny and sad.

Can you shout out 1-3 other audio makers who deserve a little shine? Why are they great?
I always encourage people to check out the work of Joe Frank. But no one ever seems to. Joe Frank was able to do a very particular kind of thing that I’ve never heard anyone else do. He had a certain kind of authority, charisma… a mood about him. He and Ira Glass were probably my biggest inspirations.

How are you feeling about the audio industry these days?
I don’t know that I have what you would call feelings about the audio industry. I can’t tell if we’re up or down, but I’ll keep going.

What do you feel about this whole video craze?
I got into this business because I have a face for radio.

If you had $1M to make another show, don’t worry about the logistics or whether or not anyone would listen, it doesn’t have to make sense like time and space don’t have to exist, what would it be?
Pretty much what I’m doing now. But maybe if I honestly didn’t care about whether anyone was listening it would be lazier and more boring… a lot of digressions where I share my dreams.

What’s a podcast, TV show, any piece of media, you wish you made?
So many. What comes to mind is John Wilson’s stuff. That’s a kind of video I would love to do… where it’s like video essays. It’s such a hard form to do well and he does it. I’ve always loved Pamela Adlon’s “Better Things.” But these are things I know, in my heart, I couldn’t do. Not even in my wishes. Like the last season of Nathan Fielder’s “The Rehearsal”... there’s just a level of pure genius.

What’s your favorite sound?
My son’s voice before he falls asleep. My wife calling me to dinner.

What’s a podcast you love that everybody knows about?
This American Life. Its impact can’t be overstated.

Is there anything I didn’t ask you about that you want to share?
Thank you for having me.

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💎podcasts i texted to friends💎

👂The Missing Sister is an investigative series about Joy Morgan, a 20-year-old Black British woman whose disappearance in 2019 revealed dark truths about the church she belonged to—Israel United in Christ, which IUIC calls itself a Hebrew Israelite church, but…it’s a cult. There’s a strange mix of violent misogyny, homophobia, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, and racism going on behind these church doors. Charlie Brinkhurst-Cuff was frustrated when nobody would green light her reporting on this story, which was haunting her, in 2020 at the height of the Black Lives Matter Movement, because people were too nervous to critique a Black church. But this story is about how we were not protecting Joy because she was Black. (Charlie’s partner in reporting remembers a commissioner telling her, literally, “too bad she’s not a blonde woman” before rejecting the pitch.) Why did it take so long for this to get reported, or for anyone to report on it? Things seemed promising for Joy before she was, spoiler alert, murdered. She was becoming a midwife, but also was swimming through the kind of hardships people in non white communities often face. The context of this whole thing is about how violence is normalized for Black people living in an oppressive system. In the end of the first episode, you hear Charlie call up Joy’s family, asking for permission to tell this story. It doesn’t seem like they want her to. But in the end they are kind of like “fuck the church” and relent It’s important to them that people know. Listen to The Missing Sister here.

How I discovered it: Press release

👂I try not to write about Clotheshorse too much but it is so perfect. Host Amanda Lee McCarty spent years working in retail and fashion, and was a buyer for huge brands like Urban Outfitters before becoming kind of a spokesperson for debunking the glamour and mystery that obscures the real truths about the clothing we buy. We spend a lot of money on clothes, but do we really know anything about where they come from, how much they should cost, who makes them? So yes Clotheshorse is about clothes but clothes as the vehicle for Amanda to talk about late state capitalism and consumerism. That is what the show is about. Amanda spent four episodes (at least, maybe it’s still going) on brands that helps us begin to untangle our relationship with them. It led me to writing up more notes than I think I ever had for a podcast before. This is why Amanda is good—she does so much research but also the has personal experience to illustrate and make sense of it. Clotheshorse is this perfect mix of those two things, a research paper peppered with good stories. I mean they’re not good, they’re mostly terrible. Hearing about the Urban Outfitters hiring process and buying process made me realize how much I was putty in UO’s hands. It gave me a tiny identity crisis. In this series you get the history of brands, shout-outs to several that are just licensed zombie versions of themselves, an exposé of cause marketing, and a breakdown of the ten commandments of emotional branding paired with specific stories about how they’ve been applied. (Careful, once you see them you cannot unsee them.) Repeat after Amanda: Brands are not your friends, they are running on vibes, it is damaging to build your identity around them, and freeing not to be. Start with “I'm With The Brand (unpacking how brands influence our brains), part one” here.

How I discovered it: I don’t remember. I was subscribed for awhile without listening, the Jo-Ann Fabrics episode is the one that hooked me, and now I listen to every episode

👂Proxy, Yowei Shaw’s emotional investigation podcast that puts her as a proxy for others to manage difficult situations, had the most perfect episode to release for her Proxy fundraising campaign. She has a similar experience to Alex Goldman of Hyperfixed, who like her, left a HUGE podcast to launch their own and it’s hard, and like impossible to make any money. I could go OFF on this but I won’t. For now I’ll say that independent podcasters going to their community is a good solution. But if you’re making a good podcast, that takes a lot of money from a lot of subscribers and a lot of time to get them. Yowei hits the street to get Alex help—how does he ask for money without feeling creepy and pathetic? What is the psychology of people who can give but aren’t giving? How do you gently push the people predisposed to give to give? (Here’s an episode of Proxy that Yowei is benefitting from, too.) Yowei talks to Haley Bash, co-author of The Accidental Fundraiser, who claims when you ask people for money you are giving them a gift, and asking for things (as funding is getting cut left and right and we are in the midst of a health care affordability crisis) is a first aid skill we all need to learn. She says we always underestimate how many people will say yes, and I believe it. People donate! Why can’t it be to you? Randomly, Haley’s husband Danny is a Hyperfixed listener and doesn’t donate. We get him on the horn to find out why. That’s what gave this episode some extra Proxy magic. And we hear some good stuff. Podcasters are free and relatively new, we aren’t trained to have to pay for them yet. People who want to give to small podcasts have no idea what’s small and what’s big, they all show up on the same platform. And a show like Proxy or Hyperfixed can feel big, resource wise, because it’s good, but the opposite is true. Listen to “Alex and the Impossible Ask” here.

How I discovered it: Follower of all that is Yowei

👂I love The News Meeting and while I don’t listen every week, every time I do I’m like why do I not listen to every week? On Monday and Friday, they bring on three journalists to pitch what they think is the most important news story of the week. It’s a great way to learn about non-US news in a short amount of time, and it’s basically like a game show. The point isn’t to find a favorite story, but the one that is most important and timely. I want to tell you a story abut an episode from last week called “Why are older people risking arrest for Palestine Action?” I clicked on this because after listening to Fiasco, that protester’s voice is still haunting me—she was unafraid to die. And as Charlie Brinkhurst Cuff points out (she’s the one pitching this story!) older people know they are at the end of their lives and that it’s more important to die for the future of the country than live out the rest of their lives under complete oppression. Anyway, I won’t spoil for you which story wins. But! I was like “Charlie Brinkhurst Cuff, Charlie Brinkhurst Cuff…that name…” and I remembered I had received a press release for her new show which also launched last week, The Missing Sister, see above. I had received an advanced episode and had been meaning to listen to it. This is all extra odd because only the day before I had a 95-year-old Uber driver who called himself an Israelite, not a Jew, and as he went on and on about it I was like, is this the cult? Anyway, this is a story about The News Meeting, it’s good. Go listen. But also about how marketing works, why I clicked on that episode (thank Fiasco) and then was reminded of Charlie’s new show and also was my Uber driver in a cult? Listen to “Why are older people risking arrest for Palestine Action?” here.

How I discovered it: Press release awhile ago

👂STORES is Doughboys about stores in every way, from the narration at the beginning to the jokey vibes to the fun, consumery content. I have been listening for awhile now (American Girl Place with Jamie Loftus, Target with Libby Watson) but the Chris Gethard episode about Cracker Barrel General Store (that he chose before Cracker Barrel kicked Uncle Herschel off the logo) made me realize how much I love Chris Gethard, even though I don’t always listen to his show Beautiful/Anonymous. I realized it’s because I love him more than the people he interviews for B/A. I don’t want him letting other people talk, I want to hear him talking. Anytime I see him as a guest I have the best time. He is so observant and thoughtful, hilarious without going anywhere near mean, and pulls in sweet, specific memories from his childhood. He also just has stuff in common with me that I care about, he’s a vegetarian and like The Pogues. (And where did I learn this? Not from Beautiful/Anonymous, from his guest appearances on other shows!) Luke and Jesse are aggressively adamant that Chris MAY NOT TALK about the Cracker Barrel restaurant. The General Store ONLY. So Chris does, why it is so perfectly American and how it straddles being super American but not political (until now?) and how it’s a store made for traveling standup comics who have to bring dumb guilt-gifts home to their kids so they will be forgiven for being on the road so much. But you get so much from Chris, who tells stories about having to do cartwheels at his town mayor’s house trick-or-treating as a kid (?) and tracking down hard-to-find sodas with Jo Firestone. (BTW I think he mentions that this is documented on his podcast called FizzyBoys and I cannot find it anywhere.) Listen to “Cracker Barrel General Store with Chris Gethard” here.

How I discovered it: Wil Williams told me to listen to it and when Wil tells me to listen to something I do

👂My daughter was a few months old when Blair Hodges launched Relationscapes, a podcast about the shifting terrain of relationships, gender, and sexuality. One of the first episodes was with someone I admire, Angela Tucker, who wrote the book “You Should Be Grateful:" Stories of Race, Identity, and Transracial Adoption. I studied that episode and sent to my entire family. Now, more than a year later, Blair had me on the show for a mini-episode to talk about my own experience with adoption. I have talked about adoption before (if you get me alone I will tell you about the traumatizing time I was on a podcast talking about adoption, ten years ago!) but this was my favorite, because Blair is a great interviewer. I felt so understood. His ability to listen closely while his guests are talking is next level, which allows him to ask perfect questions and guide his guests to great, unexpected places. I was comfortable enough to get really really really honest about what it’s been like. Thank you for the great interview, Blair. Listen if you want to hear more about me and my family, or just hear how a good interviewer works. And check out the rest of the episodes—they cover all sorts of topics about family and identity, I really think there’s something for everyone. Listen to “Letting Down the Drawbridge” here.

How I discovered it: I have been following all of Blair’s work for awhile, but wrote about an episode of Relationscapes when it was a brand new show and for this episode I was able to respond to it

👂Reveal ran a two-part conversation between Al Letson and Trymaine Lee, “Being Black in America Almost Killed Me,” about Trymaine’s new book A Thousand Ways to Die: The True Cost of Violence on Black Life in America and the very personal experience he had writing it. (Nearly dying.) Authors go on podcasts all the time to talk about their books, but man, this wasn’t that. This was an open conversation between two men about being Black journalists in America that was so unrestrained, vulnerable and tender that I almost felt like I shouldn’t be allowed to listen, like I was eavesdropping on a personal phone call. They both talk about how hard it is to report on Black violence and what it’s like to show up to a crime scene and see a body on the ground that looks like yours. (It reminded me of The Twilight Zone and made me think a lot about Jordan Peele’s work.) This was a conversation about race, journalism and also manhood, these guys are grappling with that as well. I don’t think doing the kind of work Trymaine and Al are doing is glamorous, I think you have to feel pulled to it to do this kind of hard work. I kept trying to figure out the source of the pull, maybe hoping that they thought they could make the world better. But I think that might be too naive and optimistic. They do this work to make a record so that then it happens again, and it will, our descendants will be more prepared and know that all this has been done before and it will all happen again. So this episode was about understanding history, too. Al talks about meeting his oldest son for the first time when his son was five. (Al didn’t know he existed, I told you this episode is personal.) His son was so much like him, down to the fact that he kept saying “up your nose with a rubber hose!” which is something Al said as a kid. His kid had never met him but he was like him. It’s DNA. I thought about this and texted the episode to my husband, thinking about our daughter, who does not share our DNA. Then Al went on. “DNA is way more powerful than we talk about. Our families’ history is encoded in our DNA and we carry both the good but also the trauma. You can’t get away from it, it is in you, it is in your blood and bones, it is who you are. Especially for Black people in this country whose ancestors who have experienced a crazy amount of trauma, you carry it with you every day.” I sit here after just finishing my write up about being a mom to a Black girl, thinking of that. I bet some other part of the conversation with stick with you. Start with “Being Black in America Almost Killed Me Part 1” here.

How I discovered it: Loooong time listener

👂On Origin Stories, Campside’s Matthew Shaer interviews writers, directors, and creators about how their work got made, which usually is zero percent of the things I like to listen to. When they’re good they’re good (JESSE THORN) but there are too many bad ones. The reason I clicked is because there was an episode with Dan Taberski and I was curious to hear what he had to say about not just Hysterical, but all of his work, and the connective tissue of it all. Dan is a great interview, he is funny, honest, wise, and a really good storyteller. If you make something, listen and take notes. I almost, almost did not listen to the other episode in the feed, with Noah Hawley on Alien: Earth because I was like who is that and what is Alien: Earth? But it started playing and it’s goooooood. Noah has a lot of beautiful things to say about why good art will save this whole mind-rot, attention-impacting AI thing (he has a solution…make shit that is impossible to ignore) and what makes people love things they don’t think they’re going to love (make things human.) God, this episode was the balm I needed after mind-spiraling about this. There was a part I scrubbed back to hear three times: Noah says: “Someone who works at Netflix told me the story about how writers are being told to add more exposition about who people are and what's going on because audiences aren’t looking at the screen but they are listening. It’s radio. And I love radio, but that’s very expensive radio.” Is the answer podcasts? Also, we need to pivot to video but nobody is watching? I have questions. Listen to Origin Stories here.

How I discovered it: I think I saw a promo for it on another Campside feed that I follow

👂Bear Brook is one of those shows that I see pop up in Reddit all the time, it is beloved, and it deserves to be. (It’s an investigation into a decades-old cold case in which four murder victims were found in barrels near Bear Brook State Park.) Not all true crime podcasts help solve a crime, and we don’t always get an update episode with exciting news, but this week we did. Jason Moon released an episode about the recent identification of “the middle child” as Rea Rasmussen. (He does a pretty good job reminding us how we got here, but it’s a kind of complicated story and I had to listen twice.) This is chilling and huge. A decades-long mystery solved. But there’s also frustration around the discovery, too. Why wasn’t this solved years ago? This story is not over. (Like where is Rea’s mother, Pepper?) But this is an episode with a news update and a reflection on what it means to identify Rea, to tie a name to a person who has been gone for so many years. Listen to “The Middle Child” here.

How I discovered it: Listener since the beginning but someone from the team texted early last week that I should keep an eye on the feed

👂I love you!