🍽️ Hungry listening 🏴☠️ nearsighted gynecologist 🧚 standing ovation👏 rent 🔑
🍭 👂 Robert… 🌈 🤸♀️
Bonjour.
Today is Monday, January 13, 2025. Happy birthday to my hero, my mother, Cookie Passell. In case this newsletter is too long, an episode about 100 ways to listen that was made for you here, a show I didn’t think I’d like but did here, and a surprising (and insightful) debate pitting Oprah against Wendy Williams here.
xoxo
lauren
👋q & a & q & a & q & a👋
Rebecca Auman & Theo Balcomb
Rebecca Auman is the host of Voices in the River, a podcast created by Theo Balcomb, who produces the show with help from Sara McCrea.
Why ‘Voices in the River?’ Is there one river you’re thinking about?
Theo: When we were trying to come up with a title, I had generated a list of ideas, and none of them felt right. But then one day early on, as we were talking, Rebecca said, “I think it’s Voices in the River.” And I said okay. I don’t tend to be that attached to names in general, though—when I had my first child, I wanted to just name her “baby”. Titles feel somewhat arbitrary to me.
Rebecca: She wanted to name her daughter “baby”, and she named her news podcast “The Daily.” So “Voices in the River” was a bit of a stretch.
Theo: I just don’t think titles are that important. But now I love ours. It makes clear that it’s not a show only about Rebecca; it evokes a feeling, a mood, an environment, a scene.
Rebecca: Once a week, I go down to the Eno River in North Carolina, where I live, and I sit on the banks. I try to listen really carefully to the sound the water makes, and over time that place has become very special and spiritual to me. And I love the metaphor of a river to describe a flow of collective energy. That’s what we want the show to be: a flow of women’s stories about how intuitive knowledge has altered their lives.
What are you hoping to do with the podcast?
Rebecca: We’re interested in disrupting patriarchal narratives about women and power by telling stories of intuition and magick. We want to make space for narratives of inner wisdom, which patriarchy has feminized and dismissed throughout history.
Theo: From the beginning, we didn’t care about getting the biggest name—we care more about gathering a collective of stories rather than centering personality or fame. Even when we host recognizable guests, Rebecca is far more interested in their stories and experiences than their professional identities. In our episode with healer and multimedia artist SaraJo Berman, Rebecca didn’t ask “Who are you? What do you do? What is your job?”; she said “Tell me about the things you have chosen to do in the world.”
Rebecca: Exactly. We care less about who the voices are and more about what the voices have to say.
Theo: To me, the show is really about carving out a space for these magical experiences so many of us have and keep secret because we worry they make us strange. In the strangeness of those stories, there is so much wonder and delight.
Tell us about how you two met.
Rebecca: Emi Kolawole (Guest on Season 1 Episode 2) and I had a weekend in Wilmington, NC. I remember it clearly. We were sitting at Indochine eating Pad Thai, and Emi said, “I think you should meet my friend Theo.”
Theo: Emi is the kind of friend who, when she tells you to do something, you do it. Even if you have no idea why. She introduced us, and I was happy to chat but knew nothing about what Rebecca did. I knew something was up when Rebecca signed her email “With love and magick.” When the two of us met on Zoom for the first time, she asked if she could read cards for me, and that was the beginning.
What was the moment that the idea for this podcast clicked? Can you remember?
Theo: I knew from the first time I met Rebecca that any project we did together would be unlike any other. When we started the show, I was really interested in taking the rigor and responsibility I applied to my journalistic work at NPR and The New York Times to these subjects that are often treated as trivial. Could I apply the same tools of production I had developed at these news outlets to stories about magick and witchcraft?
In our first taping, with guest Amy Gorely, I was in my usual producer mode, trying to prompt Rebecca with follow up questions and keep the conversation more or less on track. At one point, I was typing out a question, and Rebecca said it, verbatim, before I could even share it with her.
Rebecca: I could feel that was the question you wanted me to ask!
Theo: That was a moment that helped me understand not just Rebecca’s powers as a witch, but also what this show could be. We could make something as thoughtful and as poignant as the news I was making before, and we could do that by listening to our own intuitions. We could lead from our hearts, not our heads, and this would be powerful.
Rebecca: Storytelling is a process of design, and stories can be designed by both the head and the heart.
Theo: Also, when we led from the heart, there was so much fun. I mean, we could ask the question: “So how do you get to the place that you can take off your clothes and dance naked under the moonlight?” It was silly and joyous!
Rebecca: That wasn’t silly!! That was very serious.
Theo: Right, but you don’t hear someone ask about naked moonlight dancing on Morning Edition.
Rebecca: Or me talking with a guest about her playing a flute to a patch of cabbages.
Theo, I heard Rebecca say that you are a translator, bridge between worlds, a midwife. Is that always the role of the producer? What is a producer?
Theo: For this show especially, the producer as translator description is right on. Rebecca is so gifted at what she does, and it is my role to help carry her message to listeners who wouldn’t necessarily understand her practices. For a show like this, a big part of my role as a producer is to help it become more accessible.
When it comes to the production of the show, I’m paying such close attention to when there’s pauses, when there’s breathing, when there’s awkwardness. We never want to skip over the emotion that audio can capture.
Rebecca: A great producer is a net. And at the end, Theo will often come in with a question that gets to the heart of the conversation. There’s a third space that’s created together.
I know the theme is different. How is the pace and rhythm different than other shows?
Theo: I make use of pretty heavy scoring in the show. I’m interested in creating moments within the stories that you wouldn’t necessarily think of as big or important, but to our guest they really are. In a lot of our episodes, our guests talk about their dreams for the future. I love using heightened production to bring those dreamscapes alive, inviting the listener to inhabit those dreams with them. I also let these moments and scenes breathe as much as possible.
A friend of mine gave me some feedback early on in the first season that the first episodes sounded very neat, maybe a little too clipped or tight. Once we started to give the show more space, it really opened up. Coming from a more traditional news background, I think I had to free myself from wanting to make it too perfect. We have to make room for the pacing of emotional experience. Some of the things we talk about on the show—we’re used to dismissing them, and they could feel trite. In our conversation with Katherine May, Rebecca and Katherine talk about the power of saying “I am enough.” If I pulled that out of its context, or if we went to that part of the conversation too soon, it would make me roll my eyes. If it comes out of nowhere, it feels disingenuous. A statement that profound has to be earned through the pacing. At that point in the conversation, the message is able to really get through to people because of the time and care we’ve taken in preparing the listener for it.
What is the best way to listen to Voices in the River? Alone? In the dark? On a walk? Candlelight?
Rebecca: I see this show as an opening—a portal—for listeners to hear their own voices. So we would hope you listen to the show in a place that is supportive to you. We hear from a lot of listeners who put on the show in their “twilight hours,” those transitional times before they go to bed, as they have their coffee, or when they get home from work. I love that these conversations can help with those shifts.
Theo: And, of course, we start every episode (and production meeting!) by lighting a candle, so I think that’s a great way to bury deep into listening, by candlelight.
🚨If u only have time for 1 thing🚨
Blake Phiel launched a new season of the beautiful abandoned: The All-American Ruins podcast, where explorations of abandoned spaces serve as springboards into reflections on America, history, community, human nature, and Blake himself. In the first episode of the new season, Blake and his friend Julie head to a deserted camp ground in what’s left of the Borscht Belt, which was home to a Jewish youth camp. It makes him think about his own experience at an evangelical christian youth camp, youth group retreats, and coming to Jesus as a closeted kid while an active member in the church. As the name of the episode, BUSTED, suggests, Blake and Julie get caught. But what happens next is where things get creative, we hear a mixture of tape of what’s literally happening with Blake’s own imaginings. Toward the beginning of the episode Blake says something I really like, something that describes why abandoned isn’t just a beautifully made podcast and why Blake isn’t just a dude bringing a mic into abandoned places. (Both of those things would be great.) He says:
I’m not so keen on learning about a place before I explore — I wait until after I’m through any given adventure, simply because I don’t want anything to infringe on the possibility of my imagination taking the lead. A blank slate works best for me. It provides the space to make up entire worlds in my head, to break away from the daily horrors of the real one. It’s not that I’m uninterested in the backstory behind any of these All-American Ruins — I would rather just let my brain paint its own picture first, without any interference to my spiritual healing practice of accessing my imagination inside abandoned spaces.
It’s what allows Blake to get so inventive. This isn’t just a beautiful podcast, it isn’t just about abandoned spaces, it’s art that is both worthy of being appreciated from afar, and being experienced as an active participant in the story and Blake’s imagination.
notes
✨THIS THURSDAY: Philly / NYC friends! January 16th. 6pm. Free. PLEASE join me at the Philly Podcast Mixer hosted by Rowhome Productions, co-Presented by (AIR) + City Cast Philly. I’ll be speaking in a panel discussion on The State of Philly Podcasting in 2025 with Yowei Shaw, Tom Grahsler, and me. Get your ticket here.
✨I got to be a judge in Silver Sound’s Sonic Dash. The theme was "You’ve Got to Be Kidding Me” and the winning piece was Oliver Morris and Jude Hodgson Hann’s, "Scapegoat." It’s two minutes of absolute delight. Listen here.
✨Answer Me This is…back! Maybe!
✨Tink is hosting a TWO-DAY Podcast Marketing Radio Boot Camp at the end of January. Learn more here.
✨Also for Radio Boot Camp: John Asante's class, How to Make the Best Interview Show Ever! starts Feb 5.
✨Arielle Nissenblatt spotlighted Relationscapes in EarBuds.
Podcast Tink Loves: The FAIK Files
The FAIK Files is a new podcast by Perry Carpenter and Mason Amadeus (Digital Folklore) is about the wild intersections between AI and everyday human life. It's a sillier and more mischievous look at the current goings-on in AI while also keeping the seriousness of misinformation at the forefront. Plus, it's got some phenomenal music and sounds design.
💎podcasts i texted to friends💎
🎙️If you’re here, you appreciate sound more than most people. There was just an episode of Illuminated that explores the different ways we listen, and it made me think about sound harder than I ever have before. And I think about sound and listening a lot. The episode, 100 ways of listening, is based on a simple idea but will expand your sense of the word “listening,” and maybe expand your consciousness. That’s what happens every time we listen, this episde says. In a way we grow new ears each time! There’s eavesdropping, listening to a sound without seeing where it is coming from, hungry listening, embodied listening, listening to identify what’s wrong. This episode is a reminder to listen more carefully and with more appreciation. And this episode is about 100 ways, but I bet you’ll start thinking of many more. Listen here.
How I discovered it: Heard a promo for it on another BBC show.
🎙️Static came to me in late December, when most podcasts are resting, not launching. My queue was starving for something new. I saw it featured in Apple Podcasts and that is why I clicked. Even several minutes into the first episode I did not think I liked it. It starts as an over-the-top account of a girl who loves to party. It’s extremely theatrical! I didn’t know this at the time, but that’s by design. Static (:A Party Girl’s Memoir) is an audio adaptation of the play of the same name. It’s a good thing to know going in. As soon as you know that it was inspired by the true story of Ashley King, the creator, I think you have to at least be intrigued. Ashley’s had one super party-hard night with terrible consequences—she had some boot-leg liquor studying abroad in Australia that made here go blind. Static is about what it’s like to be a teenage girl suddenly dealt a totally new life she never would have signed up for, but it’s also about her relationship with her mother, portrayed by Jaime Cesar in the most over-the-top way. Again, it’s so theatrical! Ashley’s mother wants the best for her and Ashley is more than willing to tease her, roll her eyes at her, all while acknowledging that she loves the shit out of her, and that her mother was the one at her side during her literally darkest moments. In between pieces of the story you’ll hear interviews with Ashley’s surgeon, the play’s director, and her real mom. This podcast isn’t about a party girl, it’s about disability, a mom and daughter, and even a peek behind the theater curtain. Listen here.
How I discovered it: Apple Podcasts feature
🎙️Caroline O'Donoghue has been hosting episodes of Continental Garbage on Sentimental Garbage, which means it’s part-post card from Caroline’s travels and part-movie club. You could look at the time stamp and start listening to the movie club part, but I wouldn’t. I would listen to Caroline talk about anything. In this episode, her description of staying at a naked spa in Oslo with her friend Jen Cowie was even better than the movie discussion that followed, which was on 1991’s Hook. Caroline has such a way with words. Up top she talks about “the diving board and the dive,” referring to the solid thing we need in our lives in order to make beautiful, creative jumps. (That’s something I’m stealing and it’s something she stole from her mother—I see where she gets it!) The way she described her snowy New Year’s Eve in a bar with Jen was dreamy and funny. (“I’ll talk to anyone so I can talk about them when they leave.”) The postcard part of the episode is important here because you have to imagine the context in which Caroline and Jen watched Hook together—in a naked spa in Oslo, surrounded by dicks, and basking in residual hormones left behind from all the people on their ways to their rooms to fuck each other. I would advise (re) watching Hook before you listen to them talk about it. It really made me think about how hard childhood is (“even if you did have a happy one, it’s a pretty bad toke.”) Caroline and Jen also talk about fatherhood and sons and what the movie got wrong and right. Caroline calls Tinker Bell a “little tiny sex kitten with an unstable sense of self” which…I need to hear more about that argument but I don’t want to. Their smart final review is: Hook doesn’t hang together and is full of emotion that is unearned. I don’t know how you could be a smart person and not be obsessed with Caroline. (The byline of the podcast is, by the way, “Justice for Dumb Women.”) Listen here.
How I discovered it: Anna Phelan recommended it to me four years ago and I’ve been obsessively listening ever since.
🎙️Nicole Hill and Jonquilyn Hill were on Pop Culture Debate Club with Ronald Young Jr. to debate which daytime talk show host reigns supreme—Oprah or Wendy Williams, Nicole repping Oprah and Jonquilyn repping Wendy. I went into this debate thinking that Oprah would win by a landslide but, as to not spoil anything I’ll just say it was a very close call and Ronald announced his decision seemingly as he was making it. The Hills came prepared, and what we got was a really smart conversation about Black media, what we require of Black leaders and celebrities, and why an Oprah can’t be a Wendy Williams. Why Ronald has to choose just one. The question he is plagued to answer, then, is “if Black people can’t have it all, what should they be?” Once again, I thought there would be a clear answer for this. It comes down to being real vs. playing nice. Listen to this one. Nicole and Jonquilyn were perfect guests and Ronald’s ruling was layered and personal. Listen here.
How I discovered it: Regular listener
🎙️The Alarmist is a comedy/history show about disasters that seeks to determine WHO is the blame for what happened. Disasters range from things like The Trail of Tears to that lady who sued McDonald’s for spilling hot coffee on herself. The serious ones should be taught in schools, because trying to reach the goal of figuring out who is to blame for something is a very different approach than we are used to when learning history, so it usually will introduce new ideas, some of them, many of them, really goofy. This IS a comedy podcast. The light-hearted ones are just a blast. They did an episode about RENT that took the rock-musical seriously (it’s clear that the whole team were at one time RENT-heads—they are coming from a place of appreciation,) tackling some of the play’s biggest issues to figure out who we can blame for…the rent being due and nobody able to pay it. Each item on the list of possibilities, which goes “up on the board,” and it’s a hefty board this time, launches the crew into a separate conversation about Benny, Benny’s heart, confusing rules surrounding the Bohemian lifestyle, NYC, entitlement, youth and the MTV generation, heroin addiction, the AIDS crisis, the hard knock artist’s life, selling out…I won’t spoil what they decide is to blame. I know that over the years RENT has become the butt of a lot of jokes and eyerolls but can we admit this musical was amazing and telling a really powerful, complicated story? There, I said it. Listen here.
How I discovered it: Back in the Earios days I listened to everything they made
🎙️I was reading The Times’ list of best podcasts of the year and discovered Misquoting Jesus, a selection by someone named James Marriott. What a shock! I didn’t think anyone other than me likes to talk about this stuff. Then I discover Misquoting Jesus is hosted by Bart Ehrman, someone I’ve been following for a long time. In college I studied religion and thought I would BE a Bart Ehrman. I looked at the most recent episodes and when I saw all of the ones about the birth of Jesus up top I started shaking with excitement, I couldn’t add to my queue fast enough. I felt at home, this was so much of what I really though I’d dedicate my life to. But even if you don’t think it’s your jam, if you’re even mildly interested in ancient history or religion your mind will be blown. The first three episodes I listened to explain the confounding reasons Matthew and Luke have such different accounts of Jesus’ birth, why everyone is trying to get Jesus born in Bethlehem even that makes zero sense as he is, per the scriptures, of this shitty little town called Nazarath, and what it was like in 1BC before Jesus was born. (Did you know we have no idea how many wise men there were and they might not have even visited Jesus when he was first born or a baby at all?) If I haven’t already sold you on this, I understand. But podcast listeners in general love great storytelling, and why would you go anywhere other than The Bible, which is full of the greatest stories ever told, to get them? Listen here.
How I discovered it: The Times’ list of best podcasts of the year but specifically James Marriott
🎙️Listening to How To Do Everything is like opening up a tiny box that explodes in your face with a mixture of fun music and playful sound, creative segments, interviews, comedy, a little bit of celebrity interview (but just a little, it’s the perfect amount,) live tape, phone calls, and advice on how to do absolutely everything. Sometimes I cannot believe how much is squeezed into a single short episode. It’s efficient! In one twenty minute episode we hear from Tom Hanks about what it’s like to be adored, Mike and Ian help a listener who's curious about world fame, and a scientist comes on to talk about chimps recognizing family members by their butts. Tom Hanks mentions standing ovations, and Mike and Ian ask about whether or not it’s awkward to stand there like a goof for 11 minutes in front of people on their feet, clapping, something Tom Hanks has done before. And to make listeners feel the pain, they made the episode 22 minutes long, the exact amount of time of the longest standing ovation ever, which was for Pan’s Labyrynth, and urge us to stand and clap the whole time, something I did not do. But I appreciated it. Hosts are Mike and Ian (also hosts of one of my favorite comedy shows, In The Scenes Behind Plain Sight, #FreeCandice.) Listen here.
How I discovered it: Loyal listener (but a behind one; this one is not brand new)
🎙️The only reason I started Kill List was because I was running out of stuff in my queue. I just don’t love true crime that much and this sounded like something too hard core and not very nuanced. But I really liked it. Journalist Carl Miller is approached by a hacker who has stumbled upon the backend of a hire for kill site that turns out to be a huge scam, but its existence is alarming. It’s a list of dead men walking and a list of criminals. In Carl’s shoes, what would you do? "I’m just a podcaster, I can’t even drive a car!” he says at one point. He sets out to reach out to people on the list, let them know, and try to save their lives, via working with the FBI. The podcast follows the threads of some of these people. (This might not surprise you, but it’s harder than it should be to get authorities, who end up being not just passively incompetent but actively destructive, to spring into action.) But think about the other side of this: you get a call from a podcaster who says he found your name on a kill list. What would you do? Hang up? Before this podcast I might have. Kill List gets to a lot of pretty eye-opening stuff in a short amount of time. (I listened to six episodes, which gets you the full story. If I run out of stuff in my queue again I’ll dip into the other episodes which tell stories of other people on the list.) When I wrote about Extrasensory I said it was so well-produced that I wasn’t sure if it was real or just a beautifully made audio drama. (It was real and beautifully made.) With Kill List, I had to question if it was real because it sounded like something that could be a blockbuster movie. Maybe it will be. I can see Seth Rogan as Carl. Listen here.
How I discovered it: It was everywhere and my queue was slim
🎙️After four years away, Advice For and From the Future returned with new hosts—Rose Eveleth passed the baton to Julia Furlan and Ozzy Llinas Goodman. Advice For and From the Future is a beautiful, inventive advice show for curious thinkers that puts is in the future and lets us imagine the kind of stuff we’ll be grappling with. It’s fun to hear about moving off the grid and giving dogs human intelligence, but it really makes you think about how we can possibly build toward a good and equitable world in the face of humanless technology and shit like Soylent. What happens to humans (and dogs) in a future that seems to be deprioritizing humans? These questions are peppered with humor and real soul. Listen here.
How I discovered it: Longtime fan of Rose Eveleth
🎙️I love you!
lol "someone named James Marriott" - you mean podcast critic from the Times UK. #1 clicked through on GreatPods
Happy birthday Mama Passell!