🪓 Little hatchets 📻 Your Radio Playhouse 🏡 childhood homes🗽everywhere grime in America 🇺🇸

🍭 👂Sarah Jessica you need to learn how to hang 🌈 🤸‍♀️

Bonjour.

Today is Monday, November 4. In case this newsletter is too long, this is required listening for probably you, I am already grieving the day I run out of episodes of this, and this is very very weird.

Hubba Hubba: We have a new ad form HERE in case you want to buy an ad in Podcast the Newsletter or Podcast Marketing Magic.

xoxo

lauren

---

👋q & a & q & a & q & a👋

Anna Sale

Anna Sale is host and creator of Death, Sex & Money, the interview podcast from Slate. Before Anna launched the show, Anna covered politics for nearly a decade. In 2021, she published the book Let’s Talk About Hard Things, a reported memoir about having direct conversations on death, sex, money, family and identity. She grew up in West Virginia and now lives with her two kids and husband, a wildlife ecologist, in Berkeley and rural Wyoming.

Describe Death, Sex & Money in 10 words or less.
interviews about “things we think about a lot and need to talk about more”

Why audio? (Why did you choose it, why is it perfect for DSM?)
I’ve always worked in audio – I love the rhythm and intimacy of a well-crafted story for your ears. Audio is also the perfect medium for our show because it allows listeners to opt in and listen along to a public conversation about tough personal stuff that they might be too timid to join in public, and hearing the varied texture of people’s voices underscores a key value of the show: that each of us has particular joys and challenges in life that are specific to our context, but everyone – famous or not, older or younger, urban or rural – has something illuminating to share around stories of loss, love, and survival.   

What’s your favorite thing about working in audio? 
I get to work with the musicality of the voice. Along with interviewing, I also really love editing and thinking intentionally about pacing and tone to make beautiful listens with real tonal range, something enabled by our longtime sound designer Andrew Dunn. Alicia Montgomery, Slate’s head of audio, described Death, Sex & Money’s sound as “no make-up make-up,” and I love that idea. I want my interviewing and our editing to feel like we’re pulling out and pointing to the essence of our guests’ stories -- never crowding it out with over-production or cleverness.

How has the show changed in the last 10 years?
The most fun thing about making a show about death, sex, and money is that we have been able to iterate the whole time on what counts as an episode and the ways we make episodes. The one constant over 10 years is that our most ambitious episodes are drawn from listener stories. We collect these through really open-question callouts and then stitch them together as a collage so it feels like the whole DSM listening community is gathering in a clubhouse to compare notes.

The other big change has been on the business side when we moved from WNYC to Slate in early 2024. Editorially, our show is similar to how it always is, and our team is funded with a combination of listener support (now through Slate Plus membership) and advertising. and our new Slate colleagues have invigorated the team.

What’s an episode that was super fun to make? 
In the last year, we hosted a live memorial service for Death, Sex & Money in New York, as we were ending our run at WNYC. We called it Four Interviews and a Funeral, and many repeat guests like Ellen Burstyn and Chris Gethard, and Lawrence and Ronnine Bartley joined in. I delivered a eulogy for the show up to that point, which was also really helpful for me as I thought through our show’s meaning and legacy. The New Yorker wrote about it, and I still feel so proud at how we pulled that off when the team was all facing an uncertain future and didn’t know what was next when it came to our jobs.  

Then, a few months later, after Slate acquired the show and I joined Slate along with two Death, Sex & Money producers, I got to host another sold-out show at KQED in San Francisco called Four Interviews and a Revival. Our host band was led by Dwayne Wiggins of Tony Toni Toné. Getting to be on stage, dancing to their finale number – the Tony Toni Toné classic “It Feels Good” -- really was the most thrilling moment I’ve had in my journalism career. It did feel good.

Who are your listeners? How would you describe them?
Our listeners surprise me! The range of who they are is one of the best parts of the job. I’d say the biggest demographic chunk of our show are people around my age, mid-30s to mid-40s, and lean women, but certainly not exclusively so. We hear from listeners at all stages of life and from all over the world. I think this is because our show homes in on critical life transitions and milestones, so no matter where you are in life, if you’re going through something, you can find community in the stories we share.

Any good listener interactions you want to tell me about?
When I meet a listener in real life, the coolest thing is they don’t want to just want to take a picture or say hello, they want to tell me all that’s happened in their life as they’ve listened to Death, Sex & Money. They tell me about walking with their infants, listening through a breakup or divorce, making a big move, etc. It’s like hearing the mission statement for the show repeated back to me. We want to be a show that feels like we’re accompanying you through whatever’s going on in your life, and that’s an ongoing process when you’re dealing with stories of death, sex, and money. Those hits keep coming! There are no quick tips or hacks to get around times of uncertainty or messiness, so for us, it’s about showing up and being in a relationship over the long haul.

What are 1-5 podcasts you love that everyone already knows about?
My current go-to’s: Search Engine, Slow Burn, Handsome, Today Explained, What Next.

What are 1-5 podcasts you love that not enough people know about? 
I’m a big music fan, so I always recommend Song Exploder and Switched on Pop. These shows are definitely not sleepers, but when I recommend them, I am surprised more people don’t know about them. I love how they introduce me to new pop music, the mechanics of how the songs work, and the people behind them.

I also love tv and movies and Talk Easy is really wonderful interview show that more people should listen to. Host Sam Fragoso does extensive research, and he lands guests that I rarely hear elsewhere in longform conversations. The New Yorker’s Critics At Large is also a fun listen that keeps me plugged into to their corner of the cultural zeitgeist, which is useful now that I’m trying to spend less time on social media.

I’ve also been listening a lot to That Hoarder: Overcome Compulsive Hoarding, after learning about it in this newsletter! In fact, it prompted us to make an episode of Death, Sex & Money with its very charming and honest host.

Are there too many podcasts?
No, but there aren’t enough newsletters like yours to help me keep up with all the ones I need to check out!

When it comes to podcasts and your work, what is the number one thing people ask you?
“How do you get people to open up about such personal things?” I was asked this so much that I decided to write a book about it, called Let’s Talk About Hard Things. But my approach is pretty simple:

1. Prepare thoroughly and think about what I’m curious about and what a listener will want to hear.

2. Explain at the top of a taping what I want to talk to a guest about and why, and how we will follow up after the recording is over so they know what to expect.

3. While I’m interviewing, I have a plan of the beats to hit, but I try to stay curious and loose and not afraid of conversational cul de sacs. The audio gold is often after follow-ups about an intriguing word choice or random aside.  

4. Laugh out loud at the absurd moments.

5. Remember there are a lot of ways to go through life, and a lot I haven’t personally experienced, so ask questions with humility. 

6. Don’t flinch from pointed questions and ask them with care. I start a lot of questions with “This may be too personal a question, but I wonder…” or something like that.

7. Enjoy getting to know someone! These kinds of deep personal conversations with strangers can be rare in our everyday lives, so revel in the way interviewing enables you to connect and compare notes.

---

🚨If u only have time for 1 thing🚨

A few weeks ago, Rob McGinley Myers tweeted at me (in a reply tweet) “I feel like you might enjoy this podcast” with a link to a show called Before It Had a Theme. I listened, and I am actually offended it took Rob this long for him to tell me about it. He described it to me as “a tightly-edited, critical and personal conversation about the best in narrative audio, with me (formerly of American Public Media) and Britta Greene (formerly of the New Yorker Radio Hour).” The first season, which is what I listened to second, is an episode-by-episode look at episodes of This American Life, documenting why it’s great, why it matters, and how it’s been evolving. If TAL has been a 20+ year-long experiment, what are the episodes that best demonstrate this? I would be into this regardless but Rob and Britta are producing with the same level of care they are somewhat (I think) nostalgic for, the kind of hand-crafted storytelling that I think they called “up close” but I’m not sure because that is also a phrase I use all the time. There’s a great episode about Startup that is both loving and critical, as all of these episodes are, because that is something we need to do when we talk about audio. (I’m aware it’s not something I’m really doing in this newsletter.) It feels like a bit of a time warp, a visit to the planet of audio that made us all fall in love with it, or at least be fascinated enough to dedicate our lives to it. Weirdly the host of How To Be a Girl was interviewed in an episode, and that’s a show that is ALSO WEIRDLY BACK after a long hiatus and I write about it later. The first season of Before It Had a Theme ran from October 10, 2018 to January 23, 2019, an exciting time in audio. It’s back for another season in 2024, when the vibes are less cheery. That’s a great reason to revisit this stuff as we start to wonder about the sustainability model of really good stuff. I think it should be required listening for anyone who wants to work with me and requested listening for anyone reading this newsletter or for anyone who wants to get into audio and wants to understand the space they’re entering.

---

notes

✨You can hear me tell a terrible story about getting fired at the end of Thank You For Your Interest.

✨Read Managing Your Mind When You Mess Up Your Marketing in Podcast Marketing Magic.

✨Today Coffee Break podcasts launched The Great Coffee Break Treasure Hunt 2024, a virtual treasure hunt for four episodes this week, each filled with clues and language help for French, Italian, German and Spanish learners. I think this is so cool. There’s a prize. Learn more.

✨Arielle Nissenblatt spotlighted Podcast Elevator Pitch in EarBuds.

---

💎podcasts i texted to friends💎

🎙️Like someone building a sandcastle, with every episode of STARGIRL, Emma Glenn Baker is adding to her definition of what a STARGIRL is. They’re the kind of girls who are so unique and distinct that everyone wants to talk about them just because they’re being themselves. They’re not IT Girls, there’s a difference. (Emma explains the difference in the Jia Tolentino episode.) These episodes are deep dives into who these people (people like Kim Kardashian and Dasha Nakrasova) are and why their energy makes it impossible for us to look away from them. I listen to a lot of Sex and the City content, which is often about show plot or fashion or how bad the movies are. The Carrie Bradshaw episode of STARGIRL was about not just Carrie, but Sarah Jessica Parker and Candace Bushnell and where these people overlap or do not. Emma was able to flesh out these people so distinctly, in a way I’ve never considered before and illuminate things about Carrie’s prudishness and slapstick humor that most people don’t discuss. (Emma also pointed out how simple-minded it is for people to just call Carrie a narcissist, something I’m guilty of, and that she’s more complicated than that.) I stumbled upon this show somewhat randomly (I’ll explain later) and didn’t know much about it before listening. The first episode I chose was called “Bianca Giaever” and I was like holy shit! Bianca Giaever is on this podcast? (Bianca is the creator behind one of my favorite audio projects of all time, Constellations. I have interviewed her in this newsletter.) I was 40 minutes into the episode before I realized Bianca wasn’t coming to the episode. The entire thing was just a love letter to Bianca, why she is so cool. So you’re getting these really precise character studies of people like Bianca Giaever (who…I mean I don’t know that many people who like Bianca Giaever as much as / more than I do) and also Gwyneth Paltrow, Zendaya, Lena Dunham, and Mitski. You kind of keep on waiting for these STARGIRLs to show up for an interview, as if Emma were introducing them. But it’s not an interview and they won’t show up, and that’s probably for the best because that could be very awkward. Not every episode is a Bianca episode. Not every episode is a love letter. STARGIRL was the first thing I listened to this morning, I had a bunch of stuff queued up but it derailed everything because I kept on adding other episodes, and now I’m nervous because I am going to run out. The thing that excites me the most, listening to these episodes, is that I feel like I’m getting to know Emma, whom I found on an episode of Nymphet Alumni. STARGIRL is very much like that show, the vibes are very mood board-y. But there’s more structure and focus, here. More admiration and curiosity for the subjects. (And the audio is much better—god I love Nymphet Alumni but it is the best show I listen to with terrible sound, it’s so good that I’ll allow it.) I listen to a lot of things that have high production quality, STARGIRL is pretty stripped down. Emma’s art isn’t the sound, it’s her words. Listen here.

How I discovered it: Emma was a guest on Nymphet Alumni. I listened to STARGIRL before I listened to her interview on Nymphet Alumni.

🎙️(3x Emmy Award-winning producer) Lisa Weiss (best known for being co-executive producer of Oprah’s Super Soul Sunday) has a really story-rich narrative podcast called Object Diaries, where she explores the personal stories behind everyday objects. Lisa has audio of a conversation she had with her father Stan before he recently passed about the toy collection he had when he was a little boy. Tears were swelling in my eyes hearing about Stan’s father, who used his life-savings to buy a grocery store but was too kind to demand people pay when they bought things on credit, and how that led to his attachment to small things like a yo-yo. This tiny little goddam episode made me so sad about life and how beautiful it is. I was feeling the same heart palpitations I get when I listen to (one of the best things of all time) Terry Gross’ interview with Maurice Sendak. It’s that good. The second episode is this roller coaster of a story about a misunderstanding between a mother and daughter that is carried out via diary entries and what we remember, what we think we believe. The show is so good that the fact that it uses overly-used Blue Dot Sessions music actually stands out. (Mediocre shows can do that no problem. Then again a regular human being might not notice, it’s probably just super-listeners like me.) Listen here.

How I discovered it: Pitch letter

🎙️Between getting interviewed about motorcycles by Avery Trufelman, tossing boxes of chocolate into the audience, and emceeing RESONATE with the kind of expertise that makes you feel like nothing went wrong, though I’m sure it did, Chioke I'Anson recommended on stage Fearful Symmetry, pointing out the series “Hatchet Man.” Immediately the sound completely stole my attention away from everything else going on. Digging deeper, the stories unnerved me because they just aren’t like anything else being made. It will take a sec for your brain to settle into comfort, or a comfortable amount of discomfort. (That is something the audio industry needs right now.) Stories, self-described as “frightening and cuddly,” are short, sprinkled by fake ads that remind me of the movie Nope for some reason. They ooze dark humor, weirdness that feels physical, metaphor, allegory, and satire. The series “Hatchet Man” is a documentary about the HIT Albanian TV series that that always seemed to murder away its quaint and sentimental characters with a hatchet-wielding masked man. This is what people are looking for when they say they are looking for fiction that tells the truth, (The Truth being the name of the podcast that maybe has done this best. If you liked The Truth, you’ll love Fearful Symmetry.) Fearful Symmentry reminds me of one of my favorite shows of all time, Imaginary Advice in the way it plays with what is real and what is not. Listen here.

How I discovered it: Chioke mentioned it on stage at RESONATE

🎙️It’d been awhile since we heard something new from How to Be a Girl, the podcast Marlo Mack (a pseudonym) made to help her navigate life as a mom to a transgender child. What it really means to be a girl. It makes sense why. Her daughter was turning into a teenager, and not all teenagers want to be the center of their mom’s podcast, especially if it’s about something so private. But Marlo has returned to the mic, sharing the stories of other people. Now we’re introduced to a new family and hear how their lives all changed the moment their child told them they were a girl, we get to hear through every thought process they had about their Handmaid's Tale-like experience to cross the boarder, leaving Montana for a place with less harsh anti-trans laws and sentiment. I hope Marlo keeps going, I wish there were more of her, and I hope we get to hear from dozens of families like hers. Podcasting has changed a lot since the last episode dropped in 2021. How To Be a Girl has maintained its sense of up-closeness. (And I mentioned the show Before It Had a Theme earlier…there’s an old episode with Marlo in episode four of season one!) Listen here.

How I discovered it: Long time subscriber

🎙️I love a true crime series that's action and goal-oriented, so when I met Shannon Lynch, host and producer of The Alley at RESONATE, I was totally intrigued to hear about her project. It’s an investigation of the mishandling of a 1984 murder case in Washington, DC, when eight young Washingtonians were handed life sentences despite the lack of any physical evidence that tied them to the crime scene. Similar to the Central Park Five case, the police used forceful tactics to get three false confessions, all of which were later recanted. When the prosecutor found evidence pointing to the defendant's innocence, he hid the information from their lawyers. Shannon spent the last 3.5 years creating The Alley in collaboration with the accused men, all of whom appear in the series. Since most presidential pardons happen right before an administration leaves the White House, the timing right now is critical to raise awareness of the case. Update episodes are being published to follow the progress of the pardon in real time. Listen here.

How I discovered it: I got to meet Shannon at RESONATE in Virginia

🎙️Eric Marcus of Making Gay History (one of The Atlantic's 50 Best Podcasts, former Tink client!) is the host of Unfit for Service, which tells the story of Randy Taylor, the first and only openly gay male to achieve any General Officer rank in the United States military. Focusing on Randy puts a body mind and soul to the disastrous Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy, sparked by Bill Clinton. Really, when you look at it with a half a brain it’s clear it doesn’t make any sense, but when you hear about the hoops it was going through at the time to allow gay soldiers in the military, you won’t hate it less but you’ll be less flabbergasted. Eric supports Randy’s open and heartfelt storytelling with context and narration. Good shows (not every show) usually have a moment, one moment, that will stick in my brain and become the identifiable thing about the show I will remember for years, even when I cannot remember all of the details of the show. In 30 years I will probably remember Unfit for Service for the image stuck in my brain now, Allen R. Schindler Jr was punched, choked, kicked, stomped, and danced upon to death in a public bathroom in Japan for being gay. I couldn’t remember Allen’s name when I was writing this so I tried to search based on the details I could remember. It was unsettling to see how many gay people in the military have been murdered in similar ways, it took me awhile to find Allen’s name. Listen here.

How I discovered it: Email from a friend

🎙️Soul Music is the podcast that absolutely has my highest cry-rate—episodes are about why songs like Fairytale of New York or Sittin’ On the Dock of the Bay are important to people. They cover the biggest human emotions—identity, loss, belonging, longing, love, in super specific ways. They get me every fucking time. A few days before the election and a few days after Tony Hinchcliffe’s Puerto Rico “joke,” we get a perfectly timed episode about America, Anita’s all singing/dancing number from West Side Story. It’s the part where the Puerto Rican Sharks are arguing over whether America is all that great or not. It’s a never-ending argument—is it a dream come true or not? We get to hear young migrants, a Puerto Rican who watched Rita Moreno perform the role of Anita growing up, an actress who performed the song, Leonard Bernstein’s daughter, and Rita Moreno herself talk about the song, the lyrics, the visuals of West Side Story, and the emotional impact its all had and how it reflects their own ideas about America today. Listen here.

How I discovered it: I subscribe.

🎙️I almost could not believe my eyes and ears when I saw that Dear Millennial was back, it’s been more than seven years. SEVEN YEARS. In fact, if you’re new to podcasting you might know host Megan Tan from WILD. But before all of that she made Dear Millennial, a show about navigating life through your twenties, and now it’s back. A lot has changed but she picks things up perfectly, which isn’t easy to do after so much time has passed. I am a geriatric millennial but this show always felt like I was on a direct line with Megan, talking to her like I do my best friends going through the same things. It still feels like that. So much has changed in podcasting but it still feels like that. Returning to make Dear Millenial could be an overwhelming thing to do. But Megan keeps things simple, focusing on her childhood home, which is, like this podcast, a home where the past Megan lives and the future Megan is peering into. Listen here.

How I discovered it: Press release (that it was back, former subscriber)

🎙️It’s been 20 years since I saw Morgan Spurlock’s Super Size Me in a small theater in Ohio with my mom, and maybe it’s been that long since you’ve seen it, too. The Sporkful had an investigation into the movie, and Morgan, from a few angles. First, his cringy "I am the problem but I’m also the solution” #MeToo comments that I had completely forgotten about, but also the controversy surrounding his alcoholism, which wouldn’t be an issue if we were not believe that his rapidly declining health was directly tied to McDonald’s and nothing else, because he told us that. The fact that nobody knows whether or not he was drinking during the filming of Super Size Me says a lot about alcoholism, what alcoholics do in secret, and what their family members are able to ignore or just not know about. Sporkful senior producer Andres O’Hara talks to Morgan’s ex wife about Morgan’s complicated life and we get a real sense of who he really was and the sad way his story ended. It’s also another look at this movie, its enormous impact, how it went from a tiny home-spun documentary to making millions and being nominated for an Academy Award, and whether or not it should still be shown in schools. I loved this piece and told 20 people about it in person before Ellen Horne recommended it to me for Podcast the Newsletter last week. If you don’t trust me (why are you here? but) you know you can trust her. Listen here.

How I discovered it: I subscribe

🎙️I love you!