🏡 Neighborhood watch 🦅 watermelon days 🍉 too many podcasts 🎤 furtopsy🫀
🍭 👂Shemika you are the parade 🌈 🤸♀️
Bonjour.
Today is Monday, September 23. In case this newsletter is too long, it was almost terrifying how hungry we were for new content from this show and it’s finally here, it was a surprise and delight to see this show back after five years, Hanna Rosin and Lauren Ober are introducing us to their (insurrectionist) neighbors here.
Have a nice weekend.
xoxo lp
p.s. Want to advertise here? Fill out this form or let me know.
~sponsored~
How do young people see politics? Student reporters from 15 states and Puerto Rico cover the 2024 election from the perspectives of young people in new seven-episode podcast season “On Our Minds: Election 2024.” In collaboration with PBS News Student Reporting Labs, teens talk with some of the youngest candidates in the United States and explore how young people view issues like voting rights, freedom of speech, and the concept of America. Contact czirneklis@newshou.org for more info.
👋q & a & q & a & q & a👋
Chris Renfro and Fin Argus
Chris and Fin are the hosts of One of Us.
Describe One of Us in 10 words or less.
Two platonic lovers journey through the universe cultivating new friendships!
What’s one thing that we really need to understand about YOU to understand the show?
Our friendship started with a big bang of intimacy and vulnerability, allowing us each a space to share our weird voice and be held through it in friendship. We met while filming a television show back in 2021, which we talk all about in our premiere episode of One of Us; we were both away from our families and friends, living in a new city, and working through heavy emotional material on set every day, which opened up the friendship floodgates. We’ve gotten even closer since we both returned to Los Angeles. We’ve taught each other the power of friendship and figured we’re due to share the good news across space and time with any other weirdo willing to listen.
Now you have more words. Explain what you’re trying to do with each guest.
Every week, we’re booting up our rocket ship to meet a new guest in a new, imagined world. Sometimes these places are real (with a twist, of course), sometimes they’re made up. Our rocket ship can travel through time, space, and alternate realities.
So far, we’ve toured places like Eagle Rock with E.R. Fightmaster, a shock jock radio station with Sherry Cola, and a lush plantscape with Christopher Griffin AKA Plant Kween. We’re treating every guest as a “recruit” for our Best Friend Force, and by the end of our chat, we’ll invite them to be “one of us.”
We’re also exploring joy and discomfort through candid conversations and improv. Our brains work a million miles a minute and everyone’s on their toes at all times. We wanna see what people are like when they’re caught off guard in a world without limitations. For an hour, we’re letting ourselves be kids again, except now there aren’t adults in the room telling us we can’t cuss.
We hope you laugh with us, but also, you might cry! We do it all the time! Friendship is magical!
If people haven’t listened yet, where should they start?
We love every episode, but if you want a sense of who we are as hosts, then start from the very beginning! We’re building the universe of the show as we go, with new rules and lore every week. So if you want to understand why Fin is the size of a quarter or why Chris is immortal, or why we compliment each other every episode (on punishment of, well, death), then listening in order is highly recommended. (Also, every week we dream of someone making a show Wiki!)
You can, though, choose your own adventure: we love to play with genre and travel to a range of destinations. So if you’re into horror, then you might like our Sleepaway Camp episode with Mano Agapion or our Harvest Festival episode with Matthew Scott Montgomery. If fantasy’s your jam, then our trip to the very first Ancient Olympic (yes, singular Olympic) with Mo Fry Pasic is like a movie for your ears. And if you just want to relax, join Chris and Fin for a spa day—or a splash in a Mammoth Mountain hot spring with Dylan Mulvaney.
So many podcasters are doing straight up chat shows, why did you decide to make a show that breaks the mold?
We started chatting about this podcast towards the end of the Hollywood strikes. That experience made us realize that if we and our incredibly talented friends want to work on a creative project, we have the resources and the talent to do it. And we knew that if we were going to make a podcast, it had to tap into our comedy and music backgrounds. We’ve long been inspired by hybrid projects like the Netflix series The Midnight Gospel, which blends podcasting and animation. When we met producer Myrriah Gossett, we realized that we could go wild with our world building every week on the show, and Myrriah would bring those worlds to life through cinematic soundscapes and effects. Every week is like going to a 4D theater, just without the visuals!
The show also gives us an opportunity to go into worlds of fantasy and fun in a world that’s not always welcoming to the LGBTQIA+ community. We’re excited to build a space for trans and queer joy on the show each week, and we hope that people listening from around the world will know that they’re one of us, and always and forever a part of the Best Friend Force.
How are you two different and how are you the same? What do you each bring to the table?
One of us likes to take things a liiiiittle too far. The other is Disney-level PR trained. We’ll let you figure out who’s who. And tune in to see if you can figure out the topic that Myrriah has to keep editing out… *insert explosion emoji*
What’s a podcast you love that everyone already knows about?
We love Two Dykes And A Mic with McKenzie Goodwin and Rachel Scanlon. We also dropped by Couples Therapy recently and are reeeeeally hoping that we can become BFFs with Andy Beckerman and Naomi Ekperigin. And we of course love our friend Mano’s show Drag Her! Everyone listens to these shows, RIGHT?!
What didn’t I ask you that I should have?
No, but we do have a question for you! Are you… ONE? OF? US?!
🚨If u only have time for 1 thing🚨
I thought I was hallucinating when I saw that Personal Best was back after five years, 120 years in podcasting. On each episode, Rob Norman and Andrew Norton help ordinary people get a little better at little things like dining alone at a fancy restaurant or shaking hands. The first episode was oddly specific but also felt relatable—a guy Wil loves a restaurant so much that he has kind of become a regular, which actually makes him too uncomfortable to go there. There is an odd pressure to please the staff. Or maybe he just can’t commit. He stops going. So Rob and Andrew embark on a series of adventures to help him. One of them includes a long-winded, adorable, absurd, Tolkienesque quest that turned Wil into a blindfolded hobbit trying to return a shawarma (the ring) to Mount Doom, all while being chased by Nazgûls. It’s all caught on tape, and imagining adults doing this all for the sake of a podcast, in the middle of the woods, made me laugh so hard I had to take a break. The second episode starred a woman who fears she isn’t mysterious enough. (Also relatable for me.) The third episode about loneliness was so insightful. (I wrote down: “the opposite of loneliness is feeling at home.”) This show has a sense of silliness, sweetness, sincerity, and fun I think is rare. I don’t know or care if this stuff is working. It’s about the journey. And our amusement, as we get to sit shot gun for the ride. But I think the most fun part is finding the creative ways the Personal Best team goes about tackling each issue. Personal Best is full of entertaining sound and multi-dimensional elements that make every episode memorable. It’s great, it’s still great. Time has passed but some things in podcasting haven’t changed. How I discovered it: Feed drop on a bunch of other CBD shows. (I was no longer subscribed.)
notes
✨Read 🏆 Reboot: How to pitch your podcast to year-end ‘best of’ lists in Podcast Marketing Magic.
✨Arielle Nissenblatt spotlighted The Breakout: Unleashing Personal Growth in her newsletter and podcast.
✨Coming March 2025—Podcasthon, an incredible non-profit initiative that invites podcast hosts from all over the world to dedicate a single episode of their show to a charity of their choice. These episodes will be released simultaneously, creating a powerful wave of inspiring, awareness-raising audio content globally. Podcasters, LET’S DO IT! If you do, send it my way and I’ll feature it in Podcast the Newsletter. Learn all details at www.podcasthon.org.
✨Friend and former client Brandon Reed has launched a BEAUTIFUL sleep app, Dwellspring, and is offering us a discount to your audience. (The audio is so impressive, I really think if you’re reading this you’d like it.) Go HERE and use code PIXIEDUST1 to get 1 month freeeeeee! (You all, he used to work at Disney, he does things with magic.)
✨DCP partnered with Barometer to create the first Black Podcast Coalition, a collective of influential networks and shows targeting a sizable Black audience. Learn more here and email your questions info@dcpentertainment.com.
💎don’t miss💎
🎙️I would love to listen to a cozy, uneventful podcast hosted by Hanna Rosin and Lauren Ober that’s like an introduction to the area, their comings and goings, their relationships with their neighbors, and maybe a little light neighborhood gossip. That would be so much fun! That’s not what We Live Here Now is. We Live Here Now is the story of Hanna and Lauren getting to know their new neighbors, who were supporting January 6 insurrectionists. (One is Micki Witthoeft, the mother of Ashli Babbitt, who was killed in the Capitol building on January 6. Another is the wife of the first person sentenced for crimes related to January 6.) So things are not uneventful, and they definitely aren’t cozy. But I promise you, it’s really worth it. The full name of the podcast should be “We Live Here Now, Suck It Bitch.” Because that is what one of them says to Lauren when Lauren says, a little too loudly near their car, “There’s that fucking militia mobile.” See, this show is very funny. And dark. And Hanna and Lauren’s very real attempt to understand these women who are so different than them. This is a real audio adventure, I feel like I need to throw on some sort of bullet proof jumpsuit. Because as they say in the trailer, “January 6 is very much not over, so we should probably get to know the people who are still living it.” Listen here.
How I discovered it: Press release + DM from Lauren
🎙️I wrote about my excitement for How to Destroy Everything in 2023, after Danny Jacobs and Darren Grodsky dropped their first episode. Podcast listeners went wild over it, they wanted more and they wanted more now. Danny and Darren didn’t have more. They were kind of freaked out. It must have felt like a mob with a battering ram-was pounding on their door. Around Thanksgiving, they released a five minute update that said something like, "hang on, we're just taking time to get our shit together, we’ll be back.” Then they went silent. Until now. This is a bit of a tangent but it’s interesting: The problem was that they did something we tell clients to do all the time at Tink. They applied to be featured by Apple Podcasts and were accepted after their second episode in September dropped (yes, notice this weird timeline) and got a quarter-million listeners in just a few days, peaking at No. 3 on the charts. That’s what released the mob they weren’t ready for. It’s what everyone wants to happen when they make a podcast. So even if you aren’t interested in the story (how could you not be?) you might be interested in the story behind its success, which has only just begun. Who knows what will happen next. How to Destroy Everything is about Richard Jacobs, who was a wild and complicated narcissist, a swindler, a crook, and Danny’s dad. Richard ruined his life plus the lives of anyone who found themselves in his orbit. Danny and Darren are trying to map out Richard’s life, to trace all the carnage and devastation that fell in his wake. (Just look to the Richard Support Group, made of more than a dozen people who were screwed over by Richard. It had its own newsletter.) Danny and Darren have tracked down a 16-year-old girl who now lives in the home Richard lived in before he died, it’s full of secret hiding places and reveal so many puzzles about Richard. Danny’s mom part of this show, and it’s not just about the wild story or the investigative aspect that keeps this podcast engaging…Danny and Darren are real childhood friends who know and understand each other. It’s about them. And Darren witnessed some of Richard’s most bizarre moments. (Like scraping cheese/toppings off pizza and eating an entire pie without bread, in front of children who wanted to share that pizza. I couldn’t make that up if I tried.) It’s is a portrait of a monster but also about Danny, how he coped in big ways (getting sued by Richard) and small (Richard legally changed the family home address to The Royal Manor, which meant pizza delivery people would never agree to drop off pizzas.) I think we can see by the rollout of this podcast that Danny and Darren are sitting on a chef’s kiss story but didn’t know what they’re doing. Sometimes that doesn’t work in a podcast but they are good storytellers (who come from film) so it does this time. There are no tropes in this show. No stylistic choices that will go in one ear and out the other because you’ve heard them a zillion times before. It mixes dramatizations and interviews and investigations and storytelling that will keep you so engaged, so curious, so delighted, and so, so sad. Never have I heard anything so funny that makes me so sad. Listen here.
How I discovered it: I have been constantly checking the feeds for months + Wil Williams posted in the Tink Slack
🎙️If you followed Vox’s podcast The Weeds, you will have noticed that (or felt gaslit by the fact that) it turned into Explain It To Me, a new show hosted by Jonquilyn Hill that will answer questions from listeners about everything from retirement and why there’s so much money in politics to Gen Z’s odds of avoiding an apocalypse and why jars are so hard to open. The first episode, which answers the question “is my dentist scamming me,” a) is such a good one, don’t get me started on this problem—I’m even suspicious about my cat’s vet scamming us into unnecessary dental stuff and b) doesn’t just offer a surface level answer. It’s more a well-reported and sourced, fun, storytelling history journey. Jonquilyn goes way back to explain why dentists are so different than internal doctors and why dental insurance doesn’t feel like insurance. After all of this info and history my takeaway was: I should make a trustworthy friend who happens to be a dentists and then make them be my dentist. I hope Jonquilyn screams “YOU GOT ‘SPLAINED!” before playing 2 Unlimited’s Get Ready for This at the end of every episode because I really enjoyed that part. (Just kidding, she does not do that.) Listen here.
How I discovered it: Press release + I subscribe to The Weeds
🎙️Personal Best is back after five years helping people improve themselves, How to Do Everything is back helping people do everything after a long hiatus, The Weeds is now Explain It To Me and here to explain things, and Alex Goldam has returned to the mic bringing back hints of Reply All’s Tech Support with his new show Hyperfixed, where he’s working with listeners to solve their problems. Is this the age of getting help from podcasters? Or are they just fucking with us for our stories? I don’t care!!! In the first episode of Hyperfixed, Alex goes on a long car trip with a woman afraid to drive. (Did anyone experience déjà vu listening to this? I feel like I heard another “help me!” podcast teaching someone how to drive by driving with them, and it’s at the tip of my tongue, and it’s driving me nuts.) It feels very good and fun to have Alex back in my ears, and similar to what PJ Vogt did for Search Engine, we’re getting two episodes now and more in November, after I suppose he’ll have raised more money. Smart. I hope Alex gets into helping people with some really weird stuff. Episodes one and two (about baking) were fun but felt like safe starts. Listen here.
How I discovered it: I subscribed to the trailer a long time ago when it was featured in Apple Podcasts
🎙️The incredible music documentary podcast Lost Notes is back with a new season made of eight different stories, each a little slice of LA’s soul and R&B scene of the 1950s-70s. Tyler Boudreaux brought us an audio folk story about the the watermelon in Black culture beginning in Chicago, where people chase down watermelon trucks to get the best watermelons, Southern watermelons. Why all the fuss? To answer that question we must go back and back to The Great Migration, when a watermelon in Chicago would be a taste of home, and back further to see the Odell Large White, one of the only varieties of watermelon linked to enslaved Black farmers, and how it was a symbol of abolition and selling avenue for Black independence, and back further still to the watermelon’s origins in Sudan, and how its canteen-like structure allowed it to travel around the world. You learn a lot of amazing things about watermelon (there were watermelons in heiroglypics!) but that’s not why this episode is so fantastic. It’s a traveling history lesson and personal documentary all tied to Herbie Hancock’s 1973 recording of “Watermelon Man” and how it became one of the earliest popular samples in hip hop. In the end, we find Tyler at her grandmother’s house for a 4th of July barbecue, sharing in a watermelon like it’s communion, eating it with joyful abandon and reclaiming the fruit as a gesture of resistance, rather than a tired racial trope. This episode is packed with so much stuff and has a beautiful arc. Listen here.
How I discovered it: I subscribe to Lost Notes and listen to every episode.
🎙️Sound Heap, Inc. is a fictional podcast network with one mission: to make too many podcasts. (At least they’re being upfront about it.) And Sound Heap, one of the many podcasts hosted by Sound Heap, Inc. CEO and Fun Captain John-Luke Roberts, is a Sound Heap, Inc. sampler, a way to taste shows from across the Sound Heap network. Shows like If You Had A Cupboard In Your Lower Back, What Would You Keep In It? with President Emmanuel Macron or Rememberama, the podcast for people who like to remember things like the episode of The X-Files where nothing weird happened. There’s this recurring (also both confusing and explains a lot) joke that John-Luke was tricked into agreeing to a “golden handcuff” deal with unpopular French President Emmanuel Macron. I’m actually not sure if I even need to write Podcast the Newsletter anymore. John-Luke is basically curating the best stuff for us. Well, it sure is stuff! I first started listening to this sped up a bit when I was doing other things, but I actually recommend you sit down, slow it down, and take it very seriously because that will ensure the funniest listening experience. Listen here.
How I discovered it: Email from MaxFun
🎙️I binged Karen, the true crime show about Karen Read, the Canton, Massachusetts woman who was charged with hitting her boyfriend with her SUV and leaving him for dead in the freezing cold, in what felt like, but couldn’t have been, an hour. I remember this happening in January 2022, but I never followed up. What happened to Karen? Where is she now? Karen the podcast delivers. I mean, it truly is 90% footage of the trial. Some may say too much. I was down. People believe Karen either did it or is being framed, the center of a conspiracy theory run by the cops and all of their little buddies. Cops often come off as shitheads, but Karen’s story reveals some terrible lows in cop behavior. There is shocking tape, some twists and turns I did not foresee (an internet tale user named Turtle Boy who ends up being friendly with Karen and impacting the case.) Most of the people in this story seem crazy, all of them drink way too much. In fact, when I finished the show I thought about giving up drinking for the rest of my life. This podcast is about how much the cops suck, a woman who might be at the center of their web of corruption, but it’s also about what could happen to a bunch of people who drink too much and get really rowdy in the middle of the night when it’s freezing outside. Oh, and where is she now? I almost couldn’t believe it. The story is not over. Listen here.
How I discovered it: Saw it featured in Apple Podcasts
🎙️Last time we checked in on Joanne McNally Investigates, Joanne was the rumor that Avril Lavigne had been replaced by a look-a-like named Melissa. (She is also the host of My Therapist Ghosted Me, a show I haven’t listened to yet, but if someone would recommend a good place to start I’ll try it!) I loved this show because I love when people take silly things seriously. Joanne has gone one step farther with her new season “Did Furbys Spy On Us?” about the conspiracy theory that the toy was really a spy linked to international espionage. This is wonderfully stupid, and Joanne commits to the bit. Already in the first two episodes she does a “furtopsy,” (“I wouldn’t even say my brain has that much wiring!”) some research (she finds a story about someone who claims their Furby was possessed by a Japanese ghost,) and interviews (with someone who studies the aesthetics and sociology of creepy cute animal robots.) These Furbys (“they sound like nonbinary smokers who sound a little shocked”) sprung up in a time when we had just started to worry about this kind of tech panic. So while this is a story about the toy, it’s about that, and it’s also just a huge playground for Joanne to practice her comedy skills. Listen here.
How I discovered it: I subscribe.
🎙️I don’t know if everyone loves stories about boarding schools or if it’s one of my culture kinks because I went to one. Boarding schools are such weird places ripe with tradition and insular, close knit students and secrets and rituals and teachers who would be fired if they ever worked for a public school. Cat Jaffee recommended the audio drama Academy without knowing this about me, and I relished every second. It’s a coming-of-age audio drama that takes place at Bishop Gray Academy, where the academic competition is so fierce it created this secret underground society known as The Night of the Wolf, where rich kids will pay for less rich kids to get them good grades. It’s funny and has these cute romantic side stories, and it goes down like honey. I binged it like I binge a great Netflix show. Listen here.
How I discovered it: Cat Jaffee told me about it on a phone call.
🎙️I love you!
📦 From the Archives 📦
[From August 31, 2020] I binged The Ballad of Billy Balls in record time for me (I discovered it through the Pocket Casts app, which was featuring favorite episodes of Lauren Ober. Thanks, Lauren!) Listening to it reminded me of reading a book I can’t put down. I was waking up in the middle of the night to continue the story, and I looked forward to any moments during the day I could snag to hear it. It’s technically about the 1982 murder of punk rocker Billy Balls, a death which affected the host’s mother and Billy’s Partner, Rebecca. Rebecca is destroyed by this, even after all these years, and her son iO is determined to get to the bottom of the mysterious circumstances of Billy’s death. iO whisks you away to the 1980s East Village, New York City (my very own street is referred to “the asshole of New York”) in an emotional journey that digs far deeper than the crime itself. The show is actually about a complicated, healing family, and whether or not digging for the truth is the right thing to do. I’m done listening to everything, even the bonus episodes, and I find myself missing iO, Rebecca, and Billy. I I find myself looking for them while I’m walking around my neighborhood (even Billy.) I think I know people like Rebecca, the skeletons in this family closet feel familiar, and all of the characters in this story resonate with me although I have nothing in common with them. This story has swallowed me up whole.
Re: the help me drive a car theme—I think you’re thinking of the first episode of Snooze!