🗺️ Neverland ✨ little monsters 👿 listening vs. hearing 👂 lesbian bars 🍺 muscular Christianity 💪 open, Ursula 🌯
🍭 👂 TRUST ME! 🌈 🤸♀️
Bonjour.
Today is Monday, May 1. There are 10 days until my next Disney cruise. (If you want me to send you a postcard while I’m gone, fill out this form.) In case this email is too long, become a fly on the wall here, this will make you think twice, the longest lesbian bar crawl here.
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xoxo lp
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👋q & a & q & a & q & a👋
Amanda B.
Amanda B. is the host of 6 Degrees of Cats. Follow 6 Degrees on Twitter here, Instagram here, and TikTok here. Subscribe to The Captain's Log by Captain Kitty here.
Describe 6 Degrees of Cats in 10 Words or Less.
Cats - the eighth wonder of the world. Find out why!
Why the name 6 Degrees of Cats?
Per wikipedia: “Six degrees of separation is the idea that all people are six or fewer social connections away from each other.” Due to my deep affinity with, and passion for cats, I’ve amassed a delightful (or concerning, depending on who you ask) amount of trivia about cats. I see an infinite amount of connections among human and felinekind. And I make this case in my podcast, with the help of a diversity of cat, and non-cat subject matter experts from across the world. Cats and violins? Cats and socks? Cats and gravediggers? So many connections. Hence, 6 degrees of cats. As I saw in my wrap ups, “everything is connected”.
How is this different from other cat podcasts?
I love all the existing cat podcasts out there, though weirdly I don’t listen to them, I just read about them and appreciate them! I think it’s because I already have like seventy podcasts about cats in my head, ha! So based on my limited understanding of the landscape, 6 Degrees of Cats is distinctive in that it’s a cat-themed podcast, it isn’t solely about cats in the role of domestic pets but rather touches on the many roles across history and culture that they or their likeness has occupied. I’m approaching this topic more as a sociologist or an anthropologist. In conversation, I tend to describe this podcast as a history and culture podcast about cats - AND humans. It’s definitely a cat of a different color, to borrow from horses (which have the same running gait as cats #CatFacts). I just hope folks enjoy my midwestern twang, my quirky sense of humor - and feel curious, affirmed, hopeful and a renewed sense of appreciation for the misunderstood and the marginalized - like cats!
What can we expect to see in the newsletter?
I love this question! The Captain’s Log comes out the week between episode releases, and includes a debrief of the past episodes with my editorial comments. For my passengers (paid subscribers, sorry - this theme is fun!) the full edition includes “Following the Stars” - horoscopes for your cats by an unqualified cat astrologer; “What’s Giving Me 9 Lives” - a list of 9 random things that are giving a selected passenger joy and life; “News from the Crew” from my co-captains Binky & Snuggles; “Captain’s Booty” with special discounts (SPONSOR ME!) - and more! I think anyone who enjoys my sense of humor will love it, and anyone who doesn’t will probably stop listening to the podcast anyway, so I’m letting that freak flag fly.
The sound of the show feels playful and experimental. What’s your inspiration and how do you come up with ways to make it sound different?
I’m so glad you pick up on the playful and experimental stuff - and enjoy it! Thank you! Inspiration-wise, I’m a musician and one of my listeners said that she can tell I’m a musician because of the sound design. That tracks! This is the sole aspect of podcast composition that mimics my songwriting process - in that, the episodes, like songs, start almost fully formed in my head. I can literally hear the narrative flow, and what sound effect or sound bed should be there to achieve that cadence and tone. I’m of the generation of cartoon cats (yep, that’ll definitely be in an episode or five!) and the sound design of syndicated programming from those kinds of Saturday morning cartoons, Disney films, network / TGIF / after-school television and goofy pre-reality TV lowbrow cinéma vérité like Candid Camera and America’s Funniest Home videos sort of inform the cadence and zany-ness of the sound design, for better or worse. I either make it myself, or source it. On a budget of, well, $0 right now, all of the music and loops are mine, and the sound effects are sourced or original field recordings. I also want to say, my strength is in sound design more than audio engineering - I am not perfectionist about it, if it's listenable I'm ok with some variance in levels and inconsistencies 🤷🏻♀️All that hard work will likely be interrupted by LOUD DYNAMIC AD INSERTS once I get sponsors anyway.
What’s a podcast you love that everyone already knows about?
I'm failing the assignment here - can't pick just one! I’m a huge fan of NPR’s Code Switch, and am very sad about the recent layoffs and the shuttering of Invisibilia - which I really loved. Anything Tenderfoot TV puts out is on my radar - those folks are incredible and all their podcasts are amazing. (They produce one of my fave podcasts to fall asleep to - Radio Rental. Which has a cat, of course.) WNYC’s Spooked is incredible, Glynn Washington is such a powerhouse with Snap Judgement, and is also from Michigan (#GoBlue!) I used to really love Gimlet - RIP Every Little Thing - and had dreamed of pitching 6 Degrees of Cats to them, but it kind of isn’t the same as it used to be, is it? Also - LOVED Shameless Acquisition Target, that smash hit by Laura Mayer (a fellow cat lover, she actually heard my pitch at Sound Up! Bootcamp - Laura, call me!). Obviously WTF with Marc Maron (another cat lover and dream guest!) and as a Prince lover, DCP Entertainment’s Who Was Prince? is another great one.
What’s a podcast you love that not enough people know about?
Unsolicited: Fatties Talk Back is a Black, queer-led chat fat liberation podcast. The co-hosts are so funny, engaging and I learn so much when I listen. Lots of funny jokes and fresh insights to counter the many false narratives about fatness, among other things. I also love Podstream Studios’ Who Was Prince? I am a fan of Touré’s writing and I love Prince, I still remember when he passed.
Anything I didn’t ask you that you want to say?
Contrary to what some people say about “too much content”, there is always room. I hope those who find podcasting a validating way to express their true selves can make themselves welcomed. “I think, therefore I am?” is only part of it - “I’m listened to, therefore I feel seen” should be on there, too. DO IT!
🚨If u only have time for 1 thing🚨
I was almost not born because of Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean.” When my parents were on a date, my mom admitted to liking the song and my dad was so pissed he got up and left the table. My mom wasn’t sure if he’d return. It’s a lyric in this song (“So take my strong advice, just remember to always think twice…”) that sparked Leon Neyfakh and Jay Smooth’s new 10-part podcast Think Twice, which is taking another look at Michael Jackson’s complicated legacy. When the stories of Michael’s sexual abuse accusations broke, there was just one story, and that story has calcified in our minds. Leon and Jay are bringing us non-breaking news and instead asking us to break open our brains to take a fresh look at Michael Jackson and the aftermath. This is a podcast about us, too. I’ve listened to the first three episodes, it’s packed with interviews and eyebrow-raising stories. Some of them are stories I’ve heard or are details I know, but looking through this lens with Leon and Jay is a whole new thing. BTW I attended the launch part for this show last week. My wardrobe is 80% Disney merch and I accidentally wore my Peter Pan denim jacket, the one that has NEVERLAND written in huge letters on the back. If anyone who attended is reading this, I am not a supporter of Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch. The Peter Pan anecdotes were the hardest for me to get through. (They made me sad for so many reasons, not just because I identify with Tinker Bell, named my company after her.) My only edit for the show: put a trigger warning for the Disney fans. Or maybe just a trigger warning for Lauren Passell.
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April was Adopt-a-Listener Month
Adopt-a-Listener Month is technically over but we feel like we just started to crack the surface on people who don’t know what a podcast is or think podcasts aren’t for them. We’ll be sharing the results of everything we did, but this week I want to call out Jodi Murphy of Dorktales Storytime, who adopted her friend Mary. Jodi recommend that Mary listen to Poetry Unbound and Mobituaries by Mo Rocca. Great picks! Here’s what she had to say:
I'm a subscriber to Shreya Sharma's Shreya’s Audio Affairs and was blown away by her NicheCast #1: A podcast playlist when your heart is breaking. When I heard her recommendation, Poetry Unbound: “Hannah Emerson - Keep Yourself at the Beginning of the Beginning,” I knew it was one that my poetry loving friend would enjoy! I also introduced her to Mobituaries with Mo Rocca, specifically “John Denver, Death of the Sunshine Boy" because I knew it would bring back some wonderful childhood memories. She told me that she will be a regular listener for both and would love for me to continue to recommend and share podcasts with her.
Why’d she pick Mary?
Mary Acord is one of my best friends, the person who grew up across the street from me and the kind of friend who, even though we don't get a chance to see each other too often, we know that we are each other's person. Mary is a creative, compassionate human who teaches 4th/5th graders. I've visited her classroom and her kids love her! I chose her because she doesn't listen to podcasts but I knew she was a fan-in-the-making. All I needed to do was show her 1) how she could listen and 2) a selection that would spark her curiosity and creativity. She was never hesitant, only unsure of where to find them and how to begin. We both had fun participating in Adopt-a-Listener 🎉Next I will introduce her to kids podcasts and how she can use them in her classroom. Her kids will go crazy over them!
💎BTW💎
🎙️Hello, nosy people. Do I have the show for you. Is My Child a Monster? is a new parenting therapy podcast where you get to be a fly on the wall in Leslie Cohen-Rubury’s office and listen in as she sits with parents who share their stories in therapy sessions. It’s helpful if you have kids, if you were the monster of your family, if you love Where Should We Begin?, or if you are one of those people who looks inside people’s windows when you’re driving by houses at night. Leslie had her own little monster, her daughter Dale. And in a special mini pre-episode, Leslie talks to Dale about what that was like. The first enlightening episode is with two parents who have a sensitive (Story Pirates-loving) child and you get to see Leslie really show off her skills in helping parents. Leslie is a Tink client and we’ve been working with her closely…it would mean a lot if you would listen here.
🎙️Congratulations to Lizzy Cooperman (of my favorite podcast of all times In Your Hands) for being named Victoria’s Secret’s Employee of the Month. (Lizzy started working at VS because her listeners made her do it on In Your Hands.) I learned this through Lizzy’s Patreon, which you should subscribe if you miss hearing her voice as much as I do. I also recommend hiring Lizzy to give you or someone cool a tarot reading. Arielle bought me a reading for my birthday and it was so great I have been buying it for other people.
🎙️Opening Soon usually follow the journeys of opening a restaurant through individual conversations with chefs, restaurateurs and vendors about how businesses go from an idea to opening soon. They’re in the middle of a mini-series called The Build that’s zooming in on one business—Brooklyn’s Ursula—by tagging along for every step of the process. The sound isn’t perfect, which can be frustrating, but hey. That’s restaurant life for you! At least none of the chefs are threatening me or coercing me to do cocaine. And the hosts do acknowledge the quality when it gets shoddy, which I appreciate. These interviews with Ursula chef and founder Eric See let you in on all his struggles and his thought-process, how he went from the owner to a pastry shop that sold beloved burritos to moving locations to open a much larger joint with a fuller menu (the pastries tagged along.) It’s a thrilling ride that makes you feel part of the action, and will give you appreciation for all the hurdles restaurant owners have to clear to make their dreams come true. Also Ursula sounds delicious and Chris and his team seem like really good people. (Chris named his restaurant after his grandmother. I’m a sucker for grandmothers and their beautiful names. I actually almost named Tink “Grandma Joyce” before I realized it was a real-ass, viable company.) Start here.
🎙️For Where Are You Going?, Catherine Carr is surprising people on the street with a mic to ask them “Where are you going?” She’s interrupting people above ground and under and all over the world, so she’s not just collecting tiny stories of people going about their day, she’s taking a snapshot of a place. (The New Yorkers she talks to, unsurprisingly, all seem too busy to talk to her.) I’m constantly wondering this about the people I see in New York, nurses sprinting in scrubs, people carrying their dogs like babies or armloads of shopping bags at places I want to shop at, pushing carts full of equipment for things I don’t know what they’re for. It’s not just where they’re going, it’s how they respond to the surprise. Are they excited to share? Are they in a dangerous situation? Do they seem aimless? It’s a study of human nature that teaches us what I’m not sure. But listening feels like you’re sitting in the chaos of a different place and taking in the bustle around you. Listen here.
🎙️Rethinking Wellness is an anti-diet culture podcast hosted by Christy Harrison, host of Food Psych. It’s kind of like Maintenance Phase but with less snark and more guests. It is equally packed with fascinating information. I was taking tons of notes during the interview with Natalia Mehlman Petrzela about fitness culture, and how it used to be seen as narcissistic but is now an unqualified individualistic American movement that is practiced like salvation. Natalie understands fitness in an almost theological way, and explains muscular Christianity, how fitness got so virtuous, and the ways it has become so utterly sexist. Listen here.
🎙️Karina Longworth’s new You Must Remember This series about the Erotic 80s dedicated one episode to each year of the decade. Erotic 90s is spending 12 episodes just to the end of 1993. It kicked off with a prologue about the history of the X rating, pornography, and feminism, the era that defined the movies we were getting, and the hoops certain films were clearing in order not to be rated X. An episode about Thelma and Louise is a total deep-dive into the film and how it was received, and the feminism of the film that made so many people uncomfortable. The tragic ending of Thelma and Louise was a statement about what it was like to be a women living in a world that is dangerous for them. The backlash and the way people misunderstood it proved its point. Listen here.
🎙️Hollywood Gold is the show that Pod People called “You Must Remember This but current and spicier.” While it lacks in production quality and Karina’s careful guidance and exhaustive research, it makes up for it with gossip that’s still pretty fresh. Each episode host Daniela Taplin Lundberg talks to people from behind the scenes of movies like The Outsiders, The Right Stuff, and Austin Powers, you get real stories, real names, that make all of these films more interesting. An interview with Thelma and Louise’s producer and writer Callie Khouri was too perfect‚ intersecting with that episode of You Must Remember This. There, you heard the story about how Thelma and Louise was received. On Hollywood Gold, you hear from Callie about what it was like to live through the reception. (Callie is able to laugh about being called a man-hater, because she wrote a character who was raped and then killed her rapist. There is something so perfectly disturbing and apt about that.) Listen here.
🎙️Lesbian bars are dwindling, and Cruising is kind of like a shrine to them. Three queer women, Sarah Gabrielli, Rachel Karp, and Jen McGinit, are buckling into a Honda SUV to visit the ones that are standing, for the longest lesbian bar crawl ever. (You’d think this would be incredibly daunting, but there are seriously less than 25 of them remaining in the US.) The fact that this podcast is even possible tells a story about queer identity today. Does it mean that safe spaces for lesbians are no longer needed, or is it erasure? Henrietta Hudson, a bar in New York City, now calls itself “a queer bar built by lesbians.” This podcast reminds me of Vanishing Postcards, it’s a rich road trip show that pulls you in to every single place, to hear micro-stories of the people who were able to come out because of them, the people who fought to make them possible, and a look into the future to see if they can continue to exist, or will be yanked out from underneath the people who need them. Listen here. h/t Aakshi Sinha
🎙️Sam Dingman of Family Ghosts and The Rumor has launched The Midnight Disease, where he interviews creators obsessed with perfecting their craft about what we do waiting for the muse to grace them with inspiration for their work. These are long episodes but I blew through two of them, they felt like a flicker in time. I entered the mind space of Kevin Allison (RISK!) and Lauren Shippen (The Bright Sessions) to hear about the stories they haven’t told, general musings on their creative processes, and even specific things about making things. (I learned that Lauren Shippen is back to two spaces after periods, her font preferences, how she uses Asana, and that she types on an old typewriter.) Sam pulls out this often invisible thread about the creative process that ends up feeling a little scientific, a little spiritual. It’s t he kind of show that will make you feel totally seen, or in my case, in awe of the people who make beautiful things and aware that you’ll never do anything like it. I’m stealing this from Sam, but he always makes sure to say to the guest something along the lines of “I notice you do this cool thing…am I right?” It’s his observations of the artist that are just as interesting as how they actually accomplish it. Listen here.
🎙️There are so many podcasts that I listen to religiously but rarely write about. I often write about new things or exceptional episodes. But what about a podcast like Straightiolab, that offers an exceptional episode every single week? Comedians George Civeris and Sam Taggart are unpacking straight culture with funny guests, and the conversations are so weird that they go past weird to totally genius. Chris Murphy was on an episode about advertising and marketing that spoke to me as a marketer (which is for girls, advertising is for boys) and what the sad state of the industry tells us about the crumbling of American masculinity. Straightiolab is like 75% delightful tangents, and this episode is full of them, spinning off into a conversation about how communication on gay apps has seeped into how we talk IRL and what those “sup”s mean. To steal from George and Sam, “if this write-up doesn't make you want to listen to the episode, then congratulations you are probably gay.” Listen here.
🎙️If you’re reading this newsletter you’re a person in the world who communicates and relies on listening to interact with the world. Me, too. I needed to hear this episode of The Gray Area about listening (which is different than hearing) more than you, but you’ll probably get a lot out of it, too. Sean Illing interviews Kate Murphy, the author of You’re Not Listening: What You’re Missing and Why It Matters about what listening really is, the faulty ways we speak to each other at cocktail parties, and offers a real reason to cool it on all the zooms. (A conversation, much like a podcast episode, is best experienced sitting down, eyes closed, focused on the other person.) So often when we’re talking, we’re thinking of the next thing we want to say. This conversation offered a total shift in the way we listen. My husband and I listened to it together and were extremely polite to one another talking at dinner for at least twenty minutes. Listen here. Really listen.
🎙️Hear Me Out is a new show from Slate that covers “tough, topical discussions with integrity, and without cliches.” Host Celeste Headlee and a guest have a smart, fair debate on an issues from the Trump indictment to having a national divorce. For a much lighter episode, Celeste had on Kristen Meinzer to talk about something that I didn’t even know was an argument—that trashy TV is good for us. Kristen talks about how it’s easy to dismiss content loved by women and girls. (She gives The Beatles as an example.) Celeste pushes back hard, arguing that The Real Housewives aren’t good for anyone. No matter which side you’re on, it’s good to observe the back and forth. (At one point, Kristen kind of calls Celeste classist.) Kristen thinks we need to give people credit. I’m with her. They aren’t watching Sister Wives because they want to be part of a Mormon patriarchy movement and a sister wife themselves. They sometimes want to see a life that’s different than theirs, and maybe, if you want to sling bad qualities on these people, judge those people. (TLC is often referred to The Leering Channel for a reason.) So is Celeste elitist? What does elitist even mean? And are The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills the next Beatles? Listen here.
🎙️The Indicator from Planet Money spent last week steeped in influencer culture, each day diving into a different facet of the industry. They speak to influencers about exactly how much money they make and what it takes to make being an influencer your job, they go shopping with an influencer and share the receipts, and they discuss why this has become a viable job option for people who can’t fit themselves into more traditional work. The question is: if everyone is becoming an influencer, who is left to be influenced? Start here.
🎙️I love you!
📦 From the Archives 📦
[From January 20, 2020] I am addicted to Gay Future, a sci-fi comedy where the year is 2062, and everyone is gay. A totalitarian government rules over what's left of North America to spread its insidious gay agenda. Humanity's only hope for a rebellion rests on the shoulders of a precocious teenage boy who harbors a dark secret: He's straight. The writing is quick-witted and truly hysterical. I listened to a bit of BLACK FUTURE, a show that imagines what the world would be like if white people started turning black randomly. That show didn't sit right with me, and I didn't know why until I listened to Gay Future, which is doing a similar thing. Gay Future works because it isn't taking itself seriously, but while you're laughing you're actually thinking about how we treat LGBTQ people and how LGBTQ people often have to bend over backwards in order to fit into a world that is mostly not gay-presenting. Gay Future is outrageous and smart.