👶 Nubbins the doll ✨ astrology adventure 📺 broadcast piracy 🏴☠️ man thinking 🧠 scambaiters 🎣
🍭 👂 You're in for a treat! 🌈 🤸♀️
Bonjour!
Today is Monday, December 5. In case this email is too long, Skyline Drive is here go directly go Skyline Drive do not pass go no time for questions, this is one of the best investigative podcasts I’ve heard in awhile, a trailer I have been waiting forever to drop is here.
YO!🎁 🎁 🎁 🎁 🎁
I am putting together podcast gift packages to send to three lucky winners that includes shirts, books, totes, and other fun swag from your favorite podcasts. In the next few weeks, I’ll be publishing an open thread post. Open that thread and add a podcast recommendation for a chance to win. Make sure you’re subscribed so you receive the thread! I’m not telling you the date of the thread because I don’t know yet! Not because I’m trying to be manipulative. 🤗
xoxo lp
ps If you are pleased with Podcast The Newsletter, please spread the word.
👋q & a & q & a & q & a👋
Joy Dolo
Joy Dolo is the host of Forever Ago, a kids history podcast that explores the origin of one thing every episode, while teaching listeners to think critically about the past.. Joy is joined by a kid co-host for each episode. Follow Joy on Twitter here. Follow Forever Ago on Twitter here.
Explain Forever Ago in 10 words or less.
History family show about objects and events that shape our world. Dang it, that’s eleven!
How did you get to be host?
I am primarily an actor and improvisor in the Twin Cities in Minnesota, so I have a lot of experience with scripts and thinking off the top of my head. I was called in to see if I could host the show and wazoooo! Here I am!
Why are you the perfect host for this show?
I wouldn’t say I’m a perfect host! I love the way kids see the world and I feel like whenever I have a co-host, I learn something new. Being curious about the topic and the kids has guided me a lot.
What’s it like to have kid co-hosts?
Awesome! They are the best! Smart, funny, off the cuff. And their point of view is so often under-estimated in many settings. It’s cool to be able to show kids that adults can listen and empathize with them. And be goofy with them!
If you could have any guest on the show to explain something, who would it be and what?
Ms. Frizzle from the Magic School Bus tv show! I would have her explain the human body. It’s so amazing! I would also like to talk to the voice actor that played her, Lily Tomlin. I would love to pick her brain about acting-she is the best!
Who listens? Classrooms, families, kids by themselves?
All of the above! We have folks using Forever Ago in classrooms as a lesson plan-especially during the pandemic. And I have received many messages from parents that said they love to listen with their kids!
What advice would you give someone who is considering starting a kids show?
Make sure you have a strong team to help you. I could not fathom doing a podcast on my own without the help of the amazing Kids Podcast Team at APM Studios. Also, I would say to use your own unique experience when telling your story. There are so many platforms now, the one thing that makes stories interesting, to me, is a perspective that is new to me.
Are you a kidult?
Yes. Very much so. I love to play games and make faces and eat sweets. But I’m also constantly learning and putting myself in situations where I am uncomfortable so I can learn more. Just like kids, constantly soaking in new information-I feel I learn from situations that are not a part of my lived experience.
What’s your advice for talking to kids?
Talk to them like people. I’ve noticed that adults and kids can get self conscious very easily when put on the spot. I was like that too. I was super shy when I was young. When we start taping, I always make sure to ask the cohosts about their day, what they’re looking forward to, favorite meals, anything that will get them out of their nerves!
If people haven’t listened yet, where should they start? (I love The Joy of Swimming and The Lifeguard one.)
The Joy of Swimming tells more of my personal story, which brings in that new perspective piece. I also think Rubiks Cubes from season 2 and Sandwiches from Season 1 are pretty great. Oh yeah, and Ancient Egypt in Season 2! It is so hard to choose…
🚨If u only have time for 1 thing🚨
Mangesh Hattikudur knows how to make a podcast. (Before founding Kaleidoscope, he headed up podcast development as SVP for iHeartMedia, where he launched Somebody, Hit Man, Forgotten: Women of Juarez, ran creative for Mental Floss, and a BUNCH of other wonderful things.) Now he’s brought us Skyline Drive, a skeptic’s personal and curious exploration of the impact that astrology has on people’s lives and decisions all around the world. It starts out with an audio slide show, explaining why Mangesh has been drawn to astrology throughout his life, and moves on to his personal investigation into how and why astrology has had such a hold over our culture. Whether you believe in astrology or not (Mangesh doesn’t think it’s a science, he believes it is true in the way poetry is true) you can’t deny that it has mystified people for centuries—from Columbus, who believed in an astrological prophesy that led him to the New World, to Richard Nixon, who used Jeane Dixon's advice to set up a counter terrorism initiative, to the Indian Prime Minister, who still uses astrology to consult on important dates. This podcast is bursting with curiosity and joy, Mangesh interviews his mom and Pete Bauer from The Walkmen, tries to get his kid to invest in his horoscope app, gets tips from A.J. Jacobs, and consults an astrologist about the fate of his own podcast. All in the first episode. Oh, and we get to hear from Channing Tatum. Episode ends on an ominous cliffhanger that suggests what’s to come, a journey more personal than Mangesh ever could have imagined. The music rules. PAIR IT WITH A BOOK: The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton. A mystical novel set in 19th century New Zealand, written in twelve parts, each preceded by a graphic of an astrological chart drawn for the twelve men meeting in the hotel at the beginning of the book.
oh hey
✨Call 1-844-POD-AT-ME (1-844-763-2863) to hear a daily podcast recommendation, and leave your own recommendation at the beep! You can suggest your own show so this is a great way to market your show. Don’t worry, we won’t answer the phone! (We know calling random numbers can be terrifying.)
✨Kevin Chemidlin invited me on Grow the Show (thanks, Kevin! And Arielle for setting it up!) to talk about podcast marketing, specifically how I was able to increase numbers of a personal favorite of mine, Lizzy Cooperman’s In Your Hands. I cannot believe how much fun it was and I do offer a tip or two that you might want to steal for your own marketing campaign. Listen here.
✨Arielle Nissenblatt spotlighted Grief, Collected in her newsletter and podcast.
✨I put up my Christmas holiday wreath over the weekend and Anne Baird made a Canva template so that you can make your own! Tweet it to me, I want to see! #podcastthewreath
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💎BTW💎
🎙️Lost in Panama tells the story of two Dutch girls, Lisanne Froon and Kris Kremers, whose bodies were found after they went missing from their hiking trip in 2014. Journalists/hosts Mariana Atencio and Jeremy Kryt are doing the work and showing the receipts. They travel the trails where the girls were last seen, take it to the community—both the people who are afraid for their lives to talk, and the dangerous people who might quite literally sending them death threats—and they go through the girls’ backpack and camera, which were found in surprisingly good shape in the jungle. (Fishy, fishy.) It’s easy to think these women fell from a bridge or were killed by animals, but so much of that theory doesn’t make sense—especially when you get to see the photos that were snagged from the girls’ camera, documenting their last moments, and meet the shady characters surrounding the case. The photos hint at a dark and freakish story that nobody can figure out. The storytelling is so well done, they could have charged me to see the photos they share in their show notes. With your eyes and ears. you get to join the investigation, but you’ll be constantly puzzled. This is one of the most incredible investigative podcasts I’ve heard in awhile. If you told me this stuff was fiction, I’d believe you, and still love it. Listen here.
🎙️I have been working behind the scenes with Perry Carpenter (host of a security show that I cannot believe how much I love) and Mason Amadeus on a very exciting project that’s launching in January—Digital Folklore. Perry and Mason are two buds on a journey to go to the darkest places of the internet, where monsters, memes, internet urban legends, conspiracies, viral crazes are born, to learn about their ties to folkloric concepts and societal truths. Perry and Mason mix research, conversations with incredible people like Amory Sivertson (Endless Thread) and Chelsey Weber-Smith (American Hysteria) and playful narrative (it reminds me of being at Disney World) for a perfect balance of fascinating insights, humor and balance. The sound is hardcore good. Just look at the freaking website and tell me you aren’t having fun already. Launches in January, listen to the trailer (and subscribe) here.
🎙️On November 26th, 1977, viewers of Southern Television’s Five O’Clock News in the UK were interrupted by a warning from a mysterious alien voice calling itself “Vrillon:” live in peace or leave the galaxy. This is a 45-year-old cold case that Tommie Trelawny, host of The Interruption, has reopened. He starts with taking us back to 1977 to help us imagine who this might have been, and what they might have been warning us about. (This was years before the Max Headroom incident.) Was it tied to Ziggy Stardust? (There are similarities with the message and Bowie’s Star Man.) Was it a disgruntled employee? A student? It couldn’t have been hard to do, and broadcast piracy isn’t totally unusual. But normally it comes with a statement. This warning makes the message more puzzling. One of the paths Tommie takes to get to the bottom of things is by talking to a religious scholar who talks about UFO religions and new age spirituality, who mentions that religion is how we make sense of the world, and it’s always cultural, so with outer space in the zeitgeist, someone may have been spreading a religious message of some kind. Nobody has done this kind of investigation before, so we don’t know where it’s going. (Neither does Tommie, I don’t believe.) So we can all be confused and intrigued together. Listen here.
🎙️In the summer of 2022 the NHS announced it was winding up the Gender Identity Service for children and young people at the Tavistock. For the new podcast The Tavistock, journalist Polly Curtis has a hard job—reporting on gender dysphoria of young people and how we can help them, something that doesn’t have easy guidelines or answers. Polly takes us to 2011, when the clinic started offering puberty blockers to people under the of 16, which caused an almost unmanageable boom in kids to care for. She interviews the people who were treated, their families, people on all sides of the argument—should we be giving kids puberty blockers and if not, what do we do? She asks unanswerable questions—how do you know that you’re trans? This isn’t a podcast about what to think or answers, it is what has happened, what exactly happened to make The Tavistock shut down. This is a bold series that’s going somewhere we haven’t been before. Tortoise knocks it out of the park yet again. Listen here.
🎙️I assumed Man Thinkers would be full of obvious sexist jokes that weren’t actually funny because sexism isn’t funny. But this was so outrageous I have no idea how hosts George Collins and Dan Finkelstein can keep a straight face making it. I love it. They play characters of two Libertarian/incel gross men who were cancelled by “liberal” YouTube and have found a place for their voice on RSS. They’re playing up every single trope of toxic masculinity times 35,000, so some of the themes are predictable. But these guys commit to the bit and go in hard, so hard, that I did find myself laughing out loud. They mansplain, have lots of questions about their penis sizes that exhibit their insecurities, and have no idea what women…are. I was going to say how women think, but I don’t think they think women think. It’s over the top and I can confirm I liked it because after the first episode, I had to go straight to the second one. They use the phrase “nothing is off limits,” something I think no podcaster should ever say. But I’ll allow it. This one time. Reminds me of one of my favorite things that came out this year, FeMANism. Listen to Man Thinkers here.
🎙️I recommend anything Keith Morrison narrates, including the ingredients on my husband’s protein powder jars, but Murder & Magnolias is five-star chef’s kiss, and it’s not just because of Keith. He has met his match with the star of the story, Nancy Latham, a woman who, in the midst of divorcing her truly despicable husband, discovers that he hired some dimwits to kill her and maybe a few of their daughters, too. The guy is undeniably guilty and the scum of the earth, but Nancy is a woman who deserves a standing ovation for her strength, sense of humor, and her fearlessness in trying to expose her ex for everything that he is, a total, complete stinko shithead. “Your husband says you were having an affair,” Keith says. “Were you?” “No,” Nancy says,” “are you offering?” This woman is quite the pistol and I hope someone offers her a TV show not about this terrible (yet compelling story because THANK GOD these hit men were compete imbeciles and failed their one job) but about how she makes her way with the world. I would never, ever wanted to mess with her. This guy should have tried to kill somebody else’s wife. (I have now run out of adjectives for “idiotic shithead” to use, so I’ll end this review now.) Listen here.
🎙️Self Evident, which honors Asian America's stories, is running a 5 part series “Before Me,” which lets us listen in as Lisa Phu, who has just given birth to her daughter, gets to hear her mother’s story about growing up in Cambodia, fleeing genocide by the Khmer Rouge, surviving as a gold dealer in Vietnam, building a home in America while navigating the fallout and traumas of war and carrying the future of her children throughout the journey, for the first time. The intimacy of the conversation we get to hear will make you hold your breath, it feels completely raw but beautifully orchestrated at the same time. It’s an amazing story (Lisa’s mother says at the beginning, “oh my life story? That’s very complicated.” And at one point she seems surprised to admit how long it has taken to share.) But it’s also a conversation between a mom and another new mom, a grandmother cradling her granddaughter, a grandmother who has lost so much and has a lot to finally tell. Listen here.
🎙️As mentioned above, I love basically everything Tortoise Media is doing, and now they are inviting us into the news room activity that takes place before a media outlet decides to write about a story for The News Meeting, where journalists bring what they think is the strongest story of the week, and for them all to decide which deserves to be on the front page. The Tortoise is UK based, so it’s nice to hear about the world from a non-US perspective. In episode one I learned about things (like what DeSantis and the future of the GOP has to do with Bob Iger and Bob Chapek) that I didn’t catch on the millions of things I read and listened to about the latest Disney news. At the end you get three strong stories plus a collaborative conversation about which one actually is most important. Listen here.
🎙️I subscribed to Townsizing before I knew anything about it because Anne Helen Peterson, but oddly it is about something I have been thinking about, googling, talking to my partner about, and fantasizing about—leaving city life in pursuit of life at a slower pace anywhere that’s not the East Village in Manhattan. I am not special or alone in the back-and-forth thinking I’m doing. Anne is talking to people and couples who have lots of things to consider, like how moving will impact careers, the culture shift of being anonymous to being seen, losing the conveniences that a big city provides, whether or not you will find people like you, and moving to a smaller place to make the community better. It has a strong sense of place, taking you to Walla Walla Washington, Guthrie Oklahoma, and Shoals Alabama, for an intimate look at how we make huge life choices that we didn’t always have the luxury to make. This is a new problem/privilege. Storytelling helps people figure out what to do and feel less lost and alone. God, I am too old for the East Village, and I dream of a kitchen that’s thicker than a stack of pancakes. Listen here.
🎙️There is a world out there of people spending their free time trying to fuck over scammers, running them all over the world and potentially ruining their lives. These people are called Scambaiters, I didn’t know they existed until Vigilante dropped a piece about them: Scambaiters: A Brilliant Game. These internet vigilantes are finding internet scammers, many of them in places like Cameroon, who claim to be in the United States and set up fake businesses, collect money, and run. But not if the scambaiters get to them first. In their community, they have set up a game where they get points for getting scammers in different ways, like making them cross borders, and trick them into taking embarrassing pictures of themselves holding stupid signs. To scambaiters, these photos are their trophies. It’s an ethical conundrum—these "African Kings who just need $4,000” or fake business men who want you to invest in their fake companies deserve to be fucked, but they’re often people who are left with few options to survive. The scambaiters don’t care. They’re high-fiving each other all over the world with each scam of the scammer. There’s a twist at the end of this story that turns this whole thing on its head. I won’t spoil it for you. Listen here.
🎙️Rabia O’Chaudry (while we’re talking about her…go listen to her new show Rabia and Ellyn Solve the Case…the most recent episode covers the disturbing story of Diane Schuler, with special guest Sarah Silverman) was a mention on Who? Weekly, which I feel is somewhat of a coup for podcast nerds. Listen here.
🎙️Because it is now December I am obligated to tell you to listen to one of my favorite stories of all time, from Elna Baker on RISK, about Elna’s days working in the doll section of a department store during the holidays. I cry-laugh every time I hear it. Listen here.
🎙️Fleishman Is In Trouble author Taffy Brodesser-Akner (who is also the writer/showrunner/executive producer of the TV show, was on The Waves to talk about her background writing for men’s magazines (“freeing!”) middle-aged marriage, and what inspired her to create Toby, a man drowning in pussy after his divorce from his stone-cold wife. Hearing from Taffy will enrich your viewing experience, if you are viewing. Her story is necessary context for understanding the characters, especially Libby Epstein, played by Lizzie Caplan, who is the narrator of the show, and also the book. Taffy’s skills as talented celebrity profiler came in handy to hone Libby’s voice. Her journalism background is why the book is so good, and why the show is so good, too. Listen here.
🎙️I love you!
This week we’re getting to peek into the listening life of Heidi Vanderlee, owner and founder of Positive Jam PR and co-host of The Hold Steady is for Women.
The app you use to listen: Pocket Casts except for when I listen to Sleep With Me - for that, I use Spotify because I don’t want the rest of my queue played while I’m asleep!
What speed do you listen to podcasts? 1x.
How do you discover new shows? When hosts guest on other pods I love, newsletters, and recommendations from friends.
One show you love that everybody loves. You’re Wrong About.
One show you love that most people don't know about. This Ends at Prom and honorable mention Midnight Mass.
Hot take: 3-4 ad breaks in a half hour will make me stop listening to a show even if I love it.
Self-care tip: Have a skin care routine, even and especially if it’s super basic. I just use Cetaphil and unscented SPF moisturizer with some Sephora brand retinol at night but the routine itself is meditative and makes me feel like I’m being nice to myself!