👀 Odd fellows🥇body horror 🫀the official X podcast? 🤳 shout out to Uncle Elbagir👋🏾
🍭 👂You little wuuuuussies you unbelievable children people get to woooorkkk that’s how you fix this you you’re brooooooke 🌈 🤸♀️
Bonjour.
Today is Monday, May 12, 2025. Remember:
⭐️If you’d like to advertise in Podcast the Newsletter but don’t have the money to do it and are willing to run a promo on your pod for Podcast the Newsletter, fill out this form. We’ll figure something out!⭐️
In case this newsletter is too long, one of the best things I’ve heard all year is here, for the first time these stories are being recorded in English, the funniest Movie/TV podcast has a very funny episode about Friends here.
xoxo
lauren
🚨If u only have time for 1 thing🚨
When I heard the first episode of Debt Heads I felt like a thirsty person who had just discovered water in the desert. I don’t like talking about money YOU KNOW THIS but yet this show has a lot of things I’ve been craving and have been deprived of for so long. Hosted by Jamie Alyson Feldman (@realgirlproject) and Rachel Gayle Webster (@webbythefox) Debt Heads is a show with an unpredictable format filled with light and humor and surprising audio elements. And so who cares if it’s about money. In the first episode we hear about why we’re here in the first place, to learn about Jamie’s money trauma and how she ended up in so much debt. This sounds normal, Debt Heads is not. They say right up front “we are not a chat cast, we are not sponsored by mattresses.” We kick things off with a playful Dave Ramsey audio mashup, at one point Rachel and Jamie have a fifth grader read cruel TikTok comments Jamie got when she posted about her debt. Thank you for breaking the mold, you two. I hate talking about money but I love you. This podcast just feels so good.
notes
✨Read my latest Lifehacker, 11 Podcasts That Expose the Nonsense in Politics, Pop Culture, and Science (it’s a good one.)
✨My Growing Your Podcast with the Perfect Ad Spend Radio Bootcamp with Shreya Sharma is coming up 6/03/2025. (You don't HAVE to have extra money to spend on buying ads for your content, but it doesn't hurt if you do AND WE HAVE THOUGHTS.) Sign up here.
✨The Podcast Show London is coming up, and I’m speaking with Arielle Nissenblatt and Shreya Sharma. I am obsessed with The Podcast Show—it’s beautiful, and there’s a great week-long festival lineup of live podcasts from in venues across London. Learn more about it here. ADE SHERLING is the winner of the Platinum Pass giveaway so while sorry if you didn’t win you can get 10% off Platinum and Gold Passes if you use code TINK10.
✨Tribeca is coming up June 4-15. Get your tickets here and if you go let me know so we can hang out.
✨As pert of Tribeca, Talia Augustidis is hosting an In the Dark performance Tuesday, June 10th at 5:30pm. More information and tickets here.
✨Arielle spotlighted Big Brains Podcast in EarBuds.
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Rewind to the 1990s with None Of The Above, a new limited series from the Institute for Global Affairs at Eurasia Group. We dive into the decade’s most pivotal geopolitical events: failed democracy in Russia, the rise of the Taliban, the end of apartheid in South Africa, China’s economic rise, and much more. To catch all 10 episodes, make sure you subscribe to None Of The Above wherever you listen to podcasts... you don’t want to miss it!
P.S - If you’d like to see an ad for your podcast here or in Podcast Marketing Magic, fill out this form.
👋q & a & q & a & q & a👋
Samantha Oltman and Alessandra Ram
Samantha Oltman and Alessandra Ram are the co-hosts of Sabotage.
Describe Sabotage in 10 words or less.
AR: An investigation into a climate group and an oil dynasty.
How are you two different and how are you the same?
AR: Producing this series together has really magnified our strengths and weaknesses – and taught me quite a lot about how I work with other people. Perhaps due to years of producing with a team overseas, I tend to gravitate towards collaborative work (whereas Samantha, as an editor, often says she does her best work alone.) When I get excited about an idea, I tend to want to take action and move quickly – and there have been moments when Samantha [wisely] exercised caution.
I would say we share a similar worldview, and that’s reflected in our storytelling. We also learned how to produce a narrative podcast and start a company together; we are truly equals in this endeavor.
What are your roles for the show?
AR: We executive produced, wrote and hosted this show together. In terms of the scripting, each of us took the lead on a different major theme of the series based on our past reporting (and own interests). Samantha focused a bit more on the funding aspect, whereas I focused more on the activist movement.
Why are you the perfect hosts for it?
AR: We’re the perfect hosts for Sabotage because we created it! We wanted to address a gap in the market and are well-versed – thanks to our years working in other newsrooms – in how other media organizations covered climate stories. Our relationship as colleagues and friends, especially ones taking a giant leap to start a media company together, adds a unique depth to the story. We hope that by seeing two young women host a show of this caliber and candidly discuss their experience running a business, it will inspire others to step out on their own, too.
SO: I think stories always sound better when you tell them in your own voice. That’s especially true for audio. And — I think audiences seek podcasts where the hosts sound how people actually talk. We wanted this story to feel immersive and conversational, not like a dry radio host read.
What was your aha moment like…Eureka! This is the podcast? How did we get here?
AR: This is chronicled in the first episode of Sabotage, but that moment came when I read a single line in an article about the soup incident – and it mentioned Aileen Getty as a mysterious figure funding the group behind this viral stunt.
What brought you to explore the Gettys?
AR: “Rich people drama” is always fun to hear about – but the Gettys in particular are endlessly fascinating. From the oil industry and finance to art and Hollywood, their influence looms large over our culture. Stories about the family lend themselves to an almost cinematic kind of storytelling. And the idea of J. Paul Getty’s legacy being disrupted by his granddaughter Aileen proved too rich and complicated to not explore – for us at least. It’s the element that we believe draws the audience into the story from the beginning, and ultimately, sets it apart from other climate narratives.
SO: To add to what Alessandra said, I’ve been editing coverage about the ultra-wealthy and their soft power for years, so I wanted to explore this facet of their influence — how more and more heirs to great American fortunes feel conflict over the sources of their wealth, and are grappling with how to put things right. Aileen Getty is sort of a poster child for this movement, and it’s fascinating to dig into.
How is the result of the first season different than you thought it’d be?
Alessandra: We honestly had no idea how people would react to such a big, juicy story about… climate change! So it’s been incredible to see how fascinated people are after listening to the first two episodes.
We were also slightly nervous to infuse our personal origin story from the get go, but it has really resonated with people – even those who already know us in real life.
Lastly, we never would have expected to partner with such a big name like Adam McKay for the inaugural season of our show. It’s been a very cool experience so far, and it’s clear he was the perfect fit to come onto this story.
SO: I’ll add — we’re just getting started; at this point, we’ve only released three out of nine episodes. I’m excited to see the response when people are able to listen to the whole season, especially because I think some of the juiciest and most powerful parts of the story are yet to come.
What’s a podcast you love that everyone already knows about?
SO: Alternate Realities, from Zach Mack
What’s a podcast you love that not enough people know about?
SO: Overlooked, from Golda Arthur
💎podcasts i texted to friends💎
👂I met Hana Baba via her podcast The Stoop (full disclosure, she was a client!) and recently discovered her new show, Folktales from Sudan, springy stories from Sudanese folklore. Hana is from Sudan and grew up hearing these handed-down stories from her family (shout out to Uncle Elbagir!!!) and wants to share them with us, especially because Sudan has been in a civil war for the last two years, and Hana is sick of people writing off Sudan as only a tragic place. The stories were told to her in Arabic, paired with songs. Folktales from Sudan is a collection of these stories, translated to English (with some Sudanese Arabic woven in) and sound designed with Sudanese-made music. It's the first-time these Sudanese fables have been recorded in English. Hana was inspired by raising her own kids to make this, it’s completely family-friendly. But these stories are the kinds of stories that are central to being human, you’ll recognize stories from your own childhood memories in there. And the production is fantastic. This show totally took me away. Stories are timeless and short, 10 min each. Hana is able to perfectly capture them with her voice. I felt cared for, hearing them. And somehow, just knowing that they have been carried down makes them extra special. I can’t wait to play them for Stella. Listen here.
How I discovered it: A nice and thoughtful email from Jackson Musker.
👂For the most part I think you’re either of a TV/movie podcast-listener or you aren’t one. I’m pretty sure I am one but there needs to be a twist. I don’t just want to hear people talking about movies and shows that are new or random. The best TV/movie podcast twist is found on Never Seen It, a podcast hosted by Kyle Ayers. On it, Kyle invites comedians who haven’t seen something that most people have, and invites them to write a script for the show based on their best guesses about what it’s like. Kyle and guests act it out. Vinny Thomas, who has somehow never seen Friends (an “against-your will cultural show”) was on to write a scene that was insane and eerily on target but also somehow better than something we’d see on the real show. (Vinny gets a lot right but funny stuff wrong—he completely nails Phoebe’s character but is convinced her name is Louise.) The scene read only takes a portion of the episode, the rest is full of conversation that was cracking me up and creative segments (games and trivia about Friends and similar pieces of media; Kyle gets his dad to describe movie trailers while we all guess what on earth he’s describing.) I love every single piece of this funny show that never feels mean. (It’s probably because Kyle seems like one of the nicest guys—he founded Boast Rattle, an event that has two comedians go head-to-head, delivering alternating blows of the nicest order.) Listen here.
How I discovered it: Kyle was a guest on The Daily Zeitgeist a long time ago.
👂I think anyone with a grain of interest in TV, entertainment, culture, should be excited about ReLiving Single, a Living Single rewatch podcast hosted by Erika Alexander (Maxine) and Kim Coles (Synclaire.) Maybe even if you have never seen Living Single. That’s how important this TV show was, is! Episode “The Pre-Show: Back to the Beginning” outlines why we’re here they’re best friends in real life) and explains a bit of how the show even came to be, the context we need to know about the history of sitcoms, Black Hollywood, and culture in general. I really liked it as an episode 00, it was almost too good for its britches and I hope people don’t skip it. Erika and Kim get into some real shit, like colorism inside the Black community, even arguing a bit over what the entertainment business was like for light-skinned vs dark-skinned Black people. These two are so much fun, I’d listen to them talk about anything and I can see this show spinning out into a friendship chat show. But for now, we’re building an altar for Living Single. Listen here.
How I discovered it: I heard it on a promo for another show, I believe.
👂Late 2023, Charles Fournier launched Those Who Can't Teach Anymore, now an Ambie Nominated, Award-Winning, 7-part narrative series about why teachers are leaving education. I listened to the whole thing but never wrote about it for some reason. It was good—the picture Charles paints of education is grim, it’s like teachers almost in abusive relationships with their jobs. It’s a profession that abuses them—they are underpaid, stressed, and their lives are not prioritized, teaching is being under-resourced and defunded, their classrooms are battlefields—they’re afraid of backlash from parents, politicians, and the public that leads to censorship, post COVID they have to do a lot more emotional lifting for their students, and also they are now expected to protect their students’ lives if there should be a school shooting? And that was before Trump threatened to completely defund the Department of Education. I know you know this but I wanted to list it out to underline what teachers are going through. If you listed out a job description with these things, nobody would want to do it. But a teacher will get an email from a past student saying how they were impacted by their class, a book they recommended, their guidance, whatever, and when that happens it reels them back in, hence the abuse. Teachers have life-long connections with students and their work is rewarding. It’s now 2025 and teachers still want to leave, and for season two we are getting to hear what all of this really feels like. Charles is letting us into the lives of 15 teachers who volunteered to make weekly personal audio journals of their 2023-2024 school year. (He collected 300 diaries, more than 60 hours of audio.) Episode one dropped on Teacher Appreciation Day and took us back to August 2023. It’s a symphony of voices, but in episode one we hear from a 23-year old first-year elementary school music teacher, Amber. We hear from her journal and in a conversation with Charles at an actual cafe, it’s a real conversation that feels “up close.” (A word that describes a feeling I have been chasing since I think first heard on Phonograph.) Amber has the optimism of a first year teacher, her first day was eerily fantastic. Let’s see what happens. Listen here.
How I discovered it: Listened last year but was reminded about season two via a nice note from Charles.
👂For an episode of Hyperfixed, a return-caller named Kyle asks Alex to help him track down the history of this medal that was awarded to his great great great Grandfather over a century ago for being “The World’s Greatest Mind Reader.” Kyle knew his Grandpa was a magician, but where did this award come from and who was the one to bestow it? Along the way we learn about secret societies and the history of magic, and what it meant when the tides shifted on magicians. (Was it awarded by a shadowy secret society?) The conclusion was extremely satisfying but that’s not the only reason I’m writing. Alex has a Patreon he is obviously trying to grow, but he also just wants more listeners, so he’s promised to make a free Cameo for anyone who pushes Hyperfixed on a friend and takes a screenshot as evidence and sends it to him. I write about Hyperfixed all the time because it’s great, but consider me strongly urging you to subscribe now, I’ll be screenshotting this. Listen here.
How I discovered it: Regular listener.
👂NonCensored is a British weekly, improvised, satirical character comedy hosted by an awful right-wing shock-jock and comprised of “actual” people (Sir Keir Starmer) and made up ones. It takes people's arguments and highlights how ridiculous they are by pushing them to a logically extreme position. When Elon Musk suggested that all IP law should be "deleted" the team decided that if he doesn't believe in IP law, they can call themselves X: The Everything App - The Official Podcast without fear of being sued for copyright infringement. It’s a funny episode and I LOVE it when people commit to the bit. The team legit rebranded the podcast, this was completely official, the cover art and everything. Listen and then, podcasters, get inspired to think of your own creative way to stand out! Listen here.
How I discovered it: Nice note from Ed Morrish.
👂Eric Molinsky has OCD and fear of body horror films, which I gather is a bad combo because it forces him to obsess over the worst stuff he sees. For an episode of Imaginary Worlds he does something very brave, spend an entire episode exploring what it is, why it makes him so afraid, and what it does for other people. The episode opens with a conversation with your pal Chioke l’Anson (RESONATE,) who loves horror. But he also talks to David Huckvale (author of Terrors of The Flesh: The Philosophy of Body Horror in Film) who explains how body horror helps us tell stories about what it means to be human today. A listener talks about the experience of being a Trans horror fan. Lots of trans people undergo their own extreme body horror whether they have they language of understanding it or not. (Especially in puberty, when trans kids often find their bodies turning into something they really don’t want them to.) And I mean we all go through our own body horror if we’re lucky, it’s called getting old. Listen here.
How I discovered it: Longtime listener.
👂Does everyone remember that short period of time when there were whistleblowers and leaks about alien life, but there was so much bad political shit going on that we kind of forgot? I think about that a lot. I’m not over it! Aliens? Yes! But Maybe No is a podcast that is a show exploring alien encounters and belief in general. The hosts, Travis and Josh, unfortunately aren’t scientists or even experts at all. They’re “just asking questions” but not in a Joe Rogan sort of way. (Although they do mention listening to a conversation with Joe Rogan and Bob Lazar aka Area 51 whistleblower.) I think “just asking questions” about aliens is fine, I’m cool with it. Let me know what you think. The vibe here is very Josh and Chuck on Stuff You Don’t Know, they’re nice dudes who seem friendly and have buddy chemistry and are able to tell us what they have discovered. They don’t always agree (one of them is more of a skeptic) and bring up interesting side topics, like…is Hollywood in cahoots with the government, putting aliens in movies to prepare us to meet them, so we won’t be shocked? Maybe there are many KINDS of aliens, just like there are people. Some of them kidnap us, some of them are just tourists on earth, some of them are just observing. Alien stories remind me of The Bible (to bring this back to The Bible as I almost always, somehow, do) because while I do believe they exist (I think I saw something when I was a kid) I don’t care if they do or not, all this hullabaloo we make about them is interesting enough. Listen here.
How I discovered it: Apple Podcasts promo???
👂On May 13, 1985 Philly dropped a bomb on its own residents in West Philly (a short walk from where I live now) living in a rowhouse that housed MOVE, a Black liberation group founded in the 1970s by John Africa. It killed 11 people, 5 of them kids, and the bomb started a fire that took out the whole block plus parts of two others, leaving 250 people homeless. Linn Washington Jr., a Temple professor and former reporter at The Philadelphia Tribune and the Daily News has covered MOVE for more than 50 years and is the host of MOVE: Untangling the Tragedy. The people of MOVE were about extreme back-to-nature living, and extreme disruption. But for the most part it sounds like they weren’t bothering people, except for Philly’s mayor at the time, Frank Rizzo, who truly sucked. Linn lived near the MOVE rowhome, he can remember seeing John Africa walking his dog from his perch on his roof where he would drink wine. And he can remember having to open the window during an interview with them because of the strong back-to-nature living smell. This story feels so close, not just because it’s local for me, but it wasn’t that long ago—Linn has access to people who remembers details that bring this story to life. If you listened to The Africas VS. America but want to see things through a different lens, MOVE: Untangling the Tragedy will give you that. (You will also recognize Linn Washington Jr., he was in it.) This is less about the history and more about what was happening on the ground at the time. It has more Phillyness. You will not regret listening to another show about this unbelievable story. Listen here.
How I discovered it: Text from Alex Lewis.
👂I love you!
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On Version 1, Emmy Award-winning producer Waverly Colville dives deep with fascinating creators about their spectacular failures, crippling self-doubt, and unexpected breakthroughs. Each Tuesday, writers, actors, artists and innovators reveal the messy truth behind their work and share hard-won wisdom. Get your weekly dose of creative courage and inspiration, wherever you get your podcasts.
THANK YOU, LAUREN! <3 <3 <3 You are the opposite of a little children people <3