🛳 OOO: And now for something completely different👙
🍭 👂I'm on a Disney Cruise but my friends are filling in for me 🌈 🤸♀️
Bonjour.
Today is Monday, May 15. I am trying to cut down on screen time so I can go on the AquaMouse more so I didn’t write this issue, I had my friends with podcast newsletters write it for me, to make sure you got your weekly dose of podcast content. It’s a little variety show, if you will. I cosign them all! Enjoy!
xoxo lp
ps If you are pleased with Podcast The Newsletter, please spread the word.
But first…
Love Letter to Fiction Podcasts
by Shreya Sharma
Dear Fiction Podcasts,
Did you know that your existence predates that of podcasts? Yes, believe it or not. Stories have been passed down through the spoken word much before writing was invented. So, is it wrong that I look upon you as the premiere form of storytelling?
Perhaps, I am rather biased because you have been there for me in rotten times. Your worlds, with dragons, knights, and radio hosts in nowhere towns, have long been an escape for me. Right from the safety of my couch you transport my mind to places I can’t imagine imagining.
You can set our hearts throbbing, our feet stomping, our minds racing, our moods swinging, our eyes crying. And yet, so comforting.
Like a warm hug
Like tomato and grilled cheese
Like a favorite blanket
Like the smell of rain on grass
Like winter’s first ray of sun
Like a dip in cold water on a summer day
Like a story one never tires of.
I never tire of you.
I’ve known many forms of storytelling. But none like you. None so lovely and yet so terrifying. None so intimate and yet not pervasive. None heard in isolation and yet blossomed in community. None so far away and yet so accessible.
So, when they tell you how you’re doing real well this year, tell them you’ve been around forever. Ever since humans first started to tell tales.
Thank you for all the fabulous, courageous, joyous, hilarious, and precious tales you’ve told.
With love and admiration,
Shreya (Shreya’s Audio Affairs)
Special announcement from Shreya:
Hi! Okay so as evidenced as my letter here, I truly believe that oral storytelling has no boundaries. Now, you may know that I quit Inside Podcasting after a three-year stint there. I did this because I wanted to scale from podcasts to all things audio (hush, impostor syndrome).
Meet: Audio Currents powered by Recordical™. Audio Currents is a free twice-weekly newsletter that will cover all faces of audio, including podcasts, audiobooks, music, streaming, and voice acting. I’ll pay special attention to news that impacts the audio industry at large.
This industry has been SO wonderful to me, since day one. I hope you’ll extend your love and support to my new project. The first issue drops on Tue, May 16!
👋q & a & q & a & q & a👋
Tessa Kramer and Ellen Horne
Tessa Kramer and Ellen Horne are the host and executive producer of Admissible, respectively. Follow Tessa on Twitter here. Follow Ellen on Twitter here. Follow Admissible on Twitter here.
Describe Admissible: Shreds of Evidence in 10 words or less.
TK: An investigation into misconduct at the Virginia state crime lab
EH: Erin Brockovich meets In The Dark
TK: That’s way better
What has your relationship been like as reporter & host (and podcast newcomer?)
TK: When Ellen and I met, I’d been working as a reporter/producer on documentaries and podcasts for years, but this was my first time hosting a podcast (and I found the prospect somewhat terrifying). While we were pitching this story around, I was working as a reporter/producer on a series that Ellen was hosting, so I took a lot of mental notes on what it means to be a host, both in terms of being out front as the public voice of a series and playing a leading role on a team and making big production decisions.
Ellen, can you speak to the importance of mentorship in podcasting, especially for narrative projects like this?
EH: I was profoundly lucky to have a mentor like Robert Krulwich. In the first few years, we fought frequently (and sometimes bitterly!) about what we were making. The stakes felt desperately high. It took me years to be confident enough in my own work to even think of him as my mentor…because it was hard to admit that I needed one. He is still my most trusted mentor (...and we can laugh about those early story battles.) Now, a few decades after we first met, I see his influence all over my career: the way I think of character and voice, the play and conversationality of my interviews, the drive to create emotional depth...truly the list is hella long and I am forever indebted to him. But perhaps his influence is most evident in my habit of cultivating relationships with up-and-coming journalists, like Tessa. (In addition to being the executive producer of Admissible, I am a professor of journalism at NYU and director of a new grad program in Podcasting and Audio Reportage.) Tessa is a powerhouse journalist and host. I’ve learned so much from Tessa. She has that killer balance of being a big picture thinker along with a relentless attention to detail. And, best of all, she’s a total delight as a collaborator. We’ve built a team together that, I hope, will thrive for years to come, which can welcome in and train newcomers. Tessa has so much to teach other journalists. We need more rigorous and sensitive reporting in the world.
Tessa's background is largely in TV and film. Why was audio the best medium for telling this story?
TK: Funny you should ask because initially, my reporting partner Sophie Bearman and I thought this would be a short documentary. We even filmed our first few interviews. But we quickly realized that there wasn’t a lot to capture visually. This is a complicated story with a lot of players (a lot of deceased players) and most of the “action” takes place in the past. But the story of uncovering the story – how our sense of the narrative was slowly being turned upside down throughout our reporting process – that felt very active. A narrative podcast can be a great medium to capture that kind of discovery.
What made you personally gravitate toward this story?
TK: At first, I was really interested in the stories of the 13 men who’d been exonerated. At the time, I was tutoring at a federal prison in Brooklyn, and growing increasingly interested in people’s experiences within the prison system. One detail that caught my eye was that a few of the exonerees met and became friends in prison. They were falsely convicted of similar crimes, with no way of knowing they’d later have their names cleared thanks to the same forensic scientist, Mary Jane Burton. Of course, the stories of the exonerees are still a huge part of the series, but after we met Gina Demas, the whistleblower, the focus of our investigation shifted to Burton and her work at the lab.
EH: Right away I was struck by the scale of this story. Mary Jane Burton likely worked thousands of cases. As we had bigger questions about her, it seemed as if we were on top of an iceberg. No spoilers here, but I’ll just say, our questions got much bigger than one forensic scientist, so you can imagine how exponential the potential harm might be.
The series touches on some challenging topics (sexual assault, racial bias, and systemic failures); how did your team approach these topics in an ethical manner and did any challenges come up along the way?
EH: We were well into the reporting phase by the time the Dart Centers’ guidelines for trauma-informed reporting were published – and they are a fabulous resource. The way that Tessa and Sophie had conducted the interviews with the sexual assault victims was very much in line with that thinking. While in post-production, we relied on three things: thorough fact-checking, sensitivity listeners, and many rounds of iterative edits.
Tessa, you reported on this story for about four years. What is a tip you would give to someone interested in working on an investigation of this size?
TK: I’ll give you a few. First and foremost, this process taught me that everything is probably going to take longer and be a lot harder than you expect, so it’s good to come prepared for that and ready to learn along the way.
Second, if it feels like people don’t want to talk to you about something, you’re probably onto something.
And third, I highly recommend staying organized from day one. At the beginning of reporting, you don’t know if it’s going anywhere. You don’t know if you’re going to end up with two hours of tape, or 200 hours, so I suggest you assume it’s the latter and stay organized accordingly (e.g. log your tape as you go, back up your files, put links to your sources in research documents, etc.) There were big breaks in that four years – periods of time where I had to take on other full-time work until we got funding to complete reporting and production – and it was a lifesaver to have everything organized when we finally got picked up.
How does this series differ from the kind of true crime we have been seeing as of late?
TK: I don’t even know if this series fits in the genre of true crime – but it’s definitely about crime! One fundamental difference is that many true crime stories focus on a particular case, and often, trying to solve that case. From the outset, the focus of our series was something different. Our story took us into the inner workings of a state crime lab, shining a light on one of the key building blocks of so many cases: forensic evidence. I do want to say that I love a lot of the true crime that's out there! There are so many true crime podcasts and documentaries that inspired me to do this work and have had a huge impact on exposing injustices in the criminal legal system (Serial, In The Dark, The Central Park Five, The Staircase, to name a few).
A running symbol or metaphor you refer to is "Pandora's Box" and at the end of the series you talk about the two interpretations of hope being left in the box. Now with the series fully out, where do you stand on that interpretation?
TK: I was hoping no one would ask me that. I’m no Greek scholar but I choose to believe that after releasing all the evils into the world, Pandora saves hope for humanity.
EH: I’d never heard this before Tessa put this in a late episode 12 draft. If sloth and greed and whatnot were released into the world, but “hope” was not, I figure that means humanity doesn’t have it. I’ve read that the word the Greek poetic Hesiod uses is “Elpis” (Ἔλπις) which is more like ‘expectation’ than ‘hope.’ Maybe what wasn’t given to humanity was more certainty about outcomes – more of an ability to see the future. While we worked on episode 12, which is about the need for stronger reforms in forensic science, I thought a lot about “hope” and what it means to have it. And I kept thinking about the Czech playwright, poet and president Václav Havel who described hope as “an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed.”
💎BTW💎
🎙️Lauren's gone this week living her best Disney life, but you don't have to miss her because she was on the latest episode of Podcast Bestie, giving podcasters a PR masterclass in effective, fun, and EASY podcast collaborations! Plus, we discuss how to get featured by Apple Podcasts, and she workshops my upcoming submission. For more podcasting inspiration and expert advice, listen to other Podcast Bestie episodes featuring James Cridland, Gary Arndt, Devin Andrade, and more. Sign up for the Podcast Bestie newsletter for regular updates about jobs, industry info, craft tips, and marketing strategies. — Courtney Kocak, Podcast Bestie
🎙️If you love listening to animal-related content, Phoebe Judge has done it again in a recent episode of This is Love. I am constantly referring back to an episode I heard during the height of the pandemic called “Roselle and Michael” about a seeing eye dog who helped Michael Higdon escape from the North Tower on 9/11/2001. I tell everyone to listen to it. I’ve listened to it at least five times. I cry every dang time. And now, Phoebe is back with “Sampson and Baylor,” two golden retrievers who, for 10 years, climbed to the top of a local hiking trail…by themselves. They became fixtures of the path and beloved by the community. —Arielle Nissenblatt, Feedback with EarBuds
🎙️Lauren and I definitely share a love for Outside/In, and I didn’t think I could love it more until I heard about the great fruit debate. A couple weeks ago I wrote about the episode SAPIENS did about hot peppers and when Outside/In’s Taylor Quimby heard about that episode, he told me how excited he was for it because of his love for spicy peppers. A love so strong there’s a whole episode of Outside/In dedicated to Taylor arguing that hot peppers are the greatest fruit of all. If you didn’t expect peppers to be considered a fruit, you’ll learn why they technically are and get ready to learn about all the niche hot peppers you can imagine. This multi-functional, multi-sensory fruit goes up against the favourite fruits of the other members of the Outside/In team, so you’ll also hear some fascinating arguments about even more unexpected fruits. It’s an episode full of surprises and great banter! Without spoiling anything, there’s a contending favourite fruit whose existence and our familiarity with it is practically a miracle. You’ll have to listen to find out what it is! —Devin, Podstack
🎙️I just published the Top Podcast Critics So Far of 2023 on Great Pods. This is where I pull together all the professional reviewers that were indexed on to the site and see the Top 12 that readers click on to read the full review. I’ve also added the percentage amongst the group itself. Read it here. Spoiler Alert: Lauren is on the list (Have a professional review? Email hello@greatpods.co with the link!) —Captain Ron, Great Pods
🎙️LA Folks! Come to our quarterly meetup by getting updates and joining the newsletter at here.Next one is being planned for mid-June. —Captain Ron, Great Pods
🎙️Bingeworthy is a newsletter that covers the craft and the backstory to the best narrative podcasts out there. Two amazing series that I’ve covered recently were We Were Three, a mini-series put out by Serial Productions and the New York Times, by the legendary Nancy Updike. It’s a story about a family torn apart by Covid; but it’s also a story about how to rebuild from it. Bone Valley is the incredible story of Leo Schofield, who has been wrongfully convicted for 35 years, for a crime that another man confessed to. It’s also a story on the move: Leo Schofield has just been granted bail, which definitely has something to do with the amazing reporting this team put into it. What’s coming up in June? Stolen. In one week, this series won both the Peabody and a Pulitzer. It’s the story of her father who survived the Canadian Residential School System, the abuse-laden schools that Indigenous children were forcibly sent to. Can’t wait to share some more backstory and inspiration from this incredible journalist, Connie Walker. —Samantha Hodder, Bingeworthy
🎙️The podcast playlist theme for Podcast Brunch Club is HOME. (PBC is a listener community that is “like book club, but for podcasts.” Join one of the 50+ local chapters or the virtual chapter to discuss a monthly podcast playlist with fellow podcast fans. —Adela Mizrachi, Podcast Brunch Club
🎙️There’s a community on Discord dedicated to the podcast community — both listeners and creators. You can join it here. And if you don’t like Discord, no problem! Arielle Nissenblatt and the team of moderators curates a weekly email recapping the links, events, and discussions within the server. —Arielle Nissenblatt, Feedback with EarBuds
🎙️I try to keep track of when celebrities tweet or otherwise make mention of podcasts. This recent tweet from Stephen King about the latest season of Bear Brook from New Hampshire Public Radio was a real hoot to behold. On that note, tag me whenever you see celebrities mentioning podcasts, please! —Arielle Nissenblatt, Feedback with EarBuds
🎙️Are you a sound designer? Do you work with sound designers? I’ve got two great articles about podcast sound design for your perusal! Find out how getting experience sound designing both fiction and nonfiction shows can help your craft here, and grab 3 top tips to get the most out of your podcast's sound designer here. —Newton Schottelkotte
🎙️Entrepreneurship is so hard. Get an inside look over at Entrepreneur Struggle…and hey if you’re an Entrepreneur, reach out to DCP Official to be a guest!! By the way, it’s powered by LinkedIn! Join DCP Entertainment CEO, Chris Colbert, as he has powerful conversations with business leaders as they explore the mental and emotional health challenges that face entrepreneurs. —Adell Coleman, DCP
🎙️It’s Mental Health Awareness month…so check out this podcast that says what we’re all thinking feeling too! Be Well Sis with Cassandre Dunbar. After being consistently left out of wellness conversations, Be Well Sis is a podcast dedicated to providing resources for Black millennial women to be their best selves physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Hosted by Dr. Cassandre Dunbar, the conversations are candid, informative, and unapologetic. —Adell Coleman, DCP
🎙️Constellation Prize è una collezione antologica di gemme audio realizzate da Bianca Giaver, una trentenne di Seattle con un curriculum pieno zeppo di collaborazioni con la crème de la crème della radio pubblica statunitense. A tenere insieme il tutto ci pensano la sensibilità di Giaver e l’empatia con cui riesce a trasformare conversazioni quotidiane in intime confessioni, accompagnando con morbido affetto l’ascoltatore dentro le vite e i sentimenti altrui. L’effetto è amplificato dalla cifra stilistica di Giaever e dalla sua capacità di registrare su nastro piccoli e apparentemente banali dettagli che, magistralmente montati, diventano il gancio a cui appendere il significato di quello che stiamo ascoltando. —Chiara Sagramola and Giacomo Bagni, Orecchiabile
🎙️I Swear on My Mother’s Grave is hosted by Dana Black and is a podcast (and person!) that I have had the pleasure of having as a client not once but twice. Now entering its third season on Mother’s Day 2023, I Swear on My Mother’s Grave is one part personal journey, following Dana as she parses through her relationship with and loss of her own mother, and another part healing and community building with other folks who have lost their mother, as well. Dana’s mother died in 2016, but she often says that she lost her mother years before to addition and crippling neuropathy; and that’s a key part of what makes this podcast so powerful and transformative — because losing one’s mother doesn’t always mean just in death. It can sometimes mean loss as it pertains to estrangement, or something else. This is a show that has helped me learn how to support my own friends and loved ones in the loss of a parent; and, ever the heartfelt, bold, and funny conversationalist and storyteller, Dana also stresses how it is a show “about legacy and forgiveness, guilt, love, and sometimes whether all our moms' problems could've been solved by masturbating.” Listen to “Cory: ‘And for women, I think we’re taught to put other people's pleasure and needs ahead of our own.’” on Apple Podcasts or another app. —Alexandra Cohl, POD.DRALAND
🎙️Also read Alexandra’s Best Mother’s Day Podcasts roundup.