🧩 Podcast puzzles 🎛️ The Zoo 💌 love letters 📬 28 dates 🍻 one deadly explosion💥
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Bonjour.
Today is Monday, November 13. In case this newsletter is too long…Hey, Dirty, these tiny love letters had me at the edge of my seat, someone is finally asking men why they cup their balls when they watch TV.
xoxo lp
👋q & a & q & a & q & a👋
A.J. Jacobs
A.J. Jacobs is an author, podcaster, and journalist. He has written four New York Times bestselling books, including The Year of Living Biblically and Thanks a Thousand. He has given several TED talks with combined views of more than ten million, and is a frequent NPR contributor. His most recent book is The Puzzler, which inspired his podcast The Puzzler.
This interview is really special because A.J. made a puzzle just for us!
In this puzzle, the answers are titles of made-up podcasts. But they are all just one letter off from real podcasts. So if the clue is... A podcast about ornamental lace mats hosted by Michael Barbaro and Sabrina Tabernise, the answer would be...
The Doily.
Ready? Answers below.
A podcast about ropes, ties, and pretzels
A podcast about the shipping of upholstered seats overseas
A podcast about a former late night host cooking for his pals
Answers are at the end of the interview.
Describe The Puzzler in ten words or less.
Play a fun daily audio puzzle with a celebrity guest!
Why are puzzles important?
For starters, I feel like puzzles are keeping me sane. These are stressful times, and I need a treat for my brain to keep from spiraling. But I also believe in something called “The Puzzle Mindset.” The great musician Quincy Jones once said, “I don’t have problems, I have puzzles.” He reframed his life’s problems as puzzles. Work puzzles, family puzzles, social puzzles. I love that way of looking at life. Problems are thorny and depressing. Puzzles are inspiring and solution oriented.
Fill in the blank: If you like ________ you will like The Puzzler.
Pacino Salad. (That’s an anagram of ‘pina coladas,’ so I thought I’d throw it out there. I don’t know what Pacino Salad would be. Maybe it’d be hammy? Sorry! I love Al Pacino!)
What made you realize that your book THE PUZZLER would be a great podcast?
A couple of years ago, I wrote a book called “The Puzzler,” which is a history of the greatest puzzles ever – crosswords, riddles, jigsaws, logic puzzles, you name it. For the book, I had to record an audio version. And that presented a challenge: How do I give listeners audio-friendly puzzles? So I created a bunch of new puzzles that worked in audio form. And I said, hey, this is not just kinda fun, this is very fun.
How do you know that the puzzles are hard enough, or not too hard? Do you test them out?
We do test them! My wife is an excellent guinea pig, for instance. We try to make the puzzles accessible for everyone, puzzle experts and puzzle-phobes alike. If the guest is a great puzzler, sometimes we throw out an extra-spicy clue. With Ken Jennings, for instance, we played a puzzle called “Putting the Pan in Panama,” in which the answers were sentences that contained the name of a country, as well as a word that was the first syllable of that country. Like “pan” and “Panama.” I gave Ken the clue “I broke my ulna in Yerevan.” And without missing a beat, he said, “I broke my arm in Armenia.” But most puzzles are much more accessible.
What’s the process for writing the puzzles?
Many of the puzzles are written by our Chief Puzzle Officer Greg Pliska, who is one of the best puzzle-makers in the country. For the puzzles I write, a lot of them are inspired by something I see or live through or read about. A few weeks ago, someone asked Chat GPT to write instructions for removing a peanut-butter sandwich from a VCR in the style of King James Bible. They put the answer on social media. I thought it was hilarious. I thought to myself, what if we did a puzzle where we reverse that? So I give the guest a sentence, and the guest has to figure out “What was the Chat GPT prompt?” For instance, if the clue is “There’s this gnarly dude just tryin' to catch a wave back home to Ithaca after helpin' his bros win the Trojan War, but ends up hangin’ ten with this babe Calypso…” what was the Chat GPT prompt? (Answer at the bottom).
You have done so many fun and curious projects. (Explored your family tree, lived a year biblically, the Encyclopedia Britannica from A to Z.) What ties them all together?
I think the common thread is curiosity. I once interviewed the late, great Jeopardy host Alex Trebek, and he had a great quote. He said, “I’m curious about everything, even those things I have no interest in.” Which is kind of paradoxical, but I totally get it and relate.
What did you want to be when you were eight?
I was obsessed with maps when I was eight, so I wanted to be a cartographer. Which is odd, since I have a terrible sense of direction. I would have been a horrendous cartographer. The world dodged a bullet there.
What do you love about working in audio?
I love being able to give guests puzzles that would only work in audio form. We have one called an ear-bus, which is a rebus for your ears. I can’t print it, because it only works in audio! And when Ken Jennings was on the show, we did a game called “Name That Game Show Sound Effect.” We’d play a buzz or a ding or a beep from a game show, and he’d have to say “That’s the ‘wrong answer’ sound on Family Feud,” or whatever it was. He got most, but we did stump him with a glissando from the original 1970s Jeopardy!
Anything I didn’t ask you that you want to say?
Well, I’ve always loved puzzles, even as a kid. But I got back into them a few years ago. It happened because I was the answer to 1-Down in the New York Times crossword puzzle The clue was “Author A.J. ______.” And the answer was me: A.J. Jacobs.
So I was on cloud nine. As a word nerd, I thought this was the greatest day of my life. And then my brother-in-law sent me a very brother-in-law email. He did congratulate me on appearing in the puzzle, but he pointed out it was Saturday’s New York Times puzzle And as some of your readers may know, Saturday is the hardest crossword of the week. All the answers are totally obscure. So his point was: This is not a compliment. This is proof that no one knows who the hell you are. So then I was all bummed out. But the twist ending is: I told that story on a podcast, and one of the New York Times crossword makers was listening, and he did me a favor. He put me in a Tuesday puzzle. I don’t belong in a Tuesday puzzle, but I loved that he put me there.
Solutions:
A.J.’s puzzles:
Stuff You Should Knot
Armchair Export
Conan O’Brien Feeds a Friend
“There’s this gnarly dude just tryin' to catch a wave back home to Ithaca after helpin' his bros win the Trojan War, but ends up hangin’ ten with this babe Calypso…” what was the Chat GPT prompt?
“Hey, Chat GPT: Describe the plot of ‘The Odyssey in surfer dude lingo’”
🚨If u only have time for 1 thing🚨
The first episode of ODB: A Son Unique had my jaw on the floor. The podcast tells the story of Old Dirty Bastard (aka Russell Tyrone Jones aka Ason Unique…he would have been 55 on Wednesday, and died 19 years ago today at age 35,) the gigantic footprint he made in hip hop, his very high highs and very tragic lows. Host photographer Khalik Allah has a special tie to ODB—it’s a story about Wu Tang lifting a car off a little girl. It’s a great opener to a lively series about a complicated person who wasn’t taken seriously enough, but was extreme, a jokester, a man who loved babies and once jumped off a building to get a kiss, and lived and breathed the Five Percent Nation. This show is packed with great stories, there is no sagginess—I was skipping back to relisten. You get a lot of hip hop history and the story of Wu Tang, too. ODB is worthy of this thoughtful treatment, that has both devastating and joyful moments.
hell yeah
✨Read my piece in Lifehacker piece, 13 Podcasts for Your Holiday Road Trip.
✨Fay wrote an article for BlkPodNews about “The Mad Savvy Sizzle.” Read here.
✨The Podcast Marketing Trends 2023 report is now live!
✨Arielle Nissenblatt spotlighted Alaska Is the Center of the Universe in her newsletter and podcast.
💎BTW💎
🎙️I have been a fan of FeMANism for a long time. The first time I heard it, I thought the hosts were two idiotic men, but really it’s two genius women altering their voices to sound like idiotic men, leaning hard on every single stereotype in the toxic masculinity bible. (The guys are convinced they are feminists.) The latest episode has Sam reporting on his marriage counseling session with his wife, which sounds positive until you learn that he is both in the session and running it, and it made me realize that as hilarious and loveably terrible Sam and Jamie are, my favorite characters are the voiceless wives, who we only hear about from Sam and Jamie. (It’s sort of like Marta in Jack Handey’s storytelling…not sure who will enjoy that reference. But if you do, check out Jesse Thorn’s interview with Jack Handey on Bullseye.) I think a fun spinoff or series would be a podcast from Jamie and Sam’s wives, and this is all I’m asking Santa for this year. Listen here.
🎙️For Embedded’s new series All The Only Ones, Laine Kaplan-Levenson is following the lives of young transgender people by moving back and forth between the turn of the 20th century today, telling a story of gender transition for young people that is 100 years old. They’re doing something cool, reading letters and medical reports from some of the earliest trans youth documented in American history in parallel with a young trans guy (Zen, a Mexican-American New Orleans native) to compare their experiences. One of the people pulled from the past is Bernard, who lived in Alabama in the early 1900s. In Bernard’s letter with their doctor, we learn they were denied treatment before disappearing, so we can only wonder what happened. Along with history, we also get a very NOW look at how all this new legislative attention on trans issues really feels and some thinking about the trans experience in the future. Start here.
🎙️I have been a Lindy West fan for awhile—her books, tv series, her newsletter Butt News. So I was excited to hear about the new podcast she’s hosting, Text Me Back, with her friend Meagan Hatcher-Mays. I interviewed them together on Zoom (interview to come) and was overjoyed to get to meet them both. Lindy is Lindy—silly, smart, a total blast. Meagan shares these qualities. She can swing from talking about the Supreme Court to erupting in giggles about something stupid. She also gives off these mischievous vibes, like she’s up for fun even if it gets her into a little bit of trouble. I really like her. The two met in high school, where they were voted Most Likely To Make You Laugh. The podcast is the stuff they text about, the first episode covers both Chuck Grassley’s most chaotic history channel tweets and The Failing New York Times’ reporting on child revenants. Listen here.
🎙️Greenhouse is an audio drama that throws you right into an exchange between a woman, Rose, whose father just died, and the florist, Abigail, that he demanded in his will that she communicate with via letters. Through the 20 letters, we hear how their relationship begins and flourishes and…I don’t want to spoil the fun. Each exchange is a hint into what’s happening between these two outside the letters. (Each episode description is a tiny puzzle, too.) So much emotion is packed into each episode, and the back-and-forth allows the characters to develop in a way that makes it all feel so real—it’s like these letters could have been written one hundred years ago or yesterday. There is a twist that you’re untwisting the whole way through, and Rose’s father seems to be a presence in the pieces, even though he’s dead. Listen here.
🎙️In episode one of Love Bombed, we are introduced to Coleen, a divorced woman who decides to go on a date. We are hopeful for her when she meets a guy named James Scott, but not really, I guess. This show is called Love Bombed, afterall, and most podcast series are not about love gone right. James is a liar and the yarn he spins (omitting his other family while having a child with Coleen) are wild, as is his complicated process for keeping his lies together. Coleen is thrown into a self-spiral, and host Vicky Pattison leads us on an investigation about a fake person and his motives to trick Coleen. But what are the motives??! It’s truly baffling (I have been scratching me head! Oh now I’m starting to sound like Vicky)—a scam story where the scammer sees no financial gains (in fact, loses money,) his motive is seemingly to fuck with people. The lengths he goes to! You have to admire him for his creativity. Maybe scammers just need hobbies. Listen here.
🎙️I am a regular (multiple day) listener to The Journal from Wall Street Journal, especially in the past few weeks I’ve been gobbling up their daily coverage of Sam Bankman-Fried. In the evenings, I never miss their business digests which are informative and full of great storytelling. (Often about some business going under.) I want to point out one episode that was actually a kick in the stomach—Our Refinery Is On Fire: Two Brothers and a Deadly Explosion. Reporter Jenny Strasburg, who also wrote an accompanying piece, takes us to Oregon, Ohio, where brothers Ben and Max were killed on the same day in an explosion at an oil refinery co-owned and operated by BP. Jenny weaves in the voices from a worker who was there and Ben and Max’s wives Darah and Kaddie to hear the devastating way they found the news (one of the brothers demanded photos be taken of him so there was evidence how badly he was burned) and how they are trying so hard to pick up the pieces. For one woman, that includes keeping her husband’s pizza / ice cream shop running, something she never saw herself doing. One of the women had just learned she was pregnant. These men knew their lives were in danger, they wanted out. The images in this episode will stick with me for a long time, as will the painful conversations with Darah and Kaddie. This is an astonishing piece of audio journalism. Listen here.
🎙️Grace Campbell is embarking on a dating adventure, going on 28 dates in two months, only picking people who are the total opposite of her type. On her podcast 28 Dates Later, she’s letting us take backseat for the ride, letting us listen in on not just the dates, but her unpacking of them with her friends. Episodes feel like that brunch session that the Sex and the City characters were always having on Sunday morning to report on their Saturday night dates. Each dater is totally different, so unlike the real dating world, these aren’t boring. (Imagine if you had 28 dates curated for you, with completely different people.) Grace is really funny, as are her friends. So far we’ve been on a date with a sugar daddy, a therapist, and a guy with a girlfriend. Three down, twenty-five to go, if we make it out of this thing alive. Listen here.
🎙️I have comfortably been blowing through Ask Men Anything, where Emma Willmann asks men stuff that usually confounds women. Emma is a great, funny, and open host. The conversations are 100% engaging, I never find myself distracted. I am married to a man, I can ask him things whatever I want. What I like about this show is that Emma brings up stuff I don’t even think to ask. Like why do guys cup their balls while they watch TV? The guests come prepared to be honest, and they are, about how they approach dating, what they spend their time thinking about, what they’re communicating when they’re trying to communicate. Emma’s hostiness allows them to open up. Listen here.
🎙️Some of the best stories in music are the ones about overlooked artists and under-represented voices, and you’ll find them on Have You Heard This One?, which lets different journalists take the mic for deep dives into the heart of music and fandom. On Who The Heck Is Ursula Bogner?, Rose Bacci shares the strange story surrounding an early electronic musician who might never existed. Ursula’s music was revolutionary, but why did it go unheard for so long? And even more mysteriously, why was it ever revealed? It’s either the story of a woman finally getting her due respect, or a complete hoax. This episode is a history in EDM, a mystery, and a cool experiment that uses AI to give the music critics voice. Listen here.
🎙️TED Radio Hour just finished up Body Electric, a six-part series hosted by Manoush Zomorodi about how technology is messing up our relationships with our bodies. It starts with a lot of fascinating facts about the way humans have incorporated movement into their lives for hundreds of thousands of years, and explains that thanks to our computers and smart phones, we don’t seem to be moving enough. That’s bad for all sorts of thing about or health—stress, blood pressure, glucose levels, plus it’s just more draining than you’d think. The series comes with a challenge: can we start taking five minute breaks every 30 minutes for movement or a walk? Thousands of people accepted the challenge and the results were unbelievable. One woman reported that her doctor told her she might be able to go off her diabetes medication. People felt more energized and productive—despite the fact that they were taking themselves away from work (quite frequently,) their work did not suffer. Quite the opposite. This was a great investigation into something wrong with our work culture, and offers a solution that’s free, straight-forward, and simple. But how doable is it? After hearing all the stories, it’s really tempting to want to try to find out. Start here.
🎙️I love you!
📦 From the Archives 📦
[From June 1, 2020] I always roll my eyes when someone says their podcast is not a podcast. Get off your high horse! It’s a podcast, it’s fine. The word podcast can mean so many things, what you are doing is probably not as elevated as you think. But if I were to categorize anything as a non-podcast it’d be Constellations,
From the Desk of Tink
Today we’re talking to Tink client Lauren Crossland-Marr of A CRISPR Bite.
Describe the show in ten words or less: A deep-dive into CRISPR and how it’s used in food.
Who is it for?: The podcast is for anyone who eats food!
Joking aside, the podcast will be of interest to anyone who is consuming food today because we explore the use of the gene editing technology CRISPR in food. Many consumers don’t know how extensively CRISPR is being and will be used to modify foods.
Which episode to start with? To make sure listeners understand the technology and what’s at stake, we highly recommend everyone start with the first episode, “The First Bite.”
If I could force one person in the world to listen to my podcast it'd be…Norman Borlaug, who is a major character in the stories we report on throughout the podcast. Borlaug died in 2009, but he was critical to creating the modern farming system we have today. He won the Nobel Peace prize for his work combating world hunger; however, critics say may have made hunger worse because he advocated for farmers to grow only one crop, leaving them vulnerable to environmental stresses. Whichever side you land on with his legacy, I’m sure he’d have an interesting perspective to share!
What does your family think you do? This is a great question! I think my family doesn’t know quite what I do probably because I’m still learning how to explain it. They know I’m a food anthropologist, but they aren’t sure what that entails. I think they think I read for a living, and honestly, they aren’t far off! I spend most of my time preparing for courses, which means I have to stay current on the latest research in food studies. Staying “current” just means reading everything I can.