💌Podcast The Newsletter💌
Bonjour.
When I was in fifth grade I was in some sort of small advanced reading group with the school library, run by the librarian, let's call her Ms. Picard because that is what her name was. She devised a project for the students that involved everyone at home—for one week the whole family would have to abstain from watching TV. She wanted to encourage us to listen and experience storytelling with our ears. We'd then all write about our experiences being TV-less in a notebook.
I remember a bunch of moms coming in to protest the assignment. For some reason, I was the only kid there, with a bunch of moms. And all of the moms were complaining, what seemed, on behalf of their husbands. The dads did NOT agree with Ms. Picard that baseball games are actually MORE enjoyable to listen to on the radio, because you can picture the ball flying through the air yourself! And have a more vivid image of the game in your mind! (God bless this woman librarian-splaining sports to midwestern dads.)
She kept saying, "I just think that you will find new appreciation for listening and radio."
I do not remember this but my mom says that I spoke up and said, "I don't think that my dad thinks that."
If you stopped me right then and told me that in 25 years I wouldn't even know how to turn on my TV and would have a podcast newsletter, I would have put you in a noogie.
And my dad loves audio now, too. He would still probably beat Ms. Picard's ass if she tried to take away watching the Kansas City Chiefs on TV, but he now listens to People's Party, The Pat Down, Marc Maron, and How Neal Feel on a regular basis.
So Ms. Picard, if you are reading this, and I know you are, I am sorry. I was wrong and you were right. Moving forward, let's all listen to librarians when they tell us what to do, okay?
xoxo lp
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Ethnically Ambiguous's Shereen Lani Younes
Shereen Lani Younes is the co-host of Ethnically Ambiguous. Follow her on Twitter here, and follow Ethnically Ambiguous on Twitter here. (PS I got to meet her!)
Describe your show in a tweet-length description.
Ethnically Ambiguous is a podcast about being a person of color in America hosted by two friends, one Syrian and one Iranian.
What do you hope the show does for people?
I hope the show connects with people and reminds them they are not alone in this crazy world. We discuss topics that are tough to talk about including mental health, sexuality, body image, immigration, politics, representation (to name a few) and we try to do it in a conversational, digestible way so it’s accessible to everyone, while also attempting to normalize some of these stigmatized topics we cover. Another big part of our show is covering news, so hopefully through our show people can understand just how skewed Western media outlets are and how they have helped dominate the narrative about Middle-Easterners and Muslims. I’d like the show to encourage people to seek out better sources for news (like the great Al-Jazeera) and not take every headline at face value without understanding how biased the West really is. BUT back to my original point, I ultimately hope our listeners feel less alone and more kind to those who are different.
How has the show changed for you over time?
Personally, I’ve learned to open up more about my personal struggles. When we first started the show, talking about certain things really made me nervous as a queer Middle-Eastern woman and a child of immigrant parents (topics like depression, suicide, eating disorders, sexuality, queer identity, my relationship with my body, etc). But the show slowly became a catharsis for me and I realized people really appreciated and connected with our candor on the show, and it emphasized how necessary it is to normalize these topics. The podcast has taught me a lot about myself, and I’m learning my voice is important. It’s a very empowering feeling.
Women are always criticized for their voices. What is your relationship with your voice?
Growing up I always despised my voice. I’ve dealt with a lot of self-hatred and my voice was no exception. It always sounded so strange when I heard it play back on a video and I got teased a lot as a kid (I also had a slight accent growing up, so that didn’t help). I remember someone in college affectionately telling me I sound like a muppet, which I now think is hilarious and a little true. But the fact that I speak on podcast twice a week is sometimes baffling to me. I still have a very hard time listening back to my voice when we need to edit something for the show (genuine self-love and self-acceptance is something I continue to work on) but I’ve grown to really appreciate my voice for its uniqueness. Yes, it might sound weird to some people or even to me at times, but it’s mine. Creating the podcast forced me to be okay with putting my voice out there, literally and figuratively. Especially as women, who are criticized for anything and everything on a daily basis since birth, I don’t want to let the bullies win by staying quiet. So I’m learning to love my weird voice and its occasional accent, stutter, and mumble included. Being weird is a gift! Embrace the weird.
I heard you once say that a woman of color speaking on a podcast is doing a radical thing. I love that! Can you talk about it more?
It feels like being a woman of color in a public field is an act of defiance, whether she chooses it or not. Existing in a world that continually rejects and fights against you is already a daily battle. So a woman of color is inherently a warrior in my eyes, because she goes into a battlefield every time she walks outside. Speaking on a podcast and owning your voice is so powerful because it’s so needed; personally, having the platform of this podcast is an immense privilege I never want to take for granted, especially as a queer Syrian woman. I want to be the representation I so desperately needed for my younger self and to do that I need to keep existing in this space and fighting for what I believe is right. As a director, filmmaker, artist, writer, podcaster – all these fields of expression and so many more have been historically dominated by white men. So to exist and create work as a woman of color is a radical thing. The most beautiful act of defiance.
💎BTW:💎
🎙️I would like you to picture this: I am walking down the street, New York City, very early morning, listening to Finding Fred, the Beth episode. And I actually had to stop walking to cry. I broke down. Tears were drying on my cheeks. I continued to listen and cried again. Part of me felt like I had just been to church, but I go to church somewhat regularly and realize that comparison doesn't give it much justice. I felt like I had just been to church...on a lot of drugs. I texted my family and asked them to listen, because I wanted to know if this was truly moving content, or if I am breaking down from stress or going through some shit. I called my parents later, and my dad said he cried, too. (Sorry to expose you, dad. I am also sorry mom called you a pussy for crying. If this episode is a litmus test for a cold heart, I think I know where we stand vs. mom, who I'm pretty sure is not reading this newsletter, but I know that you are.) Beth was a little girl with a neurological disease who was calmed by watching Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. Her seizures literally stopped when she was watching the show. And when Fred found out that she was having a dangerous surgery, he reached out in a life-changing way. The interview with Beth's mother is heart-breaking. I felt physical pain, listening. I think Mister Roger saved her life. (I'm crying again, right now.) To hear about how Fred described the shows as "television visits" not "television shows," and encouraged people to take a moment to think of the people who have made a difference in their lives, shook me to my core, to quote Miles Gray. This show is so good, but this episode did something to me.
🎙️Finding Fred is an iHeart show, and I love a lot of other iHeart shows. (The Daily Zeitgeist, The Bechdel Cast, Ethnically Ambiguous...) I have so much love for so many people at iHeart. Like so much love. I am married to one of them! So I feel so conflicted about the announcement of the nominees for the 2020 iHeartRadio Podcast Awards. I'm angry because so many of the shows nominated were iHeart shows. (Hmm.) But was also happy to see that The Bechdel Cast was being recognized. I love Caitlin Durante and Jamie Loftus. They deserve to be recognized! But there's this article in Podnews about how the nominees were selected. James Cridland, who was named by iHeart as someone who helped come up with the nominees, writes "iHeartMedia claims that the company '[has] a panel that makes these decisions, and it’s not just iHeart people' …and they then supplied a list of companies and organizations that participated, which included… (…) Adswizz, Slate, Wondery, Podnews, ESPN, IAB, Megaphone, Luminary (…). I had no input into the nomination decisions, and it is false for iHeart to claim that I did." Yikes. Read the piece to get the full story. I mean I'm glad to be awarding podcasters, but everyone has to know that these winners are "winners," even if they are truly deserving shows.
🎙️I am a sobbing mess thanks to Finding Fred, but also Scattered, comedian Chris Garcia's show about the passing of his immigrant father and the family's struggle to find a home for his father's ashes. Actually, it's about way more than that. The latest episode was so funny and heart-wrenching, I felt rather...well, fucked up. Hearing Chris's mother talk about his father show how much she loved his father, and how much his father loved her. After all of those years. I wanted to jump on a plane to Ohio just to hug my parents. I had a moment of thinking, "why do I live in New York? Why am I not with my mom and dad? Is this real life?"
🎙️Ana Marie Cox (With Friends Like These) is one of my favorite interviewers for authors. She always makes me want to buy the book. That's ironic because her latest interview with Amanda Mull (of The Atlantic's Material World column,) A Cure for Wellness, is all about capitalism (how do we have a meaningful life living in a world built around it?), why goop sux, and my favorite thing they talked about, "straight-bodied" people and normcore. It's a conversation that hit me so hard I don't think I'll ever get it out of my mind.
🎙️I finished up Ellie and the Wave over the weekend. Many scripted podcasts I'm aware of have a supernatural or horror slant, but this one feels like a sitcom for millennials, and I don't think there's a ton quite like it. "When a global computer virus begins deleting all digital records, 30-something Ellie (Natalie Morales, Parks & Rec) buys an old tape recorder and begins narrating an analog retrospective of her life before all of her photos, videos, and correspondence are wiped out forever." I flew through these episodes. They're genuinely funny. Ellie is self-sabotaging and sarcastic, and actually a bad person. This is a fun listen that tricks you into thinking about bigger questions like, what do we have if we don't have our memories? How important are the people in our lives? Do we want to keep them in our lives? How do we live in the moment and decide what's really important?
🎙️It was podcast and a movie night at my house. Justin and I listened to the Easy A episode of The Bechdel Cast and then watched the movie starring Emma Stone. I remembered this being a somewhat sex-positive film, poking fun at the double standards we set for teenage girls when it comes to hooking up. A closer look with Caitlin Durante, Jamie Loftus, and guest Isa Mazzei reveals that the film actually has a lot of confusing messaging about whether or not girls should feel shame for having sex. (According to the movie, they should.) I consider it irresponsible to watch a film without listening to the corresponding episode of The Bechdel Cast, if there is one. It's important to think critically about these sometimes fluffy films we watched in the 90s without really examining what they are doing to our brains. I hope The Bechdel Cast runs forever so it can cover every single movie on the planet. (And I know they get a lot of recommendations for movies to cover, but I just rewatched Troop Beverly Hills and really would love to hear Caitlin and Jamie cover it.) I think I have a new rule for podcast and a movie night. If you have seen the movie and remember it well, listen to the episode first, then watch the film. If the movie is new to you or you don't remember it, watch it then listen to the episode.
🎙️Hills I'd Die On is a comedy show, where host Taylor Cox bring on guests to die on hill over a stupid thing (like Thanksgiving is stupid, Novels are bad...the Surprise parties are the meanest episode had me raging about surprise parties.) I can't stop listening to these episodes, even when I am horrified by the opinion being expressed. Sometimes I have to wonder how much the guest truly is speaking with conviction, or just trying to be controversial. But hills to die on are always fun to listen to. This is a good idea for a show. At the end of each episode, Taylor reads a eulogy for the guest, who has, let's say, passed away in the name of a hot hot take they are clinging to. I was recently invited to a party where all of the guests are challenged to come with a powerpoint presentation on a hill to die on. I am thinking of doing mine on the belief that you should never give or throw your clothes away, ever. I actually really want to argue that you shouldn't be able to call yourself an animal lover unless you are a vegetarian, but I don't want to get booed off the stage.
🎙️The Neon Moss episode of Dolly Parton's America was my favorite so far. Host Jad Abumrad gets personal, wondering how his father, who grew up in Lebanon, could have connected so easily with someone like Dolly Parton. (Jad's dad is a doctor and treated Dolly after she was in a car crash.) The episode explores the idea of Dolly's song as "immigrant songs," and Jad finds similarities between Jad's dad's upbringing and Dolly's, and ties between the kind of music from Lebanon and the music of Appalachia. It all supports the show's quest to discover what Dolly Parton's America really is.
🎙️This season of Slow Burn is so good! I love hearing about these hip hop legends, their stories and voices. To me, they all seem like Greek gods, and these stories feel like they are timeless or took place hundreds of years ago. These tales have a mythological feel. But the storytelling in Slow Burn puts the Tupac / Biggie story in context. It's storytelling I have been wanting for a long time.
🎙️Flash Forward is a fun podcast that explores possible and not so possible futures. In each episode, host Rose Eveleth takes on a new future scenario (the existence of artificial wombs, what would happen if space pirates dragged a second moon to Earth.) What makes the show different is the combination of audio drama and reporting. It's beautiful and very thinkey. Each episode feels aligned with the show's mission, yet also very different, because each one offers such new and different things to learn! Episodes I loved: Can you sue an algorithm?, Ghostbot, The Ocean Farm.
🎙️I was a tad nervous to hear that Whitney Cummings has a podcast, Good For You. Is this just another comedian with no interest in the podcast space, trying to make it in a new industry simply because she can? Maybe. But her first guest was Dan Levy, and she plays a fun game with him at the end, it's a game you can steal and play with friends.
🎙️Esther Perel of Where Should We Begin? has launched How's Work?, where she takes her relationship advice to people in the workplace. In the first episode, she counsels two men who were pilots together and started their own company together. It's interesting to see Esther flex her counseling muscles in this setting. I know a lot of people who love Where Should We Begin? that will be excited for How's Work?
🎙️I told my husband about the latest episode of Radio Rental five minutes ago (not the first segment, the second, "Laura of the Woods") and he is still shaking and saying, "ewwww...what? God!" It is that terrifying. These stories are real. And "Laura of the Woods" is about a man who had a childhood friend who he discovers is not the person he thought she was.
🎙️The trailer for Miles Gray (of The Daily Zeitgeist) and Sofiya Alexandra's new show The 420 Day Fiancé is finally here! It's half recap show, half game show featuring an "elevated" discussion of the hit show 90 Day Fiancé.
🎙️I haven't listened to There Goes The Neighborhood in awhile (I totally forgot about it somehow!) but recently enjoyed their series on something I had never heard of before, "climate gentrification," when the response to climate change impacts real estate and disparities in communities. The series, which focuses on people in Miami, where this is a huge problem, feels both informative and personal. It's a side of climate change you may not have considered, and it's also a collection of wonderful storytelling.
🎙️Tejal Patel and Jesal Parikh bonded during their training to become yoga instructors and realized they both struggled with how American yoga differs from yoga in India and the cultural appropriation, racism, exploitation and general belittling that they experienced training. What started out as hushed conversations between friends turned into a podcast, Yoga Is Dead, which jumpstarts critical conversations, elevates oppressed voices and perspectives and exposes the problems felt by anyone who isn’t in the “in” crowd of the yoga industry. It truly pulls back the curtain on yoga with a combination of historical facts and personal stories. YOGA NEEDS THIS PODCAST. WE NEED MORE PODCASTS LIKE THIS. Listen to White Women Killed Yoga and Vegans Killed Yoga. Hoping they do in fact do an Instagram Killed Yoga episode soon.
🎙️ Culture Kings announced they are leaving iHeartRadio, are taking a break, and (I think) moving to another network. (Listen to their final episode on iHeart here.) I'm excited. I think working under another network will give Edgar and Jacquis more freedom to be creative with the show.
🎙️I'm continuing my podcast swap/challenge with Paul Kondo! Erik Jones, writer of the Hurt Your Brain newsletter, has offered up Death, Sex & Money’s “I Killed Someone. Now I Have 3 Kids.” Read Paul's notes here and subscribe to Podcast Gumbo here. Here’s a snippet of my review (read the full thing here.): "Wow, thanks a lot, Erik :). This one was a roller coaster ride. Anna Sale interviews Lawrence Bartley, who in 1990, at age 17, killed Tremain Hall, a 15 year-old bystander, during a shoot-out in a movie theater. He's been in prison ever since. Anna interviews him about what it's like to have a wife and kids (he watched his son take his first steps in the prison visiting room.) Getting to hear personal stories of people in prison is an important tool in understanding the prison system. Without these stories we are so much in the dark. At one point, Anna asks Lawrence if he's ever been on the internet. He says no, but has "seen a black and white picture of it." That was a dumb little thing but made me start to worry about how Lawrence will adjust to the new world, once he is out, if he ever gets out. I'd be curious to hear if other people thought Lawrence's punishment fit his crime, or if someone who made such a grave mistake at 17 could be redeemed in another way. That's what Death, Sex and Money does to me. It makes me think about hard questions. (I'm thinking specifically about one of my favorite Death, Sex & Money episodes, Why I Steal.)"
🎙️The Death, Sex & Money episode reminded me of Wrongful Conviction, which I've just started listening to. Each episode interviews men and women who have spent decades in prison for crimes they did not commit, some of them had even been sentenced to death, and digs into the files of the lawyers who freed them. It's aggravating but important.
🎙️I started listening to Force of Law, an infuriating show I cannot stop listening to. "After police killed an unarmed black man in his grandparents' backyard, activists set out to change California law, hoping to make it easier to prosecute police who kill. That's sparked a heated debate in the state Capitol between families who have lost loved ones to police, and law enforcement officers who face split-second decisions while performing a dangerous job." It's a mix of reporting and interview, and is shining a light on the complexities of this argument, and how and why it's so difficult to make a change.
🎙️Beauty in the Grit is a new bi-weekly show from Ariel Britt with real stories from Britt's journey in recovery and the stories from others that have inspired her along the way. I enjoy listening to the variety of stories and the voices of the people telling them. And I cannot imagine how helpful this podcast must be to someone going through any kind of recovery. People struggling could feel much less alone. God bless podcasts.
🎙️ICYMI: Kate and I launched Lasso Audio, the first agency and management company for podcasters. Podcasters, click here to learn more and email hello@lassoaudio.com to tell us about your show.
🎙️I love you!
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