💌Podcast The Newsletter💌

Bonjour.

I was walking around Taipei last week, and I ate, smelled, and saw amazing things, learned about a new place, connected with my husband's family, and spent so much time with Justin out of our element, and it was wonderful. But my podcast listening schedule suffered! I did have two 16.5 hour flights to listen to my shows and read a few books. (IN THE DREAM HOUSE, SUCH A FUN AGE, SWIMMING STUDIES...I totally recommend them all.)

I was talking to my friend Nuwan, who had a long drive from NYC to Florida with his wife. His wife isn't podcast-addicted yet, and hadn't listened to lots of big shows like Serial and Dr. Death, so that is what Nuwan and his wife did on the very long drive. I love how travel can be made so much more pleasant with podcasts. Particularly in the case of Nuwan, who got to relisten to shows he loves, experiencing them for the first time with his wife. ("When else," he asked me, "are you seated next to someone with nothing to do for 30 hours?" Listening to a show alone is very different than listening with your partner.

Much has been written about how people are turning to podcasts in lieu of music or audiobooks. Those forms of storytelling will never go away. But now that people can listen to podcasts on their long drives or flights, the world is a different place. I was looking forward to my long flight–totally uninterrupted to enter the world of shows I was really excited about to listen to. And I love listening to shows with Justin, even ones I've listened to before. It's a totally different experience.

I hope you had a happy holiday and that perhaps on a long journey you were able to tune into a podcast or two, alone or with someone you love. This MUST be what the Catholics are talking about when they talk about grace—beautiful moments we don't necessarily deserve, but that we can take and enjoy and hopefully move on to be better, more interesting and loving people.

xoxo lp
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👋q & a & q & a & q & a👋

Dr. Gameshow's Jo Firestone

Follow Dr. Gameshow on Twitter here. Follow Manolo here.

Hi, Jo! Kindly introduce yourself.
My name is Jo, I'm a comedian based in Brooklyn, and I'm one of the hosts of Dr. Gameshow, a podcast where we play listener-submitted games with in-studio comedian guests and callers from all over.

What excites you about podcasting? Why did you get into it?
I like podcasts because anyone can listen to them. You don't know if what you're saying will reach 45 people or 60,000 people and that's kinda fun to keep in mind. Also, people usually listen while they're doing something not so fun, like commuting or doing errands, so it's a way of connecting with people and making them laugh as they go about their daily business. Plus, there are so many to choose from, there's bound to be one out there that's perfect for you.

How did you meet Manolo? Why is he the perfect co-host for this show?
Manolo Moreno and I met at a strange little improv show, and I was immediately amazed by him. He has this unique sensibility and delivery, and right away I knew I wanted to work with him on something. I had just started hosting Dr. Gameshow on WFMU by myself, and I knew the show was lacking something -- it wasn't quite what I envisioned, and then I met Manolo and I knew that he was the missing piece of the puzzle. We have very different energies, and after all these years, I still never see his jokes coming, he's always surprising me. I love his sense of humor. Three years into the show he actually told me he doesn't even like games. I laughed and laughed.

Did you originally think the show would be good for kids?
Originally, we just made the show per FCC regulations, since it was initially broadcast over the radio and archived as a podcast. But since there was no cursing or lewdness, and we play a lot of silly games, I think it just winded up being a great show for kids. Pretty soon, a few kids started calling in to play along, and that just sorta tumbleweeded into what we do today, where we have a bunch of regular kid callers and listeners.

Have you been criticized for your voice or anything silly like that?
Many people say my voice sounds like I'm constantly on the verge of a nervous breakdown. And many people in my family sound just like me. You can imagine what the holidays must sound like.

💎BTW💎

🎙️In an earlier issue, I miscredited who told me about The Secret Room. It was my friend Paul Kondo of the Podcast Gumbo newsletter, who has turned me onto so many great shows. Thank you, Paul!

🎙️Paul also recently announced that he's starting his own podcast! In these sub-5 minute weekly episodes, Paul's podcast friends challenge him to find a podcast episode to recommend based on what weird National Day it is. The first episode launched today! (And so...Happy National Fruitcake Toss Day!)

🎙️Ohmygod it's January, which means that our media will be working extra hard to make us feel shitty about our bodies. If you're interested in bucking the trend of early January and avoiding dieting (hell yes), listen to the first episode of Your Body, Your Brand, and then become hooked with the entire show and continue to listen to the rest of the episodes. Kaila Tova quit her graduate program at Columbia University to become a personal trainer, while she had anorexia, and tried to build a business as a health and body image coach. She noticed that this body coaching business is booming, women are leaving their 9-5s and looking to monetize their bodies. So what's going on? Why are we so bought into the idea that our bodies are more lucrative than our minds? And why do other people keep reinforcing it with their social and financial capital? The first episode contains a compelling argument that dieting is an act of violence. But this show is about much more than that. It's about women's pain and health, social media, feminism, and women at work. You'll love it if you enjoyed The Dream.

🎙️Want another reason to buck New Year's Resolutions that involve dieting or looks? Code Switch's Beautiful Lies talks about the beauty industry, and how beauty ideals reinforce society's ideas of who matters and why. They talk about how you can decolonize your beauty routine, and something that I had never heard of, achieving "slim thick," a beauty ideal lionized in the latino community. (It adds a whole new layer to trying to appear slim.) The episode drives home how ridiculous these beauty trends are, and how one day we will look back and feel that we were all crazy for trying to achieve them. As Shereen says, "maybe instead of focusing on your body, you should get your mind right."

🎙️Awesome Etiquette (an etiquette show hosted by the great-great-grandchildren of Emily Post, Lizzie Post and Daniel Post Senning) was one of the first podcasts I listened to obsessively many years ago, but I have since fallen behind on episodes. Over the holiday, I started going through the backlist and was reminded why I am addicted to this show. The etiquette advice is extremely old fashioned (this if a family business, after all.) Lizzie and Dan are channeling their great-great-grandmother while giving advice to modern problems. The listeners seem to be older people, wealthy people, with issues that I previously didn't even know WERE issues. But I guess you could argue that life is just a bunch of these weird, human moments thrown together. (Many of the questions address pizza etiquette–how do you properly order a pizza with friends? How do you fairly choose the toppings? Who pays? When should you order the pizza? I also love the classic questions, "I am visiting my new in-laws, who don't drink and hate animals and want me to be Jewish...what should I bring them?") The answer seekers obsess over often ridiculous things ("Can you believe my coworker took 3/4 of a donut and not 1/2?"), and often the advice involves jumping through outrageous hoops all in the name of seeming polite. My blood boils sometimes, hearing what annoys these people and then hearing them seek justice with politeness. This show is the equivalent of bad reality TV–so weird and so...who are these people? That I can't stop listening, and I can't stop talking about Lizzie and Dan's advice with friends and family. Do yourself a favor and listen to one, and see if you're not hooked immediately.

🎙️The Whisperforge's Remarkable Providences was one of my favorite shows of last year. (I wrote about it for The Bello 100.) So I was excited to dive into another show under their umbrella, Caravan, a paranormal adventure/love story that also has a classic wild west feel. When a queer man falls into a canyon while camping with his best friend, he encounters a world of demons, cowboys, banshees, supernatural bounty hunters, and other weird creatures, on his mission to escape. I'm impressed for so many reasons—the production is on a level we don't often get to experience, the story is completely original, and it's funny as hell. But really I got so excited about The Whisperforge. The Whisperforge is obviously capable of producing fantastic, diverse content. I can't wait to listen to what else they've got.

🎙️I am addicted to Gay Future, a sci-fi comedy where the year is 2062, and everyone is gay. A totalitarian government rules over what's left of North America to spread its insidious gay agenda. Humanity's only hope for a rebellion rests on the shoulders of a precocious teenage boy who harbors a dark secret: He's straight. The writing is quick-witted and truly hysterical. I listened to a bit of BLACK FUTURE, a show that imagines what the world would be like if white people started turning black randomly. That show didn't sit right with me, and I didn't know why until I listened to Gay Future, which is doing a similar thing. Gay Future works because it isn't taking itself seriously, but while you're laughing you're actually thinking about how we treat LGBTQ people and how LGBTQ people often have to bend over backwards in order to fit into a world that is mostly not gay-presenting. Gay Future is outrageous and smart.

🎙️I listened to the entire 6-episode series Fake Heiress from the BBC, which tells the insane story of Anna Delvey, who conned New York high society into believing that she was a multi-millionaire heiress. I love a good con story, and a good New York City story, and this story hits all the good points, and even goes international. What Anna Delvey did is unbelievable, the whole time listening, you are thinking "how did she do it?" The show explores how. It's written by a journalist and screenwriter, and it really does feel like a movie for your ears. Voice actors read transcripts, emails, and text messages, which brings the story to life. There is also a lot of creative postulating as to what Anna was thinking, and because the research is so solid, I think we have a good idea of what she was thinking. It's a wild story no matter what, but it's so well done that I'm already guessing it's one of my favorites I've listened to in 2020 (although it came out in 2019.)

🎙️Often when you've been looking forward to something for so long, it can be a letdown, so I was equally nervous and excited to press play on Jamie Loftus's 4-episode project, My Year in Mensa. It exceeded my very high expectations. My Year in Mensa chronicles Jamie's terrifying adventure taking the Mensa test as a joke and passing. She wrote about how exactly a dumb slut such as herself could pass and get in, which led to a death threat and being blacklisted by a secret Mensa Facebook group. Jamie was then invited to the Mensa Annual Gathering in Phoneix, and she actually went, all in the name of exploring the people of Mensa. She's obviously poking fun at Mensa (she sets to prove that the people in the group are not necessarily geniuses, but only people who are able to pass an arbitrary test that allows them to feel superior to everyone in the world.) I expected the show to break the rules of traditional podcasts, and I expected it to be hilarious and smart, and it is those things. What surprised me was seeing a new side of Jamie. The show is so funny it's easy to overlook the fact that she actually puts herself in danger to do this, that what she does is scary and brave. And she actually tries to empathize with these people and understand who they really are. The people she meets are truly awful, toxic, warped, sexist, racist, and violent, and it would be tough for someone like Jamie, who is none of those things and a progressive, intelligent feminist, to totally identify with her Mensa compatriots. But she tries. She listens. When they invite her to lunch or beer crawls or drinking mead or hugs, she complies. She doesn't go into this project with a "burn it all down" mentality. After receiving a death threat and being trolled online for not taking Mensa seriously enough, she hopes to change the environment, to force Mensa to create rules and boundaries that provide members with safety. Basically, she wants them to stop threatening to kill each other. She does not succeed in this, but instead succeeds in creating an audio project that is surprising and emotional, and a sharp look at what a group like Mensa is capable of doing, and what would lead supposedly intelligent people into fostering an unhealthy, dangerous environment for their bizarre community. (And...why are a disproportionate amount of Mensa members clearly alt-right, sexist, racist and violent?) There are voice cameos from many of my favorite podcasters, like Jacquis Neal, Caitlin Durante, and Robert Evans. At one point, for a moment, when Robert came into voice one of the alt-right Mensa members I thought, "oh thank goodness Robert is here!"

🎙️Finding Fred was my favorite show to launch in 2019, the Beth episode was one of my favorite podcast episodes of all time. On I Like You As You Are, we hear listener stories of people who have experienced a Helper in real life, and I could listen to it over and over again. This episode is a tear-jerker, and also powerful enough to encourage us to be better people. I don't know too many shows capable of this.

🎙️If you listened to Broken Harts, a show from Glamour editor Justine Harmon about two moms who (spoiler alert) murder-suicided themselves and their six adopted children, you'll be excited to hear Justine on What I Wore When. (You'll enjoy the What I Wore When episode even if you didn't listen to Broken Harts.) On it, Justine talks about what she decided to wear to her friend's funeral. It's emotional and more interesting than other What I Wore episodes that talk to celebs about what they wore to auditions or big events. I am obsessed with the idea of WIWW and I hope to see more episodes covering people other than huge celebrities and more regular topics like this.

🎙️I'm not super into true crime, but Pretend is so wonderful and weird and well-done. Each episode is an investigation into people trying to be someone else, so it's more about weird psycho con artists, and less about cold-blooded murderers. It lacks the things that I do not like about many true crime shows—it's well-researched and it's not focused on murder and gore. It feels like a study of human beings–what strange, fucked-up things are they capable of thinking up and executing? How are people able to get away with what often feels like simple scams that often have devastating results? I recently listened to a 4-part mini-series called The Prank Call (start here), about a prank caller pretending to be a police officer who instructed fast food managers to strip-search female employees—forcing them to jog naked, do jumping jacks, and perform other humiliating acts. (He made more than 70 of these calls in the United States over a 12-year period.) The series does more than detail a horrifying tale of a fucked up scam artist. It asks us to wonder what makes us obey.

🎙️My friends Han and Matt had a long-running show, Han and Matt Know It All. Han and Matt rounded up advice columns, and then offered their own advice. Their show always made me feel that no problem was insurmountable, that no matter what you were struggling with, there were always people there to listen and help. (On Finding Fred, we learn that Fred advised us to look for The Helpers. Han and Matt are Helpers.) The show was so well done, and Han and Matt poured so much of themselves into it. They also created a large community of listeners (a robust Facebook fan group) that allowed people to connect with each other. The show went on hiatus in the summer, but this week they released their show's finale episode. They say they knew they had to stop doing the show, it was taking over their lives, but they were scared to announce it's ending. (I can empathize with this. Eric and I still say our show PodcastPodcast is on hiatus, but I'm not sure we are brave enough to admit it's actually over. Side note: Eric and I were actually invited to guest host an episode of Han and Matt Know It All. Listen here!) I advise you to listen to the finale, and then dig back into old episodes. Han and Matt have great, loving advice, and their show will be missed by so many.

🎙️If you've listened to the entire archive of You're Wrong About twice, as I have, you'll be excited to hear about I'm Horrified!, an "alarmist podcast for troubled times." Sam Buntich and Allie Raynor tackle a variety of terrifying topics across time and space, like Civil War amputations and Olympics Host Cities. Kind of like You're Wrong About, the show shines light onto disturbing things, debunking myths and correcting the assumptions we have about them. (The Olympics host cities episode was validating. I am not a fan of the Olympics, and listening I learned how destructive they are for cities and communities.)

🎙️The Waves released one of my favorite episodes they do of the year, the annual Is It Sexist? episode. Listeners call in with their "is it sexist if..." questions, and the team weighs in with their intelligence and humor. They cover: Is it sexist that the social media management of a family rests on the woman in a relationship, if the man doesn't want to be on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram? Is it sexist that men take longer to go poop than women? Is it sexist for a woman who uses a shared bathroom in a workplace with all men to want the men to put the toilet seat down? Is it sexist for a man in a gay couple to joke about his husband ruling the home when it comes to domesticity? ("He wears the pants in this family.") Is it sexist that men are continuing to run for president, when it's time for our nation to have a woman in the White House? Is it sexist to call your young daughter who loves girly things a "girly girl?" And is it sexist that men working in a nonprofit are afraid to use the words "tampons" and "underwear" and "unmentionables" in a situation where they have to provide these items to clients? I don't think telling you about these questions is a spoiler, I hope that telling you about them will entice you to listen to the entire episode.

🎙️I love you! (As you are.)