🎹 Sexist pianos📝 death threats 🔪 vibe snatchers 👩🎤 the life of a rental car 🚘 amnesia 🧠 Serial or Undisclosed? 🔍
🍭 👂 You're in for a treat! 🌈 🤸♀️
Bonjour!
Today is Monday, September 26. There are 9 days until I go on my next Disney Cruise. In case this email is too long, the episodes that had me writing frantic notes in my phone here here and here, if you like Missing Pages you’ll like this, the terrorists who never harmed anyone here.
xoxo lp
ps If you are pleased with Podcast The Newsletter, please spread the word.
👋q & a & q & a & q & a👋
Rico Gagliano
Rico Gagliano is the host of MUBI Podcast (former co-creator of The Dinner Party Download.) Follow him on Twitter here. Follow MUBI on Twitter here.
How did you become the host of MUBI Podcast?
Luck! Or, well, by working with enough cool people that something this lucky was even possible.
See if you can follow this twisty trail of connections: I produced Amy Nicholson’s great but short-lived movie podcast for Focus Features called “Zoom.” (This was pre-pandemic, when that title could evoke something other than video conferencing.) Our music composer was a Brit named Martin Austwick. Martin does music for lots of podcasts, including “90 Minutes or Less Film Fest” — hosted by a sweet gent named Sam Clements. Because Sam knew Martin, Sam listened to and became a fan of “Zoom.” So when he learned the streaming service MUBI was interested in starting a podcast (MUBI is headquartered in Sam’s hometown of London), he recommended they talk to me, a guy who produced movie pods. Turns out MUBI were hoping to find someone who could both produce and host… and I’ve basically been waiting my whole life for someone to ask me to produce and host my own movie show.
By the way, Martin now does the music for the MUBI Podcast, too — and not just because I owe him for the connection! My word his stuff is great.
What makes MUBI Podcast different from other movie podcasts?
There’re a lot of great chat podcasts about movies, but very few documentary-style shows. We’re telling stories about movie culture and bringing them to life, with deep research, multiple voices, archival sound, and the aforementioned kickass music. “You Must Remember This,” TCM’s “The Plot Thickens,” and the Ringer’s “Halloween Unmasked” are among the few shows that come to mind in a similar vein. But they all set the bar insanely high!
It’s also important to us to make the show not just for film nerds like me, but for anyone who likes a good tale. You don’t have to be familiar with the movies or theaters we focus on, ‘cause regardless, every episode is basically about interesting people trying to create something fantastic, against the odds. And then my dearest hope is that after you listen, you’re excited to check out these things for yourself.
Why the focus was movie theaters and not movies? I love it, just curious.
When we started planning season two late last year, we were like a year and a half into COVID lockdowns, and cinemas were closing all over the place, sometimes permanently. A lot of folks at MUBI (including me) have at some point worked in cinemas and have intensely fond feelings for them, and I’ll go out on a limb and wager moviegoing was a formative experience for almost everyone in the company, at some point in their lives. So talk turned pretty quickly to the idea of doing a season that would remind people of the awesomeness and importance of cinemas. That morphed into the idea of picking one theater per episode that contributed something amazing to the culture, and telling those stories.
Was there one episode of MUBI Podcast you were particularly excited about?
This season, the main thing I wanted to avoid was a kind of PBS “Look at this grand old cinema” vibe. Again, there had to be some cool story associated with each place, that would grab you even if you’re not a theater buff.
My favorite example is probably the episode about the Westgate theater outside Minneapolis, which arguably saved the movie HAROLD AND MAUDE from oblivion back in the early ‘70s. The movie was a flop when it first came out, but then this shaggy second-run neighborhood theater — which itself had actually struggled for decades — scored a huge hit with it, screened it for years, and that launched the movie’s rise as one of the biggest cult flicks of all time. It’s just a classic underdog story — you’re rooting for the movie, and the theater, and this endearing community of people who loved both. I think it’s the sweetest of the episodes.
By the way, once we started focusing on story instead of physical grandeur, a lot of movie palaces ended up falling out of contention as possible subjects of episodes. Almost all the theaters we cover in the season were as humble as the Westgate, and some were really small. Like, the first episode is about one of the most important cinemas ever, the Cinematheque Francaise in Paris, and its original incarnation had 38 seats! But what all these theaters had in common were founders who were passionate about movies, and who created places where other passionate crazy people would come and find each other.
How has the podcast space changed since you started Dinner Party Download?
I’ve often described it as something akin to what people must’ve experienced in the early days of Hollywood: One day it’s this relatively new thing that a few people are doing and everyone kind of knows each other, and then suddenly a couple years later it’s like, “Whoa, where’d all these other people come from? With all this money?!” I mean, today there’s a standalone podcasting industry with networks and production companies and a career path. None of that existed when we launched DPD; we were working for public radio and doing the podcast as just a percentage of our day jobs.
But the upside was we had the luxury of being paid to basically workshop DPD for years, while we were airing it. I mean, the early episodes are kind of embarrassing for me to listen to and were full of stuff that totally didn’t work. But Brendan and I were given the time (and a living wage) to tweak the show, get comfortable being hosts — something neither of us had done much of before — and build a substantial audience that actually enjoyed being along for the ride with us. I don’t think any major audio company (including our former bosses) would give newbies that much runway now; I’ve been on shows that were killed two months after they first aired. I get it — there’s way more money at stake, and way more competition. But I’d like to see a world where new shows and creators get more time to learn on the job.
Do people recognize your voice in public?
It’s happened very rarely. Once I was buying something at a store and the guy saw my name on my credit card and was like, “I thought I recognized your voice!” But one of the things I love about audio is it can bring just the right amount of celebrity. The very few folks who’d think of me as some kind of “star” probably couldn’t pick me out in a crowd — it’s not like I’ve ever been hassled by a fan!
What does podcasting need to be better about?
Editing.
🚨If u only have time for 1 thing🚨
Last weekend I relistened to all of Serial and it immediately took me back to the places I was when I listened to it the first time around, and for that I am grateful. I am also grateful because now I see all the flaws everyone has been pointing out millions of downloads later. Serial did something great, it got people listening to podcasts. And I loved it. But it was Rabia Chaudry who got Adnan Syed out of jail. The second I finished Serial I listened to the first season of Undisclosed for the first time (while simultaneously watching The Case Against Adnan Syed—you all, I was *immersed.*) Within ten minutes of Undisclosed several major things were revealed that should have been included in Serial. It filled in many of Serial’s gaps, pointed out its glaring and damaging errors, contained much more ethical reporting, and is the story told by lawyers, not storytellers in detective costumes. (Hear Rebecca Lavoie talk about true-crime gentrification and Serial’s journalistic malpractice on ICYMI.) I took notes in my phone that were in ALL CAPS with !!!!!!!!! and misspellings because I was typing so frantically. Undisclosed reveals shocking things that make this story much less mysterious. A non-mystery, actually. If you want to really understand what happened to Adnan and Hae Min Lee, listen to Undisclosed. If you want to understand how this tragedy fits into the history of podcasting, listen to both. And if you still can’t get enough, watch The Case Against Adnan Syed.
oh hey
✨Sign up for my Radio Bootcamp session scheduled for 10/3! We’re talking podcast marketing, you’ll learn tons and we’ll have a lot of fun.
✨Erik Jones and Paul Gumbo have kicked off The Podcast Riddle Challenge. You could win a Sonos Roam Speaker! Info here.
✨Arielle spotlighted Shoju Sundae in her newsletter and podcast and I was the guest-host on the episode before!
✨🏆 How winning an award can help your podcast🏅 [Podcast Marketing Magic]
✨Earlier in the year I promised to write you all postcards on my May Disney Cruise, but didn’t get to step on the ship. AS YOU KNOW I’m going back and inviting you to sign up here if you want a podcast from THIS cruise, which is Halloween themed, and yes I am forcing my family to dress up like the characters in Peter Pan. (I’m Tinker Bell.)
✨September 30th is International Podcast Day. Join Tink for a Podcast Break. We're inviting you to join us for a an hour away from your desk (or place of work) from 2-3pm ET on September 30th to all listen to a podcast together. Any podcast. Take a screenshot of what you’re listening, use #PodBreak22, and tag us on Twitter or Instagram—we’ll share! RSVP HERE.
💎BTW💎
🎙️Beginning in 2005, Joseph Mahmoud Dibee and Josephine Sunshine Overaker were on the FBI’s list of Most Wanted Domestic Terrorists (at one point they were #1) even though they never killed or harmed anyone. Their goal wasn’t death, but to disrupt ecological destruction, causing damage to the bottom line of companies wreaking havoc on the planet, because getting at their bank accounts might be the only way to get them to respond. Joseph and Josephine were part of an eco-terrorist cell (for people who think The Sierra Club is not going far enough) involved in two arson conspiracies targeting commercial and government-owned animal processing facilities in Oregon and California. They’ve been on the run for twelve years but things finally caught up with Joseph, who was arrested in Cuba in 2018. (Josephine’s location is still TBD.) Joseph could be sentenced to more than 30 years in prison. On Burn Wild, Leah Sottile and Georgia Catt (from The Missing Cryptoqueen) have unprecedented access to Joseph and are talking to other activists old and new (some are breaking their silence) to tell a story of eco terrorism, how far some people will go to save the planet, and why others consider their acts as heinous as flying plans into a government building. This is a crime show with a twist. Wrapping your brain around the ethics of these stories demands more mental gymnastics than most true crime, and the criminals are extremely complex people whose passion for the environment is hard to understand. Some of them seem so normal it’s almost boring—one works for a PR agency in Manhattan and was sipping a pumpkin coffee during his interview. (Is the movement becoming less fringey and more basic bitch? As a basic bitch myself, I say that with love.) It’s packed second-to-second with intense soundscape, music, and audio effects that had my heart pumping. Listen here.
🎙️Happy 10th season, Ear Hustle! That is 400 years in podcast time. Earlonne and Nigel, you two make it look good. This show is IMHO one of the best ideas, executed the best, and with a wonderful back story. When it started, Earlonne was a co-host in San Quentin. Today is he is free. So ten years of Ear Hustle and I think I probably have listened to every single episode at least once, been along for the entire ride. And each time I think, “that’s it. Ear Hustle has covered every single aspect of the topic of incarceration.” But last week we got an episode that seems so obvious now, about lying. It’s brilliantly done. At the center is Sam Brown, a man who believes there’s a difference between factual and actual (Nigel does protest the difference, but prison rules are different.) Sam lied for 24 years about shooting an acquaintance in the face and eventually came clean at a parole hearing. The fourth wall comes down and we hear Nigel and Earlonne reflect on a tough interview they had with Sam’s mother. We get to hear an actual parole hearing, which is something even Nigel hadn’t heard before. (After 400 years!) Lying is a language you need in prison—how to use it to your advantage, how to spot it, and how to make sure you’re not pulling it on yourself. But it’s also a language we all struggle with for the same reasons. At each episode drop of Ear Hustle, the line blurs between the people who have been incarcerated and the people who never have. Listen here.
🎙️So this woman named Sarah receives a letter in the mail from a woman with the exact same name who claims to have been best friends with her when they were young. The letter is full of happy stories, but Sarah had zero memory of the friend. Sounds scammy, right? On Heavyweight, Jonathan finds the other Sarah and connects them to stir up Sarah #1’s childhood memories, and discovers that childhood trauma had completely blocked some things, like Sarah #2, out of her brain. It’s an odd friendship story with missing pieces but what it’s lacking in the middle it makes up for in the end—Sarah #1 might not remember her friend but she is able to see how she was there for her in really tough times. It’s Heavyweight at its finest. Listen here the next time you’re in a bad mood, I think it will fix you right up.
🎙️I don’t know if I’ve changed, or the podcast has changed, or if the year 1986 was just exceptionally dramatic (I was two years old,) but I am glued to the current season of Slate’s One Year, which is telling stories from 1986. From Detroit’s No Crime Day to the Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster to Herschel the very hungry sea lion, the episodes are devastating in various ways, but they also activate that pop-culture obsessed part of our brains that crave truly compelling stories. They’re the right amount of political, which is not very much, but extremely human and telling of the year. The episode The Miracle of Cokeville tells about the story of a school hostage situation that took place in the Morman town of Cokeville, it’s a heart-racing story (all the children and teachers survived…miraculous) that in the past, had been mostly reported without one of the most important details—that many of the students and staff can remember seeing angels or ancestors that helped guide them to safety. One of the teachers (it’s amazing that One Year got interviews with so many people) admits that media didn’t want to mention anything paranormal about the day’s events. But ignoring that detail is ignoring an equally interesting part of the story—how imaginative children could invent ghost stories or how a religious community could look to their faith to make sense of a tragic event. Listen here.
🎙️You know I did cartwheels over the first season of Dear Young Rocker, a colorful audio diary of musician Chelsea Ursin writing letters to her younger self, advising her on all those awkward teen moments and explaining to us how music saved her. For season four, Chelsea is handing the baton over to Nadia Marie, who is the narrator of the new season. This season feels so true to Dear Young Rocker also totally different—Nadia is a little older and her tone and story is a bit darker. Nadia was 23 when she was hit by a car on her bike and got complete amnesia. She would have long periods of time where she would remember absolutely nothing (like that she had just eaten a salad) and she could not remember how to play her beloved harp. Nadia’s new album SEVEN just dropped, so this season is sort of the album’s liner notes, the story of how she got to forgetting everything to making music again. This podcast feels like a graphic novel, alive with vivid imagery and sound. And while Dear Young Rocker was perfect IMHO, in this season the stakes are a little higher. Start here.
🎙️On Visible Women, Caroline Criado Perez is illustrating the gender data gap by looking at everything from playgrounds to cars, pointing out the ways these things have been built for men and inhibit women from thriving in almost every way. Last week she pulled up a stool to the piano to talk about how the keys are too big for almost all women’s hands, which causes pain, delays progress, and makes certain sounds impossible. Pianos with bigger keys have been made and seem to be a big hit with women and men, too. (Lots of men’s hands are too small for general piano playing.) Caroline talked to someone who is trying to send these smaller pianos to art institutions and music schools but she keeps getting denied. This is a sexist problem that we’re not even at the acknowledgement phase of. Many pianists believe pianos are perfect and rooted so deeply in tradition that how dare anyone try to improve upon them. Love that forward thinking! This was a technical look at a physical object that is impacting the world we see, feel, and hear. Listen here.
🎙️Everything Is Alive returned with a funny interview with a rental car, Alzo, that, like all Everything Is Alive episodes, is more moving than I ever could have imagined. It takes your mind to surprising places—what does it feel like to be a rental car? The monotony, strangeness, and sadness is so human. There are so many meta things to grab onto that this episode felt special—Ian calls one of the hosts of Car Talk and things get meta and super funny when Ian asks Alzo what music he wishes drivers would listen to. (It’s not music.) Listen here.
🎙️The popularity of Missing Pages proved that people are interested in the intrigue behind publishing and media, something Killed is taking a look at from a different angle—stories that were killed for one reason or another. These stories were considered too dangerous, too fringe, too something to be published at one point. Killed is finding out why. (The Streisand effect is real.) The first episode looks at a piece about the allegations against Bryan Singer and the two writers who spent weeks laboring over their piece, only to be met with a stone-cold “nope” from Esquire, despite the fact that the journalism was ethical and the story was good. The story eventually found a home at The Atlantic, but it was not without a lot of juicy drama. Brought to you by Audiochuck (hmmm) but hosted by Justine Harman, who did a great job with Broken Harts. Couldn’t stop listening. Listen here.
🎙️My gateway episode into The Constant was a 5-part episode about a submarine that was recovered from the Chicago River in December 1915. (It’s like, literally a long story.) Mark Chrisler, the most animated, entertaining history teacher you’ve ever had, started out The Foolkiller series not quite sure where it would lead him, and it was a mystery all of us until the very last episode, where Mark thinks he’s cracked the case. That moment when we hear him discover was always one of my favorite moments in podcasting. I had been on this journey with him for hours and hours—I was excited, too! (BTW the show is amazing but I do not recommend you go in head-first with Fool Killer, maybe dip in with this.) Imagine my shock to learn that Mark was wrong, which is actually what Mark’s podcast is about. (The tagline is “A History of Getting Things Wrong.” Was this a publicity stunt?) On a new episode Mark recaps the story in case you don’t have six. hours to spare, and promises to bring us his new findings in a few weeks. Catch up here and stay tuned!
🎙️We have been threatening each other for centuries—I’m sure if you looked closely enough you’d find bullying language in cave drawings. Subtitle is looking at the ways we’ve written threatening letters to give us context and understanding about why we send threatening notes, and point out the ways we threaten people has changed. Looking at the ways we used to communicate to tell a story about ourselves is why I love reading Paul’s letters in the bible. Patrick Cox and Kavita Pillay outline the history and science to threats, illustrating how “persistent complainers” with a grievance could be funneled into extremists with “last resort statements.” Listen here.
🎙️If you pay attention to music you may have a feeling that there’s an increase in music that sounds related, and Switched on Pop did what I consider a pretty intense investigation to find out if it’s true. They went through every single song on Billboard’s year end hot 100 and counted how many songs contained an interpolation of another song based on notes from genius.com. Between 2010-2015, about 10% of the songs had one, but from 2016-2020 the numbered doubled. There’s not just one answer—we are living in an age of nostalgia, streaming in 2017 changed everything…) but Nate and Charlie offer insight into the way this snatching is deliberate, and why musicians might go out of their way to credit another artist to protect themself from a lawsuit. They walk us through songs that have been snatched, pointing out things our brains might have missed before, telling an invisible story about the music industry. Listen here.
🎙️Bobby Finger of Who? Weekly has written the novel The Old Place and he talked about it with Miwa Messer on Poured Over. Miwa is tops when it comes to interviewing authors, she has an unparalleled depth of knowledge for and love of books. Listen here.
🎙️I love you!
This week we’re getting to peek into the listening life of Kattie Laur, producer of award-nominated independent and branded podcasts in Brantford, Ontario, Canada. She writes about the Canadian podcast ecosystem on her biweekly newsletter, Pod the North and makes Alpaca My Bags. Find her on Twitter: @podkatt :)
The app you use to listen: Google Podcasts and Spotify. I have no idea when and why Google Podcasts became my go-to but here we are!
What speed do you listen to podcasts? 1x - I believe in the sanctity of the production even if it hurts to get through!
How do you discover new shows? Recommendations from friends and peers, Twitter, pod app search functions, and newsletters like this one, seriously!
One show you love that everybody loves. Normal Gossip. If I could consume it via an IV tube I would.
One show you love that most people don't know about. Darts and Letters! One of my favourite episodes is Episode 24: Darts & Lasers where they unpack the different ways the world of science fiction has been a vehicle for radical thought. Jay, if you're reading this sorry to embarrass you. Oh ya, and the show is Canadian. 😉🍁
Unpopular opinion: Outdoor, free-roaming cats are neglected cats (and they keep pooping in my yard)!
Anything else you want to say? Never forget about your audience no matter how big or small your podcast is! Love and cherish them by responding when they reach out to you, and be open to their ideas and even complaints about your show. Listening to your audience will only make your show better. Stay humble, because the success of your show would be nothing without them!