⚓️ Soul of a poet, muscles of a sailor 💪 hitting dingers ⚾️ get it, Jonathan 🐢 a sweetheart and a total babe 📖
🍭 👂I want Bruce to be a hot, butch girl. 🌈 🤸♀️
Bonjour.
Today is Monday, June 17. In case this newsletter is too long…I never wanted this to be over, look what you made me do, Richard, and get a taste of one of the most fun times you could have in a theater here.
xoxo lp
👋q & a & q & a & q & a👋
Tess Barker
Tess Barker is a comedian, podcaster, journalist, and the host of the brand-new Pop Mystery Pod. She is also the co-host of the podcasts Lady to Lady, which has been a top-rated comedy podcast for over a decade, and Toxic: the Britney Spears Story for which she won a Webby for best Documentary Podcast, and Britney’s Gram, which helped ignite the #FreeBritney movement. Her work has been published in outlets like The Guardian, Vice, and MTV News, and she’s performed stand up on Comedy Central, Comedy Dynamics, and live throughout the country.
Describe your show in 10 words or less.
An informative and fun dive into mysterious pop culture moments.
Why are you the perfect host for this show?
I have been pop culture and pop music obsessed my entire life. I also have a background in investigative journalism, so this show is a way for me to combine those two strengths. My previous documentary podcast, Toxic, involved deep research into the Britney Spears case, and that gave me an extensive and close look at the power structures in the entertainment industry and how they can work to keep people silent in the face of injustice, mistreatment, or wrong doing.
What did you want to be when you were eight?
An actress.
What pop mystery are you most excited to dig into?
I’m very interested to learn more about the details of Prince’s death and what happened to his estate after he died without a will.
Episodes are so packed with research. How much time in total do you think goes into each one?
Oh man, a lot of time, ha! Luckily I love reading, watching docs, and talking to people. I’m mixing up the format on this show, so I have some episodes that are a chat-format with a lighter level of research. The documentary style episodes take quite a bit of research. Maybe 40 or 50 hours an episode?
What’s your goal for the show? (A book? A TV show? A theme park? Sick merch?)
I’d love to eventually turn this into a book or a TV show!
Do you have a ritual for recording?
Before I’m tracking narration I do old school vocal warm ups from my theater kid days. And then I need a big jug of water and tea with lots of honey in it. Recording narration is tough on the vocal chords!
Fill in the blank: You will like my show if you like _______ (can be person, place, concept, food, other podcast, movie…)
Watch What Happens Live.
If you could make another podcast, don’t worry about the logistics or whether or not anyone will like it, what would it be? Your budget is $1M.
I am a huge Sondheim nerd and would love to do a show where I go through his whole cannon and do a close read of each show. I would have a different musical theater star or composer come on each episode.
Are there too many podcasts?
I don’t think so! I love this medium because of the many forms it can take, and because of how accessible it is for creators.
What’s a podcast you love that not enough people know about?
Not the most indie answer but I am always telling people to check out the Duolingo podcast. It’s really well-produced, and has wonderful storytelling. A really fun way to get your ear accustomed to a new language.
What’s a podcast you love that everyone already knows about?
The Daily, ha. I try not to consume too much news on social media and most mornings I listen, as I feel like they do a really good job of curating topics that are important to know about.
🚨If u only have time for 1 thing🚨
Jesse Lawson and Holly Casio have a hypothesis: that Bruce Springsteen (“soul of a poet, muscles of a sailor”) deserves the queer icon stamp of approval. And to prove it, in every episode of Because the Boss Belong to Us, they are going down a list they made, asking: is Bruce camp? Does he have a narrative of struggle? Do his songs evoke feelings of deep sadness, loneliness, euphoria, or something else that queer people experience? Can you dance, cry, and fuck to Bruce? They also discuss this unspoken feeling that Bruce is giving a wink to queer folk, and if, through this series, they can find out what that feeling is. The first episode sets out the mission, the second one tackles camp. (Is Bruce camp? Absolutely. “He’s so committed to his performance that he questions if he’s ever left the performance he created, camp’s existential crisis.”) Already it’s hard not to be convinced that Bruce is giving a wink to the queer community. That album cover! This is a completely original podcast topic (but, I guess if you poll queer people you’ll find it’s not an original thought) and the sound, the sound! Listening to it I feel like I’m sitting on the floor in Holly’s room with her zines watching her and Jesse make this show by hand. (Jazmine JT Green is there too as exec producer.) I listened to the first two episodes and never wanted them to be over.
hell yeah
✨Read Tribeca's Davy Gardner on Podcast Marketing [via Podcast Marketing Magic]
✨CitizenRacecar launched Notes on Good Podcasting—weekly articles about every aspect of quality audio storytelling, from concept to promotion.
✨My next Radio Bootcamp Podcast Marketing 101 class is scheduled for July 15. Please come! I promise I’ll make it fun and helpful. Sign up here.
✨Arielle Nissenblatt spotlighted Ransom: Position of Trust in her newsletter and podcast.
✨The 3rd Annual BPA Summer Social For Podcast & Content Creators is Sunday, July 28 at 4 - 9pm at AUX Karaoke Box in Brooklyn. Please come, I’ll be there! Corey created a 20% off promo code for you: TINK2024. Or just go here for an immediate discount, or to learn more.
💎BTW💎
🎙️Wild horses could not drag me to a baseball game and I think I’d rather be trampled to death by them than attend one. I’m not saying this to yuck anyone’s yum, I’m saying this to emphasize how loyal I am to Richard Parks III, the maker of Richard’s Famous Foods Podcast and a bunch of other cool things (like the best celebrity podcast in existence, Storytime with Seth Rogen.) Richard just launched a baseball podcast, chronicling the 2024 Los Angeles Dodgers baseball season from start to finish called Dodger Blue Dream, and I stopped everything that I was doing (which was, let’s be honest, listening to a different podcast) to listen to it. I knew it would be wonderful, and it is. Now, this was intended to be a “documentary in real-time.” I don’t think Richard could have foreseen that the the Dodger’s season would start out with such a bang—the Japanese-born pitcher and designated hitter Shohei Ohtani just signed a 10-year, $700 million contract with the Dodgers, the largest contract in professional sports history, before marrying a “normal Japanese woman” in nearly complete secrecy, and being scammed by his translator who broke several laws due to his gambling addiction. This story has everything! If Richard orchestrated this string of wild events, props to him. If Richard created this as a test to see if I’d listen to literally anything he makes, he has his answer. But the point is, it doesn’t matter. The unique sound and creativity are here as with all of Richard’s work, which is the kind of audio fun that I didn’t know existed until I heard it and doesn’t exist anywhere else. The first three episodes are “a portrait of a moment” detailing this gambling scandal that erupted out of the Dogers’ club house on the very first day of the 2024 season. So while it’s like a mini-series, I can’t imagine that this storyline won’t crop up again. So I suggest you stop whatever you’re doing right now, which is reading my newsletter, to listen to it. Listen here.
🎙️I was lucky enough to attend Talia Augustis’ In the Dark performance at Tribeca, something I’d ordinarily have to fly to London to experience. The premise is simple: Talia curates beautiful pieces for her audience to listen to together, in the dark, the same way we appreciate film in a movie theather. This makes so much sense and it’s ridiculous we don’t do this in New York. I would do it every week. It wasn’t just a communal experience, it forced me to focus. I couldn’t multitask or speed things up. It was one of the enjoyable experiences I’ve had in a theater, ever. (And I have been to a local dinner show / theater performance of The West Side Story in an unnamed town in the middle of Appalachia where they served Cheez Whiz on Ritz Crackers as an appetizer!) For this experience, Talia curated ten short pieces, they were all some of the best things I’ve ever heard (maybe it’s because I wasn’t changing the liter box while I was listening to them) and made me want to MAKE SOMETHING. You know? It wouldn’t be good. But goddamit, it was inspiring. Also inspiring to start listening to more short things. It opened with a PERECT, MINISCULE PIECE made by Davy Gardner, head of Tribeca Audio. (Go to Davy’s site and listen to it, it’s 60 seconds long. Called “Commitment.”) The piece that made me uncomfortable and cry and laugh and have my breath taken away from me was something called “Thank You for Calling” that Jules Bradley made for Short Cuts. Jules used answering machine messages for over 150 abortion care centers across the United States on July 24th, 2022—a month following the overturning of Roe v. Wade. This was the kind of thing that was great to listen to in a theater with others, but listen to it wherever. Also to cap things off Talia did her own live performance of her reading from the wrong version of Breakfast at Tiffany’s when she was a teenager and it was hysterical. I hope she records this so you can enjoy it, too. One more one that nearly killed me: “Hannah,” by Beth Lewis and Chris Attaway. Listen to “Thank You For Calling” on this episode of Short Cuts. Photo courtesy of Shreya Sharma.
🎙️As I’ve mentioned countless times in this newsletter and in person, one of my favorite moments in podcast history is when Jolenta Greenberg, on the French Women Don’t Get Fat episode of By the Book, discovered that while on this rigorous diet, she could actually add a tiny splash of olive oil to the leeks she had been consuming raw for days. She cries. It’s joyous. It’s unhinged? It’s hilarious. (The point of this podcast is that Jolenta and her co-host Kristen Meizner would test out self-help books, spending a week doing exactly what the books told them to do, no matter what.) By the Book is is one of the faces of my Mount Podshmore—it’s a classic that endured its infancy right along with the pretty early days of podcasting, which isn’t too uncommon. But what’s crazy about this show is how Kristen and Jolenta have grown and evolved, still making addictive content for seven years. They’re like the Madonnas of podcasting. (I’ll stop making these stupid comparisons.) Anyway where we we? They’re back with a new season of How to Be Fine (formerly By the Book) called How to Be Fine with Friends, where they’ll be putting different friend-making methods to the test, just like they did with By the Book in the industry’s good old days. I hope there will be leeks somewhere. Listen here.
🎙️Dana Goodyear has returned for another season of Lost Hills (Dark Canyon,) with the confounding story of Mitrice Richardson, a young Black woman whose arrest (for basically acting strangely at a restaurant and skipping on the check) led to her disappearance and murder. Once arrested, despite the fact that she was obviously having a mental breakdown (she said she was avenging the death of Michael Jackson,) despite the fact she didn’t have money, a phone, or a ride, the cops let her leave in the middle of the night. Her mummified remains were found less than a month later, six miles away, far away from her clothes. This is something that could happen to any of our loved ones—one mental slip + cops = someone is dead, especially if they’re a Black woman. Episode one sets up the facts and gets into a small piece of the puzzle—the fact that Mitrice’s hyoid, a bone which often breaks when a person is strangled, has never been found. In episode two we hear from Mitrice’s journals, which paints a picture of a truly lost woman, and we meet Mitrice’s ex girlfriend. Episode three is where we hear a breakdown of what went down on September 16, 2009, right before Mitrice disappeared. I think time stopped when I was listening to that one. I have loved every season of Lost Hills, Dana is a great reporter and storyteller and I love her chemistry with her co-reporter, Hayley Fox. Malibu makes you think of sunshine and cool dudes and dudettes rollerblading around in tiny shorts (just me?) but in the dark it’s just like anywhere else. Listen here.
🎙️A Field Guide to Gay Animals is just what it sounds like—hosts Owen Ever and Laine Kaplan-Levenson are strapping on their back packs to take us all on an adventure to witness some of the over 1,500 animal species that we’ve witnessed having gay sex. Listen, this podcast isn’t just about listening to our favorite 200 year-old tortoise Jonathan (from such episodes of this) orgasming, but it is that. It’s also about why, if homosexuality is all around us in the animal queendom, the research is pretty much ignored. I guess where there are queers, there is going to be homophobia. Nobody is safe. This show is so much fun, it feels like you’re on a nature walk with comedians and you don’t even have to threaten your life by almost getting Lyme Disease. Listen here.
🎙️The Wall Street Journal’s The Journal just finished a four-part series on Ozempic, a common podcast topic. But I found these episodes to focus less on what everyone is already focused on (people with Diabetes having a hard time getting it and the side effects) and more focus on the sides of the story that are even more interesting—the disruption of the economy, the “fat is bad” psychology that has not gone away and the stigmas not being addressed, the Pharmaceutical companies that have coopted language of the fat activism and body positivity movement to sell weight loss products, and so much more. There’s a lot. It’s all tethered to the story of a WSJ editor who has decided to go off the drug, despite the fact he loved it, and why. He gets really honest about why he went on the drugs in the first place. (He admits some things I’m not sure he had ever said out loud before.) This series is thorough and the clearest example of what exactly GLP-1 drugs are (I basically have a medical degree now.) We also learn that a woman started the initial research that led to GLP-1 treatment for diabetes, and hear from the songwriter who originally wrote the "Oh-Oh-Oh Ozempic" theme song. Now that’ll be in your head all day. I think the best way to listen to it, since it’s all over the feed, is here. (Are the apps working on a better way to do this?)
🎙️Happy Father’s Day month to Gary Vider’s dad and Gary Vider’s dad, only. On #1 Dad, Gary is sharing his memories with his, Manny Vider, who has been living a life of schemes and lies for at least 40 years. Con men are bad but Manny’s lies were at least amusing. (He had Gary pretend to be a Sports Illustrated for Kids kid journalist, a position that didn’t exist, to get him into some of history’s biggest sports events and face-to-face with history’s biggest stars, including Michael Jordan.) He lied to everyone about everything (seriously, the list of cons is so amusing,) which might have seemed cool at times as a kid. But 24 years ago, Gary stopped talking to his dad. Now Gary has his own kid, which has led him to maybe like a long therapy session we get to listen in on, where we get to work through what this did to Gary as a son and figure out how it will shape his own fatherhood. And what his dad meant when he said “someday you’ll understand all of this.” Gary doesn’t. (Isn’t it cool that you get to build your own idea of what fatherhood is?) Gary is a dynamic host, the stories are unbelievable, and the format is fun. Gary’s wife is on the mic, and it is she who points out that Manny liked to sue everyone, and he does hear this podcast he’ll “sue everyone involved.” And I’m pretty sure he will, Gary’s mission is to talk to his dad for the first time in a long time and see if he’s changed, and this podcast is building toward that. Listen here.
🎙️The first time I encountered Jasmine Romero it was through her podcast Princess of South Beach, which I loved so much I rushed to interview her for Podcast the Newsletter. (Fun facts, she plays Sofia Sanchez on Sesame Street and was lead producer and editor for Chompers.) Her newest thing, Sacred Scandal: Nation of Saints, centers around the mid-sermon assassination of El Salvador’s Archbishop Oscar Romero in 1980 and is reallllly different and personal. It’s a important piece of El Salvador’s history that I had no idea about, which is embarrassing because the US is heavily involved in both a) empowering Roberto D’Aubuisson, a neo-fascist politician who became the death squad leader, and b) funding a war that would eventually kill its own citizens. (Four Cleveland, Ohio nuns were raped, brutally murdered, and buried in a ditch. And if blonde Ohesian nuns aren’t safe, then who is?) The episode that details the day Romero died had me hanging on the edge of every word of Jasmine’s storytelling. And all the way through the history we get Jasmine’s personal anecdotes about her own family, she really brings us along on this journey back to El Salvador. And the plot keeps getting thicker and thicker—Jasmine is drawn to the story of an unsolved murder in her own family. Listen here.
🎙️How to Do the Pot launched a 3-part series celebrating Pride that explores how the AIDS crisis in San Francisco during the 1980s catalyzed the birth of medical cannabis and ignited a national movement toward legalization. Ellen Scanlon introduces us to the pivotal moments and the courageous advocates that shaped medical cannabis in California, the first state to legalize it for compassionate use. This series honors the love and perseverance of San Francisco’s gay community during the AIDS crisis, and highlights the ongoing benefits of medical cannabis for HIV patients today. Listen here.
🎙️Since we’re talking about weed, I also recommend the Great Moments in Weed History’s episode about the 1970 study that had 10 young women monitored while smoking increasingly strong weed every day for three months. Before relaxing Canada’s cannabis laws, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau wanted to see if doing so would cause the economy to collapse. These women, who were perfectly rational throughout and after the study, worked their butts off to try to get the results released, which bonded them for life. And that’s cute. But then why have the results never seen the light of day? Episode is with esteemed weed journalist Mary Jane Gibson. (That is her god-given name.) Where’s the movie? Listen here.
🎙️I love you!