👄 Stories from the OG Black Twitter 🚢 unsinkable? ⚓️ tick shopping 💁♀️ Misbehavin’ 🎸
🍭 👂A lot of open tabs 🌈 🤸♀️
Bonjour.
Can anyone guess which podcast below is the source of this newsletter’s subtitle, “a lot of open tabs?” Let me know in the comments.
Anyway, today is Monday, July 22. In case this episode is too long, new gossip is here, a show I thought wouldn’t have a season two has one, and this was pitched 26 times, got 26 no’s, but is miraculously here for you to enjoy. As my dad says every SINGLE time he leaves a room, have a nice weekend.
xoxo lp
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👋q & a & q & a & q & a👋
Beth Lewis and Chris Attaway
Chris Attaway is a freelance audio producer. His partner Beth Lewis is an actor and writer. They live in Birmingham with their toddler Suky, and their dog Mouse.
They are creators of the audio short Hannah, a piece that totally blew Shreya and me away at Tribeca, which we heard in Talia Augustidis’ In the Dark audio event. If you haven’t yet listened, (or even if you have,) press play then sit back and enjoy. Chris also published a podcast episode sharing what happens next, if you're interested!
Shreya Sharma: Describe Beth Tapes: Hannah in 5 words or less.
Chris Attaway: Stages of grief, but renting
Beth Lewis: Awkwardly autobiographical millennial angst
SS: Where did the inspiration for Beth Tapes: Hannah come from?
CA: The prompt came from Beth’s writer’s group. As for the actual inspiration, I’ll let Beth answer that one. It’s very personal.
BL: Yeah, I started a writing group with some friends in lockdown. Each week we’d set a group homework - they were just meant to be quick, silly ideas to loosen us up a bit, but the temptation to try and make the others laugh (or cry) was always too strong and I spent far too long on them. Sadly I can’t find what the prompt was for Hannah, but we were trying to find somewhere to live, and lockdown was just starting to lift. It was such a weird time. It was like we’d had a reprieve from all the usual expectations of life, that surviving was enough, but suddenly all the pressure to achieve and be proper people again came flooding back in. I suppose really it’s also about how ridiculous we all are. You can spend months terrified your family will be taken from you, seeing the pain other people are going through, but when you’re finally in a room together again having an argument about which draw a pan should go in. We’re funny little ego-bound things.
SS: What’s one piece of audio you’ve listened to and thought ‘wow, I wish I made that.’?
CA: Jesse Lawson made a piece for Short Cuts a few years ago, called Bats in the Attic. They describe it as “a bit about bats and a lot about grief”. I cried when I heard it. The metaphor was so perfect. One of my best friends died when I was 21 and I’ve wanted to make something about that for years. If I can make anything close to Jesse’s piece I’ll be happy.
BL: I’m such a sucker for good BBC audio drama, especially if it’s spooky. I thought The Hotel by Daisy Johnson was amazing. Interweaving horror with feminist themes and incredible acting - just brilliant.
SS: Who are your dream audio producers to collaborate with?
CA: I’m late to the party but I absolutely can not get enough of Valley Heat at the moment (I can feel Beth rolling her eyes at me) so I’d love to make something with Christian Duguay
BL: Anyone, any project, let’s go. This is going to sound ridiculous because we live together, but I wish Chris and I made more together. Having a toddler has made it trickier than it should be.
SS: Should we make more short-form audio? Why?
CA: Absolutely! I like the punchy feel to short audio. You get in, make your point, and get out. No hanging around. And having a time restraint can often force you to get creative. For example, I always love taking part in the KCRW 24hr Radio Race and I love hearing everyone’s pieces afterwards. People are so talented.
BL: Of course! We need more places to put them too.
SS: What’s one thing you’d like to see more of in podcasting?
CA: More stories from real people. I feel like I’m always bollocking on about this but normal people are so much more interesting than celebrities. Just listen to Where Are You Going? and you’ll see that regular people are so much more charming and funny than any celeb. Having said that, I will absolutely produce the next Celebrity-Chats-To-Another-Celebrity podcast because god knows I need the money!
BL: Same, just more platforms and opportunities for the many talented people out there making brilliant audio, that isn’t just two celebs chatting about nothing for an hour.
SS: If you weren’t an audio producer, what would you be?
CA: I’d probably still be working in the school I was working in before I quit to pursue audio. If it wasn’t for Beth believing in me, I wouldn’t have had the confidence to do it.
BL: Sadly my day-job is winning the battle for now. One day. One lovely day.
🚨If u only have time for 1 thing🚨
You can finally listen to episode one of Nichole Hill’s Our Ancestors Were Messy, an official Tribeca selection. Nichole is telling Black history stories focusing on the people who brought the drama, reading society pages and gossip columns of popular pre-Civil Rights era Black newspapers with a guest. Nichole is a masterful storyteller, the way she pulls us through episode one (the love story of one of America's first Black power couples Drs. Anna and Percy Julian) is a bit like the hugely popular Normal Gossip. It’s full of really juicy details that make you able to do more than just see the stories, and as Nichole pulls you along she sort of makes it a truly a choose-your-own-adventure experience. (“What would you do?”) One difference, it’s absolutely true. And there is real attention to the sound. This is a genius idea for a show on multiple levels, we are just lucky it’s done with so much care.
hell yeah
✨Tink turned five! on Friday.
To celebrate this milestone, we’re offering a $50 discount on Podcast Therapy sessions for everyone who signs up before August 19.
Our free Tinkerversary webinar about making podcast friends is sold out! (Though there is a waiting list.) If you weren't able to get in we do have a free weekly podcast marketing newsletter Podcast Marketing Magic that covers a lot of the tips and tricks we'll be discussing in the webinar and much much more. Our team will also be attending Podcast Movement next month in D.C. and is giving a few presentations on marketing there. The best way to get updates about future opportunities like this one would be to subscribe to the newsletter and follow our social media on Instagram and Twitter!If you have any other questions or are interested in learning more about working with Tink, feel free to reach out to us directly and we'll be happy to work with you to figure out the best options for you and your show!
We also shared some adorable throwbacks of our team from when we were five. Look at how much we’ve grown – just like our company! Here and here.
✨Read part two of our launch series: metrics that matter, via Podcast Marketing Magic.
✨”Guys, I’ve listened to all the greats, what are some really really good podcasts?” Reddit thread.
✨Arielle Nissenblatt spotlighted Blame it on the Fame in her newsletter and podcast.
💎BTW💎
🎙️Do you remember in 2011, when all those high school girls in Le Roy, New York started having strange ticks and violent symptoms of a mysterious disease? It spread like wildfire and is considered the most severe case of mass hysteria since the Salem Witch Trials. I do. I don’t, however, remember what the conclusion was. What happened? Dan Taberski (Running from Cops, Missing Richard Simmons) is trying to clear things up on his new show Hysterical, where he revisits the timeline of events and interviews people who were impacted and experts and scientists, plus all the topics that pop up along the way (fentanyl exposure, Havana Syndrome.) In the end we return to Le Roy, and all I’ll say is that we can conclude that something truly scary happened there, but also something truly remarkable. It feels good to have Dan’s voice back in my ears, and his storytelling is smooth as honey, direct and extremely curious, peppered with humor and personality. There are great clips inside this show, and the writing is wonderful. Listen here.
🎙️Tim Batt and Carlo Ritchie, the guys who brought us Did Titanic Sink?, a podcast / compelling argument that it did not, are back with what I thought wasn’t possible, a new season of Did Titanic Sink. (I was pretty convinced and thought the issue had been resolved.) The new season starts sounding like an investigation into the legend of the Canterbury Panther, a mysterious creature sighted in New Zealand. Tim and Carlo claim to have been afforded a grant to make it via New Zealand’s Regional Fund. But after swiftly determining the Canterbury Panther is complete bullshit, they parlayed the funds into a further investigation into the sinking of RNS Titanic. The first episode of this new season starts with a little review of a book written by Charles Lightoller, an officer who survived the Titanic—a book that was later sued out of publication. Was Charles lying or was he on to something? There’s a lot of scene setting in the first episode of this series. A lot of descriptions of the ship going down with details I’ve never heard before that will make you feel suspicious of everything. After listening to episode two, the idea of having to wait for episode three felt upsetting. Listen, these guys are comedians. I don’t care if they’re right. I am so ready to go back to this Titanic conspiracy theory. Fortunately Tim and Carlo never left. Listen here.
🎙️Dan Taberski is back, Rose Eveleth is back. What is this, Christmas? Rose is the host of Tested, a six part documentary podcast series about "gender verification" regulations in sports, and what happens in the wake of idiots trying to figure out if people are women or not. (Spoiler alert: their lives get ruined.) In their newsletter Bucket of Eels, Rose writes that they have been pitching this show around for eight years. I’m going to quote them now:
One outlet said they'd love it as one episode, but only if I could make it "funny." Another said they'd love to run the six-episode series but they could only pay me $5,000 for it. I found an editor who loved the idea, and who told me he thought he could get his boss on board too. Three days later, his entire team was laid off. A major sports outlet strung me along for over a year claiming they were interested, but then wound up passing because "anything that questions the gender binary is too experimental for us." A major narrative studio passed because "sports don't do well for us, our listeners are too high brow for that." Another major narrative studio told me they were "tired of being pitched trans stories" and when I tried to explain to them that this is not, in fact, “a trans story,” they stopped replying to my emails. Two places passed because I wasn’t a big enough name to be the host.
They pitched 26 outlets, got 26 no’s, and made a grand total of -$3,240.20 dollars making this show.
Tested is a celebration of grit and persistence, obviously, but it’s a really important story and what I heard was really good. Rose is asking what a biological difference really means and how we can even study it, who gets to decide what’s fair, and most importantly, why we think the way we do. Listen here.
🎙️Extremely American’s new season Onward Christian Soldiers is stomach-churning, unsettling, and really throw-your-phone-out-the-window-level frustrating. It takes us to Moscow, a small town in Idaho, that is slowly becoming a Christian town thanks to Doug, Wilson a leader with a deeply conservative worldview that would have women submit to their husbands, and have the Bible decide the law of the land—he’s not just making a place heavily influenced by Christianity, he’s making a place (that previously was a very cool, liberal town) completely under Biblical rule. And he doesn’t want to stop at Moscow. The power of these people is so strong, their influence so fast-spreading it’s impossible not to imagine it turning American into a Christian nation. So far this is about the Christian Industrial Complex Doug is launching, and it’s truly a hard listen. (Stop the ride, I want to get off.) But it’s so well done, so important, so urgent, I’ll allow it. Listen here.
🎙️Do you remember Ursa Short Fiction? It was Deesha Philyaw (The Secret Lives of Church Ladies) and Dawnie Walton’s celebration of immersive short stories. Deesha is back with with Kiese Laymon (Heavy, How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America) for a new show, Reckon True Stories, a celebration of essays, journalism, and memoirs. The first episode was an introduction to Deesha and Kiese, why they’re here. And it made me want to turn off my podcast and start reading and I don’t even turn off my podcast when I think my apartment might be on fire. What makes great non-fiction great? What kills it? This episode is really about the entanglement between fiction and non-fiction, and how brilliant minds use both in both. Episode two, an interview with Roxane Gay, is about criticism and who reviews are really for. Plus there are so many great reading recommendations along the way. Listen here.
🎙️When I first heard of Movement with Meklit Hadero, I don’t think I understood exactly what “a show about the intersection of migration and music” meant. Or perhaps I just underestimated it. But the instant you listen to one single episode of Movement, you feel it, you get it. It’s a show a bit like like music in the sense that you have to listen to it to really, really feel it. Meklit is telling stories of immigrant, migrant and refugee musicians who used their art to find their own sense of place. And they do that in many ways. In the first episode of the season, Meklit talks to Gerson Lanza, a guy who came to New York City from Honduras without even enough confidence to speak his name, discovered tap dancing on Sesame Street and then later on Late Night at the Apollo, then became a professional tap dancer. The episode is more than his story (though the storytelling on Movement is b*e*a*u*t*i*f*u*l,) it’s about the history of tap dance and reclaiming it, and the beautiful things that can be communicated without words at all. In all sorts of music, all over the world, and even a smile. Listen here.
🎙️Rock That Doesn’t Roll had an episode about how to make fake Contemporary Christian Music good and believable, laying out a few ground rules and talking to Joseph Stephens, composer for The Righteous Gemstones, and Daniel Smith and Chris White of Electric Jesus, an independent film about an aspiring 80s Christian metal band. The rules? 1) Write something sincere and not a parody. 2) Draw upon your own childhood memories. 3) Borrow from the best. I love The Righteous Gemstones and it was cool to hear how much thought was put into these songs, it made me appreciate the show even more. (Now I have Misbehavin’ stuck in my head, and I also want to watch Electric Jesus.) When you really think about it, making this kind of music is harder than it sounds, and I think these rules are applicable to so many things we do in writing. This was an episode about the art of parody. I wanted to cover this one because I LOVE Rock That Doesn’t Roll (in this episode, we also learn a little about what the title means, something I hadn’t quite unpacked before,) I love The Righteous Gemstones, and it’s a good excuse to plug one of my favorite fiction shows of all time, CrossBread, a mockumentary about the Christian Rap duo founded by twin brother and sister Josh and Joan Burns. Listen to the episode of Rock That Doesn’t Roll here.
🎙️Texas Monthly (who had a series I really liked, Tom Brown’s Body) has a new one…The Problem with Erik, about a complete, rich idiot (Erik) who had an affair with an escort who was dating another total idiot who decided to blackmail him for being with his girlfriend. Instead of paying the money he wanted, Erik had Charlie Sheen’s former bodyguard and a couple of special ops-trained security contractor to confront him. Things got completely out of control and *spoiler alert* the escort and her boyfriend ended up dead. The writing in this show is so good, the descriptions of these people so specific, I was googling everyone. This story is insane and so well-told that I’ve listened to episodes twice because I didn’t want them to end. There is a murder scene in episode four that is horrifying and chilling. Listen here.
🎙️I went to a very Greek school but didn’t rush and for years had an allergic reaction to anything related to fraternities and sororities. But after Bama Rush I became extremely invested, eyes glued. Mad Rush is a show about how to rush right, hosted by the Original Sorority Rush Consultant Trisha Addicks, the woman all the media outlets were talking to when this stuff was blowing up. I have never so wished I could do Podcast Therapy with someone. If you know Trisha, tell her I’ll give her a free one. This podcast could be big but needs a little direction. I just listened to an episode about bra fittings, a sorority sister’s most self-deprecating moments (they weren’t!) and someone who was demanding I “don’t wear lily in rush!” several times and I don’t know what that means at all and it was never explained. In fact, I don’t know what about half of the things these women are talking about, it’s like Trisha is speaking another language with her guests. And I’m so fascinated. So then maybe this show doesn’t need to be polished, maybe it’s perfect. Let me know what you think. Listen here.
🎙️Ashley Ray is throwing the balance of my weekend listening routine totally out of balance by ending TV, I Say with Ashley Ray. (I recently wrote about how it was something Justin and I listened to together every week.) I had no idea it’s been four years of this show, time flies when you’re having fun. I have truly appreciated it. Thank you, Ashley. The finale was a great conversation with Jason Mantzoukas, packed with TV recommendations and smart takes on The Bear season three, Jake Gyllenhaal, and even Ted Lasso, plus some things you aren’t watching but should be. ISO something to replace this, now. But these episodes will always be here if you’re looking for something new to watch. Listen here.
🎙️If you’re reading this Monday, I’m probably on my way to Philadelphia to move into my new home. (Visit me, introduce me to your friends.) I’m probably excited but heaving with tears to be saying goodbye to my girl, my first love, New York City. I am a regular listener of They Had Fun—Rachel Josar interviews people about their best New York City day—every episode reminds me of one more great day I’ve had here in the past 20 years. There have been soooo many. I had fun! Listen here.
🎙️I love you!
📦 From the Archives 📦
[From August 10, 2020] Bela and Martha Karolyi first became famous for shaping young Romanian gymnasts into the best in the world via brutal training tactics from behind the Iron Curtain, and they brought these tactics with them when they opened a gym in the United States. Once here, they succeeded in getting the US gymnastics team gold medals and making the young women a force to be reckoned with for Russia, China, and Romania. 30 for 30’s Heavy Medals tells the whole story, and explains at what cost. The series seems to be asking: if the Karolyis were really so cruel and abusive, why did so many athletes seem to perform so well under their tenure? But hearing interviews with Mary Lou Retton, Dominique Moceanu, Kerri Strug, Simone Biles, coaches, administrators and parents, it seems obvious. These girls paid for the US medals with their childhoods and their lives. Toward the end of the series we see Martha take over the team, and her wickedness cannot be exaggerated—it seems quieter but more sinister than Bela’s. Martha was the queen of silence—she didn’t want to know any setbacks her athletes were facing, she just wanted to win. Under her tutelage, in walks Larry Nasser, and we get to see how he became such a strong and problematic figure in US gymnastics. I don’t follow gymnastics, so many of these stories of the US team were new to me. I felt the excitement of hearing them unfold as if I was watching them live on TV.
Congrats on the anniversary. Love reading this newsletter.
Hysterical might have just rocketed to the top of our best podcasts of 2024 list