✨The best podcasts of 2021, part I✨
🍭 👂 You're in for a treat! 🌈 🤸♀️
Bonjour!
You’ve probably seen my podcast Christmas wreath, and maybe you read some of my picks for the Bello 100. For my Podcast the Newsletter end of the year special, I’m rounding up all the podcasts and episodes that I wrote about in the “If u only have time for one thing” section. You’ll get the first half now, the second half on Friday. I hope you have time to enjoy some of my favorite audio pieces over the holiday. Thanks for supporting Podcast the Newsletter! You mean a lot to me.
xoxo lp
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✨Jan 4: In The Dark tells the story of the kidnapping and murder of Jacob Wetterling. I had listened to In The Dark’s series on Curtis Flowers, which is one of the most wonderful things I’ve ever listened to, and this season was equally compelling. The reporting is so good it changed the way I think about true crime—I found myself watching and listening to other true crime shows in a more critical way. Madeleine Baran starts sketching out the night of October 22, 1989, and with each episode, that night emerges with more color and vibrance. If you think true crime is not your thing, try either season of In The Dark.
✨Jan 11: The Cut’s The Truth About False Memories opens with the 1995 “Lost in the Mall” experiment, which concluded that if you are told something happened to you as a child, even if it’s a lie, you’ll probably believe it’s true as an adult. It began as an extra credit project by Elizabeth Loftus for her psychology students at the University of California at Irvine in 1995. But the repercussions of this assignment have had a real impact on whether or not we believe survivors in sexual assault cases. The story follows the path of two psychology professors, one whose life was torn apart by the study, and one who built her career around it.
✨Jan 18: I loved Teikirisi so much that after listening to the first episode all I wanted to do was make a pillow fort and listen to everything that had already been released, and the episodes kept getting better and better. Fryda and Carmen are using storytelling to give a bold voice to the Cuban-American experience, and gracefully toe the line between chatty and serious. It’s a podcast about Carmen and Fryda’s friendship and more. In El Periodo Especial: Scarcity & Famine, Fryda’s parents are invited on to give a first hand account of what it was like during the height of Cuba’s economic crisis, when there were extreme scarcity and reductions of rationed foods. Carmen and Fryda tell stories in a way that make me wish I was sitting with them, in person, to join in on the fun.
✨Jan 25: Josh Gondelman’s Make My Day is a comedy/news gameshow with one contestant who tries to win, via a somewhat nebulous point system (they always win!) by making Josh’s day. I think it might be the single most joyous place in the podcast universe. I would listen to Josh host anything and I sort of just wish he did, but this show in particular suits Josh, an eternal optimist, perfectly. On an episode with Emily Yoshida, Emily and Josh dream up a fictional (maybe) film that’d be a shoe-in for winning an Oscar. The scenario gets increasingly funny and comes together so perfectly into one of the funniest exchanges I’ve heard on a podcast in awhile.
✨Feb 1: American Hysteria had the episode of my dreams, on Disneyfication, and the explanation for this very real, biological feeling, and how Disney brings us to a fantasy world through all of our senses. Listen to a clip here. Chelsey Weber-Smith released a follow-up episode with Sarah Marshall (You’re Wrong About) covering animatronics, The Enchanted Tiki Room, and the wild story of Disneyland’s opening day, also known as Black Sunday. I can’t mention The Enchanted Tiki Room without pointing you towards one of my favorite audio pieces of all time, Those Happy Place’s Birds of Paradise series, which is a historical look at the attraction but also probes what it can tell us about its era, aesthetics, and intended meaning.
✨Feb 8: The Experiment, claims The United States was an experiment with certain ideals, and checks in on that experiment to see how far we’ve strayed. The first episode, The Loophole, starts out with a bang. A hunter shoots down an elk outside of hunting season in Yellowstone, which is illegal, but because it takes place in a place known as the “Zone of Death,” he’s able to literally get away with murder. And anyone can. It’s an interesting story and then scholar Brian Kalt joins to explain the loophole while attempting to close it.
✨Feb 15: When I saw that Spectacle had dropped its first two episodes I think I clasped my hands together and looked to the sky and said, God, I truly do not deserve all that you provide me. I love Neon Hum and editor Catherine Saint-Louis’ work, and the subject is not only get-out-the-popcorn enticing, but it’s also tackling a subject that hasn’t already received this exhaustive, investigative podcast treatment. Host Mariah Smith is tracing the history of reality TV to illustrate how it’s changed culture, and how culture has changed it.
✨Feb 22: Sometimes when I’m curating clips for Hark I take screenshots while I’m listening so I know which moments deserve to be revisited for capture. I have about 14 screen shots of this episode of Imaginary Worlds. It tells the most interesting story of Grimms’ Fairy Tales, which were conceived by the brothers Grimm in Germany before Germany was a country, but were solidified in our culture with heavy German influence. The story of why these stories stick with us today is fascinating.
✨Mar 1: Phoebe McIndoe and Redzi Bernard have created Telling Stories to ask storytellers about their craft, and then they close the episode with a mini challenge based on what they learned. The first episode is with Arlie Adlington (creator of one of my favorite pieces of audio of all time,) who shares a piece he made for The Dig’s Antibody series, International Trans Person Helpline (it’s amazing,) and his challenge to the hosts: to create an audio piece which features a sonic transition: from one location to another. You can listen to Phoebe and Redzi’s homework assignments here. (And they urge us to all join in.)
✨Mar 8: Each episode of La Brega, stories of the Puerto Rican experience, focuses fully on one subject (its US-style suburbs, surveillance of US citizens from the US, colonialism, and cultural identity) and through engaging stories, investigative journalism, and history, you get a really complete story of the events that have shaped Puerto Rico, how the things that make the island so special are also what have set it up for so many challenges. “La brega" loosely means “the struggle” or hustle, what Puerto Ricans do when they are faced with a challenge or an imbalance of power, something that seems to define its rich history.
✨Mar 15: Embedded published a series on the shooting at Annapolis’ Capital Gazette, an event that left five people dead and many more lives shattered. The series is so interesting, because it goes over the shooting, but more importantly the aftermath. How does an entire newsroom deal with the trauma of a shooting, and how does a news organization report on something that hits so close to home?
✨Mar 22: From the outside, these three mini-stories about teenagers surviving a deserted island, a man trying to find meaning in a warzone, and the number and concept of zero, seem to have nothing in common. But Throughline ties them all together to tell a larger story about chaos, and how we try to find order in it. Each story is incredible, but the one about the teenagers is what will stick with me. Rund Abdelfatah talks to Rutger Bregman, who was fascinated about a true Lord of the Flies story—a group of six young boys survived for a year alone on an island.
✨Mar 29: I am always put in a good mood the moment I turned on an episode of Tea with Queen and J, who are calling out stories that aren’t getting enough attention and are saying what most people aren’t saying about those story with so much humor and sharpness and openness and compassion. I feel safe and loved in their care. These women cover news (both heavy and light) in a way that keeps the most vulnerable people in mind, and with lots of laughter.
✨April 5: When Covid hit and Heather Li was laid off from her finance job, she started making It’s Nice To Hear You. The idea is pretty neat: Heather wondered if she could make romantic connections between people through voice memos alone, and started collecting profiles of people who wanted to be part of her project. Then she matched them up, and asked them each to send a voice memo answering questions from 36 questions to the person they were matched with. Heather sent the voice memos back and forth, so each participant knew nothing about the person, not even their name. Just what their voice sounded like and how they answered theses questions. It’s like a reality podcast dating show social experiment. The sound is completely immersive and Heather weaves in research and her own personal story, bringing her heart and all of her vulnerabilities to the show.
✨April 12: Texas native Evan Stern has set out on an adventurous road trip exploring the dives, traditions and colorful characters that can be found hidden away from the interstate in his podcast Vanishing Postcards. Episode one takes you to the iconic Tom Sefcik Dance Hall in the teensy town of Seaton (it won’t show up on your GPS,) a place that has been shaping Texas culture for generations. Evan invites you inside to hear from the family running it and a few of the regulars. It’s an immersive, funny, lyrical piece that feels alive. Vanishing Postcards lets you in to secret places that feel almost forgotten, definitely overlooked, but enormously important.
✨April 19: I hate talking about money but I do love stories, and Reema Khrais’ This is Uncomfortable is completely heavy on the perfect storytelling with a backdrop of money. The stories are about people and love and awkwardness and horror, nothing nitty gritty. On Why don’t you fix your teeth? a woman talks about how her teeth were keeping her poor—no one would hire her, they assumed she was a meth addict. On Instrument of Sabotage, a clarinet player’s career is upended by a vengeful mystery person, and he doesn’t find out until it’s too late.
✨April 26: Katherine Goldstein’s The Double Shift is a narrative and journalistic show that paints portraits of motherhood framed around the lives of moms as women, not only people tethered to their kids. This shouldn’t be revolutionary, but it is. Katherine is one of the only people offering us this kind of narrative. The show brings us the complex stories of moms, and proves that the way we often look at their stories is missing a big piece of the puzzle. My favorite piece is Mamas of the Brothels, which is about sex workers at Sagebrush Ranch in Carson City, Nevada, who are also moms. Katherine digs into the ways moms are supported at Sagebrush Ranch, and the pros and cons of doing legal sex work when you have children. Hear my favorite moment here.
✨May 3: Dan Taberski’s The Line is a serious war crime story about a group of Navy SEALs broke ranks and accused their chief, Eddie Gallagher, of murder in 2018, but the way Dan tells it, it feels personal, too. The story and language are Dan’s, he offers intimacy and humor. Everything I read about this show made me think it was not my jam, but I heard Rebecca Lavoie raving about it on Crime Writers On…so I was convinced to try. Hear a great clip of the show here.
✨May 10: At age twelve, Adreanna Rodriguez had to make a bigger decision that most of us have any made in our entire lives. She is part of the Sioux tribe, and spent her childhood in youth shelters and foster homes with her younger brother and sister. One day, as part of the Indian Relocation Act, she was given the choice to be sent back to her reservation that her grandmother left over 60 years ago with her brother and sister, or remain with her foster family. She went with option two, but in Bloodlines, for VICE News and partnered with Snap Judgment, she revisits the reservation to imagine what her life could have been and how her childhood could have been different if she went with option one. It’s not a black and white solution, Adreanna will never know if she made the right decision. This story is an emotional rollercoaster, incredibly personal, and so well produced.
✨May 17: Over Ramadan, Misha Euceph released a story a day that highlighted the voices and lives of different Muslim rappers, astronauts, comedians, Malala, and more for Tell Them, I Am. I found myself unable to rush them, and spent the rest of the year finishing up the collection. I recommend the story of Anousheh Ansari, the first Muslim woman in space. Anousheh talks about the sadness she felt returning to earth—is beautiful and devastating.
✨May 24: Radiolab’s The Dirty Drug and the Ice Cream Tub is a wild ride that follows a drug called Rapamycin from the soil in Easter Island to the refrigerator of a doctor named Suren Sehgal who illegally smuggled the drug to New Jersey because he believed it was the key to unlocking medical mysteries, when no one else did. He ends up the reason the drug survives and is able to make billions of dollars and prolong millions of lives kind of by reversing time, teaching us about science, the human body, and even the history of Easter Island. In the end, the doctor ends up using his own body to test the drug, becoming a martyr for proving its effectiveness. Now I’m wondering WHERE IS THE MOVIE?
✨May 31: In 1977, NASA sent the Voyager into space with two records known as the “Golden Records” that contained sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth, with the intent of providing aliens with Cliffs Notes for earthlings—who they essentially are and what they have made. Comedians Caleb Hearon and Shelby Wolstein have created the perfect podcast to reflect this, Keeping Records, which asks guests: what items of culture would you put in the Golden Records? In the year 2021, what do you think aliens should know about us? It ends up being a podcast about celebrating good (and pointing out bad) culture. It’s the chemistry of hosts that makes this show shine.
✨June 7: Rough Translation’s series Home/Front is in the middle of a three-part series on Matt Lammers, an Asian-American man who grew up in the midwest, got into some trouble as a kid, and ended up in Iraq, where he was injured and lost three of his limbs but was extremely lucky to have survived. The account of his near-death experience was fucking harrowing (you can hear that part here) but Matt’s entire life seems like it was taken from a movie. This episode is about how he met his wife and the experience she has living with and loving someone who’s been through what Matt’s been through.
✨June 14: I set aside time to enjoy the new season of Mija and I felt like I was curling up into a comfy chair with a good book. The first season followed the fictional world of Mija, a daughter of Columbian immigrants, by dedicating mini-episodes to all of her family members and illustrating their myriad of experiences as immigrants. The new season’s Mija tells the story of her Egyptian immigrant family's journey from Alexandria, Egypt to London and beyond. These are sweet, short stories offer colorful details that bring each character to life, and each tiny episode feels like a treat that deserves your total attention.
✨June 21: In this episode of Ear Hustle, we are introduced to Leslie, and as her story unfolds, we learn that she has been in prison for 50 years and that she committed a crime when she was young. It is not until later that it is revealed (this is a spoiler so heads up…) we are hearing from Leslie Van Houten of the Manson murders. This is a complicated story told delicately, allowing us to see Leslie as a person behind bars before we judge her for the crimes she’s committed.
✨June 28: Aack Cast is Jamie Loftus’ philosophical/academic look at Cathy Guisewite’s Cathy comics, which ran in newspapers 365 days a year from 1976 to 2010. (And returned during the pandemic online.) Jamie Loftus is smart enough to make anything interesting, but this appears to be in her wheelhouse, and in mine—a 30-(40?)-something-year-old woman weighted down with the anxiety of doing things right but failing every time. Jackie Johnson is the voice of Cathy, and Miles Gray is the voice of Irving.
✨I love you!