☎️ The 💰 best 🏰 podcasts 💌 of 🔍 2023, 🗽 Lauren's 👻 version 🍻
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Bonjour.
Today is Monday, December 25. This week, I’m highlighting the podcasts of 2023 that blew me away. It was hard to pick, I left many on the cutting room floor. Feel free to browse the archive for more recommendations. 23 is an arbitrary number—I just crammed as many great shows as I could into this edition. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did. And thanks to everyone who worked on them!
xoxo lp
👋q & a & q & a & q & a👋
Jenni Melear
Jenni Melear is the creator of Build-a-Prince: A Royal Christmas Love Story.
Tell us about Build A Prince in 10 words or less.
A quirky, feminist twist on the royal Christmas movie genre.
Can you tease something about it that will get us to listen if we haven’t already?
The reluctant princess who longs to be a regular girl? This ain't it. Adelaide is a brilliant bad ass and wants to lead her country. Her problem has to do with marriage -- but a man won't be able to solve it.
What was the inspiration for Build A Prince?
I was fully cracking out on TV Christmas movies a few years ago and dreamt the plot for Build a Prince. I know that's kind of a lame answer but I legit had one of those insanely detailed dreams that mapped it all out and immediately called my best friends and writing partner and said "this is what we're writing next." I have a feeling it was a reaction to the standard "regular girl meets fancy prince who sweeps her off her feet" storyline and my brain was craving something spicier.
Why is everyone so obsessed with that Royal / Christmas combo?
This is such a good question!! Maybe it's the combo of two things that make us feel like there's real magic out there. They're both heightened worlds where anything seems possible. So put them together -- bam. Kid in a royal Christmas candy store.
What’s your favorite Christmas movie?
I watch Love Actually and White Christmas every year. If you're not on the White Christmas train -- get on it! It's SO GOOD and the dancing and costumes will light you on fire. As far as the made for TV type Christmas movies -- I have very strong opinions on these. I couldn't possibly pick a favorite but will say this: the lead actors being good and having chemistry is EVERYTHING. If the female lead is authentic and full of life and the guy is delicious and not boring and they seem to genuinely be drawn to each other -- it's magic. We'll accept sometimes less than stellar writing and lower budget sets and questionable plot points if those key elements are in place. If one of them is off, it's probably a dud. For example -- the ones with Kimberly Sustad and or Vanessa Lengies or Sarah Drew are all pretty dang good because those actresses are great and charming and make us feel something.
What Christmas movie is overrated?
Keeping on the made for TV movie theme -- I hate to say it, but last year's Lindsay Lohan movie Falling for Christmas fell flat for me. I was SO excited for it and saved it until Christmas Eve. She's always pretty interesting and watchable but there was just no chemistry. If I'm not literally DYING for them to kiss under some mistletoe...I kinda tune out.
Fill in the blank: You will like Build A Prince if you like ________.
Jane Austen, Gilmore Girls, elite early 2000s rom coms, those cheap frosted cookies with sprinkles in the grocery bakery section, and very warm, very fuzzy blankets.
You’re new to podcasting. What was your favorite thing about creating one?
I'm obsessed. Shooting film and tv can be incredibly tedious. You'll spend a whole day on one scene and 10 different angles and insert shots etc etc. We got to record the ENTIRE script in a day and it was electric. Actors don't often get to perform a piece straight through and really stay in it, and writers don't often get to hear their work that way.
What are your hopes and dreams for the podcast?
I'd love to have the opportunity to produce a bunch more of these for next Christmas. And of course, Build a Prince was always meant to be a feature film, so fingers crossed that's what's next.
If you were going to make another podcast, don’t worry about the logistics or whether or not anyone would like it, what would it be?
Well, the sequel of course -- Build a Baby. And I have an idea for another royal Christmas love story that involves a fighter pilot. Sounds weird but trust me, it would be delish.
Is there anything I didn’t ask you that you want to say?
If you listen to Build a Prince and don't fall in love with Billy Flynn -- you do not have blood pumping through your veins. I often complain about genital-less Ken Doll-type dudes in these movies -- kind of bland and lacking charisma. Billy is truly an artist and just so interesting. Seeing him bring this character so fully to life was such an incredible delight for me, and I think it will be for you too.
Self-care ritual: I work constantly and have a three-year-old -- self care for me is literally like...sitting in a chair and staring at a wall for a few minutes a day, if I'm lucky.
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hell yeah
🎙️I was on All of It talking about my favorite podcasts of the year. Listen here.
🎙️Read Podcast Marketing Lessons from Holiday Movies in Podcast Marketing Magic.
🎙️Arielle Nissenblatt spotlighted Radical in her newsletter and podcast.
The 23 Best Podcast of 2023
🎙️I know I am constantly doing cartwheels about podcasts I love (w/emoji only, I can’t do a real one) but I rarely come out so strongly to say after listening to something new that it’s one of the best things I’ve ever heard. I’m saying it now, about You Didn’t See Nothin, where Yohance Lacour brings us to a 1997 hate crime that took place on the South Side of Chicago and changed his life forever. He takes us back to the day of the attack when he was in his early 20s, when the terrible media coverage of the attack drove him to take things in his own hands, working with a local neighborhood newspaper to investigate the crime. Fast forward to present day, Yohance is back in Chicago, bringing a new perspective with archival audio and new interviews with those involved. Yohance tells this story in an animated, poetic way that makes you feel like you’re inside a pop-up book. The story is a mix of true-crime investigation, personal memoir, and some of the best narration I’ve ever heard, and it’s winning in every single one of those categories. Yohance steps into this show boldly, within seconds you want to hear what he has to say. I think if you listen to this episode, you won’t be able to stop. Listen here.
🎙️I am jealous of anyone who hasn’t yet listened to Hang Up, an audio dating show from Radiotopia, hosted by Zakiya Gibbons, created and produced by Caitlin Pierce. Dater “Maxine” (not her real name) is matched on audio-only dates with six potential mates. After each episode, all full of dates and fun segments, Maxine hung up on someone until she eliminated all but one. And in the end, that person was allowed to go on an all-expense paid vacation with Maxine, or take $1,000 and run. Even the second time I listened, I was so, so invested. Every moment was pumped full of energy and surprise. Cannot wait for this show to return for season two early next year. Listen here.
🎙️The first season of NRP’s “rhyme and punishment” podcast Louder Than a Riot was about what happens when hip-hop stars come into contact with the criminal justice system. Season two looked inward at the people marginalized and punished within the rap game. The first episode includes original reporting from the trial that found Tory Lanez guilty of assaulting Megan Thee Stallion and includes moving raw footage of hosts Sidney Madden and Rodney Carmichae as they digest the misogynoiristic trial. One minute we think we’re having a renaissance for women in rap, but Megan’s trial was a reality check about the way we treat Black women. Holding these two truths— that the criminal justice system is unjust to Black men AND ALSO that Tory Lanez shot Megan—can be hard to do but Black women have to do it all the time. The season is full of conversations with Trina (this was one of my favorite episodes,) Latto, DreamDoll, Saucy Santana, iLoveMakonnen, Rico Nasty, journalist Kim Osorio, activist Tarana Burke and more to show how the double-standard became the standard in rap. Listen here.
🎙️Jonathan Menjivar has been helping other reporters make their shows at Pineapple for the past five years but now is coming out with something on his own. Classy is all about the surprising and funny ways social class comes up in our lives. Jonathan grew up in a working-class family just outside of LA, his parents are immigrants from El Salvador and Mexico who had factory jobs. This is something he has felt every moment of his career, working at Fresh Air and This American Life, which were worlds away from what he knew. It was a huge identify shift. (He told me, “Does the fact that I don’t eat white bread anymore make me kind of a dick?”) Classy is a fascinating topic that he is exploring with his entire self, and it opens up so many things we don’t think about when we’re interacting with people in our lives, from our boss to the person who cleans our apartments (if we have hired someone to clean our apartment.) It’s a mixture of storytelling, reporting, and interviews with people like Terry Gross, Jonathan’s first boss. Classy is uncomfortable, class-sprawling, funny, honest, and a beautiful look at something so many of us experience but never talk about. And it’s so about Jonathan, but every episode was a window into a world of someone else. And every episode could have been the best episode of the series. Listen here.
🎙️I assumed Man Thinkers would be full of lazy jokes about toxic masculinity, but co-hosts George Collins and Dan Finkelstein lean hard into the bit and the result is laugh out loud hilarious. They interview real doctors and experts about testosterone, egg-freezing, and being a better man, in the characters of two Libertarian/incel gross men who were cancelled by “liberal” YouTube and have found a place for their voice on a podcast. One of my favorite episodes was an interview with Will Blunderfield who drinks his own urine, suns his asshole, and teaches classes in sexual kung-fu. Listen here.
🎙️The BBC’s I’m Not a Monster came back for another incredible season with The Shamima Begum Story. It’s outrageously compelling. Shamima is the quiet British teen who disappeared from London and emerged four years later in Syria with the Islamic State group, and Josh Baker (who blew us all away in season one of this show) traces her journey from London to Turkey to Syria and talked to her for a year to get her to tell her side of the story and confess to things she’d never stated before. Shamima is hated and pitied. Some see her as a traitor who should not be allowed home, some see her as a victim groomed by ISIS, now stuck in a Syrian detention camp. Josh has dug deep into the story to find nuance, truth, and the beating heart of a shocking story. Listen here.
🎙️I waited for Weight For It, Ronald Young Jr.’s nuanced conversations and thoughts about fatness and people who think about their weight all the time, for awhile. We don’t hear enough men talking about their relationship with weight. Ronald is unafraid to put himself out there, his body and his feelings, for a podcast that shifts the conversation about fat and desirability, and why so many of us are waiting for something…(thinness?) to start living the life we deserve. There were two conversations that totally blew my mind—one with an ex-girlfriend who Ronald dumped when he was younger because she was fat, and another with his doctor, who says the most ridiculous things to Ronald about his body and how he needs to lose weight. It’s the kind of conversation fat people are used to hearing all the time, but is shocking for anyone else to listen in on. Listen here.
🎙️When I saw the title Say More with Dr? Sheila, I thought…oops! A typo! It is not a typo. Dr? Sheila is not a doctor. She is Amy Poehler. (“For legal reasons, Dr? must be said in the form of a question.”) This is an improvised comedy show where Dr? Sheila lets you be a fly on the wall in her couples therapy sessions (think Where Should We Begin? with zero expertise) while she takes people with relationship issues and then messes them up even more. (In episode one, she plays a round of OJ-inspired “if you did it” about cheating, which reveals truths about “Beth” and “Ryan” that they definitely didn’t want to know.) Episode two has the best baked-in ad I’ve ever heard. Couples include the voices of Fred Armisen, Kate Berlant, Rachel Dratch, John Early, Tina Fey, Ana Gasteyer, Ilana Glazer, Abbi Jacobson,Jason Mantzoukas, Maya Rudolph, Paul Scheer, and many more. Listen here.
🎙️How to Destroy Everything is about a wild and complicated narcissist, a swindler, a crook, and a father named Richard Jacobs who ruined his life plus the lives of anyone who found themselves in his orbit. Hosted by Richard’s son, Danny, and his son’s childhood friend Darren, it’s best described as a docu-dramedy. Danny and Darren are trying to map out Richard’s life, to trace all the carnage and devastation that fell in his wake. There have only been a few episodes (episodes are coming out sporadically which is kind of driving me crazy but also makes me anticipate every episode more) but so far we’ve learned that there was a Richard Support Group of more than a dozen people who were screwed over by Richard (the group had its own newsletter) and Danny and Darren have tracked down a 16-year-old girl who now lives in the home Richard lived in before he died. Danny’s mom part of this show, and it’s not just about the wild story or the investigative aspect that keeps this podcast engaging…Danny and Darren are real childhood friends who know and understand each other. And Darren witnessed somed of Richard’s most bizarre moments. (Like scraping cheese/toppings off pizza and eating an entire pie without bread, in front of children who wanted to share that pizza. I couldn’t make that up if I tried.) This is a portrait of a monster but also about Danny, how he coped in big ways (getting sued by Richard) and small (Richard legally changed the family home address to The Royal Manor, which meant pizza delivery people would never agree to drop off pizzas.) But its’ also about his friendship with Darren, which makes this…potentially frightening and bummer of a podcast feel a whole lot lighter and more friendly. Listen here.
🎙️I was so excited to listen to Keys to the Kingdom that I was nervous to press play. On it, audio power couple Matt Gourley and Amanda Lund take us backstage of our favorite theme parks to hear from surviving characters, performers, and fans, getting the juicy details about what it’s really like, sans pixie dust…perhaps what places like the Disney headquarters doesn’t want us to know. (In fact, this seems like a pretty gutsy move. I think many people are afraid to spoil the magic of Disney—they have been warned not to, with threat of lawsuits.) Matt and Amanda interview ex cast members (Disney lingo for…anyone who works there) Deep Skirt, White Glove 1, White Glove 2, and Scott Aukerman about the strange things they have to do to please guests and stay sane. (If a dad is getting handsy, princesses are instructed to hold their arm up and say, “let me pose you like a prince!” which means…get your dirty hands off me your family is watching. This also works if a kid is barfing on your costume or covered in ice cream.) Episode one covers princesses, episode two is dedicated to the cast members in the fuzzy costumes. This is my dream podcast. Matt and Amanda are delightful, funny, and they are not holding back. Listen here.
🎙️The Redemption of Jar Jar Binks is a podcast for people who love Star Wars, for people (like me) who have never seen Star Wars, and for people who fucking hated 199’s The Phantom Menace simply becaue they hated Jar Jar Binks, named "the most annoying movie character of all time" by Complex. Because this podcast is about how much people hated Jar Jar Binks, and how internet hatred for him impacted the real person who played him for the big screen, Ahmed Best, in a deeply dark way. The podcast is hosted by Dylan Marron, who became an expert on people saying terrible things to him on the internet. On his podcast Conversations with People Who Hate Me he interviewed people who talked shit about him online to ask them why, proving that there’s a real person that you’re talking shit about online, and once you meet them, your hateful tone might be softened. Dylan is the perfect host for this show, which is about Star Wars but really the internet. Listen here.
🎙️While recovering from a head injury, Ellie Gordon-Moershel was prescribed to watch a movie she loved as physical therapy. She picked Dirty Dancing, started sending her friends short voice notes about it, and realized it’s worthy of a scene-by-scene study. Her podcast Butt Out, Baby! is just that. This is a podcast for those who love the film but also for people interested in storytelling, film, and craft. Ellie is reading from the screenplay, which gives interesting insight into the story’s original intentions. (Baby is an “endearing unkept puppy.”) And often the things in the screenplay left out of the film are the most revealing. Every episode, she provides a birds eye view, granular recap, and dramatic argument for a tiny baby corner of the movie. She also provides context about the racial and sexual politics happening at the time, taboo feminism, 1950s paternalism, the history of Jim Crow, and more. Ellie has been involved with audio storytelling since 2008 (I found an episode of 99% Invisible that she made.) She breaks the rules with this podcast because she understands them so well. It feels like an audio pop-of book of original music, interviews with her family and friends, and sharp analysis that makes you realize everything about this fun movie was intentional, every moment can be explored. The first real episode zooms in on the car ride to Kellerman's, a somewhat ominous scene (with the movie’s only voice over) that sets us up for the story that’s about to unfold. This is an ode to the film if you want it to be. But it’s also so much more. Listen here.
🎙️Constellation Prize is one of the most beautiful shows. It feels like host Bianca Giaever is sharing a section of her heart, bringing her mic around as she interviews people about art, God, and loneliness. It’s insightful, intimate, and feels alive. I cherish the first season and was never expecting it to come back, but it has…for a 4-part miniseries that started in a way that amuses me. Bianca got a terrible pitch letter from writer Terry Tempest’s publicist pitching Terry to the show. This technically makes no sense. The show hadn’t aired since 2020 and isn’t an interview podcast. (This is my pet peeve in podcast PR.) However, Bianca got excited and decided to run not a series of interviews, but an experiment in which Bianca and Terry asynchronously went on night walks and then shared their thoughts and experiences and via audio messages. For the first scene of the series, Bianca thinks back to a photo she took of her grandmother the last time she saw her, her grandmother was waving goodbye. I always get sad when old people wave goodbye at me. It can be terribly heavy and ominous. (I can remember my Uncle Buddy and Grandma Wanda waving to me a lot towards the end of their lives, I think they knew something about how much time they had left.) Bianca worried about her grandma being alone, she had been alone for so long. And now that her grandmother has passed, I wonder if she is still alone. Bianca reflects on her own loneliness, and her experiences of these night walks, communicating with Terry from afar, and what we believe in when we see nature. This series seems like it was somewhat accidental but it was a very happy accident that was possibly written in the stars. Enjoy this series, and the first season of Constellation Prize. I think it is something you will return to in order to feel things and be reminded of the magical things audio can make us feel. Listen here.
🎙️I stumbled upon The Karen & Ellen Letters, a podcast I cannot tell is real or fake (I think it might be a combination of both) and I couldn’t stop laughing, but I was also confused about what I was hearing. Here’s what I have figured out: The Karen & Ellen Letters started as a blog, when Josh discovered this pile of letters between two kind of dimwitted young women and their landlord that dispute rent money, apartment renovations, and jurisdiction in the Bay Area in the late 80s. The blog, which reads like a comedy skit, gained popularity and was then released as a podcast voiced by actors, which was then deleted, and I think only recently partially rereleased. (New episodes are leaking every few days.) I’m only a few episodes in. They feel out of order, which adds to my confusion and obsession, and an interview with Josh and a reader of the original blog leads us to believe there are two seasons, that things are murky, that some of it is true (but what!) and that some of it is sad. And that once you know what happens (what happens!) it will change your outlook on the whole thing. I listened to the available episodes fast, too fast. I will have to listen again. I was literally desperate to try to figure out the context for this story. I have no idea what will unfold (I suppose I could read the blog, if I wanted to spoil it for myself) but I do know that even if this is completely scripted, it’s hilarious. Karen and Ellen are privileged, write with the intelligence of seven-year-olds, and seem to have no idea what it means to rent a house or live in an adult world. Mark, their exasperated landlord, is trying to catch them up to speed, denying their requests for thousands of dollars of reimbursements, insisting that they pay for the refrigerator they damaged when one of their boyfriends smacked it with a ribeye steak, and repeatedly asking them to stop painting the walls and covering the furniture with fur. If this review is confusing it is because I am confused, and the experience of listening to The Karen & Ellen Letters is confusing. But it’s the best kind of confusing I’ve ever experienced. Listen here.
🎙️On Meddling Adults, Mike Schubert invites two people to compete to solve children’s mysteries from Encyclopedia Brown, Scooby Doo and more, for charity. Full disclosure: I can never solve the mysteries, that were intended to be solved by children, but this is still one of my favorite shows. Mike is a kind and funny host, and putting people to this kind of kid detective test ends up feeling like improv with a twist. Something that never occurred to me before was how hard this show must be to make. Mike has to read the stories himself and distill them into quiz format. (He’s not skimping on the writing, it’s great.) Can you imagine reading an entire Nancy Drew book only to discover it won’t work for the podcast? Nobody is saying that reading a Nancy Drew mystery is a waste of time, but I’m laughing picturing Mike finishing one and saying, “that’s it?!” and chucking it on the ground. We didn’t get any Nancy Drew in this episode (Encyclopedia Brown stories are pretty short, making them perfect for the show.) But the more you listen to these mysteries, the more you learn what an illusionist Encyclopedia Brown’s Donald J. Sobol was—the tricks he uses to distract young readers (and you,) the tactics that keep coming up, the characters that return again and again. It’s Encyclopedia’s world, we’re all just living in it. Listen here.
🎙️Tristan Redman is a serious journalist who doesn’t believe in ghosts…except for the one who may have been living in his childhood bedroom when he was a teenager. Fast forward a decade or so, Tristan is married and discovers that his wife Kate’s great grandmother Naomi Dancy happens to have lived (and was murdered) next door in 1937. For his podcast Ghost Story, has started gathering stories from other people who have lived in his old bedroom that report seeing the ghost of a faceless woman. Naomi was stabbed in the eyes, allegedly by her brother, which would make this a grisly true crime story. But Tristan believes the faceless woman is Naomi, and that she has a message: it wasn’t her brother who killed her, but her husband. And so the true crime story turns into a ghost story, or maybe it’s the other way around. Episodes two and three begin to take a darker turn. Listen here.
🎙️Eight new lesbian bars have opened in the U.S. since Cruising (the lesbian bar road trip podcast) launched in 2021. It’s back for season two, and Sarah Gabrielli, Rachel Karp, and Jen McGinity are taking us to every single one. But this isn’t just a road trip podcast, it’s a time warp. We go back in time, to 1930s San Francisco, to 1990s New Orleans, to meet lesbians in history who were hidden or forgotten, but in one way or another stuck out their necks to protect queer people and the spaces for queer people. Okay so it’s a history podcast on the road, about bars, but also packed with some of the most beautiful, gooey-ass love stories I’ve ever heard. The episode Femme Bar is about a cute couple, a loss, and the bar they built together to heal from it (I Google-stalked them.) The episode Charlene’s is sweet enough to make you believe in that kind of forever love that you’ll have until your very last breath. So yeah, this is a lesbian bar road trip podcast. But it’s really about love, with some cool as hell bars in the background, run by some amazing women in history. Listen here.
🎙️Carolyn Holland is 80, rich, and a widow, who claims to have fallen in love with a homeless man named David Foute 23 years younger than her who has moved in with her. Is this a love or con story? That’s what Intrigue: Million Dollar Lover is all about. Some (like Carolyn’s daughters, who are not. having it.) claim David has eyes on Carolyn’s fortune. They have reason to be nervous—not only is David much younger, he admits to have being a crystal meth addict and drug dealer who spent time in jail for making pipe bombs that police believed were linked to a possible attack on Walmart. (Dave thinks…still thinks…Walmart was intending to microchip us all.) But is it any of our business if an 80 year old woman finds sex and love? This is more complicated than that. Carolyn’s love for Dave might stem from her own trauma, which is intricately laced to his. This isn’t just a juicy story, the show is great. BBC Journalist Sue Mitchell seems to be the third corner of the love triangle—it’s like Carolyn and Dave have let her live inside their world. She hears and observes everything and talks to everyone. She is absolutely a character in the story. Million Dollar Lover might be a love story, it might be a story of financial abuse, it’s definitely a family drama. I just finished it today, it takes a very sad turn. Listen here.
🎙️From the LA Times: Foretold, a piece that centers around Paulina Stevens, whose fate was sealed at age 17 to leave school, marry young, and become a fortuneteller in her insular Romani American family. This series is about what happens when you leave your community and define a new one on your own. Faith Pinho is overturning tarot card tables to tell Paulina’s story to destigmatize Romani culture. This is also a story about Faith’s evolution of a journalist, taking us from her initial conversations with Paulina in 2019 at a different news outlet and through the journey as she gets closer and closer to the meat of the story. Listen here.
🎙️In 1995, Carole Fisher was looking for love so her friend Mindy introduced to Bob Bierenbaum, a Jewish plastic surgeon who flew planes and spoke several languages. (Mindy dated him and was passing him along.) He was “perfect on paper,” a fact that allowed Carole to dismiss several red flags. Like telling her that his ex-wife Gail was missing and presumed dead but he definitely did not kill her!!!! Carol and Mindy start talking about him and along with a bunch of other girlfriends, start this sort of armchair detective club where they attempt to track down what happened to Gail. It was a joke. But the dots start to connect and on The Girlfriends, Carole Fisher tells the story of how her girlfriend gang of dicks found out more than they bargained for, uncovering truth that they system hadn’t. Much like Do You Know Mordechai?, this is a mystery backed by a group of friends that I desperately want to join. Murder isn’t fun but this podcast is. Listen here.
🎙️Finding Fire Island is a sparkling, engaging audio tour of Fire Island, with Joel Kim Booster, Margaret Cho, Matt Rogers, DJ Lina Bradford, Brian Moylan, Ben Rimalower, Paul Rudnick and more as your guides. Host and EP Jess Rothschild takes you through the interviews, offering histories, raunchy memories, clear instructions for the different types of parties and etiquette, the fashion…everything you would need to know before you visit to have the best experience. And everything you would need to know to appreciate Fire Island for the party haven that it is. Each episode is peppered with stories from the people who have made it fantastic, painting Fire Island as a place people come visit to be free and themselves. If you loved Joel Kim Booster’s Fire Island, this will feel like the audio extension, a colorful audio map you’ve been waiting for. I absolutely relished every second, licked every second off my fingers, yummy yummy yum yum yum.
🎙️From the file of The City Reliquary comes Undiscarded, which exhibits objects of New York City that tell stories about its people. Each episode starts with something like a lightbulb from The Statue of Liberty or a sign from Second Avenue Deli to launch into a history of that object’s place in New York City’s history and the personal stories that make it uniquely New York. Meet the man who cared for that lightbulb, the family that holds up the world’s most iconic Jewish deli, the alligators thriving in the sewers. I love New York. I’ve lived here for eighteen years, I thought I couldn’t love it more. My heart expanded three sizes listening to these beautiful episodes that shine light on the city’s quirkiness, stories that couldn’t happen anywhere else in the world. I recently heard someone who has lived in LA and New York say that if you fall on the street in LA, people will ask you if you’re okay but then dash off without helping. A New Yorker will call you a stupid asshole and help you up. These stories illustrate the city’s rough edges and beauty, the kindness found in the chaos, and the heart of the people who live here. I imagine if you have loved New York and left, it will make you want to go back. And if you’re like me and live here and sometimes get tired of the harshness, the tightness, the seemingly impossibility of keeping up with the pace, it will make you realize it’s all worth it. There couldn’t be a more beautiful love letter to a place. Listen here.
🎙️Despite what we’ve probably been told, the week following the assassination of Martin Luther king Jr. in 1968 was one of the most fiery, disruptive, and contentious weeks in American history. For many, King was the last chance for a race reckoning without blood. For many his death was a religious event that (happened around Easter and) meant war. The retaliation that followed diverted a social revolution and changed America forever. Holy Week starts as a text-book rewrite of the story you thought you knew but unfolds to reveal the stories of people left in the wake of King’s Holy Week, the tiny ways it broke them and their families from the inside out. This is from The Atlantic and hosted by Vann R. Newkirk II, the same people and host who brought us Floodlines. When Jesus was assassinated, it sparked one of the largest and most powerful religions in the world. MLK’s assassination was a tidal wave that impacted the entire trajectory of modern America that we’re still learning about. We’re still in it. And in Holy Week, we get a granular look at how the wave threw not only our country into a whirlwind, but families and individuals, too. The writing for Holy Week is tight and could read as a novel. The music is a character itself, perfectly rising and waining to accentuate the highs and lows of the story. Listen here.
🎙️I love you!