🎣 The cozies 💌 Finn’s mom 💕 familiar strangers 🏙️ Baby Lasagna 🎶
🍭 👂"Nobody wants to read a book about Robert Moses" 🌈 🤸♀️
Bonjour.
Today is Monday, May 27. In case this newsletter is too long…one of the weirdest and funniest things I’ve discovered (thanks to Connor Ratliff) is here, an update to a Peabody Award-winning piece here, a series that is way more fun than I thought it’d be (and you really shouldn’t miss it) here.
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xoxo lp
👋q & a & q & a & q & a👋
Jess Parks
Jess Parks is an LA-based feature sound mixer and creator behind the podcast I Seduce The Dragon.
In ten words or less, describe I Seduce The Dragon.
Hilarious, immersive storytelling with unbeatable chemistry and high production value.
How did you meet everyone on the cast? You’re such a rag-tag group but have amazing chemistry! You can really tell in the audio that you’re all friends outside of the game.
I could fangirl over these players forever! Some hadn’t even met when we kicked off, but I’ve got a bit of a talent for assembling a great team and I love to connect people. We didn't even plan a podcast at first — just wanted to have a blast with a fun crew. Watching these friendships grow beyond the game? Pure magic.
I’ve known Flanders the longest; we met over a decade ago when she was a bartender at my favorite local dive, just one of her fascinating talents among blacksmithing, arm wrestling, homesteading, jiu jitzu, and, oh yes, she’s a lawyer. At a dinner party with Flanders, I met Ryan, who is one of the coolest, most vibrant and fun people on the planet. Meeting her inspired me to assemble the game, and I began considering who else would compliment the personalities we already had.
I brought in Dana, a colleague from my days as a post executive at Sony Pictures, adding her sweet enthusiasm and whimsical naughtiness to the mix (plus I just love her laugh). And I snagged Cristina, who I met through D&D in 2020, for her appetite for deeper story, complex character exploration, and all that delicious emotional conflict.
What inspired you to get into podcasting after working in Hollywood audio production? How has it differed from what you were used to?
Hollywood audio post production is still my life and there is a transferable set of skills, certainly, when it comes to editing and mixing for an immersive experience. But in feature sound we don’t control the narrative or pacing, and I love the challenge of carving out the story for the podcast. I turn three hours of free-flowing, improvised chaos (like dailies, for those in the biz) into a seamless, action-packed, hour-long narrative that’s truly a delightful listen where everyone sounds smart, funny, and great at D&D!
What’s your favorite sound effect or sound design moment from the first season of I Seduce the Dragon?
There is a weretiger moment coming in Episode 11 that is such a thrilling confluence of sound design, music and dramatic narrative, it gives me goosebumps. I can’t wait to release it.
What’s your favorite podcast that everyone already knows about?
Dungeons & Daddies is a must-listen in the D&D genre and one of my biggest inspirations for our show. The cast are incredibly funny people in very individual and complementary ways, it feels as much like hanging out with your funniest friends as listening to a well-produced show. I had only just begun to get interested in D&D when I started listening to them, and they’re a big part of why I’ve grown to love the game now.
What’s your favorite podcast that not enough people know about?
If you haven’t heard Murder She Rolled, I’m sorry but you’re blowing it. It’s a pretty new D&D podcast starring Alan Seawright, creator of Cinema Therapy. Their DM is crazy talented, and the characters are diverse and hilarious. Dive in now and thank me later.
Anything I didn’t ask that you’d like to share?
If you’re new to D&D, we’ve got you - start with our “Clippy’s Version” of the first couple episodes. They’re the same full adventure, but include helpful (and snarky) explainers to help you get the hang of it!
🚨If u only have time for 1 thing🚨
When I interview podcasters, I ask them to give me a podcast recommendation. I’m always in search of something amazing I’ve never heard of. It happens only sometimes, and it did when I was talking to Connor Ratliff of Tiny Dinos (for an interview that I haven’t published yet.) Connor recommended A Place Upstate and I went straight to it and it was one of the weirdest, funniest things I have ever heard. Robert and Cyrus Cozy (Noah Forman and Michael Antonucci) report the local goings-on from their cozy upstate New York cabin with cozy tips so you can be as cozy as they are. It’s a mix between Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon Days and the “Schweddy Balls” SNL sketch featuring Ana Gasteyer and Molly Shannon that’s making fun of NPR. One of the things that makes this podcast so perfectly made, not just funny, is how it understands the medium enough to play on it. The pauses and pacing are perfectly awkward. The sound is playful, too— music is its own character that dramatizes topics like bird watching. Jo Firestone is on the first episode, and if you like her comedy then this show will be your favorite show of all time and you, like me, will be nervous because this is a podcast that seems to have ended. Please Cozys, can we have some more? I listened to a bunch of episodes at once and it sort of warped my brain—I started thinking everything I heard was a parody of itself and funny, from the podcast White Devil to a SKYRIZI commercial. I have already recommended this show to people who got back to me immediately saying it was the best thing they’ve listened to in a long time. I got so much feedback about how everyone loved my Tiny Dinos recommendation last week. If that was you, trust me (and Connor) and try A Place Upstate now. You will lose your mind. (They also have the best podcast website I’ve ever seen.)
hell yeah
✨For Lifehacker, I declared the 12 of the Best Podcasts of 2024 (So Far).
✨The Western Sound team is hosting a series—Seminars on Creativity and Craft, hosted by three of the most creative people working in audio: Kelly McEvers, Jad Abumrad and Avery Trufelman. The seminars are geared toward podcast producers and anyone working in a creative field. The goal is to inspire attendees to create their own groundbreaking work, find their next dream project, turn setbacks into inspiration, and navigate tough times in our industry. They're all in June and held over Zoom. As a Podcast the Newsletter reader YOU get a 15% discount code: PODN15, and can sign up here.
✨Read What your fav Bridgerton couple reveals about your marketing style [via Podcast Marketing Magic.]
✨The Tribeca lineup has been announced. Get your tickets here. Don’t miss the Audio Flux event or In the Dark Live.
💎BTW💎
🎙️On 99% Invisible Roman Mars is bookclubbing Robert Caro’s 1,200 page book The Power Broker, a biography of Robert Moses, the guy responsible for so much of the park, highway, bridge, playground, housing, tunnel, beach, zoo, etc formation of New York City. The book is really about power, how Robert Moses got it (without ever being an elected official) and kept it and was able to be one of the influential people in history. Every month this year he’s going over 100 pages with people like Jamelle Bouie and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. If this doesn’t sound fun, you’re wrong. Roman kicks things off with Conan O’Brien, whose level of obsession with Robert Caro rivals my nephew’s obsession with Minecraft. Robert Caro’s interview in this series was one of the best episode I’ve heard in months. Caro sounds like a guy who needs his own 1200 page biography. He’s fascinating, it’s like he’s from another time and space. Listen to the Conan episode here, the Caro one here.
🎙️I’m assuming you’ve listened to Erica Heilman’s Finn and the Bell, a masterpiece she made for her podcast Rumblestrip. It won a lot of things, including a Peabody. If you haven’t listened to it, go do it now. Then listen to the newest Rumblestrip episode, Tara. Erica checks in on Tara, Finn’s mother, at Finn’s memorial in the Hardwick Vermont forest. Listen Erica is the last kind of person that would want to, or even utter the words “make content go viral” so I hope this doesn’t offend her but that’s what The Finn and the Bell kind of was in a small circle of podcast nerds. Everyone who listened had a reaction to it. I listen to it every so often and experience all sorts of new feelings. My chest tightens just thinking about Tara running into the snow after her son’s suicide to feel everything in the universe happening at once. Tara received letters addressed to “Finn’s Mom, Hardwick.” That’s how small Hardwick is. It worked. In case you were wondering, Finn’s death doesn’t get easier or less painful and it doesn’t make any more sense, and it doesn’t have to. Listen here.
🎙️The Atlantic always putting really thoughtful, sweeping, fresh series up on their feed. The series subjects are broad—how to keep time, how to talk to people. But the episodes tucked inside are nuanced, specific, and unique. The newest iteration of the show is called How to Know What’s Real and it asks what real life is now that the internet and AI are integrated into so much that we do. In
, Devin wrote about the first episode “How to Know Who’s Real,” but I want to recommend episode two “How to Live in a Digital City,” which lets us imagine our identities if the internet, a place that has the scale of the city and the intimacy of the small town, was a real place. How do we build community in a digital space? How does the infrastructure of this city affect our cultural code and how we interact? It introduced me to the concept of the infinite stranger, those people in your life who are both intimate and anonymous. (The guy you see on the subway every morning at precicely 8:18am.) This was the episode that I had to listen to several times. Listen here.🎙️When NPR laid off Yowei Shaw (Invisibilia,) she went to a very dark place and she talks about it on the first episode of her new show Proxy. Things didn’t end there, she worked tirelessly on a piece about rejection and getting laid off for a huge unnamed podcast that also got killed. That’s what broke her, when the darkest place got darker. That’s not what Proxy is about, really. On Proxy, Yowei connects people going through stuff with proxies—other people who have shared experience or can offer valuable advice. It’s not advice or therapy, it’s something in its own category. It’s learning how to get laid off better by talking from other people who have been there. This feels like obvious magic to me. Isn’t that what community and connection and even storytelling is for? Yowei is magical, too. She’s proven herself. And now she’s picking herself back up by turning her pain into something that’s helpful. In episodes two and three we get to hear the story that got killed and an interview with an HR person, who seems like a real human, and listening to her actually made me feel really sad for HR people. I know so many people who have been laid off lately, send this to them! It’s healing. But also beautiful for what it’s doing and for how it’s built and for what it sounds like. Podcast art by Good Tape, woo hoo! Listen here.
🎙️I enjoyed Who shat on the floor at my wedding, it was smart, original, and fun, and unlike other things I hear. That’s my favorite kind of thing to hear. But I always get nervous when someone tries to do it again, and they are, with a new season called Who Shat: The Case of the Tiny Suit/Case, tracking down the person who left a suitcase (that’s not actually so tiny, turns out) and a literally tiny three-piece corduroy suit hanging on someone’s veranda in the Swedish backwoods. Both stories involve people leaving something and a combination of silliness and seriousness, and that combination is my favorite. Listen here.
🎙️On Eurovangelists, Jeremy Bent, Oscar Montoya, and Dimitry Pompée have been covering the Eurovision Song Contest in colorful detail, absolutely delighting people who are into Eurovision as much as they are, and converting people to Eurovision who aren’t already. With the 2024 competition finale having aired (Dimitry was there IRL) comes the Eurovangelists recap, where they award performances for fun things like best: host, bit, use of digital screens, choreography, and the Slavic English Award for Lyrical Excellence. I did not watch Eurovision technically but I followed along with this show and online. If you haven’t absorbed a single thing you might want to watch the Eurovision finale first. Listen here.
🎙️This year, for Stonewall’s 55th Anniversary, Making Gay History is re-releasing their fifth season, a look inside the 1969 Stonewall Uprising from the people who were actually there. It’s a must-listen for podcast lovers, history lovers, love lovers. There will also be a bonus episode interview with June Thomas (I love June…did you know she has an upcoming book on lesbian spaces, A Place of Our Own, coming out…ohhhh…tomorrow?) Eric will also be on a panel for a live recording of Slate’s Slow Burn at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival. Listen to the Stonewall series here.
🎙️In LA, a city where pedestrians get weird looks for walking (this always happens to me when I try to walk there anyway) Allan McLeod is going on walks of all kinds with people and letting us in on the conversations they have, for his new podcast Walkin’ About. When you think about it there are all kinds of walks! Dog ones, power ones, drunk ones, cemetery ones, night ones, hikes! The walks guide the conversations (which are refreshingly normal but funny) and celebrate the different reasons we walk anywhere and with anyone. I love audio diaries or anytime someone does something literally anything different than sitting at a mic in a studio. On Janet Varney’s episode I learned what a Kula cloth is, episode two was with Mike Mitchell. Listen here.
🎙️Offline is a really well-done show about the internet, John Favreau and Max Fisher’s interviews always surprise and delight me. There are hard-hitting ones, but it also swings to silly sometimes. For their movie club they watch movies and talks about what they got right and wrong about the internet, and how the movie would be different if it took place today. Their look at You’ve Got Mail did a great job capturing a very narrow window of the internet’s history when we would actually get excited to hear that “we’ve got mail.” The guests are Kendra James and Jon Lovett. Kendra is funny and fascinating, and I find Jon Lovett hilarious. I think you could throw him on any podcast with zero seconds notice and he’d be a great guest. Listen here.
🎙️The entrepreneurial space in podcasts is usually pretty US-leaning, with stories highlighting American entrepreneurs. Grit & Growth (note: they’re a client!) will give you all a different view! The Stanford Seed podcast hooks up some of the greatest minds at Stanford with African and South Asian entrepreneurs in rapidly developing markets to see how they can empower them to succeed. The mixture of data-rich analysis and storytelling makes Grit & Growth so very different from the business shows that are going to the same people with the same problems. Listen here.
🎙️I love you!
📦 From the Archives 📦
[From August 10, 2020] This episode of VENT Documentaries makes you feel like you are swimming inside a teenage girl’s brain. It’s the first episode of the new season, which focuses on love, and gives the mic to Hibak. (Each episode of the show offers a story from a young person in one London Borough.) Hearing Hibak swoon and obsess over boys is so authentic I felt like I was her 16-year-old friend sharing secrets with her at the lunch table. The stories on VENT are always great, for the voices and the excellent sound production, which takes playful risks to transport you to a new place. I can remember when crushes and getting dumped and flirting felt like the most important thing on earth, and VENT gives respect to these real feelings. Each moment is full of sounds that are deliberate and powerful. I listened to the last few minutes of the Isaiah episode a few times.
A Place Upstate's website literally transported me through time