👩🎤The fortunate ones ❄️ cocaine Christmas 👮♀️ cowabunga🏄♀️ gay seagulls 🌈 I’m scared ☠️
🍭 👂 Girls just want to have fun 🌈 🤸♀️
Bonjour.
Today is Monday, June 19. In case this newsletter is too long, this will change everything you have ever thought about Girls Just Want to Have Fun, how dare you Essence, a white Christmas but with coke here.
[I will never charge you to read Podcast the Newsletter. If you’d like to buy an ad, inquire here.]
xoxo lp
ps If you are pleased with Podcast The Newsletter, please spread the word.
👋q & a & q & a & q & a👋
Dane Cardiel
Dane Cardiel got his start at Simplecast as a founding member. Now he’s at Gumball, where his conversations revolve around solutions for podcast monetization. He’s just launched Good Tape, a print magazine that captures the conversations happening in the audio industry.
Why do we need Good Tape? Was there an aha moment?
I know the podcast news cycle in the last 12+ months has taken its toll on many. It can be hard to feel optimistic about the trajectory our industry is heading and the institutions we currently have in place. Beyond that, there are so many diverse and marginalized communities under attack facing real political dangers — who are singularly unsafe and targeted in public life — and that has a compounding effect on feelings of pain and isolation. How as an industry are we responding to this moment? And if so many podcasts serve as a bridge to help people escape the doldrums of their life circumstances, what exists for those who make podcasts? Really the concept of a magazine felt like the perfect vehicle for address a need I sense in so many in our community — to help realign our industry’s priorities and form a new locus for engaging with each other, especially for those who don’t feel particularly welcomed, supported, or safe in our existing industry spaces.
Tell us about the team.
I’m so lucky to be working with Alana Hope Levinson and Sami Wittwer on this magazine. I’ve known Alana for over 8 years from my prior work in digital media and have followed her incredible career over the years as she’s developed media products for Vox, Wondery, Substack, and MEL. Her involvement will uniquely elevate Good Tape into a must-read cultural touchstone. And as she has said to me before, people don’t purchase magazines for the writing alone — design is critical. So what Sami Wittwer has been able to accomplish in less than a few months to develop the Good Tape brand is incredible. Her design thinking and execution will ground the magazine into something beyond an industry publication for a few hundred people to appreciate. As our industry grows and new listeners develop a deep appreciation for this medium, Good Tape is poised to reach far beyond our inner circles and the design quality is what will set us up for this broader reach.
Are you taking pitches? What do you need from us?
Although we are accepting pitches on our website and would love to consider any contributions from writers and podcasters who’d like to be involved, much of our content will be sourced with journalists and writers within our network for this first issue. We understand it’s also hard to pitch us without knowing our editorial mandate, but after this first issue I imagine it will be easier for folks to put together compelling pitches that fit our magazine’s tone.
Were there any other names for it? How did you come up with it?
Expanding on the answer above. I was attending On Air Fest in LA last year, and in conversation with Julie Shapiro we were talking about our backgrounds in print media making zines, magazines, and chapbooks. I was thinking about what a magazine could be named for the podcast industry, and thinking of this audience of long-time radio and audio makers, I couldn’t escape something involving tape — good tape is something to capture, experience, and mold. There really were no other titles to consider. It had to be Good Tape.
What table did you sit at in the high school cafeteria? (which clique were you in?)
I was all over the place in high school. I would honestly sit at every table. This turned into not having very many deep friendships, but I really loved connecting with all sorts of cliques and being friends with everyone — the athletes, the preppy kids, the theater kids, the nerds… but I was closest with my soccer and golf team buddies.
Will there ever be any audio elements to Good Tape or do you hope to keep it strictly print?
We’re not particularly interested in moving outside of our print scope for now. There’s always room to evolve into something else, but in some ways the project risks becoming less interesting in a digital audio context. Staying focused on print is an important differentiator for now.
What’s your favorite thing about the audio industry?
The overwhelming kindness of our industry. There’s absolutely much more to do to bring kindness to all our collective spaces, but by and large, as an industry, we’re unique in this way. There’s a true sense of community, belongingness, and responsibility that animates our work, which I doubt many other industries can say exists for them. I mean, even our media buyers are engaged and generative with their time and energy. This isn’t common and we shouldn’t take it for granted.
What’s something it could be better about?
Improving how we treat workers in terms of pay equity and following through on the commitments we made through the Equality in Audio Pact many signed after George Floyd’s murder. Imriel Morgan, Laura Blake, and Steph Colbourn are reviving this pact today and urging its signees to reaffirm their commitments with action. Laura, head of the UK Audio Network, recently shared data on the pay gap for UK audio professionals based on race and gender. The key takeaway: “If you’re not white, or a man, you’re earning less than you were three years ago.” As an industry we need to “say less and do more” to address these issues head on.
Are there too many podcasts?
Of course not! There are around 200-250K podcasts publishing weekly episodes and despite a well-documented increase in listener demand, there are actually significantly fewer new podcasts being launched in 2023. Yes, we’re in the midst of a market correction and the ad market is soft, but it might be the perfect time to either launch a new podcast or double-down on your marketing efforts on an existing podcast to capture the new listeners adopting the medium for the first time.
🚨If u only have time for 1 thing🚨
You have probably heard Cyndi Lauper’s Girls Just Want to Have Fun (which was #1 on the charts the day I was born) millions of times but have you thought about it, really thought about it? Sentimental Garbage covered the song in a sharp, fun, and academic way, which is really what this show does best. (After listening I thought host Caroline O'Donoghue could rename the podcast Girls Just Want to Have Fun.) It’s an examination of both Cyndi’s and the original version, which was sung by Robert Hazard, who is famously a man. This changes everything if you think about it. And Caroline and guest Tom McInnes think about it. It’s a conversation about fun, what Cyndi means when she’s talking about wanting to walk in the sun and the fortunate ones, and why when you hear Girls Just Want to Have Fun, you don’t want to dance to it, you just want to hug yourself. Know what I mean?) Girls Just Want to Have Fun doesn’t have many lyrics, but each one carries more than its weight. Caroline and Tom are even able to tie it to the writer’s strike.
hell yeah
✨ Read Make the most of your ratings and reviews (Podcast Marketing Magic)
✨ Read my piece 10 Podcasts That Are Totally Bonkers via Lifehacker
✨Last week I wrote that I would love to sport a FREE CANDICE t-shirt (Behinders, you’ll get this joke) and Candice must be a subscriber to my newsletter because she made one! Let’s make this thing fly off the shelves.
✨Aline Laurent-Mayard won Tribeca's Narrative Nonfiction Audio Storytelling Award for Free From Desire! “For its delightfulness, its fresh perspective, and its deceptively-easy-sound, we would like to award the Tribeca Audio Award for Established Audio to “Free From Desire” by Paradiso Media. This compelling personal story has lessons and insights for anyone with a body. Aline’s evocative and charming writing was a spoonful of sugar for a deeply-entrenched problem in larger society: the ways we do and don’t talk about sexuality, and how that impacts our sense of belonging in the world.” From Aline: “I'm speechless. Free from Desire is a narrative podcast about discovering and accepting that I'm asexual. But more than that it's an investigation into our society's obsession with sex, and its impact on our mental health. I spoke to experts, sociologists and friends to dissect how society has dictated ideas about sex, coupling, and happiness, and how we could free ourselves from this compulsory sexuality and rethink intimacy.”
✨Arielle Nissenblatt spotlighted Daily Fail in her newsletter and podcast.
💎BTW💎
🎙️A few weeks ago on There Are No Girls on the Internet, Bridget pointed out a weird social post from Essence magazine on Viola Davis's Cannes outfit. Viola’s name was spelled “Vila” and Bridget sensed the language had been written by AI. Later, Essence reached out to Bridget about it on Instagram—at first they admitted to being "busted" but then they accused her—THE Bridget Todd—of spreading misinformation. So was it an editor having a hard day (we’ve been there) or did someone ask AI to write something in AAVE Black slang? Bridget gets into it. This is a juicy BEEF (pun intended) you’ll want to pay attention to. It says a lot about what happens when we blindly rely on AI. Listen here.
🎙️Sometimes I listen to really beautiful, immersive, experimental shows. Sometimes I like a sharp investigative series. But sometimes I just want to hear two Disney nerds talk about how much they love Disney World. See: Baby, This is Keke Palmer, where John Stamos comes on to talk about the magic of being a Disney adult. I was basically noddeding my head off. Listen here.
🎙️The Set opens on Christmas Eve in New York City. NYPD officer Barry Brown is trying to catch a group of guys selling coke. He ends up completely covered in the stuff, which is a beautiful, cinematic way to start the story of NYC’s crack era, the most violent time in New York City history. It’s a great, New Yorky Christmas story. (Cue Fairytale of New York.) I didn’t think I’d like this one, I don’t need to be reminded of the cop corruption in my own city. Nevertheless I persisted and I’m glad I did because it’s a well-plotted, fascinating look at the fucked up world of New York’s sprawling 3-0 precinct (The Dirty 30) and the policing culture that was born from crack markets in the 90s. It’s fast paced enough to make it exciting but slow enough to let us swim around in the stories. It’s a world where the cops are more drug traffickers than they are cops, and noble cause corruption, which means that if you do your job right, nothing happens. So you slowly start to break the rules, even if you at one point thought you had morals. The Set lets us see how it happens, bringing us into the dark alleys where we find cops buying and selling coke and stealing anything they can get their hands on. Listen here.
🎙️Foretold is the story of an incredible woman, Paulina Stevens, who was raised in the psychic shops of the Romani community in California, and eventually broke out in a high-stakes drama that sounds like a thriller in action. In conversations with host Faith Pinhol, Paulina takes us through her marriage at seventeen, the friction-filled break with her family, her tireless battle to keep her kids, and the unconventional path to find her own love and happiness. I was rooting for her and my jaw was dropped the whole time. Foretold is how Paulina was reading fortunes, and cooking, cleaning, and serving her in-laws, doing everything that was expected of her. Until she stopped. Along the way we learn about how the word “gypsy” has become a slur, the racism toward Roma (the last acceptable form of racism) and the stereotypes of the culture that are both true and untrue. Paulina escaped to reveal a hidden world where we usually aren’t welcome. Foretold will teach you things that make you realize why Paulina left, but also about a vibrant and resilient group of people who have endured centuries of being marginalized, persecuted and driven out. This is what happens when we do this to people. Faith poured her soul into this reporting. If you liked Tara Westover’s Educated (like I dunno, Barack Obama,) you’ll like this. It displays a kind of bravery I know I don’t have. (If my parents told me to live in a dumpster and survive on garbage bags I’d probably have done it.) Listen here.
🎙️I love gothic literature films and podcasts (oh my god have you listened to My Gothic Presentation?) but to be honest I’m not sure, until I listened to this episode of Imaginary Worlds, I could give a really good definition of it. Some things just feel gothic-y. On Imaginary Worlds, Eric brings that feeling to life, explaining how it’s often driven by a sense of being gaslit, and why this kind of storytelling strikes a chord with a generation that was gaslit while coming of age during war and a recession. And more importantly, how it’s having a recession for contemporary writers who are reimagining the tradition, letting it cross over into other genres in new and exciting ways. I just finished the episode and all I want to do is stop typing and pick up my extremely warn copy of Rebecca, and murder my maid and hide her in the hidden bookshelf because she had an affair with my father before my mother was drowned in a mysterious boating incident. Listen here.
🎙️Surfs up, dudes! Dana Goodyear is bringing us another gnarly season of Lost Hills, this time investigating the surfing world HOW MANY SURFING CLICHES CAN USE HERE? The star of the show is the Dark Prince of Malibu, Miki Dora, a surfer who was vicious in the water and out of it, spending half his time in search of the perfect wave, half his time hand-writing fraudulent plane tickets that took him all around the world, which led the FBI on a 7-year manhunt around the world to find him. Very Catch Me If You Can. Surfers have this image of being care-free and fun, but Miki had tricks up his sleeve and calling him a rebel is an understatement. Not to demean his surfing abilities, but he also kind of sucked. (He painted a swastika on his surfboard at least once.) Lost Hills is a great investigative show, and Dana Goodyear, a surfer herself, brings us into the story with lots of beautiful imagery (take me to the beach, Sarah! I can smell the salt!) and a real understanding of the sport, and what Miki meant to it. But it’s also kind of like Point Break fan-fic, except it’s all real. I’m dreaming of Patrick Swayze. Listen here.
🎙️LGBTQIA+ venues are dwindling (I recently wrote about Cruising, a road trip of the less than 25 remaining lesbian bars in the US) but at one time they were special, safe places where queer people felt like they could be themselves and figure out who they were. Singer/songwriter K Anderson is telling the stories of queer people by exploring the now-closed bars and clubs that shaped who they came to be on the podcast Lost Spaces. It’s a mixture of mini memoirs and tributes to ghost stories of places that changed the world. Episodes are time capsules that will surprise you with moments of sadness and levity. Listen here.
🎙️I found my people! Scope Creep is for those “ready to ditch the corporate Hellscape and build a business that’s good for their mind, body, and bank account.” I spent years positive I was built for the corporate world but it was only in launching my company that I realized it’s not always a kind place for ambitious women. I’ve been waiting for someone to put voice to this. Hosts Jamie Cox and Liz Talago, two brand strategists navigating solopreneurship on their own terms, are. When I first saw it I wanted to listen every episode at once, I was like a kid in a candy store: “Why Are We Like This?” “Being Yourself In Your Business” “How to Sell Yourself Without Selling Your Soul” “Building Boundaries” and “Bad Business Advice & Girlboss Red Flags.” If these are speaking to you, you’re in for a treat. Listen here.
🎙️Radiolab’s Lulu Miller was on an episode of You’re Wrong About with a bunch of queer animals, it’s one of those rare YWA episodes that will make you feel happy about the world. Lulu uses stories of gay seagulls, penguins, rams, swans, and dolphins to teach us something about gay humans, gay parenting, and why bisexual parents might be the best suited for the job. Remember that story that went viral about the male penguins caring for a rock? This is the follow-up to that story you need. Listen here.
🎙️I can remember rereading Helter Skelter when I was living alone and having nightmares. I was constantly looking out my peephole, positive someone was coming to murder me. Cecilia Steyn, the subject of Queen Havoc and Her Murder Cult, is being compared to Charles Manson, and I had a nightmare that she was trying to kill me, too. There is a grossness I feel when I listen to this show, but that means it’s doing a good job. I’m afraid of Cecilia, who led a group of killers (a mother, Marinda Steyn, and her two children, along with others) to commit 11 murders in the South African city of Krugersdorp between 2012 and 2017 before being caught by the authorities. There is evil lurking, and listening to Queen Havoc makes you feel closer to that evil. I recommend it if you’re into that stuff. Maybe follow up with an episode to Finding Fred to cleanse your palette. Listen here.
🎙️Media Roundtable, which is like the nutrition label for audio, has a new series called Ad Infinitum, which is focused on audio ads, the creatives who make them, and the latest thinking that informs them. The first episode is a deep dive into audiolytics and features Dallas Taylor, host of 20 Thousand Hertz. He breaks down the sonic textures and synth voices we hear on ads, the key to getting into someone’s brain (emotion,) how a lack of emotion can come in handy, and how big spenders in audio are making ads, going through specific examples from ZipRecruiter, Progressive, Home Depot, and Lowes. You can learn about what they’re doing right and wrong. (Guess who wins?) Listen here.
🎙️Over on Dallas’ 20 Thousand Hertz, Brandon Reed of 12 Hour Sound Machines made a special noise just for the 20K audience—a purple noise to mimic the show’s purple vibes. He plays a sample at the end, but you can find the full version (12 hours! no loops, no fades!) here. Listen to the Twenty Thousand Hertz episode here.
🎙️I love you!
📦 From the Archives 📦
[From February 7, 2020] Snap Judgment’s Raft of Passion tells the story of Mary Gidley, who escaped an abusive marriage by joining a study that required her to join ten others on a raft from Las Palmas, Spain to Cozumel, Mexico in the 70’s. It was an experiment conceived by Mexican anthropologist Santiago Genovés to investigate interpersonal relationships in conditions of limited space and social isolation. Though she was trying to escape something and transform into a new person, she found herself falling back into old habits. The way she describes being stuck in the middle of the ocean made me feel like I was stuck there with her. I felt like I was there with her as she saw the shore coming closer, her adventure ending. I feel like time stopped listening to this episode. And then I had to sit a bit in silence to put all the pieces together.
From the Desk of Tink
Today we’re talking to one of Tink’s clients, Quinn Emmett, host of Important Not Important, science for people who give a shit.
Describe Important Not Important in ten words or less. Conversations from the frontlines of the future.
Who is it for? As we most often describe our work, it's science for people who give a shit. So these are conversations for anyone who wants to feel better about the huge ways our world is changing, and wants to do something about it.
Which episode to start with? You’d have me choose from among my children? I am aghast. From recent convos, if I had to choose one, I’d say Emma Pierson, Heidi Roop, Linsey Marr, Sasankh Munukutla, Rachel E. Gross, or Riley Black. Sorry not sorry.
Favorite listener interaction: An unnamed deputy in the State Department unexpectedly emailing to let me know they’d listened to every single episode.
Dream guest: Right now, probably Sal Khan.
Would love to be a guest on…Hidden Brain, Ezra Klein, Smartless, Oologies, Invisibilia.
Dream partnership: 2x guest Brandon Ogbunu is one of the smartest, most thoughtful humans I know. I’d love to build some sort of limited series together doing basically whatever he wants.
If I could force one person in the world to listen to my podcast it'd be…I’d be delighted to force everyone who wastes untold millions funding federal level races we’ll never win to listen, so they’d re-direct their cash towards drastically more affordable and impactful local and state races.
What do your parents / kids / family think you do? My children know what I work on, but they think it mostly involves sending emails and make phone calls all day, which isn’t inaccurate.
Do your kids think you're cool? “Cool” is doing a lot of work here. My kids are Shit Givers, but I get way more street cred from not burning their Sunday pancakes than if I ever talked to the president.