🤴The long cringe 🥇 Speedo boys 🏰 castle Gaykeep 🎮 horror Rx 🔪
🍭 👂The most messed up breakfast I've seen in my entire life 🌈 🤸♀️
Bonjour.
Today is Monday, July 29. In case this issue is too long, is it just me or is Wondery is getting better and better?, did you know we almost lost the gayest RPG game forever?, and a mysterious donor is promising to help fund this show but your help is needed. This week’s interview is hilarious and sweet. Hit me up if you can figure out where the quote “the most messed up breakfast I've seen in my entire life” is from.
xoxo lp
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👋q & a & q & a & q & a👋
Abby Wambaugh and Sofie Hagen
Abby Wambaugh and Sofie Hagen, the hosts of Help Hole, are comedians and writers and friends who love self help books. Abby is also a parent and Sofie is not JUST a writer, Sofie is an AUTHOR of two excellent books. (Will I Ever Have Sex Again?, and Happy Fat.)
Describe Help Hole in 10 words or less.
SH: Comedians Read Self Help Books So You Don’t Have To?
AW: Comedians Improve Themselves And Argue With Each Other About Human Nature. Sorry you said describe it in exactly 11 words right?
How are you two similar and how are you different? What do you each bring to the table?
SH: The way I would describe it is that Abby is the light and I am the dark. Abby likes people and parties and she’s fun and loud and silly. I stay at home reading books about trauma and doing stand-up shows about, well, trauma. When we read Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman for the podcast, it was quite obvious: Abby thinks four thousand weeks is not long enough to be alive; I think it’s at least three thousand weeks too long.
AW: Hahahaha
How did you meet? What’s the show’s origin story?
AW: Sofie and I met in 2022 when I was opening for her tour shows in Denmark (I am American but I live in Denmark, Sofie is Danish but lives in London). We had a long road trip to a far away show immediately after meeting each other, and we DID NOT RUN OUT OF THINGS TO SAY AT ANY POINT EVER.
What’s that quote I heard you say about self-help books? About people who poo poo them? Something about how self help books are ways to help our selves, and what’s so bad about that?
SH: I’m often raging about how people hate self-help books because they’re imagining books about feelings for women and the patriarchy hates both of those. Few people are poo poo’ing those How To Be A Strong Manly Millionaire Books written by men. But if a book is called How To Love Yourself and it’s written in a pink font, it’s suddenly unhip and uncool. Because it makes people uncomfortable. Being kind to yourself, having compassion, is embarrassing. I think that sucks. What’s wrong with wanting to learn to love yourself? How is that a bad thing? Leave us alone.
AW: lol you don’t have to leave me alone. I don’t want to be alone. (I think Oliver Burkeman says that quote in 4000 weeks. I think it’s like “This is not a self help book, but what’s wrong with wanting to help yourself?” But also, by our definition, 4000 Weeks is a perfect self help book.)
Anyway, I like that you aren’t pessimistic about self help books. Are you optimistic people?
SH: It’s funny because Abby is and I am not. But this just means that I am pessimistic about people who don’t like self-help books. Sure, there’s so much garbage in the ‘self-help’ and ‘wellness-industry’ and we definitely call it out when we see it. We’re not reading these books thinking they have all the answers and we should follow all the advice and trust every word. We are reading them, looking for little bits of gold. Even if it’s just a sentence that hits hard. Or a piece of advice that changes something in our brain chemistry. I’m a big complainer but I don’t feel like I can complain, if I am not also trying to make things better.
AW: I’m very optimistic. But I think a lot of people think optimism is naive and I’m not naive, I’m right. I can read a completely shitty book and still get something out of it because I’m looking for the good parts not the shitty parts. I still know it’s shitty. But a lot of Self Help is so so great, if you’re not spending all your time being worried you’ll look dumb reading it.
Fill in the blank: You will like Help Hole if you like _______.
AW: Writing morning pages and Nicolas Cage movies
If people haven’t started yet, where should they?
AW: When I stoop so low as to quote my own podcast in my actual life (daily) it’s usually something from these episodes: 4000 Weeks, The Body Keeps the Score, War of Art and Self-Compassion.
Do you have any rules about which books to choose / not choose? How do you pick?
AW: At first we really tried to get a list that would show the kinds of books we would cover, so people would see the list and know the range. But now I feel like we both keep going for the books we just need in our lives at this exact moment and that has made the episodes even better. It’s so fun and interesting how we pick books the other person would NEVER. And then we are inevitably interested and invested anyway because we are interested and invested in each other. IT’S SO SWEET. Or we make fun of each other.
How has making this show changed you as people?
SH: I keep saying to people, ‘I didn’t think it would actually change my life!’ because I genuinely didn’t. It was just meant to be a fun podcast with my friend. And now, I have a morning routine, meaning every day, my life is a bit easier than before. I have got a lot more self compassion, I’ve learned to add flirtation into my life, and I’m working on a third book, which I wouldn’t have thought of doing, if it wasn’t for Help Hole.
AW: Me too, same. I am on fire right now and I think it’s a great deal to do with this podcast. I am almost 7 months into a year of sobriety that Help Hole inspired, I have the most regular running habit that I have had in years, I am facing my creative work with a bravery and playfulness that is on a new level. And the absolute best part is when listeners come up to me and we can talk about that stuff right away, without any runway. I love it. I feel like it’s been an invitation to have some of my favorite conversations with strangers without any digging around.
How has making this show changed your relationship to one another?
AW: I think because we are making a podcast where we are earnestly working on ourselves, and talking about that process constantly, it has felt really natural to take working on our relationship seriously too. I think we communicate with each other much more openly now because it’s like, we know all these things about what we want and are working on and it would feel disingenuous if we didn’t carry that over into our friendship and working partnership. I feel really inspired about how we have grown in communicating since we started.
What has worked when it comes to growing Help Hole?
AW: We do 2 Bonus Episodes a month for our Patrayons (we say it that way cuz my mom does) and for those instead of reading books we watch movies or talk about podcasts or people we think could help us improve ourselves. They are really fun and more relaxed and we sometimes share teasers of them so people can see what they are missing and hopefully encourage them to back us on Patrayon. Our Patrayons are the beeeessssst and since we don’t do ads they are the only thing that makes it possible for us to grow and continue.
What’s a podcast you love that not enough people know about?
SH: This might be incredibly obscure, but if you have any Danish listeners, the Danish podcast ‘Sincere’ is one of the best things I’ve listened to. It’s quite old now. It’s two journalists who try to figure out who the anonymous person is who’s changing a Danish celebrity’s Wikipedia page all the time to make him look a lot better - and who changes his competitor’s Wikipedia pages to make them look worse - and is it, in fact, the (huge!) celebrity himself, doing this? It’s so silly and fun and I listen at least once a year.
AW: My First Joke is a podcast where comedians talk about the jokes that helped them find their voice, and it’s really good. I get excited every time there’s a new one. Very funny and smart hosting by Carson Olshansky and Kevin Wingertzahn.
What’s a podcast you love that everyone already knows about?
SH: I’m a huge fan of Pod Save The UK, If Books Could Kill, Maintenance Phase and Handsome.
AW: I listen to Mike Birbiglia’s Working It Out and it started a few months before I did stand up for the first time and taught me like, every single stand up word I know.
Are there too many podcasts?
SH: There are too many podcasts created without the passion and actual desire to put the work in. I’m a comedian and I see so many comedians be pressured into starting a podcast because ‘you need to have a podcast!’ and then they have an idea they sort of care about and they do 10 episodes and leave it behind, because it turns out, people don’t want to hear people be uninspired for an hour.
AW: Nope, everybody who wants to make a podcast should make a podcast. Everybody should try everything they want to try, it’s the only way! I think if you quit after 10, that’s amazing, you made 10, you probably found a lot out about yourself and making podcasts, and maybe you used to make fun of people on the internet and for a while you were too busy and now you’re humbled.
What didn’t I ask you that I should have?
SH: Ohh, I think what I want you to ask us, is about money. No one likes to talk or hear about money, that’s why it’s interesting. So, Help Hole is completely self-funded and self-produced. We don’t want to do adverts because we don’t like them - and personally, I didn’t want to be produced by a big company, because I did a podcast for the BBC and I absolutely hated that someone had a say in the creative process. We started a Patreon and we just hoped enough people would subscribe, that we would no longer be losing money. If people subscribe to Patreon, they get a new episode every other week, which are arguably more silly and fun than the main episodes. We discuss movies, documentaries, people, apps and so on. But it has really made me think a lot about the difference between podcasting now and podcasting ten years ago, when I first started. Back then I did it with a horribly ugly logo made in Paint and I ran around with my little handheld Zoom recorder and chatted to my comedian friends. Now, you almost can’t promote a podcast without renting a studio with 4 cameras and professional lighting. I sort of miss my handheld little recorder and my ugly logo. Back then, I told my listeners that the podcast was free but if they saw me in the street or at gigs, they could come up to me, place cash in my hand and walk away. And they would. It was so cool every time it happened. I wish more people would talk about the financial aspect of providing (essentially) free content.
AW: What’s next? We’re releasing an Artist’s Way episode in September and then doing the Artist’s Way 12 week program with our Patrayons starting in January! I’m so so excited about this, have done the artist’s way 4 times and am really psyched to do it with the Holigans!! We call ourselves that except for Sofie-kins who hates cute names.
🚨If u only have time for 1 thing🚨
I don’t know what’s going on over at Wondery, but their shows are getting better and better. Even non-scripted shows used to feel a bittoo scripted for me. This has been changing gradually and listening to The Bachelor of Buckingham Palace made me realize I just can’t think this about Wondery shows anymore. (Maybe it’s because they’re making good partnerships, this time with Vespucci.) The show is about a reality TV show, I Wanna Marry “Harry,” that never should have happened but did—single women were whisked off to England to fight for the heart of someone who ended up being only a dead ringer for Prince Harry, not Prince Harry, though they were manipulated to believe it was him. That was back in 2014 when Harry was single and reality TV was even wilder. A lot of things make this show good, but the thing that stuck out to me the most was the host, Scott Bryan. Scott’s delivery of this story makes you feel like you’re watching the show (through your fingers) with him, hearing his genuine reactions to the cringe moments, which actually sort of end up being one very long uninterrupted cringe. Looking behind the curtain we realize that although these women were manipulated to look stupid, they weren’t. They were out-gunned. And that maybe we were the idiots for ever believing that they thought this Harry lookalike was really a Prince. Scott talks to a few of the girls who highlight some of the biggest manipulations, on-camera and off. It’s notable that there was one Black woman in this palace who immediately not having any of it and escorted herself out a few episodes in. Her interviews were the best.
hell yeah
✨I’m speaking twice at Podcast Movement in August! Almost 100 Podcast Marketing Tips, with Arielle Nissenblatt, is on August 20th at 1:30pm.
✨I’m also on a panel on August 21st at 1:30: Stop Paying for Audience: Master The Power of Organic Marketing
✨Read the latest in our launch series in Podcast Marketing Magic: Timing Your Launch to Current Events. See also part 2: The Metrics that Matter and part 1: Launching our Launch Series (it’s meta.)
✨What at the most interesting podcast episodes you’ve ever heard? [Reddit]
✨Arielle Nissenblatt spotlighted Paranormal Pajama Party in her newsletter and podcast.
💎BTW💎
🎙️Thomas Curry, a producer of Call Me Mother (a show I loved and so did a bunch of other reviewers) emailed me to let me know he’s launched something new, Sissy, intimate, in-depth and endlessly fascinating stories about queer life. The first episode is an interview with Ryan Best, who made this revolutionary (and first) LGBTQ computer RPG, GayBlade, and the story of how GayBlade nearly became a nearly extinct piece of media until the internet swept into retrieve the files. I love a good lost media story (have you heard Everyone Knows That?) but this is also about one game people played in the early 90s, during the horror of the AIDS crisis, when queer people were being told that AIDS was being away to get rid of gay people, that also kind of became like therapy for them. Sissy is currently fundraising on Kickstarter (which just named the podcast a "Project We Love”) to fund five additional new episodes of the series. Here’s a show, like Proxy, that needs help to get off the ground. (See below.) Because podcasts take work. (We all know by now that only a few podcasts are making almost all the money.) Listen to Sissy here. Kickstarter is here.
🎙️Ilana Nevins (of Tink!) wrote and voiced and episode of Out There about how hiking with her father was tied to her eating disorder, and maybe his, although he says he doesn’t have one. When Ilana told me about making this episode, I looked at her and said, “I’m sorry, I’m going to say it, I have to say it…this is so brave.” I thought her eyes were going to roll out of her skull. But even a broken platitude is right twice a day, and I really think it was brave to revisit this personal thing so openly. So now that that’s out of the way, it’s a beautiful piece, too. I knew Ilana was a good writer but have never been able to enjoy her writing in this way. There were lines that stopped me, moments she captured really well. Her voice is able to communicate silences, exhaustion, discomfort, peace, and love. She talks about worrying that her recovery would ruin her relationship with her dad, and he doesn’t do a lot to make her feel better about that. (She tells him, I think you’d love me more if I lost ten pounds, less if I gained ten pounds, and he does not immediately shut her down.) You actually get to hear her talking to her dad, who did not choose recovery while she did. Sorry not sorry, Ilana, this was brave. But that’s not all. It feels like talking about eating disorders and recovery through nature and family in a way I’ve never heard. Plus it was just good storytelling. Listen here.
🎙️Yowei Shaw debuted her show Proxy in mid-May with a bang, three episodes about getting laid off, which was relatable to me and part of the show’s origin story. A new episode popped into the feed last week that gets to the heart of what Proxy is really about and why it might be hard to summarize in an elevator pitch. It is Yowei’s producer, Kim, who puts it to words in a way I will never forget, words that appropriately describe the show and I think podcasting in general: Proxy conversations, and many audio pieces, provide us with intimate connections that provide us with a deeper meaning. It’s magical, or as Kim describes us, kind of like taking the communion wafer at a Catholic mass. What follows is part one of a four-part quest to solve the mystery of proxy conversations and why they work, an episode about how proxy conversations work in restorative justice. The guest, Alissa Ackerman, is a criminal justice professor at California State University who has been using this proxy method for years, connecting victims of sexual abuse with sexual abusers (not their own) to stimulate healing by letting both sides tell their stories in a safe place, and let the victim rewire the way they tell their own stories. I’m having a hard time putting this to words, kind of like how Yowei was having a hard time putting Proxy to words. The best way to describe Proxy is hear how it’s working in the world, whether it be communion or kinds of therapy. But wait. The most interesting part of this episode came at the beginning, when Yowei reminds us why we just heard a bad ad for CarMax…she’s turned on automated ads to try to make some money. And she reminds us, as all podcasters should, just how hard it is to make what they’re making. How much time it takes. Human hours. Kim isn’t just on the podcast to talk about Holy Communion, she’s there to remind us that she is being paid for 12 hours a week, but the show needs her more. An anonymous donor has offered to fund Proxy (=more Kim hours) if Yowei is able to get 1,000 paid subscribers by August 22. Even more funding will be unlocked if Proxy is able to get 2,000 paid subscribes. This is one of the most mysterious look-behind-the-curtains I’ve heard. (I think it’s good Yowei isn’t sharing everything, my imagination is going wild about who this anonymous donor is.) This was a pretty eye-opening and meta episode about expanding the ways we can heal and comes to terms with what has happened to us and what we’ve done, and also what it takes to make a quality podcast lift into the air and take wings. Listen here.
🎙️Hot and Bothered is spending some time analyzing romance movies, and I recommend every single episode. Vanessa Zoltan and Hannah McGregor did a huuuuge deep dive into How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days and are now in the midst of a Meg Ryan series that includes a two-parter on Sleepless in Seattle. I loved the two-parter on When Harry Met Sally, a movie that is so good that every podcast that covers it is able to discover something totally new about it. Blank Check talked a lot about how the story is told through Sally’s hairstyles, and how the movie should really be called Sally, which is what I call it now. This conversation was about a lot of things but the new thing that it gave me to chew on was about how (When Harry Met) Sally is really about how hard it is to be a woman. This episode of Hot and Bothered isn’t really looking at the movie as a film, but as a love story. Somewhere there is a love story about how much I love the movie. Listen here and here.
🎙️I remember when, 28 years ago, Eric Rudolph of the white supremacist Christian Identity Movement, set off a homemade pipe bomb in Centennial Olympic Park during the Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia. But I had forgotten about (or never knew, I was 12) the similar attacks that followed—two at abortion clinics and one at lesbian nightclub. Flashpoint kicks things off at the summer games but goes deep into the aftermath. I was listening along at the beginning, thinking it was a fine series, until there was a bit of a mic-drop moment when you learn why the host, Cole Locascio, is there. I don’t want to spoil it, but it’s personal. Existential, even. Listen here.
🎙️August 2, 2024, marks the 100th Anniversary of James Baldwin’s birth, and Penguin Random House and Vintage Books launched The Baldwin 100, an eight-part series, to celebrate. I loved the conversation with Roxane Gay about what a disruptor and revolutionary James Baldwin was (I had no idea he got in a fist fight with Richard Wright and have questions) and how he said things, and wrote things, fearlessly. This develops into a conversation about revolutions in general, what it takes to make one happen and why we need one now. And a bit about how to tie this all into the upcoming election. Listen here.
🎙️I listened to the latest from Hang Up right after I binged The Bachelor of Buckingham Palace. What a stark contrast. Hang Up is an example of how a dating show can, dare I say, make us all better people, draw out love and understanding from corners in our minds and hearts we didn’t know exist, exercise empathy, teach us how to apologize with grace, and gee I guess also set people up romantically for our own entertainment without exploiting them. This was the reunion episode, where we get to know all the people involved, why we have to cut Cedar some slack, and hear why Timo turned into a mulleted little ghost. This season of Hang Up was a must-listen, this episode was a must-listen. I already can’t wait for the next season. Listen here.
🎙️Anita Flores was one of the first people I interviewed for Podcast the Newsletter. (She had a Frasier podcast called I’m Listening, which I think was ahead of its time.) She started something new, Doctor Horror, “a mental health horror podcast providing scares for whatever ails you.” It’s about horror movies and feelings, a more niche version of You Are Good, which is about movies and feelings in general. Why do horror movies make us feel good sometimes? Which ones match which mood? I was thinking about horror movies differently, but also writing down tons of horror movies I want to see. Thank you Doctor Horror, I’m cured. Listen here.
🎙️Tihany’s Illusion: The Search for Franz Czeisler is the fascinating story of Franz Czeisler, a Jewish Hungarian who escaped from Nazi Germany to Brazil to become one of the most popular circus showman and illusionist the world has ever seen. In plain sight. His skills as an illusionist enabled him to escape in the first place, but it also helped him remain a new person, an unknown mystery. By changing his name and traveling as an illusionist, he was able to fool everyone. This podcast is a panoramic history slash mystery that feels magical and fast-paced, it will truly sweep you off your feet. It opens in the middle of a conversation with Catherine, Czeisler’s granddaughter, who remembers her memories of being in the circus with Czeisler. It’s a great opening that will make you excited and curious to hear everything you can about this complicated man who seems in some ways, impossible to know. Listen here.
🎙️While Longform was making its way out through the revolving podcast door, Evan Ratliff was coming in with his new show Shell Game, an exploration of the capabilities and implications of voice cloning technology using OpenAI’s GPT-4o. He hooked up his voice to an AI chatbot to create a fake Evan who had conversations with scammers, his family, sources, etc. All to find out what this technology can really do. So it’s a show, it’s a game. He’s playing with technology, he’s playing with con artists, he’s playing with regular people, he’s even playing with us. I was kind of annoyed, in episode one, hearing his voice agent fuck with poor customer service people just trying to help people in need of customer service, but in episode two “Evan” fucks with scammers and in episode three he sets up a hall of mirrors, putting his voice agents in conversation with each other. They really want to go on a photo walk together, whatever that is, and they never, ever want to hang up. (“No you hang up first,” it’s cute.) With these real conversations, we’ll eventually learn just how janky voice cloning was in 2024 when we relisten in 20 years. Or probably even 20 weeks. Shell Game is playful and feels Search Enginey. Listen here.
🎙️I love you!
📦 From the Archives 📦
[From August 17, 2020] On Other Men Need Help, Mark Pagan examines what it takes to BE A MAN!!! in modern society, and sort of asks “why is it like this?” Why can’t men care about self-grooming? Why can’t men be sensitive? On the most recent episode, he asks Why can’t men tell each other “I miss you.” PERIOD. No washing out the meaning by following up with “dude” or “man,” something lots of men do. He read a friend’s social media post that said, “I miss you,” which took him on a journey to find out why that makes some men uncomfortable. Mark’s stories are always beautiful and so funny—if you haven’t listened yet, I promise you will fall in love with him right away. And all of these tiny issues he’s diving into with this show, well they actually feel quite huge, after listening to him talk about them. There aren’t any shows tackling this stuff like Mark is, and few are as well-produced.
Congratulations on 5 years of Tink Media.