🪵The man behind the Wild Boys 🏕 lobster-thief murder 🦞 Vegas, baby 🎰 the post-trail blues 🧗♀️
🍭 👂 You're in for a treat! 🌈 🤸♀️
Bonjour!
Today is Monday, February 14. There are 113 days until I go on my next Disney cruise?????????? In case this email is too long, I listened to this three times, if you don’t like The Trojan Horse Affair this might change your mind, love letters to fruit here.
This week we’re getting to peek into the listening life of Caitlin Biljan, an assistant producer for community engagement at KPCC/LAist, an independent radio producer/storyteller, and a collaborator on the What If? podcast. Some of her favorite projects have included assisting with the Unheard LA show and creating two viral TikToks for @laistvids. Recording a story about a filmstrip for KCRW’s UnFictional changed her life. “All I wanted to do after that was make stories for podcasts and public radio.”
The app I use: I listen on Myspace the most … just kidding! It’s Apple Podcasts.
Listening time per week: It depends, sometimes 2, sometimes 22.
When I listen: Driving for sure! When I had a hardcore commute, The Dinner Party Download saved me. The cocktail recipe meant I was halfway home and the playlist songs would end right as I was parking. I weirdly specifically like listening to Office Ladies when I cook? I also like to listen to it on road trips with my husband Marc. We’ve been listening to Stay F. Homekins lately too when we drive together. Comedy podcasts are great for long road trips. When writing, I like music podcasts like Song Exploder or Guest DJ Project.
How I discover? For my work, I’m lucky enough to get to listen to even more podcasts! Recently I helped transcribe a few episodes of Temperature Check and it was amazing. My friend Giuliana works for Rebel Girls so I’ve been checking that out lately. I really want to support what folks in my community are making at all times!!! My BFF Laura and Marc are also POWER listeners, so I always love their suggestions! Marc introduced me to a really funny podcast that Adam Scott and Scott Aukerman make where the title always changes. Right now it’s called U Talkin' Talking Heads 2 My Talking Head. This newsletter is also a gold mine! Grateful for all of it.
Anything else? I hope you check out the What If? True Stories and Alternate Endings podcast and I am also hoping to start a fun PNW nostalgia podcast soon! If you’re interested in collaborating on that, I would love to meet you! Thank you so much! cgbiljan@gmail.com @robots_are_rad.
xoxo lp
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Sam Mullins
Sam Mullins is the host and creator of Chameleon: Wild Boys. (In 2003, two half-starved brothers emerged from the wilderness, telling an incredible story of survival. A small Canadian community took them in. The only problem? The boys weren't who they said they were.) On Crime Writers On…, Kevin Flynn called Sam “the Canadian Dan Taberski.” New episodes drop every Tuesday. Follow Sam on Twitter here. Follow the show on Twitter here.
What was it like to go back to Vernon to make the show?
It's so funny because I associate all of my trips back to Vernon with like, you know, going home for Christmas, or I always go there to just like chill and eat my mom's cooking and just kind of take it easy. And it was so bizarre to go home, to have a sort of stressful reporting trip where I'm like hitting the pavement, trying to see if I can get ahold of people and, and all that. But it was really fun to be going all over town with my microphones. So many of the people that I needed to talk to have never really been interviewed for anything before. So it felt like a unique challenge to make people feel comfortable from the outset, so that we could get some good tape where it feels like it's just two people having a casual conversation.
How did you make people that aren't used to being interviewed feel comfortable on mic? Were people skeptical?
People were a little bit skeptical—they seemed baffled why I was so interested in this story. A lot of people I reached out to were like, ‘hasn't everything that could possibly be written about this already happened? Why? These boys came and they lied and then they left. And what more do you need to know?’ So that was a hurdle, to convince people to talk to me, and that I'm trying to make something of value about our community.
Did people recognize you when you were doing your reporting?
I knew a couple of the people but Tammy, I didn't know. My connection to her was that she was my prom date’s mom’s good friend.
That’s solid.
It's pretty good because my prom date’s mom always liked me. And she's like, yeah, he's a local guy and a nice boy. Tammy felt so negative about the first media go around with the story 17 years ago that she was really reluctant to revisit it. And I know that she had turned down other people who were sniffing around telling the story again seven years ago. It really feels like you can't tell the story without Tammy. She’s too crucial to the whole thing.
So then you're the perfect person to be telling this story because you have people’s trust.
If I wasn't from Vernon, I don't think I would've gotten these people.
Do you listen to any podcasts? Were any of them inspiration for Wild Boys?
When we started the pandemic, I had one daughter, but now I have two, and there was a ton of stroller pushing time. I wasn't working so I was just devouring podcasts in a way that I never had in my life. The Ballad of Billy Balls, Wind of Change was like a light bulb moment for me. I really loved the Dolly one that Jad Abumrad did. I really loved Unfinished: Short Creek.
Did you learn anything about yourself making the show?
The biggest thing that I learned is that when your brain absorbs a news story, you can carry around the wrong version of it for your whole life, from lack of curiosity. My whole life, I've been thinking that in regards to the story that it was like, these two California kids came to town and just tried to trick us all to have a laugh and then they left and they weren't even sorry. That's the story that was absorbed into my brain and that was not what happened. Something a lot more complicated and nuanced happened. And it made me think about what other stories or bouncing around my brain that I need to re-examine.
How did you get the bush boys to agree to speak on the podcast?
I will say that one of them was extremely easy to get and for the other one, it took a year of several moving parts to make it actually happen. I didn't know it was gonna happen until like 12 hours before it was happening.
How did your comedy background help you with making a story?
My background's more in sketch. Sketch is very collaborative and it's very much like ‘let's all throw out ideas until we have the best idea.’ I get the sense that isn't like super common when you're writing a true crime thing. It's just like a joke, trying to find the right sentence, working, shopping it around. And comedy thrives on efficiency. I’m always thinking, ‘what is the most effective way I can convey this complicated set of like events? How can we keep this thing moving?’ That helped a lot in the scripting.
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🚨If u only have time for 1 thing🚨
Outside/In’s episode on the “post trail blues” was funny, beautifully made, and I could actually feel my brain curving around to understand something I hadn’t understood before: how unmoored people must feel when they return from a long (sometimes looooog) time in the outdoors. I have a luggage tag that says “I love not camping,” so I started the episode feeling like I was hearing people speaking a different language. (The episode opens with a woman who felt more comfortable peeing outside, even when she came home from hiking the Appalachian Trail.) But as it’s described on the episode, a return isn’t a return. It’s a loss—you are in withdrawal from your adventure, your silence, and your community. I studied abroad in Italy when I was a Junior in college, and before we left there was a mandatory seminar about returning home. “Nobody will understand or care about your stories, you will feel strange.” And nobody did, and I did. (And look at me, telling you one of my study-abroad stories.) But I think I can start to imagine this dilemma. I remember thinking about how much I loved myself and my life in Florence. How could I maintain that version of myself? This is kind of what hikers grapple with when they return, and this episode paints a beautiful picture of what that’s like.
⚡️News from Sounds Profitable⚡️
Sounds Profitable (check out the newsletter and podcast) covered my favorite of subjects— DAI, the core technology that enables programmatic advertising and differentiates between counting a download vs counting ad delivery. This is the absolute best guide to understanding what DAI is and how podcasters can use it better. Read/subscribe here.
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✨Five years ago, Arielle Nissenblatt sent her newsletter EarBuds to 35 people, and today it is one of the largest podcast recommendation newsletters. She celebrated by putting together a playlist of podcast episodes about paper, the traditional gift for first anniversaries. Keep an eye out for the accompanying podcast episode, which launches today. In it, I interview Arielle and her new EarBuds assistant Nina about the list, the last five years of EarBuds, and “Data Nina” offers some statistics about the 265 lists that EarBuds has published. (We learned that my list, Pain and Suffering, was the top list in 2020! I love stats when they boost my ego!) Here’s the list!
✨Arielle also ran a Twitter Space dedicated to why we need podcast newsletters and podcast criticism. You can listen to it here.
✨Twila Dang ran her monthly Women in Podcasting Twitter Space and as always, it was hugely informative. (It happens the second Sunday of every month at 11am EST. Follow Twila to be notified about upcoming spaces.) Laci Mosley even made an appearance! Listen here.
✨I shared some Instagram tips for podcasts in my newsletter Podcast Marketing Magic. Read it here.
✨It’s my mother-in-law’s birthday tomorrow. She has a beautiful Etsy shop where she sells hand-pressed flower bookmarks. She finds the flowers herself on her hikes in Longmont, Colorado. Buy one here!
💎BTW💎
🎙️I listen to Straightio Lab every weekend on 1x speed with my husband (that’s rare) and as we listen, we’ll be in two different rooms cracking up at different times. Hosts Sam Taggart and George Civeris invite funny guests to talk about straight culture, but whatever they’re talking about and whoever they’re interviewing results in equally hilarious content. This week there was an interview with Grace Freud that was actually an incredibly nuanced conversation about masculinity by looking at the culture of boy scouts. They crack tons of jokes but talk about what a perfect scouts could look like and why they were drawn to (and turned away from) certain aspects of the organization. Stay to the end for one of the funniest ending segments I’ve heard. Listen here.
🎙️People keep up sidling up to me and kind of whispering in my ear, “what do you think of The Trojan Horse Affair?” I sense they do not like it and feel bad about not liking it. It is not for everyone and it is not perfect. But on Crime Writers On…, the team breaks down why if you don’t like it, a shift in your listening could improve your listening experience. What if it’s not about the letter and the conspiracy theory? What if we’re listening to a great buddy movie? What if the entire show is itself a Trojan Horse that gets you to listen to a podcast about two hosts coming from very different places, their relationship, and journalism in general? Now that’s a conspiracy theory! Listen to the full episode but I snatched some great stuff from Rebecca and Kevin here. Full episode.
🎙️I discovered Blocked Party over the weekend and couldn’t stop listening. Stefan Heck and John Cullen invite guests on the program to talk about who they’ve been blocked by on social media. The guest list is so much fun to look through—Taylor Lorenz talks about getting blocked by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jamie Loftus talks about getting blocked by Mike’s Hard Lemonade. There’s bound to be someone you want to hear from. The result is a great interview paired with a wild internet story. Listen here.
🎙️On the 11th of every month, Pineapple Street drops a surprise audio piece on The 11th. No rules apply. I listened to LOVE three times, where writers Resham Mantri and Carvell Wallace (you may remember him from such great podcasts as Finding Fred) let us in on the most intimate details of their relationship. It’s intense, honest, funny, and hard. This Is Dating has been getting a lot of credit for being a fly on the wall in first blind dates. But those people know they are performing, this felt completely raw. Resham and Carvell share all the ups and downs of managing a long-distance, adult relationship. I found myself able to sit with every moment and exchange. There is no hiding, here. It’s so honest I almost felt like I shouldn’t have been there, but I wanted to be. Listen here.
🎙️That said, the most recent episode of This Is Dating was the best. We go on another date with Aziz, who has a lot of chemistry with his date—it feels like a home run and is adorable and the opposite of cringe. They’re totally themselves and are not performing. Yet they two decide not to take it to date two. Love is complicated. Listen here.
🎙️If you’ve ever toyed with the idea of doing Ayahuasca, let Private Parts Unknown’s Mind Trip series be your go-to guide. Sofia and Courtney talk to people who understand the science and philosophy, and Courtney shares her own experience in depth. They take you through what it’s like step-by-step, from the fasting up front to the mental transformation you experience long after you’ve filled up your shit-bucket. I know someone who wants to do Ayahuasca, and when I told him he’d shit his pants, he said “not me.” Dad, you’re going to shit yourself. Dad, please listen to this. All the rest of you, too. Listen here.
🎙️Fruit Love Letters is a new podcast from Whetstone Radio Collective, which is putting out so much high-quality stuff it has my eyes literally bugging out of my skull. Why can’t this Valentine’s Day be about love for something non-human? Like fruit? Host Jessamine Starr begins each episode with a beautiful poem to a fruit, and follows up with a deep dive about the varieties, what the fruit means for different cultures. It will deepen your appreciation for the humble mango, blueberry, and apple. (Do you know why they’re trying to make mangos purple? Or that there used to be thousands of varieties of apples but now there are only like six?) These are beautiful pieces that will teach you something new. There is a dedication to storytelling, here, that you don’t find everywhere. Listen here.
🎙️ Criminal’s Phoebe Judge has a story about vigilante justice that is so much more interesting than it first appears. It’s about the murder of a lobster thief in Nova Scotia, a man who was robbing from the pockets of Lobster people. One Lobsterman had had enough, and took action that made him a criminal but also a town hero. Listen here.
🎙️On Into the Depths, Tara travels to Costa Rica for an investigative dive to the wrecks of two Danish merchant ships–the Fredericus Quartus and Christianus Quintus. There was a rebellion aboard one of the ships in the 1700s that left many of the slaves aboard dead or missing, and centuries later, their ancestors are left with a gap in their histories and wondering what really happened. Tara and fellow explorer Alyea Pierce try to picture a female-led insurrection on one of the ships. (The more women aboard a ship, the more likely a revolt—women often led these rebellions.) It’s a chilling story and Tara takes you underwater to truly imagine what happened aboard the ships, and how the rebellion shaped the future of Costa Rica. Listen here.
🎙️The Experiment is in the midst of a 3-part series on SPAM, which explores the food’s history (it goes back to WWII when American GIs landed overseas and would toss cans of SPAM out of trucks to the hungry people they sought to liberate) and a strike at the Hormel Foods plant in Austin, Minnesota in 1985 that tore the community apart. People are still salty and host Gabrielle Berbey (her grandfather first came to know and love SPAM as a kid in the Philippines—there is a personal element, here) had a hard time getting people to open up about it. But the people who do open up really open up, taking us through their stories of protesting and then crossing their lines for the good of their families. But weren’t they striking for their families in the first place? Listen here.
🎙️Under the Influence is back with a new season about the power women have on the internet. On episode one, host Jo Piazza announces a “women’s day off the internet” she is planning to prove what might crumble if the buying power and influence of women online comes to a halt for one day. She refers us to the day Iceland's women went on strike, which changed the way women were seen in the country and helped put Iceland at the forefront of the fight for equality. It’s the kind of thing for the history books that you wouldn’t want to miss out on. Women on the internet, would you want to miss out on this? Listen here.
🎙️I love the format of Roxane Gay’s The Roxane Gay Agenda, where she offers a culture recommendation, an interview with someone doing something cool, and a story that lets us see what it’s like to be Roxane Gay. This week’s episode provided us with a hilarious story of Roxane being on edibles (she ends up calling the police, claiming she’s about to die.) The conversation with Seth is great, he is also forced to answer the question: “how do you reconcile the realities of the history of weed as a white man of privilege who enjoys this kind of entrepreneurship when so much of the country is ass-backwards?” Listen here.
🎙️We seem to be in the midst of a book banning flare up, and over on The Stacks, Traci Thomas covered it from all angles with a special five-episode series about the book banning distraction. She talked to librarians, educators, students, politicians, parents, and people (like Alison Bechdel) who have had their books banned to hash out things about book banning that you’ve never considered before. Traci is a fantastic guide to the book universe. Listen here.
🎙️On Sapiens, Jen Shannon, Esteban Gómez, and Chip Colwell speak with anthropologists from around the globe to help us uncover what makes us human. An interesting new series is focused on how Black and Indigenous voices are changing the stories archaeology tell. The series starts out with a story of an Indigenous archeologist who almost didn’t become one because she was ridiculed for offering a non-traditional perspective to her field work. It hooks you, and illustrates the power of being able to tell our own stories. Episode two might be familiar to you, it was familiar to me—the team talks to Dr. Ayana Flewellen and Dr. Justin Dunnavant about Diving with a Purpose (featured in Into the Depths, if you’re interested in learning more and why having Black scuba divers is crucial in unearthing African history. Listen here.
🎙️We always hear about how young teenage girls are basically setting the tone for what’s popular in music these days, and that goes way back to the days of Beatlemania. On a hilarious episode of Mortified, we hear two women read from their teen journals, which document a time they were obSESSed with boy bands—The Jonas Brothers and Dream Street. These passionate entries are both adorable and while perhaps(?) embarrassing for the reader, a pure joy for the listener. We get to see inside the brains of teenage girls and the fervor they are capable of having for people they don’t know but feel like they do. Listen here.
🎙️Maintenance Phase goes somewhat true-crimey with the story of Belle Gibson, an Australian "eco-preneur" who claimed to have cancer to help sell her wellness product. (A shitty app, that received a ton of attention and is basically just a bad cookbook with “clean” foods.) Maintenance Phase doesn’t just educate us or make us laugh (but it does) but it gives us a place to release our anger for the fuckery happening in the wellness industry. It feels good to get made along with Aubry and Michael. They are perhaps the best at showing anger in a funny way. If I didn’t have this space to get out some rage, I don’t know how I’d deal. Listen here.
🎙️I loved Neon Hum’s Spectacle series about the way reality TV has impacted present-day pop culture. The new season about Las Vegas dropped last week, and host Brent Holmes will explain how such a silly place (Brent calls it “The Ultimate American City,” which sounds like Disney World so I’m in) can hold such power. If you’re going to love America, you’re going to have to appreciate Vegas (and Disney World.) This series seems promising in that it will have some great stories, and raise appreciation for a place that Penn Jillette calls “capitalism at its silliest.” Listen here.
🎙️I love you!