Podcast Roundup May 2019 Edition

I have so much to talk in podcastland about this month! I can hardly wait.

I have a complicated relationship with the podcast Small Town Dicks (I've mentioned it before actually). It's very pro-police and the unfailing support of the two hosts at some fairly questionable things the police do is hard to listen to, but I do think that law enforcement is frequently overly criticized on many true crime podcasts, so I appreciate the opportunity to hear the perspective of people with a working knowledge and a point of view that is radically different from mine.

The recent episode "Cut and Run" almost made me quit the podcast forever. The victim was a convicted sex offender who had been out of prison for a decade and while he did use some illegal drugs since he had been released, he had been mostly off the police radar for most of that decade.  Towards the end of the episode, one of the hosts (Yeardley Smith, I think), congratulates the cops for doing hard work to solve the case because he was not a likeable victim. Like...what?  He was murdered. No one deserves to get murdered. The cops don't get to say whose cases they solve.  They don't get to only solve cases with "deserving" victims. I was very angry.  I am still subscribed to this podcast, but one more issue of victim blaming and I'm definitely hitting unsubscribe.

The boys at Longform did an interview with Linda Villarosa that was so very interesting to me. Villarosa is a reporter who works on a lot of pieces about health, particularly health discrepancies between different races. Her 2018 piece on poor maternal outcomes for black mothers was the first time I actually considered that racism actually impacts the quality of people's health. It was eye-opening and I'm now a bit of a Villarosa fangirl.  I think the field of epigenetics and how trauma in past generations can impact current generations is super interesting and can explain so many racial differences.

The Story Collider is a podcast in which people tell personal stories about science. The last time I wrote about this podcast, it was about a woman telling a story about her unusual pet. This time I'm going to draw your attention to the episode called "The Joy of Cats." Both stories are just brilliant and if you belong to a cat or there's a cat in your life, even if tangentially, you'll appreciate how these two stories get at the dark heart of cats.

I've talked about the podcast Reveal so many times that my guess is you all are sick of hearing about it. But, guess what? The good people at Reveal do such good work and the topics are all so riveting, even if I don't think they'll be riveting at first, that I have to preach about how good this show is.

When I saw the title "America's Drug War, Revealed," I will admit that I groaned. Just like I didn't really want to listen to the 99% Invisible episode about building tunnels for moving drugs because I didn't feel like I needed another episode about the drug war, I just wasn't up for more on the drug war. I feel a bit overwhelmed by the scale of the drug issue in this country  (although I don't necessarily think the solutions are that challenging). But I trust Al Letson and his team and I listened. And I'm glad I did. It was a story behind the story that I'd never heard about.  It involves George H.W. Bush, a bag of crack cocaine, and the park across from the White House. If you don't know the story from these clues, you need to listen.  Good stuff.

Front Burner is CBC's daily newscast. I don't listen every day, but generally I'm impressed with the quality of the show. It doesn't flit around from topic to topic, but instead focuses on a single issue that it addresses in 20 - 30 minutes. The recent episode called "Who Gets to Compete in Women's Sports?" focused on the sad case of Caster Semenya, a middle-distance runner from South Africa who has dominated her field for the last ten years. She's been controversial because she was forced to undergo sex testing and it has been rumored that she has intersex traits.

Meanwhile, Semenya's lost a bunch of appeals and it looks like she's going to have to take medication to decrease her testosterone levels if she wants to continue competing. There are so many questions involved in this. If gender and sex aren't binary, how do we make a line for competition? What counts as a woman? Why are women's sports so much more policed about actual sex than men's sports? Should someone have to take medication to undo a natural advantage he or she has (in this case, Semenya naturally has elevated testosterone levels)?  Semenya is clearly a fringe case and, as such, she's getting a lot of attention. I feel terrible for her. I also think this case is important in determining a lot about the future of women competing at high level athletics.

Pop Mom! is a podcast in which critic John Teti hangs out with his mom, Bonnie, and they discuss things related to popular culture. Bonnie Teti is not a professional and she sometimes is ridiculously "get off my lawn" grumpy about pop culture. But the rapport between the two of them is so heartwarmingly sweet and honest and lovely.  I think if you listen to the show you have to sort of acknowledge that the views on pop culture, particularly from Bonnie, are not as well-informed as some you might get from professional critics, but the show is not actually about the reviews, if you know what I mean.

But the recent episode on "Avengers: Endgame" was so good. I've only watched a handful of movies from the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), so I'm not the target audience for this film. I'm not, as a matter of fact, going to watch it. But John Teti's introduction of the film had me cracking up so hard.  Bonnie's inability to stop laughing at John's intro made it all the more hilarious. And then, Bonnie came out on board as loving the film and John was sort of meh about it and, as the episode moved along, John changed his mind and was persuaded by Bonnie's comments. It was such a turnaround of the usual Bonnie hates things and John has to show her why things are good. And it was so exciting to hear Bonnie be so enthusiastic.  Then there was a moment at the end when John was talking about how some of the heroes from the MCU don't appeal to him, but each hero reaches a different audience. It was such a rare moment of reflection of diversity in real time in which some realizes something about their privilege that they hadn't realized before that I almost teared up (listening to a dumb pop culture podcast!).  It was golden.

I want to be the favorite aunt. I'm not going to lie about that. I feel like it is my due. I have no children of my own, I buy good gifts, and I try to say yes to most requests from my darling nieces and nephews. But the youngest one doesn't like me as much as he likes Aunt Maggie. And I can't figure out how to make him love me! So I got it when Planet Money's reporter Kenny Malone got a little bit jealous when his nieces' and nephews' other uncle started winning big on Jeopardy! and he was pushed out of favorite uncle status. "How Uncle Jamie Broke Jeopardy" is an economics story about Jeopardy!, sure, but it's really a story about how rivalry between aunts and uncles is real.

And then!

Then!

There was another episode of Planet Money called "Counting the Homeless" and I just about melted into a puddle because it was like this episode was  made for me. It introduces a social science problem - homelessness - and then it talks about solutions. First, we need to figure out how big a problem it is. We need to count homeless people. While this seems fairly straightforward, it's actually kind of a challenge because homeless people don't always hang out in obvious places, nor is it always easy to tell who is homeless (also, there are lots of social desirability issues here - imagine someone, a perfect stranger, asking you "are you homeless?" and even if you were, would you answer yes?).  So we have to count them. And then we have to figure out how to help them!  Social science says that the cheapest and easiest way to help the homeless is to give them homes.  Mind blown.  This episode took a great public policy question, explained the question, explained the methodology behind studying it, and then gave a potential solution.  Thumbs up from me.

Doughboys in the only podcast that consistently makes me laugh. And the live episode with Carl Tart and Allan McLeod about Waffle House was making me laugh so hard that I had to stop walking and put my head between my legs because I was short of breath and getting lightheaded. Many times when podcasts put out live episodes, I just know that they won't be as good as studio shows, but the Doughboys live shows have the same type of content live or in-studio. The back catalog of the show is enormous (I've been listening for a couple of years and just now caught up so I'm listening to new releases) and I know that can be intimidating for a new listener, but if you need some levity in your life, this might be the podcast for you.

Another month, another Code Switch episode I kept putting at the bottom of my list because I just couldn't deal with my white guilt. But, just like I said in January and March, the shows are always well done. This one was called "Anger: The Black Woman's 'Superpower'" and I'm sure there's nothing in this show that a introduction to black studies course wouldn't cover, but I thought it really nicely laid out the so-called Sapphire caricature of black women.  I feel like there has to be a way for me to introduce this material in my race and politics course without having my students get defensive, but it's hard because even I get defensive and I know better. Argh. This show is so good, but it makes me doubt myself a lot, too.

The Moth is a storytelling podcast and the stories told are relatively hit or miss to me. The episode called "The Motor City That Never Sleeps" had two short, brilliantly told stories. In the first story, a woman accidentally drops her keys down an elevator shaft in a city where she doesn't know anyone and has to figure out how to deal with that situation. In the second story, parents play favorites between their daughters in childhood and that breeds resentment into their daughters' adulthoods.  Both were just brilliantly written, brilliantly told, and have just the right touch of humor.