November 2019 Podcast Roundup

If you had asked me if I was interested in the women of the New York mafia, I probably would have said no. But Mob Queens is a podcast that is a bit irresistible. Jessica Bendinger and Michael Seligman find themselves in a rabbit hole, examining the life and death of Anna Genovese, the wife of a notorious gangster who also happens to have some power of her own.  I really enjoy stories of how researchers do research and Bendinger and Seligman are pretty transparent.  There are twelve episodes and I finished them in two days when Hannah got really long walks because I just couldn't stop listening.

I was scanning through a reddit thread about "niche podcasts," hoping for one that would appeal to me (how to train your two-year-old relatively timid rescue dog who is really smart how to do 50 tricks, for example) and someone wrote about Finish It!, a podcast hosted by two brothers (who close each show by saying they love you to their mom) in which they read Choose Your Own Adventure books completely - they will not move on to another book until they've read each page and each ending. I just really enjoy it.  I'm only on week seven, but their frustration with the first pages of the book are already so severe, I think they may honestly lose their minds before they have completed. It looks like there are about twenty-four episodes devoted to the first book and it looks like they're in the 80ish episode range at this point. They have completed The Cave of Time, Who Killed Harlowe Thrombey?, Space Vampire, Deadwood City, and are currently reading The Forbidden Castle.  I legitimately can't think of a better podcast idea than this.

There are a number of podcasts about the Jeffrey Epstein (this word is hard to come up - affair? controversy? issue?  history?) story. I find his whole life so disturbing that I really had to force myself to listen to Broken: Jeffrey Epstein and I chose it mostly because Julie K. Brown, the reporter from the Miami Herald who originally broke the case, is one of the correspondents.

In general, I actually don't recommend this podcast because it's meandering and tells so many tangential stories that I frequently get lost.  This is actually a problem I have with a number of podcasts that have major players who are newspaper-based because they're used to having an audience that can just go back and read something if they've forgotten a name or a detail, but audience listening need a lot more verbal reinforcement. Anyway, one of those tangents come in episode 6, "Life and Death at a Downtown Jail." For reasons that I still don't understand, the authors talk about the uprising at Attica in 1971 as a reason why Nelson Rockefeller changed his stance on criminal justice reform and led to the War on Drugs. It really is an excellent encapsulation of the true beginnings of the War on Drugs and I have no idea why it's sandwiched in this podcast on Epstein, but it's fascinating and tells a story of Attica that I was unfamiliar with.

I've written about Imaginary Worlds before. It's a podcast about science fiction and fantasy worlds and why we suspend our disbelief and accept them. The recent episode "From Outer Space" is about our traditional narrative surrounding alien abductions and how it links to World War II and science fiction. I found myself googling all kinds of things after I was finished with this episode. Very thought provoking and puzzling.

A search of The Memory Palace brings up me talking about it half a dozen times on this here bloggity blog. I just think Nate DiMeo's writing and delivery are the best things in podcasting in 2019. In the episode "The Story of Maria Barberi," DiMeo takes into the life of an immigrant woman who does a very bad thing and what the impact of that very bad thing was. As with many of The Memory Palace's episodes, I found myself thinking about this story days and days after I listened. DiMeo is like a modern-day Aesop, but his morals aren't nearly as encapsulated with pithy sayings. He is a national treasure, that Nate DiMeo.

I am VERY excited about the new season of The Adventure Zone. I have written about TAZ countless times here. Three brothers and their dad play a role-playing game. There are goofs, family jokes, and lots of dice rolling that I don't understand. The first season was a D&D arc and I adored the early episodes in which the jokes were wall to wall and it was so much fun. The second season was some other role-playing game (Monster of the Week) and my enthusiasm for the show flagged. I stopped moving it to the top of my queue and I occasionally would skip weeks if I had better things to do.

But there's a new season! They're back to D&D! There brother I think is least funny is the DM, but that means our characters are fun! There have only been two episodes so far, but I have eagerly put them on the top of my list and have enjoyed it.  Yay! TAZ is back, y'all!

 It wouldn't be a podcast roundup if I didn't shout out a Code Switch episode.  In March 2018, I wrote about an episode called "A House Divided by Immigration" about a family with mixed-citizenship status members. The recent episode called "Status Update" is an update on that family. It's as heartbreaking as you think it will be.

The first season of The City was about an illegal dump in Chicago and it touched on issues of environmental racism, governmental corruption, and families dealing with the fallout. I listened to it last fall and basically recommend it to everyone I know.  The second season is all about Reno, Nevada and the divide between the Old Reno of strip clubs and brothels and the New Reno of Tesla and other tech startups.  I'm really glad I'm not on the city council of Reno, that's for sure. I don't think this season touches on nearly as many BIG topics, but it does talk a lot about sex work in a fair, thoughtful manner. If you're interested in what happens when communities are undoing huge changes, this podcast might be for you. It was fascinating.