February 2020 Podcast Roundup

Last month I talked about the collaboration between Death Sex + Money and Code Switch in which they did episodes about interracial friendships. The minisode "Who Are Your 'Quick and Deep' Friends" from DSM explored the results of a survey about interracial friendships with a psychologist. It definitely forced me to examine some of my own social circles.  It turns out that I don't really have close friends who are of a different race than I am. Some of this is because I live in a small town, but it's not like we don't have ANY minorities here - it's that I don't know these people because our town is segregated.

Pop Mom! is one of my favorite podcasts. I always bump it to the top of my playlist because I find the relationship between Bonney and John Teti to be life goals.  They are playful and loving and I am utterly charmed by this mother and son pair.  Their podcast is normally lighthearted fare, although sometimes we get glimpses that things are sometimes hard, with Bonney's health woes and John's depression.  But there was an exchange in the recent episode "Super Bowl LIV" in which Bonney makes a smart-ass comment about John's wife Anna and it quickly devolves into one of the most uncomfortable moments that could ever take place between a mother and her son. I laughed SO HARD.

Don't be alarmed by the title. They only talk about the Super Bowl for a few minutes.  Most of the podcast is devoted to general chitchat and admiration of Jennifer Lopez and Shakira.

Reveal is, as usual, doing excellent work that often falls to the bottom of my playlist only to have me regret not listening to it first thing because the episodes are SO GOOD. In the episode "Don't Count on the Census," the Reveal team takes a look at how the 2020 census rollout is a fiasco and how undercounting is going to be a huge problem. Then it looks at how a couple of states are trying to fix the problems.  I'm borderline obsessed with the census, so I love these types of episodes.

Reveal also looked at organ transplants in the episode called "Lost in Transplantation." For a podcast that uses the word "logistics" multiple times, this was surprisingly fascinating to me. There's a limited time frame between when an organ is removed from its donor and when it can be considered viable for transplant. How often to organs miss this window? How can we prevent organs from going unused? A strange world of organ tracking exists and I had no idea how complicated these questions would be to answer.

If you had asked me what I thought of polygamous marriage before listening to "Polygamous Marriage in Modern Malaysia," I would have told you that it was a bad idea because it simply subjugated women and was a form of oppression that rarely benefited anyone - women, men, or children.  I also would have said that I struggle with the topic because I try really hard not to judge people for their "lifestyle choices," but that the ideas behind polygamy are not normally about happiness, but about maintaining power for the patriarchy.

And listening didn't really change my mind, but it did let me hear some voices (of women!) who believe that polygamy might be the answer for them. And so my viewpoint wavered. A tiny bit. The Documentary provides glimpses of people around the world who have different life experiences than I have and I found this episode to be quite enlightening.

Nate DiMeo, the creator of The Memory Palace, is a national treasure. His writing is the best writing in podcasting. In ten minutes, he creates images that will never leave your mind.  In "The House of Lowe," he tells the story of a fashion designer in such a haunting manner that I've been researching the designer for weeks.  "Life's Work," the most recent episode as of when I'm typing this, nearly made me cry as it recounted a horrendous tragedy in American history. Mr. DiMeo, you are my intellectual crush.

I end up deleting a lot of Longform episodes before the end of them because I find a lot of the stories repetitive and kind of boring. So when Ashley C. Ford came on and was giving actual numbers of how much money she made and talking about how even though she had all this money, she didn't feel like she had all this money, and just was so honest and open, it was a breath of fresh air. THIS is what I listen to Longform for.

The Moth is a storytelling podcast and, as such, it's quite hit or miss for me. Sometimes people just aren't good public speakers, you know?  But the episode called "Jury Duty, Walking Tests, Pepsi, and NOLA" had four solid (SOLID!) stories and was quite impressive. In the first story, a woman is forced to confront her own biases and stereotypes while she's serving on a jury.  It was hilarious to listen to, while also being quite moving.  In the second story, a man tells a story about how his physical limitations forced him into learning how to accept help.  In the third story, a woman tells a story about sweet, sweet passive aggressive revenge.  And the last story, a father tells the story of his relationship with his son and how it changed over time.  They are all really, really good.