Podcast Roundup April 2020

I am a ball of stress most days. My jaw is clenched, my shoulders are up by my ears. and there's a constant refrain of all the things going wrong in the world and how I'm not doing enough echoing through my brain.  So it was with no small degree of relief that my podcast friends Mallory and Jason released an episode of Binge Mode on April 1 and said that they'd be doing so weekly until this whole *waves hands about wildly* social distancing thing was behind us.

I last wrote about when Mal and Jason were doing a deep dive into the Harry Potter series and I stand by that recommendation and may very well re-listen to those episodes. But this is not about WHAT these two are talking about. It's about them just talking to each other. Their friendship is palpable and admirable and I love listening to them talk.  Sometimes this podcast gets criticized online because they talk over one another and Jason can be LOUD, but I love that they are enthusiastic about the things they talk about. Right now, all I want is people talking about things that are normal and this fills that hole for me.

Has anyone been following any non-virus related news?  Well, there's this big thing happening right now. It's called the census. I'm pretty much obsessed with the census and so are the folks at Code Switch. Their recent episode "Mother, Should I Trust the Census Bureau?" deals with the very real issue that many people in minority communities do not trust the government enough to fill out the census form. This episode dives into the very real historical reasons for this distrust and why census results are so important.

I've talked about how The Moth regularly gets pushed down to the bottom of my list because the stories are so inconsistent.  But then I listen to an episode or two and I realize that the misses are much rarer than the hits.  In the recent episode "When We Were Young," Oanh Ngo Usadi told an immigrant story about her childhood and some interactions with her neighbor that made me tear up. Maybe my emotions are a bit close to the surface these days, but this story really moved me. The episode "Wigs, Wigouts, and Insurance" had three solid stories, but the final story told by Stephanie Pierolo about her love for her son and the lengths she would go to protect him also made me well up.  If you're not in the headspace right now for these types of heavy stories, maybe put them on your to-listen list for a later time when things are a bit less heavy in the world.

And that's all I found particularly notable for the month. I'm finding myself more and more likely to just not download episodes if I think it might be COVID-related content. I find myself more and more likely to just delete something I might have had patience for in the past* and I'm more and more picky about what I listen to.  I've decided that the only way forward for me is to just go back and find podcasts that were recorded BEFORE social distancing and quarantining and working from home and Zoom became a noun and a verb. 

I've recently added Finding Drago, Illegal Tender, Newcomers, The Fred and Rose West Tapes, and Verified to my podcast app list.  If any of them are any good, maybe you'll hear about them next month.  Any other recommendations for things recorded before-crazy?

*I rage deleted an episode of Longform when the guest, Naomi Klein, had the ABSOLUTE gall to say that people without children should be doing more work than people with children right now. Like we don't fucking do that ALREADY, what with people with kids faffing out early to go get their kids early from daycare or calling off of work whenever their kids are sick. Fuck off, Klein.  You made your choice and now you have a child you need to care for - that's on you and shouldn't mean I need to do more work.

I also just deleted an episode of my beloved The Adventure Zone right in the middle of a sentence because I just can't deal with the way Travis DMs.  I'm just not going to listen again until they start a new campaign.