Podcast Roundup, July 2022

Bill Woodrow, Listening to History

I'm going to shout out a few long-running podcasts today. They do good work and I rarely acknowledge them, but I still listen to most of their episodes.

The first thing I want to talk about is Planet Money's ongoing series about the Beige Book. The Federal Reserve publishes the Beige Book eight times a year and it's just a series of anecdotal information gathered from the twelve districts across the country on economic trends and conditions. PM takes the Beige Book and makes an episode about the report, awarding Beigie Awards to the Fed district that they consider the best or most telling anecdote.  In recent episodes, "LIVE from New York, the Beigie Awards" and "The Beigie Awards: The Gallon is Half Full," the Fed workers who have "accepted" the Beigie Awards have been so pleased that their work is being acknowledged and just so excited that someone is reading the Beige Book.  If you want to hear some underappreciated bureaucrats get giggly, the Beigie Awards series might be for you.

Yesterday, Slate's Culture Gabfest released its 2022 "Summer Strut" episode in which they crowdsource songs from their listeners that you could strut to walking down a city sidewalk. I wrote about their Strut episode in 2020 and the songs in 2020 were contemplative and less strut-y than in previous years. Last year one of the hosts was on maternity leave and didn't participate, but she's back this year and she really brought the chaos. She picked this weird song called "I Am Steve" by the band Hey Steve and one of the hosts, whose name is Steve, started get a bit defensive about it and the byplay among the three hosts was making me audibly snort while I was walking the dog.  

Edited to add: I added "Birding" and "I Am Steve" to my Earworms playlist. I think it's the first time I've ever actually added songs thanks to a Strut episode.  I am loving this chaos-inducing Julia Turner. 

As always, the conversation about the song of the summer went over my head because I'd heard of none of the songs that they talked about, but it does remind me that there is a bit of a monoculture out there yet - I just don't really participate in it. Great episode and I highly recommend it. 

Glen Wheldon is one of the regular hosts on Pop Culture Happy Hour. In general, I like the same things he likes, but even when I disagree with him, I love his sheer enthusiasm.  I've written before in this space that his monologue on why Rowlf is the best Muppet in "Our Favorite Muppets" had me absolutely rolling on the floor. So his rant about what he deems as the best movie soundtrack of all time in a recent episode did not disappoint me. I mean, he's obviously wrong, but he's so positive and has such strong feelings and Aisha Harris is so completely befuddled that the whole episode is going on my list of the best moments in my podcasting listening career.

Other Top Podcast Moments:

1. The beginning of the "Missing Fathers" episode of Hello From the Magic Tavern when a famous voice from another podcast introduces the show. 

2. The Joe Thomas (ep. 50) --> Andi Oliver (ep. 70) --> Christmas Special episodes of Off Menu may be the best trilogy of podcast episodes in the history of podcasting. 

3. The moment in the "Tray, Tumbler, Spork" episode of Ear Hustle when one of the incarcerated men who works on the show was all "I don't deserve this empathy" to the non-incarcerated host and I almost cried.

4. The ending of "The Living Room" from Love + Radio. So haunting.

5. The answer to who was stealing the lady's identity in "Money Tree" from Criminal. I still think about this nearly every week. 

6. While I'm thinking about Criminal, the woman in "Final Exit" does such good work and yet I thought she came off as so terrible during the interview and I think about this episode all the time, too. 

7. One of the live shows of The Adventure Zone when they're doing a team-building exercise and they're all being giant jerks to the DM and boy does he pay them back. I laughed so hard. 

8. I can't get over how much the Song Exploder episode of "The Commander Thinks Aloud" comes into my brain on a regular basis. I don't listen to Song Exploder a lot and had never heard of this band or this song, but it lives rent free in my head.

9. The shock in the anonymous narrator's voice on the Casefile update about the capture of the EAR/ONS serial killer. I'll never forget the moment I heard it. 

10. I think about how many raccoons are in our yard every night after listening to the guest on the racoon episode of You're the Expert. 

Have you listened to any good podcast episodes lately? What memory of a long ago listened to episode has stayed with you?