Podcast Roundup Week #1

I am currently subscribed to 86 podcasts, most of which are active. I actually had over 100 at the beginning of our holiday break and have been slowly purging the ones I don't listen to or are no longer active.  I'm usually about a month behind in my episodes, although I am getting closer and closer to actually being caught up.

When people ask how I listen to so many podcasts, I have to admit that it's because I'm basically always listening. I listen when I work out, when I sew, when I walk, when I drive, and when I clean house. Basically if I'm doing something I don't LOVE to do, I'm listening. This provides me with multiple hours each day to listen to podcasts. I don't watch television or movies much, though, so this replaces visual media for me.

I use Podcast Addict as my podcast player.

This week I listened to 35 podcast episodes and here are a few that I would recommend.

The Adventure Zone: Live in Nashville - I don't think you can actually listen to this episode without having listened to the rest of TAZ, but here's the gist. Three brothers and their father play D&D and make a podcast about it. They are hilarious and the family dynamic is sweet and fun. There was this moment at this live show when the dad, who plays a cleric, uses a spell that he's used before in ridiculous situations for an actual useful purpose and the audience breaks into applause and I'm not going to lie, I did a little fist pump while I was walking in the woods, too, because it was great. The dad in the group sometimes catches some flack because he's not always the best D&D player, but he sometimes has these golden moments. The Adventure Zone is one of my favorite podcasts, and I've never played D&D in my entire life.

What Trump Can Teach Us About Con Law: Prosecuting a President - Roman Mars, the host of 99% Invisible, another super popular podcast, puts out this occasional show of indefinite length on Trump's destruction of presidential and governmental norms with constitutional law scholar Elizabeth Joh.  There's a moment at the end of this episode when Joh asks Mars to think about the debate about whether or not we want someone in charge who thinks the president is above the law and Mars has this little laugh and says "no, that wasn't hard at all," that made me laugh out loud as I was, again, walking in the woods.

Code Switch: (Legally) Selling Weed While Black -  I have a complicated assignment in one of my race and politics classes in which I have the students listen to a combo of Johann Hari talking about the early stages of the War on Drugs as it relates to a war on blues (which was largely aimed at the black community) and the racist policies of the Bureau of Narcotics under the leadership of Harry Anslinger and then listen to an explanation of the song "Strange Fruit" as it relates to that, but this Code Switch podcast actually does a lot of that work for me and I don't have to send students off in to so many different directions. I think too many people automatically link Richard Nixon and the War on Drugs, but I think Anslinger should be a household name, too.

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?

7.18 Winner - Podcast Roundup

Bestest Friend and I are doing a podcast project. Every day we will write a blog post on a pre-determined theme chosen by a random noun generator. The theme for the eighteenth day of the month is "Winner."

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I have been trying some new podcasts and have stumbled upon some excellent ones, so let me regale you with what's been going on in my earbuds. 

Violation, a collab from WBUR and The Marshall Project, looks at the case of one black man's journey through the criminal justice system, from being found guilty of a murder while he was a minor to prison to attempting to get out on parole. Jake Wideman doesn't deny killing a fellow camper on a trip when he was a teenager, but should he spend the rest of his life in prison for something that happened when he was sixteen? He's been seeking mental health treatment and has a potential stable home life outside of prison. On the other hand, he did kill a child. It's so fascinating and I found myself wavering constantly about what his fate should be and what role members of unelected parole boards should play in life-altering decisions they may or may not be qualified to judge. As someone who strongly feels that life without parole sentences should be illegal, when confronted with parents pleading that their child's murderer stay behind bars, it was sometimes hard to stick to my guns. Very thought provoking and it really made me think hard about my beliefs.

When I saw a new four-episode season of 30 for 30 drop, I was hesitant. Called The Bag Game, this season investigates how a top NBA recruit fell from the rankings after he was caught up in NCAA violations when he was attending the University of Kansas. I don't know why I was hesitant because 30 for 30 has never steered me wrong, but I thought this sounded like a bit of a snooze. It wasn't, though! It was great and fascinating and character-focused. Billy Preston may not have been squeaky clean, but it was clear to me that he deserved better than he got.  Anyway, I am not a sports person, but I like all these 30 for 30 stories and I was super impressed with this one.

I have been trying to find a replacement for the first season of The Adventure Zone, which was the peak of some people playing D&D in a listenable way for non-D&D players. I've dipped my toes into other roleplaying podcasts, but a lot of them are actual play, which is long and rules-y, and some are just annoying bros being annoying bros. The Adventure Zone itself has yet to have an additional season beyond their first that I have listened to in its entirety. So I downloaded the first few eps of Dungeons & Daddies without much hope, but then I downloaded more episodes and then more and then soon I had listened to the entire first season! Just as good as the first season of TAZ and maybe even slightly better because I found myself tearing up a couple of times at the end. I haven't yet dipped into the second season, but I'll keep you updated. 

And that's all from me from podcastlandia. Have you listened to anything great recently?

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.

My 10 Favorite Podcast Episodes of 2016

I listen to a lot of podcasts - the same way a lot of people watch television shows or movies, I listen to podcasts.  If I'm alone I'm probably listening to someone chattering away in my headphones.  So here are some of my favorite episodes from 2016.  Note: I'm a Basic Bitch of podcasts.

1. "Extinct Hockey" from Surprisingly Awesome

Surprisingly Awesome is an uneven show. The premise is that the hosts take a seemingly boring topic and make it awesome. I'm not actually crazy about the original hosts (Adam Davidson and Adam McKay) and sometimes the shows actually are just boring (the broccoli and flossing shows, for instance), but it seems like the Adams are gone and they're playing with some hosting changes. I, for one, would like John Hodgman to host the show permanently because both of the episodes he's hosted have been super memorable, including his dive into sports fandom in "Extinct Hockey" and an actually surprisingly look at "Cardboard," which I almost didn't download because I thought it was going to kill my soul. You can probably skip all of the other Surprisingly Awesome shows and just listen to those two.

2. "Sharon Shockwave" from Our Debut Album

This podcast follows two comedians as they write a song in an hour. Every month they write this song, then record it, and we get to listen to the whole hilarious process.  I find the premise preposterous and brilliant, all at once. If you haven't listened to this podcast, there are only eight episodes as of right now and they are all brilliant, but I really thought the guest on this particular episode was pretty spot on (shout out to the hilarious "King of the Deep" and "Ice Hotel," too).

3. "Falling in Love...with Heroin" from Death, Sex, & Money

Anna Sale is an interviewing genius. She cuts right to the heart of matters, but somehow comes across as caring and empathetic while she's asking super hard, uncomfortable questions. This particular episode stayed with me for months and even now I find myself wondering about the couple in this story and their children and hoping for good things for them.  The show itself is a mix of interviews with famous people and just normal people and I don't always LOVE her celebrity interviews, but I do love most everything else about this show.  It makes me wonder a lot about what I do that's perfectly normal to me would seem bizarre to people on the outside.

4.The Elizabeth and Mary story from Strangers (Part I, Part II, and Part III)

I don't always  love Lea Thau, the host of Strangers. I particularly dislike when she starts talking about her personal life, although some people love it. But. She really shines when she interviews other people and this three part series about a woman who is donating her kidney to a stranger she met via the internet is a fascinating story. I kept talking about it with my husband and it sparked a lot of interesting discussions in our house.

5. "Missing Fathers" from Hello From the Magic Tavern

I have recommended this podcast before and I still get quite excited when it shows up in my feed. I'm pretty sure you'd have no idea what the hell was happening if you did actually just listen to this one episode because the brilliance of the show is that what happens in previous episodes is canon to the world in which one of our main characters has landed himself in alternate, fantastical world named Foon.  I almost cried with glee with this episode because Aaron Mahnke (of Lore fame) did a brilliant intro to it and I was laughing and pretty soon tears were running down my face because I was laughing so hard. This episode might be a little inside baseball, but the collaboration between Lore and Hello From the Magic Tavern was quite possibly the best thing I heard in my earbuds all year.

6. "The Truth" from In the Dark

This podcast is an in-depth look at the child abduction case of Jacob Wetterling, an infamous case that I learned a lot about when I lived in Minnesota.  The podcast was already in production before the police announced that the 27-year-old case had been solved.  It's a scathing look at failures in law enforcement and legislation.  The entire nine episode (plus an additional update) series is fabulous, in a well-researched, well-produced, and terrifying kind of way. It's also not really all that surprising if you have ever met a small town police officer.  You should listen to the whole podcast, but if you don't have time for that, the last episode is a great capsule of all the main criticisms raised by the investigation.

7. Rachel Monroe on Longform

The Longform podcast interviews writers, journalists, editors, and other people involved in the world of media.  I'm not always a big fan of talking about writing (just write if you're gonna call yourself a writer!), but this podcast somehow sucks me in most of the time.   I've really been digging the interviews with women recently - the Krista Tippett interview was surprisingly interesting, as was the Ellis Jones interview - but this Rachel Monroe interview is one that I find myself thinking about as I'm going to sleep at night. You live in a crappy little town? Make the best of it.  You are interested in some random topic that no one else seems to think is important?  Write something to make people think it is important.  Monroe is my new accessible role model.  She's just doing her thing and doing it well and I think I can reasonably emulate that.

8. "Boy in Photo" from Reply All

Reply All recently changed its logo. I don't like the new logo at all, so I went with the old one.

Reply All is a show ostensibly about the internet, but in actuality most of the stories are tangentially related to the internet and truly about people and their quirks. Some people might argue that the "On the Inside" series (episodes #64 - 67) is the best of Reply All this year, but I found that series a bit hypocritical at the end. But "Boy in Photo" is haunting. The amount of legwork it took for these fools (the hosts play fools on a regular basis) to figure out the mystery was surprising and exciting. I was taken aback at how much I was on the edge of my seat. It was great pacing, great editing, and just great storytelling all the way around.

9. "Public Works: Rethinking America's Transportation Infrastructure" from 99% Invisible

I've written here before about my love for 99PI and Roman Mars' sexy, sexy voice, so I won't go on any further in my slathering adoration.  Surprisingly Awesome could take some cues from Mars on how to make a topic I have no interest in the most fascinating thing in the world.  But, my friends, I am actually acutely interested in public works and if I ever get to teach a class on American infrastructure in the 21st century, I am going to lead the first day of class with this gem. (I also considered "The Trend Forecast" as an episode rec because I had never heard of WGSN and it was absolutely riveting, but then I realized that my frequent predictions that the end of the United States will come with an attack on our infrastructure really demonstrates that I'm a public works kinda gal.)

10. "Wendell Sayers" from Making Gay History

Have you ever wandered what it was like to be gay before being gay was even moderately socially acceptable? Not a leader in the movement, not someone who was there for Stonewall, not someone you already know, but just a guy?  Then this episode is for you.

And if you're interested in other great podcasts, consider The Adventure Zone for a comedic Dungeons and Dragons game (I've never played D&D, but I love TAZ anyway - you have to start at episode 1, though), The Memory Palace for storytelling like no other, Harry Potter and the Sacred Text for a philosophical lifting of your soul, Hello Internet for neurotic dudes talking about neurotic things, Offshore for a mix of history and current events in Hawaii that somehow represents the entire world, Totally Beverages for random talk about drinks and hilarity, and You're the Expert for interesting, knowledgeable scientists chatting with comedians who clearly know nothing.

Snapshot of My Day, Edition #6, 6/23/2022

I got the idea for a "snapshot" type of post from Stephany who got it from Torrie over at To Love and To Learn. I'm a straight up copycat of their format!

Right now.

Time I woke up: Just before my alarm went off this morning at around 6:15. The birds were chirping and the sun was streaming in through the windows.

First thing I did upon waking: Stumbled over to my phone to turn off the alarm and then I went around closing upstairs windows to keep the cool air from overnight in during the day.

Today's weather: Mid-80s and sunny.  Clear blue skies. It's a pretty perfect summer day.

Today is Hannah's third Gotcha Day. We're so proud of our little nugget.

An out-of-the-ordinary thing that happened today: The neighbors have been working on their front porch, which is to say that they totally demolished it. Today they were pouring concrete for a new slab and footings and Hannah the Dog lost her mind at one of the workers. She has rarely been so excitable on a walk and it was not a shining moment in her training.

Last thing I read (not on the Internet): I'm reading Dark Lover (Black Dagger Brotherhood #1) by J.R. Ward because we chose it as our book club book for the month on my joking recommendation. I do not think this book series is perfect (the names all have extra letters in them! like Rhage! and Tohrment!, Ward can't resist name dropping designer brands all the time, and her constant use of the term "shitkickers" instead of shoes or boots is frustrating), but her worldbuilding is solid and in the later books she really dives into some of the difficulties of being in a long-term relationship which is not something you really see in romance a lot.  Do I sound defensive about this choice? It's because I am. I said it sort of jokingly, not expecting that everyone would jump on the suggestion. *sigh* I'll let you know next week how it went over with members of my book, but I'm guessing that the answer is not really well.  

Last thing I read (on the Internet): I read a long reddit thread about the scandal involving Billy Jensen, the former host of the podcast The Murder Squad.  I'm also slightly obsessed with why the McElroys are so abruptly ending their current campaign on The Adventure Zone and moving from weekly to biweekly and have spent more than my fair amount of time reading through threads about that, too. I love juicy podcasting gossip.

Last text I received: Reminder from the vet that Hannah has an appointment tomorrow. (Of course she does!)

Last text I sent: My BFF sent me a meme via text (above) and I texted back "Lolol. It's too true."

Last website I visited: A local two-year college's website to look at job postings.

Our grocery store stocks these in the summer months, so I eat one every night after dinner. I do not regret the extra 100 calories a day.

Last show I watched: I watched an episode of season two of Floor is Lava on Netflix after a particularly stressful job meeting. 

Last podcast I listened to: I'm relistening to Binge Mode Harry Potter as a comfort listen and I just finished the episode on the fourth movie.

Last thing I said: Hannah still won't eat her snack. I don't know how we're going to get her to take her afternoon meds. (I said this to Dr. BB in case that wasn't clear.)

Last thing I ate: Blue Diamond Habanero BBQ Almonds.

Things are crazy next door!

What I was doing an hour ago: Watching Floor is Lava.

What I will be doing an hour from now: Attempting to get Hannah to eat dinner. I suspect it will not go well.

Current whereabouts of the other members of the household: Hannah is sleeping in her bed in the room next to me, Zelda is on her cat tree in the mudroom, and Dr. BB is upstairs practicing guitar.

One thing I crossed off my to-do list today: I had one small assignment at work today to write a paragraph or two explaining something we're doing and I did it.  I procrastinated for far too long, but it was done, so that's that.

I'm only slightly mortified at what a mess my work space is. Only slightly, though.

That's a wrap. Is your desk neater than mine? Does your dog refuse to eat?  Let me know what crazy demolition is happening in your neighborhood!

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. 

Podcast Roundup Week #21

This week I listened to 47 episodes. The theme was that it's hard for African Americans to live in this country.

Reveal had an episode called "The View from Room 205" in which an investigative reporter followed a class of fourth graders at a school in Chicago's West Side. Looking at these individual students, this teacher, and this school, Linda Lutton tries to grapple with the ideology that education in the great equalizer and that education can lift kids out of poverty and out of bad neighborhoods.  And what she finds is that schools can't fix poverty. And poverty matters. It matters if kids are hopeless because they don't see a future for themselves because there are no jobs for them. It matters if kids are hungry because they haven't had food all day because there's no food in the house. It matters if kids are home alone because their moms are working two or three hourly jobs at a time to try and pay rent. It matters that it's almost always moms working because their dads are in jail. It matters that their dads are in jail because their dads probably committed a crime to help get money to support their families.  She looked at one room with just a handful of kids, but came away with a social commentary that will break your heart.

The Moth Radio Hour had two stories that also followed this theme.  In its episode "Domestic Affairs," Gina Sampaio tells the story of the process of creating her family through transracial adoption. At one point her little boy, who is a different race than she and her husband, matter of factly tells Sampaio that he wishes he had been adopted into a black family.  Sampaio's response to this nearly shattered me.  Adoption is full of joy, but sadness, too. If things were 100% okay in the world, we wouldn't need adoption.  Sampaio's understanding and caring came through in spades.

In that same episode, Tony Cyprien talks about his first day out of prison and what a culture shock it was for him. Re-entry of prisoners into day to day life is not something I often hear about at the micro-level.  Sure, I know the stats about recidivism and suicide and unemployment at the macro-level, but personal stories like this are rare.  I thought it was interesting because it was so much more than I expected.

In 1987, NFL players went on strike. Players who had been competitive and got cut late in the process took the field and played instead.  30 for 30 took a look at those players in "The Year of the Scab." The "replacement players," which is the code words that the documentary makers used for "scabs," are still mad to this day, particularly the ones who played for the team that won the Super Bowl that year, that they don't get acknowledgement that they were integral members of the team.  And I guess I have little sympathy for them because they were scabs.  They refused to acknowledge that by playing, they weakened the position of the players. But I digress.

I think a lot of the 30 for 30 podcast episodes delve into how black men's bodies are used for white profit, particularly in sports (see also "Morningside Five") and the toll that this can take on black communities. It's telling that the men interviewed in "The Year of the Scab" honestly couldn't see any other way for them. It was football or bust. How do we teach black youth that there is a career outside of sports and music if the white culture doesn't let them in?  There's so much de facto segregation in housing and careers that it seems like black children may not be incorrect in their assumption that they can't be florists, bakers, and welders.  

And then I listened to The Adventure Zone "Live in Dallas" for a little levity. 

September 2019 Podcasts

You know how summer is bad for television? It's all repeats and nothing new? That's sort of how I felt about September podcasts. I was really reaching for quality programming.

I really jive with the Planet Money people. They do talk about economics, but I feel like 50% of their episodes are really about measurement problems. Their recent episode called "The Modal American" is really just an issue of how to define and measure something. How do you measure what the "average" American is?  Is it income?  Gender? Geography? Occupation? Number of family members? Age?  This question is really a conceptual definition, combined with a measurement question. As someone who sits around pondering these types of questions all day, I wholeheartedly approve of this episode. Then again, I'm a numbers nerd.

Bundyville has two seasons. The first season is all about some crazy insane sovereign citizen types who think the federal government is not a real authority. I liked the first season well enough, although I had some serious issues with giving people like this a voice. This second season, though, is sort of a mystery/crazy right wing conspiracy combo.  It takes a look beyond the Bundy family and focuses on what types of violence are spurred by the viewpoints of people like the Bundys.  It was a scary look at what goes on in the anti-government movement.

Patient Zero is a New Hampshire Public Radio joint (they also put out a podcast called Bear Brook, which gets high marks from me, although that story is way too complicated to follow in podcast form, which is why I've never written about it here) that tells the story of Lyme Disease.  What is it? What causes it? How do you treat it?  How did they figure all that out?  Is there such a thing as chronic Lyme disease?  Why isn't there a vaccine? If you're into public health, man's relationship with the wild, New England, epidemiology, or your dog's health, this is a podcast for you. The story about the Lyme disease vaccine is absolutely baffling to me.  Every single episode is well constructed, well edited, and super interesting.  This is a surprise hit of the fall for me. 

Unravel is an Australian ABC podcast. I listened to their fourth season called Snowball.  It tells the story of an American woman who basically preys upon a New Zealand family and turns out to have quite a history as a con artist. The twist with this season is that the reporter who is doing all the research is part of the family. It's really smart and interesting and I enjoyed listening to it - it's sort of an unusual perspective of a tangentially impacted victim telling the story. The New Zealand impressions of American accents are worth it all by themselves and don't even get me started on how amazing the Kiwi slang expressions are. 

But, all of this aside, I spent most of the month relistening to the Balance arc of The Adventure Zone.  There are people who claim that early Balance episodes are not worth listening to, but I actually really thought the podcast was most fun when Giffin, the DM, wasn't taking the storytelling aspect of his job so seriously. The early episodes are full of jokes, goofs, and dad jokes. I very much enjoy those early episodes. And I listened again because I can. I don't relisten to podcasts very much, but I can see myself pulling out these episodes when new podcast releases come to a halt in the late summer/early fall. 

Podcast Roundup Weeks #32 and #33

In the last couple of weeks, I've listened to 72 episodes.  There have been some really interesting episodes.

In Imaginary Worlds, host Eric Molinsky guides us through science fiction and fantasy the questionof why do we suspend our disbelief and enjoy these genres. It's a diverse podcast, covering things from the card game Magic the Gathering to Live Action Role Play (LARP) to fantasy maps, with occasional miniseries covering topics like Doctor Who and Harry Potter more in-depth. Even when I'm not super enthused with an episode topic on first glance, Molinsky is a master storyteller who will make me care by five minutes into to the episode.

The episode I want to talk about is called "Imaginary Deaths." Why do we mourn the deaths of fictional characters so much? I can easily get verklempt if I think too much about Harry Potter losing Hedwig (his present from Hagrid for his birthday and first real magical touchstone!) or Beth in Little Women who just didn't live a life worthy of her goodness except, you guys, Beth was NOT REAL. Molinsky talks with fans like you and I who have these deep feelings associated with death on the page or the screen and then talks to a psychologist, Jennifer Barnes, who studies this very thing. Basically, Barnes argues that it's relatively recently in human development that humans have had to distinguish fiction from reality and this skill is put to the test when we're consuming media. It was a fascinating discussion and, if you consume fiction, this is worth a listen.

I have written repeatedly on the genius of Roman Mars and his podcast 99 Percent Invisible before. He introduces me to things in the designed world that I have never thought about before (there's an episode about basketball which I ordinarily would be zzzz, but it raised a fascinating issue about deciding to actually have a hoop with a hole that I still think about a lot), but you don't need me to talk up one of the most listened to podcasts in the world, do you? The episode "Interrobang" is all about punctuation. I love to nerd out on the history of punctuation and typesetting and the idea that there's a need for a NEW end of sentence punctuation is a total mind game for me, especially as I find more and more ways I'd use it in my own writing.

A relatively new podcast in my arsenal is Dr. Gameshow, a show hosted by comedy genius Jo Firestone, who along with her very low energy co-host Manolo Moreno, plays games that people listening to the show send in.  She usually also has two guests in studio and they play against people who call in. The whole thing hangs on how good or terrible the games are and how game the in-studio guests are.  It consistently makes me laugh, although sometimes I'm laughing because I'm super confused as to what's going on because the games make no sense.  The episode "#NAHSMYOZ" has guests Jason Mantzoukas (of the super hilarious podcast How Did This Get Made) and Moreno's 10-year-old niece. I have actually turned off the podcast before when there was another child guest, but this 10-year-old girl is articulate and her rapport with Mantzoukas warmed my heart. Also, it was a cutthroat game.  I laughed a lot.

I have not been as enthused with Reply All in 2018 as I was in 2017, but there are still good episodes being released. "All My Pets" was an episode that left me confused and befuddled and I started looking up everything I could about it online and I wanted to talk to someone about it, but I don't know anyone who listens to this podcast, so here I am blathering. It tells the story of a girl who has a YouTube channel about pets. She grew up rather sheltered and when she became famous, she met an older guy, moved in with him, and now she doesn't know what to do with her fame.  It's a story from the producer Sruthi Pinnamaneni and I think it was brilliant, but I still have so many questions. So this woman is an animal hoarder? Are these animals cared for?  Is her boyfriend abusing her?  Is she going to be okay?  I mean, we don't know the answers to these questions at the end, but we do know that something is not okay in this woman's world.

The Story Collider is a podcast that curates stories about science. I mean, usually the science angle is quite tangential, but there's at least a bit of science. Each episode has one to three stories put together on a theme. The first story in the episode "Loneliness: Stories about Finding Friends" tells the story of a woman, Cindy Joe, who has an unusual pet and how much comfort she founds in him.  I think about this story all the time.  Pets are great, my friends.

The Adventure Zone is magical. Three dudes and their dad get together and play role-playing games. Their dad is clearly kind of a doofus who raised three other doofuses, but they're all SMART and FUNNY and so clever and quick and they love each other and the family relationships that come across in this stupid podcast about tabletop games frequently makes me tear up.  Also, sometimes it's so funny I snort out loud when I'm walking to a parking garage in a major metropolitan area, like this past week when a bit from the "Live in San Francisco" show in which they talk about an octopus looking like two halves of a horse. Even now I'm giggling, even as I know that what I typed is not remotely funny.  You guys. This show.  Please listen to it.

2.18 Winner - Podcast Episode of the Month

Bestest Friend and I are doing a podcast project. Every day we will write a blog post on a pre-determined theme chosen by a random noun generator. The theme for the eighteenth day of the month is "Winner."

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I have rarely in my podcast listening history, relistened to a podcast. I relistened to The Adventure Zone's Balance campaign and have relistened to select episodes of Serial and Let's Go to Court. But I have never listened to an episode and then immediately listened to the episode a second time and then later that same week relistened for a third time.

Until this past week. Evan and Andrew Gregory were guests on Too Scary; Didn't Watch (a horror movie recap I really enjoy hosted by three female friends) and they kept talking about how great the episode of their podcast, Punch Up the Jam, that two of the TSDW hosts had guested on was. I generally don't listen to a lot of music podcasts, but as I've mentioned here before, I'm running a little low on podcasts because of holiday hiatuses, so I downloaded the "Barbie Girl" episode.

In PUTJ, the hosts talk to the guests about a song in great detail. It could be a song the guests like a lot or a song that they mostly like but have one issue with or a song that the guests don't like at all. Then the hosts go and "punch up" the song.  Sammy and Emily were the TSDW guests and they talked about every line of "Barbie Girl" by Aqua and then Evan wrote a banger punch up and I laughed so hard. There was a moment in the discussion when Sammy referred to the song as "devastating" and a part where she sang the man's part of the song and I have to admit that I have a crush on Sammy.  I have never laughed as hard at a podcast as I did at this serious examination of one of the dumbest songs in history. 

Anyway.  I listened to it twice in one day and then listened to it again later in the week. I'm obsessed with this episode. (I've also listened to the punch up of Brandy (You're A Fine Girl) multiple times, but did not feel the need to listen to the discussion multiple times.)

Have you ever immediately relistened to an episode of a podcast?

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To see what Bestest Friend wrote about winners, go check her blog out at Too Legit To Quit.