The end of my summer included an eight-hour road trip and then a decent amount of driving while on my vacation. I also started going to the gym again. All of that means my podcast listening time increased. Which means I have a few extra podcasts to review this week.
I listened to a mix of bigger-name podcasts and more ‘indie’ podcasts, and dove into a few music podcasts given our continued focus there for A Positive Jam, as well as one investment podcast that is a blue-chipper. For the review format, I’m adding which episodes I listened to that constitute the review.
Gimlet – How To Save A Planet
Type of podcast: Interview/Conversation/Reporting
Episodes listened to: #1 and #2
Gimlet is a leading podcast studio, one of Spotify’s big acquisitions. I don’t know their gamut of podcasts well enough to say, but I follow one of the writers for this podcast and it seems to me that How To Save A Planet was a big launch. It gets prominence in the PocketCasts app, for example, and the CEO and cofounder of Gimlet (Alex Blumberg) is one of the hosts, along with a leading climate policy expert and do-it-all, Dr. Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson. So it’s both worth listening to for what they’re saying about an important topic and to consider their choices from a podcasting perspective.
The biggest thing I’ve noticed from the first two episodes as far as structure is that this blends different podcasting styles in an interesting way. I don’t mean to oversell my categorization of podcasting types, as many podcasts mix up their approach, but How To Save A Planet does so in a new way, to me.
The hosts are very conversational, and have an easy, likable rapport that pulls the listener in – though I am looking forward to when the ‘hey, we have a podcast!’ bits fade out. They also feature interviews though; the hosts interview key guests or the reporters on the team, and those reporters are speaking with people in the field. Which is the third element, of course, the reporting and story-telling element.
Each of the first two episodes tells a story, one about the rise of wind-powered energy in the US and the challenges and opportunities therein, and one about the adoption of the Green New Deal framework in Europe. They use the episode – about 40 minutes in length – to organize a full example or picture of an aspect of the climate change economy and challenge.
The other big choice they make is to end each episode with a call to action, or more specifically offer ways for listeners to get involved in response to the episode’s topic. Theoretically, this crosses some sort of journalistic line. I don’t come from a full journalism background, and in the current subjective vs. objective debate old distinctions have been challenged if not blurred, but it seems that if there’s any topic worthy of a more advocacy-driven approach, it’s climate change. So I think it’s a nice touch.
There’s also a potential dissonance in how conversational and light the back and forth between the hosts can be, given the weight of the topic, but that’s probably also deliberate. That lightness makes it enjoyable to listen and is likely to keep listeners coming back, while still delivering the unvarnished facts of the world’s ill health.
(Small thing for podcasters to take comfort in – episode one features a Zoom robot glitch, which happens sometimes when recording. If it can slip through on a Spotify/Gimlet show, it can happen to anyone!)
Emily Harris and Andrew Rinard.- Get Offset
Type of podcast: Conversational/Interview
Episodes listened to- #45 and #74
Get Offset focuses on music, with a prism of music gear as a starting point. It’s a smart way to differentiate, and while I am a total gear noob, they seem to know their stuff. I listened because someone on twitter introduced us to this given their Hold Steady fandom (full disclosure: we’re hoping to have Emily join us on A Positive Jam). I listened to both their Hold Steady interviews. They take their time building up a flow with the guest, and then get to some really interesting points about touring, or in the second episode’s case – recorded with Hold Steady guitarist Steve Selvidge at the beginning of the pandemic – over the state of the music industry as lockdowns were beginning. I did not hear much about cats, but cats is apparently a side-focus for the podcast which I wholeheartedly endorse.
Slate – Slow Burn
Type of podcast: Documentary
Episodes listened to – all of Season 3
Slow Burn is another one of those podcasts that almost defines the medium. (As a disclosure, the host of the first two seasons, Leon Neyfakh, guests on A Positive Jam this week.) I listened to season 2 a few months ago, and had dabbled in season 3 previously but dove back in over my vacation.
Season 3 covers the rise and fall of Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G. Similar to Season 2 on the Clinton Impeachment, it’s set in the 90s, which is when I grew up. So the stories were both part of my youth but never fully understood, though the Clinton impeachment has stayed more relevant to me as an adult, and so a little more familiar.
The story itself is great but it’s also worth paying attention to the choices the team makes in how they tell that story. For Season 3, starting in media res with the shooting of Tupac at Quad City Studios both grabs attention and pinpoints the start of the east coast vs. west coast rap battles. The story ends unresolved, but given there’s no findings of who killed either rapper, how else could the story end?
I thought the episode focusing on Dolores Tucker’s crusade against rap lyrics to be an interesting digression from the main plot of the season. I think they wove it in well enough to the season, and it also echoed the episode that focused on gangster rap and the police. I’m wondering if there could have been more reflection or analysis, in retrospect, on Tupac’s evolution from being a feminist to one who appeared to be proudly misogynistic. And I wonder if a little more could have been done to analyze his and Biggie’s motivations and responsibility for all of this – I walked away thinking Tupac was a little less than he was purported to be, and also a hothead who aggravated his circumstances. I don’t think I’m supposed to walk away with that, and a little more context would have been helpful.
That said, I think these podcast series that look at recent past events, whether they be Floodlines, Fiasco (Neyfakh’s new podcast), or the more political focused seasons of Slow Burn, are never going to be able to cover all aspects of the story. They scratch the memory and nostalgia itch, and for those who want to dive deeper, they provide questions and resources so you can dig in. At least, that’s how I’m thinking about it.
(And as a quick thing, Slate’s monetization model is ads plus bonus episodes as part of their membership program – I suppose those bonus episodes would be a way to dive deeper as well. Also a quirk – in Spain I usually don’t get ads from shows hosted on Megaphone, which allows for dynamic ad targeting and, for the US shows I listen to, is usually targeted at the US audience. For whatever reason, all the ads showed up in the last episode).
My-T-Sharp Network – Our Favorite Sings
Type of podcast: Conversational
Episodes listened to: #17 and #18
I came across this while looking for music podcasts, probably on Spotify. There was a two-parter available on the Blues Brothers, a movie I only first watched maybe last summer. I didn’t totally get it; I liked it, but it didn’t appear to me as that classic. That made this two-parter podcast a good place to start..
Our Favorite Sings has great banter, as a starter. It took the hosts Monty and Tiffany about 10-15 minutes to even get to the Blues Brothers, and I didn’t know a lot of the artists they were talking about in the run-up, but their teasing one another and their enthusiasm kept me hooked and laughing. And then when they got to the Blues Brothers, they did a very good job of balancing their personal experience with the subject matter itself. I never thought about the fact that Blues Brothers would of course be playing on WGN whenever there was a hole in the programming (along with Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, I imagine?). And I knew some of the musician cameos in the movie, of course, but missed a few. In any case, they shed light on the movie and their conversation was enjoyable. I plan to check out a couple more episodes when I have the chance.
Podium Podcast – Igor El Ruso
Type of Podcast: Documentary
Episodes listened to: all five
Podium Podcast is the leading podcast studio in Spain. The charts in Spain are filled with their podcasts as well as radio stations – La Cadena Sur, OndaCero, esRadio – and then a few Spotify Studios podcasts and English language podcasts. So as far as dedicated podcast studios go, they don’t have much competition.
I had previously tried listening to Valencia Destroy, a podcast about the famous Ruta del Bakalao and the music/drug scene on the Valencian coast in the 80s-90s, but I haven’t been able to get past episode 2, mostly due to my own Spanish skills. I’ve also sampled some of their non-documentary podcasts. Igor El Ruso is only a five-part series, and it was more digestible.
Igor El Ruso is the pseudonym for Norbert Feher, a Serbian born near the Hungarian border. He went from petty crime to murder, first in Italy and then in the Aragon region in Spain. The podcast takes us through his story in a fairly classic true-crime way. We hear about his upbringing, we hear from Italian experts and former prisonmates, and we hear how he hid himself in ‘España vacia’, the term for much of the middle of the country that has been depopulated as people head to the cities over the past decades.
The story is well told and well produced, with perhaps a little bit too many sound effects to accentuate the narration. I had trouble understanding some of the interviewees, but that could have been my car audio or my Spanish listening skills rather than the production. I liked the podcast, but the thing I was left asking is what is the ‘so what?’ Why does this matter? It could be that because I’m not fully immersed in Spanish media and day-to-day affairs, I’m just missing that this is self-evident, as important as say the Tupac/Biggie killings covered on Slow Burn. But from listening, the closest I got was that the government was too slow to act, which may be a sign of the neglect in these empty parts of Spain. Whether that was the case or something else, I think the producers and the host, Patricia Peiró, could have hammered this home a little more.
That said, there’s every chance I missed it, and the podcast was enjoyable and well done in any case.
Patrick O’Shaughnessy – Invest Like The Best
Type of podcast: Interview
Episode listened to: Katrina Lake
Invest Like The Best is the investing interview podcast. Patrick O’Shaughnessy always comes prepared and is genuinely interested in his guests. He does a good job listening and responding to the conversation, and there are enough standard touches – his closing question, the production at the beginning, repeat guests, and the way he connects conversations – to provide familiarity to listeners. I listened to an interview with Stitch Fix CEO Katrina Lake, someone I admire in the business world, and learned quite a bit from the conversation.
The conversation made me think and spurred me to action in my investing – in the sense of thinking through what I want to do with my investing, I mean, not a straight buy/sell thing – which is about all you can hope for from a show like this, along with an enjoyable conversation.
The Detroit History Podcast
Type of Podcast: Storytelling
Episodes listened to: Season 1, episodes 1-7
I’ve always had a soft spot for Detroit, one that grew when I met/dated/married a Michigander, and one that grew more when I realized that there’s a gulf between where she’s from – West Michigan – and the Motor City, a gulf that extends beyond the four hours it takes to drive there. I love cities and love thinking through the life cycle of a city, and cheer for cities with rich cultural histories that are trying to get on the upswing. New Orleans and Detroit, I often say, are the two cities I’d most like to live in if I lived in the states.
So when I became aware of this podcast, because I follow a Detroit historian (Tom Sugrue) who retweeted it at some point, I knew I’d be interested. And in finally listening, I think it’s delivered so far. Each episode is about 20 minutes, allowing enough space to tell a distinct story about the city. Host Tim Kiska tells it straight – and has a great Michigan accent to boot. It will be interesting to see how well he does in representing the diversity of Detroit, a very Black city but also with a ton of different people that have crossed through it. It’s also a city that has often had stuff to come back from, and so it can be hard to tell a positive story without coming off like a booster.
Through the first 7+ episodes (from 2017/2018), I think the show hits the right notes. There’s a bit of a boomer perspective – five of those seven episodes take place in that time period, and two are about the beginning of the 20th century. At the same time, they are interesting nuggets on those periods – about Coleman Young’s testifying before the House of Un-American Activities Committee, or the Detroit Red Wings of the 1950s and the first woman executive of a US sports team. And the 8th episode, which I listened to but with only half a mind, is about the Arab American community in Dearborn and the Detroit area, which points to the show seeking to be representative. I’m learning and enjoying the episodes, and especially enjoy Kiska’s pronunciation of Ossip Gabrilowitsch. That episode, on the building of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and Orchestra Hall, really encapsulates the show’s approach, and I got a lot out of it.
She Will Rock You
Type of Podcast: Conversational
Episode listened to: #24
This is another one of the music podcasts I came across, and one of the more enjoyable ones. Two women review a classic rock (in the broader sense of classic rock) band’s career. I am guessing they are in their mid to late 20s, maybe early 30s, and so they’re coming at these bands fairly fresh, which makes for a fun perspective. It’s not far from the two teenage brothers on youtube listening to old songs for the first time.
I listened to their episode on Rage against the Machine. First, I laughed out loud at the non-sequitur intro about Taco Bell. And then the discussion about Rage and how ‘these bros’ were revolutionaries was fun. I’m not a huge Rage fan but knew enough to follow along, and I thought they hit key elements of the band’s trajectory. Basic research along with personality from the hosts can go a long way in podcasting.
Lukewarm Tallboy Studios – Bend & Scoop
Type of podcast: Music / Interview
Episodes: Various
Links: Apple
I first became aware of/started ‘podcasting’ in the mid-00’s. I put that in quotes because what we did at 30music.com was compile monthly mixtapes, which we would share on the site as an mp3. I don’t remember us actually being on Apple podcasts, and Spotify had not even been invented yet, but the concept was simple: share our favorite new songs from the month or the year.
Bend & Scoop is one of a few podcasts I’ve learned about recently that is bringing that mixtape style back. Bob Bland, the host, pulls together a few movie clips for the intro (I believe the title of the podcast is a Cheech & Chong quote), classic radio jingles for transitions, and explains which songs you are hearing. The music trends towards a variety of indie rock, including many bands I haven’t heard of, so it’s a cool way of raising their profile and an enjoyable mix.
He’s also recently started adding an interview segment at the end of episodes, called ‘is that your vinyl answer’, where he brings on another podcaster as a guest to talk about their vinyl collection and music in general, as a way of promoting the vinyl record store industry, which is cool. Full disclosure – I am appearing as a guest on this week’s episode, I believe. But I think this is an example of an organic podcast bringing good energy to the world, good stuff.