Dr. Death: Bad Magic - Season 4 Trailer is here!
+Whitewashing and Caribbean slave history
Hey Poddy People!
How are you? It’s the time of the year when “Best of” lists are coming out in podcast land. Apple and Spotify are the prominent ones this week. I’m gathering all the publications and will make a master list as I did 2 years ago here. I’ll also be aggregating the Great Pods website data for our list of Most Viewed podcast pages of the year here. Stay tuned.
Let’s GOOO!!
The Round Up
I was listening to Novel’s 28 Dates Later - It was a little too nepotistic for me. You might like it.
Apple’s Top NEW Shows of the Year which is more varied than the Top Podcasts list. Read the Apple list here. Great Pods is more aligned with that list than legacy show lists.
Webby Awards for submissions deadline is December 15th, 2023 - Podcasts enter here.
The Podcast Show - London opened up their pre-registration. It was a blast this year and I plan to be there again in 2024. Complementing the conference are live podcast shows in the evening. You know I like my live shows.
Can I say much anticipated? With a hit podcast like Dr. Death, I think so. Wondery & Laura Biel are back with Season 4, Bad Magic, and we’ve got the trailer! Listen here!
Things to know: It will be released on Wondery+ on December 4th and on all platforms starting January 22nd.
YouTube baby! I posted my first long-form (it’s not that long) video on the tube.
It’s silly and stupid, but I did it. Like and Subscribe today! I have a feeling I’m going to be saying a lot of that in 2024.
While flying back from Thanksgiving weekend, I watched the first three episodes of Based on a True Story on Peacock. It’s pretty entertaining. It must’ve done good numbers because it’s been renewed for season 2. Now I just need my friend’s Peacock login to finish the season.
I’m probably one of the few that used the Castro podcast app. Unfortunately, it’s looking like it will be shut down according to PodNews. It’s not necessarily official…yet. I’ll be moving my library to Pocket Casts (owned by Automattic - Wordpress), which already looks like an easy-to-use app.
On to my picks this week…
Podcast: Heirs of Enslavement
Genre: Society, History
Publisher: Persephonica
About: This is the story of how two Heirs of Enslavement - Clive Lewis MP, a descendent of the enslaved, and Laura Trevelyan, of the enslaver - can come together to right the wrongs of the past.In this six-part series, Clive and Laura will travel to Grenada, Barbados, and back to London to delve into their shared history. They’ll be asking what people across the Caribbean and beyond want, how to find a way forward, and whether true reparatory justice can be achieved.
Most of the subscribers for this newsletter are from the U.S.
I only point this out because our education in the U.S. on slavery was mainly within and pertained to the States. So with this podcast, we get to hear more about the British Slave Trade and the ancestral portion of this global perspective. Just by the first couple of episodes, you’re hearing from Clive’s father who moved back to Barbados teachers, etc. Heck, you learn where the “Limbo” came from, and it was surprising, to say the least.
The limbo got its start among African slaves who were transported to the Caribbean on crowded ships. Historians believe the dance symbolizes how slaves would have to squeeze through tight spaces in the slave ships to find their friends and family members. - Wonderpedia
Laura Trevelyan, for what it’s worth, publicly apologized for her family’s participation and gains of wealth during this time. She set up a fund for reparations and quit her BBC job to advocate for more reparations. Read more here.
This podcast is not just a history lesson, but a personal one between the two.
Rachel Cunliffe • New Statesman
"Heirs of Enslavement is provocative. But it’s also a thoughtful, nuanced look at a highly polarising subject. It’s not just countries like Grenada that need this conversation, he [Lewis] argues. Britain does too…"
Podcast: Magnificent Jerk
Genre: Personal, Society, Film
Publisher: Apple, Pineapple Street Studios
About: On the last day of her grandmother’s life, journalist Maya Lin Sugarman finds a box of forgotten screenplays that sets her on a journey to uncover the truth about their author: her late uncle, Galen. She discovers that he was a leader of a Chinese gang, that he went to jail, and, in a final twist, that he poured his life story into a screenplay that was turned into a ’90s Hollywood action movie…starring Rob Lowe, Burt Reynolds, and Ice-T.
“The true story of a fake story about a real life.” This is how Maya starts every episode. I binged the entire season this week on my new Pocket Cast app. Wink Wink. What I thought was a mere exploration of a B movie that turned out to be much more. Fascinating.
In addition to what the description pointed out, we have a mother-son relationship, drug dealing, entrepreneurship, Hollywood’s whitewashing of scripts, and Bay Area demographics.
What originally would have been an Oakland Chinese gang story that could’ve been more gritty and real, turned into a Slavic European story about stealing plutonium. What could’ve been…
Maya not only gets the low down with her family history, and ex-girlfriend of Galen but tracks down the producers of Crazy Six (Galen’s movie) to ask why it was changed. We even get Dante Basco, Rufio from classic Captain Hook, chiming in about his experience with Galen in another movie called Riot.
The trailer alone feels like Conan O’Brien’s type of cheesy sketch. The podcast is a well-done that ties everything together in the end. Loved it.
Sarah Larson • New Yorker
“...singularly amazing premise...it’s become a moving rumination on why we keep family secrets, and what we choose to hide.”
One of Galen’s bit parts was this guy running from the couch in Kindergarten Cop’s party pooper scene here.
Just Added This Week…
Classy with Jonathan Menjivar - Pineapple Street Studios
The Big Dig - WGBH
Tortoise Investigates: Walter's War - Tortoise Media
The Laughs of Your Life with Doireann Garrihy - Doireann Garrihy
The Vanishing Point - Audacy, Tenderfoot TV
DERELICT (New Season) - Night Rocket Productions
The Rest is Entertainment - Goalhanger Podcasts (A rare 5-star review from Critic, James Marriot!)
The Second Victim - Audible
American Tabloid - Audible
Humor Nero - Laura Formenti
Top of the Pods this past week on greatpods.co (November 21st-26th):
5. Who Killed JFK? - iHeart *New
4. Moriarty: The Silent Order - Audible *Unchanged
3. Case 63 - Spotify *Down 1
2. Ghost Story - Wondery/Pineapple Street Studios *Up 1
1. The Kids of Rutherford County - Serial, The New York Times *Unchanged
Did I miss a professional review to be added? Submit it here.
Did you want to add YOUR podcast to the database, especially for a new podcast or season? Submit it here.
Hang in there, take a breath, and be kind to one another.
Listening with you,
Captain Ron
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Some great suggestions here! I'm also excited about the new season of Dr. Death - Laura Biel is a great journalist and has done some fantastic work.
Heirs of Enslavement looks really interesting to me as someone whose family is from the Caribbean and did the England route as well, eventually landing in Canada for good. I wouldn't have known about this podcast so appreciate the recommendation :)
I nominate you for President of the United Podcasting States. UPS!