It's been 84 years!
Women's History Month, Renegades, and wtf is Clubhouse?
Yes, Rose. It does feel like it’s been 84 years with this ‘demic. Lucky for us in the States, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is rolling out.
Website update: We have now added ratings to podcast pages! Another step closer. We are the only site that aggregates critic reviews and assigns them a rating. More refining is needed, but I love sharing these updates. Thanks to Chris for adding it!
To summarize, in February, we added an editorial carousel to the front page, sorting by genre(limited), ratings(limited), and over 400 critics reviews. Check them all out at greatpods.co and give me some feedback.
On to my picks this week…
Podcast: In Plain Sight - Lady Bird Johnson
Genre: History
Publisher: ABC News
It’s Women’s History Month and ABC News just released the first two episodes of In Plain Sight - Lady Bird Johnson. It’s a poignant, fascinating listen on someone I wouldn’t have been looking out for. President Johnson's wife, Lady Bird Johnson, kept an audio diary that you might consider was the first personal journal podcast made. My favorite moments are when Lady Bird already has a plan on what she wants to achieve, LBJ objects, and she does it anyway.
If there is one production note that I would give feedback on, it’s the music. The piano beat is too reminiscent of Serial’s famous piano theme. It works, but all too close. For half of the first episode, I couldn't shake that feeling. 4.5 out of 5.
It turns out I wasn’t the only one feeling the Serial connection.
In Plain Sight is part radio drama, news magazine, historical documentary and is even reminiscent of Serial at certain moments with Sweig’s(host) cadence matching Sarah Koenig’s, but ultimately it remains an original masterpiece.
R.D. Burbank - Laughing Place - Mar 3, 2021
Here’s a clip from the podcast:
Podcast: Renegades: Born in the USA
Genre: Society
Publisher: Higher Ground & Spotify (Spotify Only)
There’s no sugar-coating it. If you don’t like any of these two, you won’t like this podcast. Generally, I enjoy President Obama's oratory skills. So ya, I liked it. The second episode gives way to more race conversation which is meatier than the first episode’s background introduction.
A few critic reviews have already come out and we’ve aggregated them on the website with an average of 4.1 out of 5 ratings (Did I mention WE HAVE RATINGS!). I invite you to check it out and write a review if you listen!
Two different critic opinions:
👎 review
So far, Renegades is less than the sum of its parts, and it leaves me wondering how they could have made it a more worthwhile exercise.
David Klion - The New Republic - Mar 3, 2021
👍 review
…it's refreshing to hear two men — who both represent America in their own ways — enthusiastically discuss overcoming their shortcomings and coming out better on the other side.
Ashlie D. Stevens - Salon - Feb 23, 2021
Podcast: Recode Daily
Episode: What is Clubhouse?
Genre: Tech
Publisher: Recode by Vox
With over 8 million downloads of their Apple App, Clubhouse is taking the audio world by the storm. But what is it? I’ve been on it for two months. I still don’t know half the stuff that goes on there. My hot take: It’s the new live radio meets AOL chat rooms.
I did some digging around and Recode Daily does a nice dirty explanation about it.
JoPo623 says of Recode Daily, Great show and host! It’s tight, full of information about things that affect our lives in the context of technology and just interesting things that I never would have known if it weren’t for this podcast.
What is Clubhouse? episode: Player.fm, Spotify, Apple, Google, Stitcher
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Stay safe and keep wearing a mask!
XOXO
Captain Ron
About: Great Pods is solving the podcast discovery problem by becoming the Rotten Tomatoes of podcasts with Critic and Listener reviews.