Population: Scamtown
+Violence in schools+ S-Town journalist is back! and Top 5!
Hey Poddy People!
Hello, new subs! School is in session and I’m on campus (USC) several times a month now. Why? There are four podcast studios on campus. Long-time readers know this already because I don’t shut up about it. In any case, I am tired of being asked, “So do you have a podcast?” I can say that I have a new podcast coming out in collaboration with the Incubator and the Grief Entrepreneurial Center’s Blackstone Launchpad. Unlike business podcasts with leaders at the middle or end of their startup journeys, I’ll be interviewing incubator startups at the beginning of their journey. Hopefully, students and alumni can get inspired to start something. Maybe you’ll find that inspiration as well. Stay tuned and until then…Let’s GOOOOO!
The Round-Up
Hawk Tuah viral Hailey Welch launched her podcast called, Talk Tuah with Jake Paul’s company, Betr. Read more.
Sweet Bobby, my favorite true-crime catfishing podcast is getting the Netflix documentary treatment! Read more here.
I saw this tweet and I immediately thought of the fiction podcast The Soyuz Files:
Speaking of NASA, on an entertaining episode of Tosh Show, he interviews Astronaut Steve Swanson. More about the Soyuz spacecraft.
Leaving the Coming Soon section: Let’s Talk Offline, Fine Dining, Naked Sports with Cari Champion, The Godfather: A Film We Can’t Refuse, Empire City: The Untold Origin of the NYPD, Thanks Dad with Ego Nwodim, Adventures of Curiosity Cove, Coach with Bill Belichick, Talk Tuah with Hailey Welch, Cozy Critters (from Doug the creator of Curious State)
There are a lot of podcasts coming soon. Get that play button ready: Boneheads with Emily Deschanel and Carla Gallo, We Don’t Always Agree with Ryan & Sterling, Mind Your Own with Lupita Nyong'o, Glory Daze with Johnny Manziel, Criminal Attorney, Feed the Queue, Sidebar: A Suits Watch Podcast, 60 Minutes: A Second Look
Graphic novelist, author, screenplay writer, and fiction podcaster (The Sandman, Narration on Third Eye), Neil Gaiman, is having his entertainment projects put on hold due to sexual assault allegations. The Tortoise podcast, Master: the allegations against Neil Gaiman, is the main source of the pause. Read more here.
Based on reporter Mandy Matney’s podcast, Murdaugh Murders, Hulu ordered the small-screen adaption starring Patricia Arquette. Read more here.
NYPD opened fire on a fare jumper, two bystanders, and their own officer over a silly $2.90. That just jumped the Empire City podcast to the top of my queue.
If you’ve seen Reservation Dogs on Hulu, you know Bear, one of the four leads of the show. If you haven’t seen it, you should, it’s so good, educational, entertaining, funny, and emotional. D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai had a hand-painted on his face to bring attention to the missing and murdered Indigenous Women movement.
What’s the podcast connection for us? To highlight the great and Pulitzer Prize award-winning Indigenous podcast, Stolen. Have a listen. Bravo Bear!
In the last edition of the newsletter, we saw Oasis get back together. I expected the BBC’s The Rise and Fall of Oasis which had just finished weeks prior, to release a new episode of the reunion. Well, they did. Listen here.
Comedian Virdas with his take on the “alpha” money-making podcasts out there:
On to my picks this week…
Podcast: Violence Week
Genre: Society
Publisher: Emily Reeves, The Silver Podcast Network
About: In East Lansing, Michigan, an outburst of violence at the local high school, and the discovery of a gun, leads to a community reckoning over school safety, racial equity, and the role of police in schools. This four-part documentary series asks big questions about school safety, policing, racial equity, and what it’s like to be a teenager in an era of school shootings.
This is frustrating. Mixed with archival audio to current audio interviews of the student victims, we get a captivating and first-person listen into the security at schools. I would be very curious after listening to a bunch of policing podcasts, what mental health or stress tests are there for these people who get hired. Mix it in with an affluent high school in East Lansing, Michigan, who are they securing?
The incident was only a decade ago, when Emily’s old classmate, Marcus, was tased for deescalating a situation he wasn’t involved in. He wasn’t even able to continue his football career in college because of the trauma-caused incident. We also get educated about restorative justice.
University of Wisconsin - Law School
“Restorative justice seeks to examine the harmful impact of a crime and then determines what can be done to repair that harm while holding the person who caused it accountable for his or her actions. Accountability for the offender means accepting responsibility and acting to repair the harm done.”
An easy four-episode listen for you to binge on and be informed.
Stephen O. • Podcast Delivery
“Violence Week not only shines a light on the first-degree effects and turmoil but also steps back to ask broader societal questions. It’s almost as though this one high school’s terror is a reflection of an entire society’s vulnerabilities and thrusts it all into the national spotlight.”
Podcast: Scamtown
Genre: True Crime, Scams
Publisher: Apple, FunMeter
About: Welcome to Scamtown! It’s a place where the true crime is stranger than fiction and the stories are filled with quirks and moral ambiguity. Join the mayors of Scamtown, Emmy-nominated filmmakers and Signal Podcast Award winners James Lee Hernandez and Brian Lazarte (McMillion$ and The Big Conn), as they take you through stories ranging from the strange to the unbelievable. Wild scams, surprising heists, forbidden love, and massive explosions are just a little taste of what’s in store.
I dislike saying a podcast is enjoyable when serious things happen, but here I am saying it for Scamtown. listen because maybe some of them are further in the past versus last year. I would venture to say that the stories picked in Scamtown, like the Casino bombing in Lake Tahoe, which I knew nothing about, were more Scam-adjacent versus a true scam. That story had a real threat and a real bomb with a real person threatening the area for a ransom. Compelling yes. A scam? Not sure. If I’m wrong, someone school me on it. Regardless, it was still a good episode!
However, true to the scam, as we know it today, is the episode on the early “telemarketing” scams. Originating like all great exports, not in India, but right here, in the States. An FBI bust and a first-person account of the agent who was excited to arrest these scammers was a fun listen.
Hannah Verdier • The Guardian
"They lift the lid on twisted stories, wild hustles and almost unbelievable tales in this thunderingly entertaining podcast."
Podcast: Question Everything
Genre: News
Publisher: KCRW
About: Reporter Brian Reed re-examines everything about journalism, the profession he thought he knew. In the middle of making his second hit podcast, Brian got sued. Accused. Told the biggest story of his career – the Peabody Award-winning series S-Town – wasn’t journalism. Which meant he had to spend years proving that it was. Obsessing over the question, “What is journalism, anyway?” Join Brian as he turns the tools he’s acquired over his years as a journalist on journalism itself. With gripping stories, reporting, and interviews every other Thursday, Question Everything is a show for anyone who's ever felt confused, frustrated, or misled by the news they rely on. At a time when distrust in the media is at an all time high, when so many believe that journalism is failing, Question Everything is a real-time quest to try and make journalism better.
I was about to repeat what the description had, but it explained it perfectly. In the first episode, we have journalist, Gay Alcorn questioning Brian about his journalism in S-Town and the controversy surrounding it. It was a nice opening episode to reflect on his most popular podcast. Gay wrote a piece on S-Town for The Guardian in 2017.
“This American Life’s [S-Town] strength is that it allows the listener into the process, that it doesn’t pretend that the reporter is an objective observer. It has built a reputation, and garnered trust, because it acknowledges that reporters are human beings responding to real people, trying to find things out as best they can.
But Reed doesn’t let us in, not really.” - Gay Alcorn, The Guardian, 2017
This is where Brian agrees with her write-up on the transparency of the process that could have been done better and goes on to recollect a particular scene.
The second episode which is also had been video taped for Youtube, has Ira Glass, Zoe Chace, Jonathan Eig, Astead Herndon, discuss the challenges of journalism in their worlds and what compels them while having cocktails. For example, Astead Herndon talks to conservatives at a rally where they complain that the New York Times doesn’t like to talk to conservatives and is never there. Meanwhile, he is actually there representing NY Times and interviewing them.
Alexi Duggins • The Guardian
“An admirable, open-hearted wrestle with a vital question – with an impressive first episode...”
‘Top of the Pods’ from the past week with You Probably… back on the charts and at #1:
5. Scamtown - Apple
4. The Rise and Fall of Oasis - BBC
3. Chai After Dark - The Midnight Chai Society
2. Rachel Maddow Presents: Ultra - MSNBC
1. You Probably Think This Story’s Is About You - Larj Media
Stay safe, be kind, and do something nice to your neighbor…if you have one.
Listening with you,
Captain Ron
Great Pods is your best friend in podcast discovery. Get immersed in engaging critic reviews and ratings to help you decide on your next podcast listen. Tell a friend!
Question Everything sounds like it would fit well with This is Propaganda
Great job.