Sweet Bobby x Scamanda Must See Pod TV📺
Spectrum of pods... + Top 5 podcasts
Hey Poddy People,
I hope you are safe wherever you are. We’re in the last quarter of the year and I feel like things are just heating up. Well, in Los Angeles, literally the weather is heating up. In my world, campus visits have increased I am seeing positive outcomes slowly come to fruition. In addition to that, we’re calling the startup podcast I’m creating with the USC Incubator companies, “Greif Startup Spotlight”. Greif is the Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies in which the USC Incubator resides.
In previous newsletters, I’ve mentioned on campus there are about 4 podcast studios. I record my podcast from the Business school. I did finally get to see the Iovine and Young Academy Podcast studio(it’s tiny), and the new one at the main library (looks like the one in the business school). I have one more to go, and that’s from Annenberg’s Media Center. More updates in the coming weeks.
Let’s GOOOO!
The Round-Up
A Dios Le Pido… NPR’s culture-defining music program and often podcasted, Tiny Desk concert kicked off with “El Tiny” for Hispanic Heritage Month, and when Juanes struck those chords for A Dioa Le Pido I was as giddy as the backup singers were. I’m assuming they stopped podcasting the show, which is sad, because of music rights and all. So this is my podcast-adjacent rec.
Crooks Everywhere was just released from iHeart | Vespucci. I’m interested in this take and what updated information from two previous podcasts about the murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia. The previous podcasts:
Who Killed Daphne? - Wondery
My Mother's Murder - Tortoise
Reminder: Afros & Audio Podcast Festival is happening Oct. 18th-20th in Baltimore. More info here.
Sweet Bobby trailer is out! The awesome catfishing podcast from Tortoise Media launches on Netflix on October 16th, 2024.
AND Scamanda trailer is out! Unlike the one episode Sweet Bobby, Scamanda will be a series. Launching October 9th, on Hulu. The official ABC News / Hulu channel for some odd reason made the official trailer private all of a sudden. At the time of sending the newsletter, I added a random YouTube channel that had the trailer instead. ABC News what happened?
Why ABC/Hulu? Why? Coming Soon: The World with Richard and Yalda, Informants: Lawyer X, Before We Go, Broken Record (New Season), Kill List, Wiser Than Me with Julia Louis-Dreyfus (New Season), In Good Companies (Launching on Fall US Tax Day)
Left Coming Soon: Boneheads with Emily Deschanel and Carla Gallo, Mind Your Own with Lupita Nyong'o, 60 Minutes: A Second Look, Niche to Meet You, GoalLess: A Soccer Show, On the Table with Ashley, Feed the Queue, Beyond Voting, Crooks Everywhere, Historical Records, Less Radical, We Don’t Always Agree with Ryan & Sterling, Criminal Attorney, Sidebar: A Suits Watch Podcast, Chess Piece: The Elián González Story, On the Table with Ashley
Pushkin’s Broken Record podcast is launching a new season with Blue Note Records interviewing jazz artists. Read more here.
I just got Oasis reunion tickets this morning for the LA Show. If you managed to get tickets for next summer’s tour, make sure you listen to The Rise and Fall of Oasis.
On , we got our first interview with South Asian guest actor, Welcome to Plathville, Kapeesh Mourya!
Today’s recs go from casual-society-educational to traumatic.
On to my picks this week…
Podcast: Rebel Spirit
Genre: Society
Publisher: iHeart
About: Rebel Spirit is a brand new podcast series from Akilah Hughes (Crooked Media’s “What a Day”) about her return to her small town of Florence, Kentucky with a mission to change her high school’s mascot from a Confederate General into a Biscuit. The show features moving interviews with everyone from the artist behind “Gritty,” The Philadelphia Flyers’ viral mascot, to principals at schools across the nation who have made this change. In speaking to people at every inflection point of the issue of problematic mascots, Rebel Spirit endeavors to make the process of correcting historic wrongs less of a bummer.
While working at TuneIn, there was a sports deal with Minor League Baseball to air the radio calls of the games. While indexing all the teams, most had such whimsical and fun mascots. The sports mascot logo that was a favorite of ours was The Montgomery Biscuits. A buttery biscuit.
My mind was always on this while listening to the podcast. I was rewarded in episode 5 and it melted my buttery heart. Not only did Akilah have a quick chat about it but also another new favorite mascot, Philadelphia’s own, Gritty from the NHL team Philidelphia Flyers. I admit it, for the first year and a half, I followed Gritty when it was launched and watched its Instagram live. Just Gritty walking through the streets of Philly giving high fives to joggers and taking selfies with folks on their lunch break.
That was the payoff for me, but educationally, we see local school boards and community red tape as folks hold on to their troubled past. Akilah and the team do a wonderful job in giving a casual, but educational look at how the high school process might work, especially in from her high school.
Lauren Passell • Podcast The Newsletter
"It’s got a real mission, it’s journalism but it’s funny but it’s making a real point. And then I started thinking about the biscuit as a mascot, and that checks a lot of boxes, too."
Podcast: Shell Game
Genre: AI, Tech, Society
Publisher: Evan Ratliff
About: A podcast about things that are not what they seem, hosted by journalist Evan Ratliff. In Season One, that thing is Evan’s voice. By creating a voice clone and hooking it up to an AI chatbot, Evan set out to discover what happens when you try to take control of the very technology that threatens to replace you. Shell Game was named one of the the best podcasts of 2024 by New York Magazine and called "awesome" by The Verge. Over the course of six episodes, Evan’s voice agents talk to spammers and scammers, to Evan’s friends and family, to colleagues and sources, to other AIs, and even to a therapist—all to better understand what AI voice is able to do, what it can't yet do, and what to expect from a future in which more and more of the people we encounter in the world aren’t real. (Also, on substack
)
It’s funny. sometimes alarming, and a great way to start your AI listening journey.
Online therapy company BetterHelp spent $6.4mn in podcast advertising in August, according to the latest data from Magellan AI. I bring that up because in episode 4 AI Evan calls a BetterHelp therapist. Eventually, he calls as the real Evan and lets the therapist in on the experiment. She was super nice about the situation and used the opportunity to upsell for real Evan to call back when he needed it.
In episode 5 Evan “pranks” his friends like Kaleidoscope’s (Skyline Drive) founder and host, Mangesh Hattikudur, and others. Interestingly enough, we could immediately tell it was an awkward tone vs. the real Evan in the cadence and processing of the dialogue. However, one of them was able to have the AI confess it was an AI. It’s just entertaining to hear weird things like how AI Evan says “the neeeeewwwwwsss”.
Nicholas Quah • Vulture
"The resulting series can be a little shaggy and uneven at times, but the underlying oomph of Ratliff’s exploits here is reliably compelling. It’s fun to hear a human being rebel in a bid to defend his own humanity."
My favorite funny interaction was when AI Evan was talking to a scammer posing as Spectrum TV/Internet (in Los Angeles). The scammer’s response to finding out it’s getting a fake telephone number lives rent-free in my head now. Clipped here.
Also listen: Me, Myself, and AI - Mosaic Monocle - When humanity meets AI in a conversation about life, things get interesting. In this show, Dawn-Michelle Lewis, teams up with AI co-host, Aria, to explore what it really means to be human.
Podcast: In The Dark (Season 3)
Genre: True Crime, Investigation, News
Publisher: The New Yorker
About: A crime committed. A crime forgotten. A crime unpunished. A man in Haditha, Iraq, has a request for the In the Dark team: Can you investigate how my family was killed?
Finally, I got around to listening to what people in my podcast circle have been listening to. Season 3 of In The Dark. Maybe I’m a masochist for important-infuriating podcasts, but holy guacamole, this investigation is one of those. Especially if you are looking it at like from a current events point of view. Military coverups, false incident reports, and countless innocents as collateral damage to the lies fed to us. Sometimes I wonder how much more I can take of these type of stories.
Thankfully The New Yorker was able to acquire the In The Dark team and their fantastic work. The four years of exhaustive investigating is quality and it shows.
Rebecca Lavoie, Kevin Flynn, Lara Bricker & Toby Ball • Crime Writers On
"Rebecca declares season three a hella achievement. Lara says the team knocks it out of the park, with great writing, thoughtful sound design, and superior reporting. Toby admired how the team cut through the platitudes of "the fog of war""
The New Yorker published the graphic images that the military doesn’t want you to see. Visit with your own caution. It’s pissing me off. Simple as that.
A five-year-old girl, Zainab Younis Salim, was shot in the head by a U.S. Marine.
This was just one of the pics…
‘Top of the Pods’ from the past week brought on some new players!
Scamanda - Lionsgate Sound
The Coming Storm - BBC
Talk Tuah w/ Haliey Welch - Betr
Who Shat On The Floor At My Wedding - Indie (not sure why it’s back on the charts)
Sidebar: A Suits Watch Podcast - Stitcher Studios *New
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!
Obviously Thanks for the mention. =)