What Podcasts Have I Been Listening to in 2019

1. Last Days of August– I love Jon Ronson, who is the host and writer of the podcast. I first heard his voice on the radio show This American Life about six years ago. I was attracted to it because I love Jon Ronson and read a few of his books previously. He wrote a book about social media pile-ons called So You’ve Been Publically Shamed. In all disclosure, this podcast gets pretty dark. It is about a porn movie actress who commits suicide in 2017 after a Twitter pile on regarding her comments about who she chooses to work with in her movies. It also explores the stormy relationship that she has with her husband and the other factors that might have contributed to her death. I learned about this podcast because it was on the Time Magazine List of top podcasts of 2019.

2) Last month, I got very into listening to Headlong: Surviving Y2K. It was less grim than this month’s offerings. Being the kind of person who I am who gushes, I would say that I loved Dan Taberski, who person who man’s this project. It is a portrait of various people and what they were doing between the end of 1999 and early 2000. Among the people profiled are computer professionals fixing computers, religious fanatics who moved to the holy land in Israel to see the end of the world, pregnant mothers about to give birth, and bank employees who are being held up by a robber as the millennium changes over. I enjoyed the podcast because all the stories profiles were so interesting and I loved the host Dan Taberski’s style because he is so friendly and compassionate with his interviewees that it makes them very comfortable and want to tell more.

3) After listening to Headlong Surviving Y2K, I decided that I wanted to listen to more Dan Taberski, so I listened to Headlong: Missing Richard Simmons. I have never been that into Richard Simmons and when I first heard about this podcast in 2017, I just wasn’t that interested. After I experienced the magic of Dan Taberski’s storytelling, I knew that I wanted more of whatever it is that he was selling, so I listened and I was entranced. Spoiler: Richard Simmons isn’t really missing, but he is out of the public limelight where he appeared to love living for so long, so what happened to him?

4) I needed to listen to everything Dan Taberski made, so after Y2K and Missing Richard Simmons, I listened to Headlong: Running From Cops a podcast about the TV show Cops. Cops is the longest running reality show on TV. It was the first reality show. It invented the genre. One of the main themes of the podcast was the impact that the show COPS has made on the way people perceive policing today. It has also potentially impacted the way police act to day because of the way policing is portrayed on television. Cops films in several cities across the United States and some cities like Portland, Oregon have made the decision to not allow reality police shows to film in their city. The reality police program Live PD is also discussed.

5) In May I became obsessed with the true crime podcast: To Live and Die in LA. It follows the story of a young Albanian aspiring actress, Adea Shabani, who goes missing in LA in February 2018. It is hosted by Neil Strauss, who is a man on a mission in regards to figuring out what really happened in regards to Adea. If you like true crime, this story is very gripping and addictive. I listened to it while it was not quite completed yet and I had to wait patiently every week to get the newest installment. Highly recommend!

6) Until I started listening to The Dropout, I had no idea who Elizabeth Holmes even was. I guess parenthood got in the way of me paying attention to the news. Afterwards, I was flabbergasted, this was such an interesting story about privilege and power. The Dropout is also a true crime story, but a different sort than To Live and Die in LA. It is a story about corporate crime and fraud. It is a story about a young woman who starts her own billion (yes, billion) dollar medical device company. She becomes a media darling but nothing is as it seems. The quality podcast is made by ABC News and Nightline and is hosted by Rebecca Jarvis.

7) Until I listened to Patient Zero ,I never imaged that the Lyme Disease story would be so interesting. The Lyme disease story is layered and complex because we don’t know everything about the disease even now. When people in Lyme, Connecticut first started reporting symptoms in the 1970’s it took over a decade for epidemiologists and doctors to figure out that a large number of people in the area were coming down with symptons that were distinct from rheumatoid arthritis. This poodcast was hosted by Taylor Quimby at New Hampshire Public Radio. Taylor Quimby, was one of the main contributors on another podcast done by New Hampshire Public Radio that I really enjoyed in 2018 called Bear Brook.

8) In late summer I started listening to The Clearing, a production of Gimlet and Pineapple Street Media. It was almost too dark of podcast for me. It is also a true crime podcast about a woman named April Balascio, who upon turning 40, turns her father in for murders that she believes he committed in the early 1980’s, while she was a child and the family lived in Ohio. He is eventually convicted and sent to jail. After this happens, April feels that she needs to figure out what other murders her father committed so she can sleep peacefully at night and help other people who do not know what has happened to their loved ones. Josh Dean, hosts with April’s assistance.

Podcast I Dipped My Toes into this year:

1. I re-listened to Bear Brook, the true crime podcast that I loved last year. There were some updates to the story and new information. I was spurred to re-listen after coming across this story while I was waiting to get my haircut at Great Clips. I was excited to see that a librarian helped identify one of the Bear Brook victims after taking to some after hours sleuthing ( I was excited but not surprised, librarians love helping people and research.)

I mostly listened to limited-run type podcasts this year. In the past, I had mostly been interested in listening to podcasts that are recorded every few weeks for years at a time like: This American Life, WTF With Marc Maron, and How Did This Get Made. But that wasn’t really my thing this year.

However, I did listen to some episodes of Reply All, a technology podcast, that is made by Gimlet. I especially enjoyed the episode where one of the hosts experiments with micro-dosing LSD during a workweek and does not tell most of his co-workers about his experiment. Listen here. For some reason that story stuck with me.

What podcasts did you enjoy this year? Are you a podcast person or not? I really enjoy this Saturday Night Live sketch about a fake award show for podcasts called The Poddy’s.

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