When our isolation started in mid-march, I couldn’t listen to podcasts at all. I was decentered and the days were too surreal. I played Fiona Apple and Waxahatchee and all my dad’s old favorite songs and my own old favorite teenage emo songs on repeat when I ran two and a half miles on my new running route, zig-zagging across the streets to avoid being near anyone, trying to find a way to escape my worried, racing mind. The pockets of time where I used to listen to podcasts, alone in my house doing chores, in the car on the way to pick up kids or do errands, running on my old busier, crowded trail, had all been suddenly shut down. I had no interest in listening to any voice recorded before March 12. That was another epoch, another era, a foreign country where I didn’t understand the language anymore.
Headphones of One’s Own: Women, Chores, and Podcasts
It was -45 degrees here last week, then it snowed, so school for my two preschoolers is a mythical notion that maybe used to happen but also maybe I made it all up and they’re never going back! We are hibernating creatures, we are hunkered down, we are maybe all just a little crazy, and... Continue Reading →
Where to Start? Entry Points for 2018 Favorites
If there's a common thread in all my favorite podcasts of 2018, it was seeing another side of something I thought I knew. And if there's one question I have a hard time answering for myself, even with a trip down a good old Google rabbit hole, it's, "Where should I start with this new-to-me podcast?"... Continue Reading →
Household Name: Well-Known Brands, Well-Executed Stories
A good storyteller can use almost anything as an entry point into showing us how people change, how culture shifts, and how we understand or misunderstand each other. Almost all of my favorite podcasts do this in one way or another. But That’s Another Story asks what books changed people’s lives to begin the conversation,... Continue Reading →
4 Reasons I Love But That’s Another Story
The idea behind But That’s Another Story is to get notable people talking about a book that changed them, changed the way they saw the world, or found them at just the time in their lives when they needed it. Host Will Schwalbe, author of The End of Your Life Book Club and editor at Macmillan publishers, says he got... Continue Reading →
Pop Culture Happy Hour: Panel Chemistry and No Snobbery
NPR’s roundtable discussion of what to watch, read, and listen to is my go-to podcast for discovering what’s worth being on my precious post-kid-bedtime-binge-list, but it’s also more than that. The panelists do such a good job of talking about pop culture’s role in our lives: its importance in making us feel less alone,... Continue Reading →
6 Podcasts on Work and Parenting That Don’t Use the Phrase “Work-Life Balance” Like It’s A Real Thing
Maybe you have a fulfilling, financially lucrative, and flexible work situation. Maybe you have a kid who sleeps through the night, doesn’t nurse like a starving pterodactyl and never gets sick with the kid puking plague. Maybe you’ve reached that mythical asymptotic place on the curve of work and kids that gets as close to having it down as it possibly gets. Or maybe you’re more like me and literally every woman I know when it comes to work and kids:
Four Interviews With Badass Women To Get You Through Another Terrible Week
Another week, another news alert about some Voldemort jerkoff turdface dude in politics, comedy, or Hollywood who's made women’s lives miserable. I submit, as one possible avenue of dealing with this now-routine terribleness, making sure your podcast playlist is as full as possible of interviews with tough, cool, talented women like these. Lisa Ling... Continue Reading →
Why The F Do I Love WTF?
I’ve been having a hard time nailing down what it is about WTF with Marc Maron that I love so much, but let me try. He’ll sometimes meander into a four minute story about some divey place he used to do standup or some guitar he’s trying to find strings for, or he’ll skip talking... Continue Reading →
From Weinstein to Wonder Woman: 2017 in 10 Podcast Episodes
Dear Sugars: Hillary Clinton: Hillary helps the Sugars answer a letter from a woman who faces what they call the "double bind of female ambition." If so much of 2017's politics felt achingly personal, or if you ever wrote Hillary a letter asking for advice in your head, this one's for you. Why Oh Why:... Continue Reading →