Big edition today. Since I made you wait a few extra hours, let’s get right to it. The counts: 57 notable guests, 16 new podcasts, six deep dives and one happy statement from an attorney.
Pod Take of the Week
“I am finally free from the injustice that left me locked in a box for nearly 23 years.”
Listen: In the Dark: Freedom
- That’s Curtis Flowers, in a statement after finally having the murder charges against him dropped Friday.
- Flowers didn’t speak for the podcast. He released the statement via his attorneys.
- In the Dark host Madeleine Baran, however, released a 17-minute podcast featuring Flowers’ attorneys and others after learning that the Attorney General of Mississippi dropped the case against Flowers.
- Baran chronicled the plight of Flowers in Season 2 of In the Dark, telling how he “endured nearly 23 years behind bars, six trials, four death sentences and, most recently, months of house arrest for murders he always maintained that he didn’t commit.”
Go Deep
1) Surviving Remote Schooling Listen: This American Life, How To! With Charles Duhigg
- TAL goes five acts on “this unprecedented school year.” The episode title gets right to the point: “Long-Awaited Asteroid Finally Hits Earth.”
- Duhigg launches a three-part series with “expert tips for navigating a most unusual back-to-school season.”
2) Chadwick Boseman
Listen: Black Men Can’t Jump [in Hollywood], The Watch, The Fourth Wall, the Bill Simmons Podcast, Off Camera, Sunday Sitdown
- Podcasters mourn the actor’s death and pay tribute to the man who played Black Panther, among other iconic characters. Coverage includes:
- BMCJ, a pod that “reviews films with leading actors of color and analyzes them in the context of race and Hollywood’s diversity issues,” took a 2-hour, 24-minute deep dive.
- Reggie Ugwu joined The Watch to discuss Boseman’s life and career.
- Boseman also gave several podcast interviews during the last few years, including with Bill Simmons and Griffin Schiller.
3) “MacGyver”
Listen: Duct Tape & Paperclips
- Comedians Nathan Hartswick and Annie Russell are five episodes into a rewatch of the Richard Dean Anderson classic series.
4) “Where the Crawdads Sing”
Listen: Mean Book Club
- The MBC takes a wrecking ball to the long-running New York Times bestseller for 1 hour, 45 minutes.
5) “Should American Horse Racing Still Exist?”
Listen: Bloodlines
- ESPN’s Wright Thompson investigates the deaths of 49 horses at Santa Anita racetrack in Southern California, “American horse racing’s origins and what those deaths might tell us about the future of the sport.”
- It’s a three-part series. Total listening time: 2 hours, 20 minutes.
6) Talking Heads
Listen: This Must Be Talking Heads, U Talkin’ Talking Heads 2 My Talking Head, How Good It Is, Rivals
- Talking Heads are having a moment in Podcastland.
- Adam Scott and Scott Aukerman aborted their album-by-album pod about the Red Hot Chili Peppers and pivoted to an album-by-album discussion of “the music and impact of the band Talking Heads.”
- Rodney Gordon is also going album-by-album through the band’s history. The most recent episode features an interview with drummer Chris Frantz.
- How Good It Is lays the praise on the band’s first hit, “Psycho Killer.”
- And a few weeks ago, Rivals dissected the intra-band squabbles.
Guest Appearances By…
($L) = Luminary, behind a paywall. (S) = Spotify exclusive. ($A) = Audible, behind a paywall. Andersen, Kurt Working
Andrews, Erin Daddy Issues with Joe Buck and Oliver Hudson
Bateman, Jason Armchair Expert
Baker, Nicholson Penn’s Sunday School
Bamford, Maria Never Not Funny
Bauer, Jeni Britton Skimm’d from the Couch
Baumgartner, Brian Sports Illustrated Media Podcast, The Adam Carolla Show
Bialik, Mayim People I (Mostly) Admire
Brownstein, Carrie Life is Short with Justin Long
Buttigieg, Chasten The Axe Files
Carlile, Brandi Broken Record
Carter, Kaitlynn Berning in Hell
Coates, Ta-Nehisi Longform Podcast
Cyrus, Miley The Joe Rogan Experience
Dench, Judi David Tennant Does a Podcast With…
Disney, Abigail TED Talks Daily
Downey Jr., Robert Smartless
Duplass, Mark Off Camera
Feldman, Liz Good One
Flowers, Brandon The Watch
France, Tan Self-Helpless
Gyasi, Yaa Women Who Travel
Hadreas, Mike Talkhouse
Handler, Chelsea The Gift of Forgiveness
Hawk, Tony Talks at Google
Howard, Ron The Treatment
Jamil, Jameela Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend
Jay, Sam Why Won’t You Date Me?
Jenner, Caitlyn Literally! With Rob Lowe
Kemper, Ellie Anna Faris is Unqualified
Konnikova, Maria The Next Big Idea
Kwan, Michelle Busy Philipps is Doing Her Best
Labelle, Patti Biscuits & Jam
Love, Kevin Pardon My Take
Lowe, Rob You Made It Weird with Pete Holmes
McKean, Michael Off Menu
Meacham, Jon Kickass News
Miguel People’s Party with Talib Kweli
Nas Zane The Zane Lowe Interview Series
Notaro, Tig Mike Birbiglia’s Working It Out
Oswalt, Patton Comedy Bang! Bang!
Palahniuk, Chuck The Tim Ferriss Show
Peretti, Chelsea WTF with Marc Maron
Perry, Katy Rolling Stone Music Now
Pompeo, Ellen Red Table Talk
Rogowsky, Scott The Best Show
Schneider, Rob Pardon My Take
Shteyngart, Gary Bookable
Skenazy, Lenore Armchair Expert
Simmons, J.K. WTF with Marc Maron
Stelling, Beth The Last Laugh
Strong, Cecily Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me!
Trejo, Danny The Jordan Harbinger Show
Trussell, Duncan The Joe Rogan Experience
Tyson, Mike The Joe Rogan Experience
West, Kanye Cannon’s Class
- Only part one of the two-parter is live and Kanye has already dropped eight bombshells, says E!
Yang, Andrew The Ezra Klein Show
Notable New Podcasts
1) It Was Said
- Author-historian Jon Meacham looks back on “some of the most powerful, impactful and timeless speeches in American history.”
- Apple Podcasts rank: No. 7.
- Rabia Chaudry “takes you into the world you never even knew existed.”
- The crux: “Around the world, and throughout history, billions of people have believed in an entire race of creatures known as the djinn. Ancient, powerful, and hidden from the human eye, djinn lore spans continents and centuries.”
- Apple Podcasts rank: No. 21.
- In this pod from Team Coco, Rory Scovel and Ruthie Wyatt “are joined by their hilarious celebrity friends to unpack the mysteries of fatherhood, parenting and the weirdos who raised us.”
- First guest: Conan O’Brien, naturally.
- Apple Podcasts rank: No. 34.
4) Beyond the Last Dance ($A)
- The 10-part Audible original will follow additional storylines from “The Last Dance.”
- BLTD expands on the Emmy-nominated documentary series TLD, which chronicled Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls’ heyday.
- Saredo and Surer Mohamed promise “a story-driven podcast that explores the hidden afterlife of war.”
- Jess Salomon and Eman El-Husseini host a “funny take on news with comedians from around the world.”
7) Into the Zone
- Novelist Hari Kunzru hosts “a podcast about opposites, and how borders are never as clear as we think.”
- Danny Gold and Sean Williams expose “the secret world of transnational criminal networks that have flourished since there were banks to bust, drugs to smuggle, and scams to run.”
- Robert Mays and “a team of world class NFL writers and analysts…break down the biggest stories throughout the world of football.”
10) A Podcast of Unnecessary Detail
- The podcast begins “with a single word and brings together three unique takes on it from the three Spoken Nerds.”
11) The Pod Spotter
- Zack Robidas profiles “a great new or lesser-known pod” every Monday.
12) From The Oasthouse: The Alan Partridge Podcast ($A)
- Steve Coogan brings Alan Partridge to Podcastland, with “an access-all-areas pass to the nooks and crannies of his hinterland, to reveal a wiser, cleverer, more reflective Alan than many of his more vaunted peers have given him credit for.”
13) Nova Now
- In the pod from PBS’s Nova, Alok Patel “takes you behind the scenes with the people—scientists, engineers, technologists, mathematicians and more—working to understand our world.”
- The A.V. Club’s “editors and celebrity guests discuss the Emmys, Oscars, Grammys, Globes, and more.”
15) Criminalia
- The pod from iHeartRadio asks, “What can we learn from the criminals and crimes of the past, and have humans gotten better or worse over time?”
- Note: Yes, I missed this a couple weeks ago when I was away. Plugging it in as it’s got some momentum on the charts.
- Apple Podcasts rank: No. 32.
16) Racket
- Another iHeartRadio pod “dives into the world of the Gold Club, a notorious Atlanta strip club that was a 20th-century bacchanal for the rich and famous.”
- Apple Podcasts rank: No. 52.
And One to Look Forward to: Hank the Cowdog (Sept. 14)
- Welcome to Podcastland, Matthew McConaughey.
- The Oscar winner stars and executive produces the pod about the dog — the “self-declared ‘Head of Ranch Security’ — who “finds himself smack dab in the middle of a host of tangled mysteries and capers that span the universe of the Texas Panhandle cattle ranch Hank calls home.”