After 1008 episodes Studio 360 has called it quits. I’ll miss it. It left a hell of an archive, and its excellent finale touched on the art of the finale, naturally.
This week’s counts: 42 notable guests, 16 new podcasts, four deep dives and one soap opera for children.
Pod Take of the Week
“You can be powerful and funny at the same time.”
Listen: Good One: Michelle Buteau’s “Nobody Wanna See Your D*ck” (33:01)
- That’s Buteau, on lessons learned from telling her joke that’s became a cathartic rallying cry in the #MeToo era.
- Buteau says she uses her time on stage to process what she sees and hears around her, and this is what she learned during while calling out Harvey Weinstein and others for their predatory behavior.
- Buteau’s the first guest on the revamped Good One, which features comedians breaking down their jokes.
Go Deep
1) The State of Local News
Listen: After the Fact
- The Pew Charitable Trusts pod launches a three-part series on the erosion of local news outlets in the U.S. and “how it may be affecting our communities.”
- Brutal stat: 2,100 newspapers have closed over the past 15 years.
2) Voting in America
Listen: How to Vote in America
- The “micro podcast” from WNYC Studios aims to take “small bites at big issues to help you understand something most people should, but probably don’t: voting.”
3) Taylor Swift vs. Katy Perry
Listen: Rivals
- iHeartRadio’s show about pop music rivalries kicks off with 44-minute dissection of the feud between two (fading?) pop stars.
- Also: The Lindsey Buckingham/Stevie Nicks 46-minute deep dive gets a debut slot.
4) “Survivor: Winners at War”
Listen: Ringer Dish
- The Ringer goes all in on “Survivor”’s all-winner season, with an episode-by-episode recap of the long-running reality show.
Guest Appearances By…
($L) = On Luminary, behind a paywall. (S) = A Spotify exclusive.
Bamford, Maria Death, Sex & Money, Talkhouse
Britton Bauer, Jeni How I Built This with Guy Raz
Carlson, Gretchen Skimm’d From the Couch
Cash, Roseanne Vocal Point with Martina McBride ($L)
Chieng, Ronny Off Menu
Davidson, Adam Kickass News
Dreier, Hannah Longform Podcast
Dykstra, John Maltin on Movies
- Convo with the man who devised the lightsaber.
Ehrenreich, Barbara The Ezra Klein Show
Gaffigan, Jim Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend
Green, Sudi The Goodie Goodie with Sabrina Jalees
Grier, Pam The New Yorker Radio Hour
Grier, David Alan Touré Show
Guzman, Luis Life is Short with Justin Long
Horgan, Sharon Full Disclosure with James O’Brien
Hudson, Kate Oprah’s SuperSoul Conversations
Huebel, Rob Not Too Deep with Grace Helbig
Idle, Eric Conversations
Johnson, Rian Keep It!
Kane, Carol WTF with Marc Maron
Kroll, Nick It’s Been a Minute with Sam Sanders
Kutcher, Ashton Armchair Expert
Leonard, Sugar Ray Hotboxin with Mike Tyson
Lewis, Juliette WTF with Marc Maron
Lil Yachty Touré Show
Lorenz, Taylor The Reason Interview with Nick Gillespie, Ad Age Ad Lib
Mankiewicz, Josh Jensen and Holes: The Murder Squad
- The “Dateline” correspondent talks about true crime on TV.
McGowan, Rose The New Yorker Radio Hour
- She talks to Ronan Farrow in the wake of the conviction of Harvey Weinstein.
Mooney, Kyle Filling the Void
Orenstein, Peggy Armchair Expert
Perez, Rosie Angry Americans
Poindexter, John Fiasco ($L)
Robertson, Robbie The Big Picture
- The music icon talks about the relationship between movies and music — and his relationship with Martin Scorsese
Savage, Andrea Anna Faris is Unqualified
Smith, Tracy K. The Ezra Klein Show
Tarter, Jill On Being
- The cofounder of the SETI Institute says “we’ve just used technology as a proxy for intelligence, and we’re trying to find places in the sky where something has used technology to modify their environment in ways that we could detect over interstellar distances, which are vast.”
Taylor, James Broken Record, Questlove Supreme
Touré The Gist
Waitzkin, Josh The Tim Ferriss Show
Weisberg, Danielle Pretty Big Deal with Ashley Graham
Yo, Michael The Joe Rogan Experience
Zakin, Carly Pretty Big Deal with Ashley Graham
Notable New Podcasts
1) Verified
- True crime alert: Natasha Del Toro hosts a ten-episode series about a sexual predator and “a group of fearless women from around the world [who] band together to bring him to justice.”
- It’s No. 39 on iTunes, the highest-ranked debut of the week in the U.S.
2) EPIDEMIC
- Infectious disease specialist Dr. Celine Gounder and former U.S. Ebola czar Ron Klain take a weekly deep dive into the coronavirus.
3) The Eleventh
- The Australian Broadcasting Corporation pod goes a Slow Burn-style deep dive into “everything you never knew about one of the most famous chapters of Australian political history – the downfall of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam.”
- It’s “a political drama, a spy thriller and a love story.”
4) Byers Market
- Dylan Byers “takes you inside the room with the most influential executives and entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, Hollywood and New York.”
- First guest: Sheryl Sandberg.
- Host Julia Cunningham “lovingly reveals the plot of films that you would rather not see,” including “low percent Rotten Tomato films” and “gender flipped remakes of a remake.”
6) 5-4
- A podcast about “screwed up” U.S. Supreme Court decisions.
- The guides to the screwed-up-ness: “Slow Burn co-creator Leon Neyfakh will narrate the facts and historical context around the case-of-the-week and then hand off the discussion to legal commentators.”
- In this “soap opera for children” a couple of tech entrepreneurs “announce their plan to make one of the local kids the world’s first child astronaut, nothing is ever the same again.”
- It’s set on an island in the Irish Sea.
8) Deeper with The Dolan Twins
- The YouTubers promise “unfiltered, vulnerable conversations on serious (and not-so-serious) topics.”
- More true crime, this one from “20/20” about two men’s “sun-kissed California lives” that are “darkened by greed, paranoia and accusations of wrongdoing.”
- Matt Gutman hosts.
10) MusicalSplaining
- If you have strong feelings of any kind about musicals, this could be for you. It’s a pod “for people who love musicals (and also for people who hate musicals).”
- Lindsay Ellis and Kaveh Taherian host.
11) Asking For It
- From Mermaid Palace, it’s a “queer, contemporary take on the Goldilocks tale: about love, music, intimate partner violence and breaking the cycle of abuse.”
- This one gives the finger to diet culture. Virgie Tovar, “one of the nation’s leading speakers on weight-based discrimination and body image,” hosts.
13) Into America
- The NBC News show is “about politics, about policy, and the power both have over the lives of the American people.”
- It’s a deep dive into forensics and famous crime cases, and “how the forensic scientists are meeting the challenge laid down by a criminal who is forensically aware.”
15) State of Mind
- The pod from Blinkist shares “intimate stories of the world’s best authors, entrepreneurs, athletes and artists.”
16) Rivals
- Steven Hyden and Jordan Runtagh host iHeartRadio’s show about pop music rivalries and what they say about us.
And One to Look Forward to: Believer (March 3)
- It’s a “Twin Peaks” and “X-Files” like “paranormal audiodrama.”
- The plot: “Lara Campbell used to believe in ghosts. Now she pretends to believe in them for money. But when her ex-partner goes missing in a town with some very mysterious issues, she may have to re-evaluate everything she thought she knew.”