by Dixie Laite, Dametown.com | If you’re like me, you’re always keeping your ear to the ground about new podcasts over which you can obsess. Well, first, take your ear off the ground — it’s filthy down there. Second, check out my Podcast Playlist series. I polled some of my top most favorite-est favorite people and asked about their top favorite podcasts, and here’s what they came up with. There are sure to be a few here destined to rock your world in 2020!
Editor’s Note: Stay tuned for more segments of our new ongoing series, “Podcast Playlist”. Each installment features a kickass woman from the Ossa community sharing her list of all-time favorite podcasts.
Meet Cindy Shapiro
Hey, what if I came back in my next life as a supernaturally smart and hella sexy woman who writes music and lyrics and puts on shows about women’s badassery? Doh! Cindy Shapiro totally beat me to it.
But I can’t be sad or bitter because she just does it so effing well. Cindy is Incorrigible Entertainment — shows about incorrigible women by incorrigible women. Check out Anais Nin Unbound and her rock opera about the goddess Psyche. (Starting to see what I mean?) Here are her all-time favorite podcasts:
My Podcast Playlist
Family Secrets
(iHeartRadio) This podcast takes a sensitive, incisive look at the secrets that families keep, and generally uncovers one secret per week. The stories unspool in unpredictable and fascinating ways.
The host, Dani Shapiro, has her own riveting story about her own family secret, stumbled on when she decided to take a DNA test and discovered that her long-dead father was not her birth father. She is smart and compassionate with her subjects and also happens to have a perfect-for-radio voice. I love this podcast.
Listen: Apple Podcasts|Spotify
Pod Save America
(Crooked Media) This podcast is run by former speechwriters and advisors from the Obama White House who have an incredibly sophisticated inside view of politics. While they are outraged by current events, they maintain a youthful hope about the future, and are by turns hilariously funny and inspiring. I turn to them for perspective, solace and strategy twice a week.
Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify
“The Good Place”: The Podcast
(NBC) I love this podcast because it gets deep into process. I’m an artist myself, and I’m interested in how other people go about making things. This is the official podcast of the quirky, hilarious, smart NBC comedy The Good Place, now in its last season.
It’s hosted by Marc Evan Jackson — he plays Shawn, head of “The Bad Place”, on The Good Place. Each week, he recaps an episode and interviews key people involved in the episode, including cast, writers, costumers, set designers, and so on. And each week he ends the show by asking his guests, “What’s good?” I like that people need to answer this open-ended question each week in these dark times.
Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify
Tom & Lorenzo’s Pop Style Opinionfest
This husband-and-husband team discuss fashion and pop culture each week in a smart and disarming way from their family room couch while their cats crawl all over them.
They originally became famous from blogging about Project Runway in the show’s early years, but probably gained the most cultural fame from their deep dives into weekly analysis of Mad Men episodes — both the shows themselves, and the costuming. (If you haven’t read Mad Style, do yourselves a favor…) Their weekly take on queer culture in their podcast is incredibly enlightening.
Listen: Apple Podcasts | Stitcher
Bon Appétit Foodcast
I love the Bon Appétit Test Kitchen and its personality-driven shows, where they all wander into one another’s frames and sometimes even bang into each other’s actual shows and interact with one another. Then, they show up on the Bon Appétit podcast and continue the merriment.
They all love food and speak about it with such ease. Even though I’m a vegan and won’t eat or cook most of what they talk about, I still love listening to them dig into these topics with one another. The podcast is hosted by Editor Adam Rapoport, who is facile and fun as a host.
Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify
Follow Cindy Shapiro: Twitter | Instagram