12 Podcasts You Didn’t Know Could Even Be a Podcast
Reading Time: 7 minutes450 episodes of a show about why McDonald’s started (and then stopped) serving pizza? Sure.
I recently tweeted that my favorite kind of podcast is the kind that makes me say, ‘I didn’t know that could be a podcast!’ And I mean it.
Better than any big celebrity getting behind the mic, better than any explosive true crime exposé, I love a show that invents its own format, or considers a question I didn’t even know was a question, a show that has never been done before. In an often risk-averse entertainment industry, these shows are refreshing proof that drawing waaay outside the lines can really work. Here are 12 podcasts you never saw coming.
I have thrown the phrase ‘unlike anything else’ around a lot in my podcast writing, but I mean it this time! On Neutrinowatch, Martin Zaltz Austwick (Answer Me This, Song by Song) and Jeff Emtman (Here Be Monsters) have created a podcast that uses computer code that gathers the day’s headlines, the positions of the planets in the solar system, and new music to generate a podcast episode that is different every single day. (Wendy, the computer who needs to be included in the credits, explains it better than I can in the trailer.) It’s a departure from thinking of a podcast as a static thing, and instead is something that will evolve alongside the listener. Listening is an incredible, dream-like experience. If you’re looking to push your listening to the next dimension, download and listen to Nautrinowatch, and then download and listen to it again later.
What Ever Happened to Pizza at McDonald’s is a so far almost 450-episode long, deeply serious investigation into the history of pizza’s short lived appearance on the McDonald’s menu, and the reasons behind its discontinuation. Brian Thompson shares research and interviews that are sometimes more like comedy skits, exploring the history of the challenges and obstacles that the fast food giant faced when trying to sell pizza: supply chain problems, difficulties in maintaining the quality of the pizza, and competition from other pizza chains. Brian also dips into the marketing strategies and promotions McDonald’s used to boost sales of their pizza, as well as the reactions of customers and industry experts. It’s an incredibly niche, hysterical behind-the-scenes story of one of an iconic fast food failure, and a playful wink at the podcast genre at the same time. Brian uses common tropes that other investigative podcasts often resort to, but when applied to this seemingly ridiculous endeavor, the result is a completely unique experience.
Believe it or not, there was a time when we did not have a bison emoji. Comedy writer, podcaster, four-time Jeopardy! champion, and bison enthusiast Alex Schmidt wanted to change that. In 2020, he submitted his bison emoji proposal to the Unicode Consortium and it was approved, so that today we (and our children’s children) could use the bison emoji with wild abandon in our text conversations. 1 Way to Make an Emoji is a four-part miniseries that explains how he did it, but it folds in ‘incredible science, bizarre American history, the artisanal unicorn emoji industry, revolutionary Internet linguistics, freak lightning strikes, hoax supervolcanoes’ along the way. Alex has another comedy podcast called Secretly Incredibly Fascinating, about finding the fascinating in mundane things like ball bearings and the letter Y, and it is also very good and deeply odd.
We Stay Looking is a satirical ‘true crime’ series, an extension of Insecure’s podcast Looking for Latoya, which chronicled the fictionalized search for a missing Black girl named LaToya Thompson (played by SZA). That podcast, which starred ‘Rose Cranberry’ (Terri J. Vaughn,) pokes fun at investigative podcasts as a means to to illustrate the real corruption in the justice system. Looking for Latoya lasted for one episode before LaToya was ‘found,’ to illustrate how lackadaisical the efforts of law enforcement often are when it comes to recovering lost Black women. Rose then returned for season two to track down not just women, but anyone who has gone missing and been overlooked. (There are only six episodes in season two: ‘The budget only allows for so many Black stories a year. Apparently after six, they would have reached their quota for diverse material.’) It’s funny, but man does it pack a punch.
I heard that Oatly (yes, the oat milk) had a podcast and I went in with low expectations and was totally amused. Oatly Lake is another show poking fun at true crime/murder investigation podcasts by sounding exactly like them. The episode (there is only one, and there will only be one) sounds like an episode of Serial, with its plucky music and serious tone. It seems Oatly, the Swedish dairy alternative company, found a lake in Michigan with the same name as their brand. (Or so they thought—we eventually learn that nobody on the Oatly team googled it, the spelling differs.) They sent out Schuyler Swenson to interview the lake’s proprietor, Justin Hausler, to figure out who owns the lake and whether or not it has any connection to the milk. (Spoiler alert: It does not.) It’s a completely meta experience—Schuyler waits for an ad break and then is reminded by a producer that there are none because the entire episode is an ad for Oatly.
Cold Case Crime Cuts is a podcast that dives into some of the most horrific (fictional) crimes ever committed. Who really killed the radio star? Who shot the sheriff? The ‘detective’ uses real lyrics from each of these songs to solve the case. It’s great to think creatively about these pop songs, and also great if you’re familiar with that certain style of overly serious true crime podcasting. But it’s hysterical even if you know absolutely nothing about either. (The best episode so far is all about the Copacabana.) This show has invented a new kind of joke, and it’s endlessly funny.
When Covid hit and Heather Li was laid off from her finance job, she started making It’s Nice To Hear You. The idea is pretty neat: Heather wondered if she could nurture romantic connections between people through voice memos alone, and started collecting profiles of people who wanted to be part of her project. Then she matched them up, and asked them each to send a voice memo answering 36 questions from the person they were matched with. Heather sent the voice memos back and forth, so each participant knew nothing about the person they were ‘speaking’ with, other than what their voice sounded like and how they answered the questions. It’s a reality podcast/dating show/social experiment, and it’s freaking fascinating—along the way, Heather also weaves in research and her own personal story, putting her heart (and all of her vulnerabilities) into every episode.
The Podcast for Laundry is a a mock-advice comedy show hosted by Brett Davis that purports to teach listeners about the art of laundry, but in reality is a platform for Davis and his guests (Ziwe Fumudoh, Tom Sharpling, Aparna Nancherla, and others) to engage in improv skits, jokes, and satirical commentary about all sorts of things, often using laundry as a jumping-off point. The show features interviews with fictional characters, fake commercials, and riffs on current events. It’s totally absurd and off-beat, and will confuse anyone expecting straight-up interviews or storytelling, but delight anyone with an ear for satire that’s almost too strange to work. (But it does.)
Let’s Make a Sci-Fi is the podcast about how to make science fiction stories, and it does it by literally making a science fiction series in each episode. Comedians Ryan Beil, Maddy Kelly, and Mark Chavez interview science fiction writers and fans (Neil deGrasse Tyson, Emily VanDerWerff, Rainn Wilson) who discuss their writing processes and generate ideas for plots, characters, and worlds. Let’s Make a Sci-Fi touches on the history of science fiction and its sub-genres, and explores its impact on society, so it will appeal to sci-fi nerds—but also to anyone in the process of writing or making something and struggling to get it to the finish line. In the final episode, professional actors read Ryan, Maddy, and Mark’s script, bringing it to life — for better or worse.
On every episode of Podcast But Outside, Cole Hersch and Andrew Michaan set up shop in a random location (in cities and small towns, at conferences and weddings, outside a disgusting bathroom) with a table and chair with a sign that says ‘Be on our podcast. We will pay you $1.’ (And they mean it.) Any random passersby that Andrew and Cole can snag sit down to share stories both strange and mundane about their day, their jobs, confessions, and stories. You never know what you’re going to get. But Cole and Andrew have the comedy skills to make even the quiet interviewsworth hearing. (On one episode, the duo was stationed in front of Koontz Hardware in West Hollywood and were approached by a rotation of colorful characters, one of them a podcaster whose voice I recognized right away, and you might, too. Cole and Andrew did not.)
Off Book is an improv musical podcast—Jessica McKenna and Zach Reino literally make a musical on the spot, generating a brand new musical every week. It’s so good it seems hard to believe they’re coming up with this stuff in real time, but just wacky enough that you know it is. The music is great and the lines are funny, but what’s funnier is picturing adults rushing to put the whole thing together. If you haven’t listened yet, start with ‘Fear of the Ocean‘ with Mary Lou: Two sisters, whose parents are taken by the sea, go on a closure-venture aboard The Dry Salad, without any nautical know-how. They meet up with a Sigma Ki party boat and adorable little turtles that pop onto the deck and (spoiler alert) they eventually have a hilarious reunion with their parents. I wish I had 1/1000th of the talent of Jessica, Zach, and Mary Lou.
Staying on the musical beat, Howell Dawdy’s Fast Track is a podcast in which audio producer/editor/musician Alexander Smith—in character as Howell Dawdy—brings on a guest to write a brand new song in 30 minutes. Each episode ends with the full-length song, completed and recorded. And the thing is, the songs are all incredibly good. It doesn’t matter if the subject of the song is incredibly weird (a recent episode, featuring the hosts of the bad movie podcast The Flop House, involved a sexy alien encounter); invariably, they all slap. Sure, you can listen to the finished product on Spotify, but it’s really fascinating to hear how the audio sausage is made.
Reference: https://lifehacker.com/12-podcasts-you-didn-t-know-could-be-a-podcast-1850016905
Ref: lifehacker
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