Podcast queues for winter blues
Death cramps, the truth about ovaries, doula con, mothering, nostalgic exploring, better vegetables, voice clones.
I was long overdue to refresh my display of podcast cover art and through a happy accident, this one feels extra curated. The blue-ish tones across all of these podcasts look so great together that it might be one of my favourite versions so far!
This week’s podstack
Cramped - Death Cramps: Is This Normal?
There is just too much to love about this show! If the theme song doesn’t get you hyped up, the reality of care and science for people with periods will get you fired up. Kate Downey has had what she calls “death cramps” her whole life. They’re debilitating but easily brushed off as “oh yea, some people just get really bad cramps”. As the theme song says, we never really study the female body so the answers have been historically very unhelpful or non existent. She’s on a mission to find out all the science and truth about what’s going on with certain period symptoms and the diagnoses that can come with them. You know what’s a cruel fact I learned? You need to take ibuprofen BEFORE your cramps actually start in order to suppress the prostaglandins that cause the pain you’re feeling. So I guess I gotta be psychic now. But for some people or for some of their periods, there can be more of those prostaglandins firing. If that’s not enough, the pain and prices described in episode two when cramps have sent people to the ER will further infuriate you. Plus, Kate adds a new segment where she shares a song about cramps (yes, there are several of these) and it’s awesome. With every episode, Kate goes deeper into the research, speaks with more experts, and finds more relatable experiences. She’s blowing my mind every week and this is essential listening! (transcript)
hol+ by Dr. Taz - How Ovaries Influence More Than Just Reproduction with Dr. Piraye Beim
I’m going to do something different here and recommend a chaser episode to go with Cramped. If you’re enjoying learning more about the way the female body works, you need to listen to this one next. Just like the title suggests, the health of ovaries impacts and reflects so much more about our overall health than we realize. Dr. Piraye’s expertise of ovaries is the perfect compliment to the research that Kate is doing on Cramped. I can’t believe how much I have underestimated these organs. Dr. Piraye puts it into perspective really well by comparing how we used to treat dental care and our oral health. We look back on that and can’t believe how people used to care for (or not) their teeth. That’s how we’re going to feel about areas of women’s health in the future.
The Con: Kaitlyn’s Baby - Kaitlyn's Baby: The barking dog
I vaguely remember hearing about this story in the news when it first broke, but I didn’t learn that much about it and now I’m learning the wild details of how one woman conned over 50 doulas with a fake pregnancy. The elaborate lengths that the woman had to have gone to to keep up the charade of multiple complications blew my mind. And that’s just the logistical stuff. Hearing the emotional distress that this caused to the doulas, who are such kind and generous people in the work they do, is heartbreaking. You hear all the details of one of Kaitlyn’s cons in the first episode and I thought the whole series was going to be about just that. But this was not a one and done situation. This goes much deeper and spans across friendships, provinces, and many years. Just when you think you’ve heard everything that Kaitlyn did, another episode drops.
Homegoings - ‘What does the concept of mother and child mean to you?’
Leave it to Myra Flynn to take a solo episode and make it just as beautiful and impactful as any other episode out there. When someone asked her what mothering means to her, Myra knew she needed to take the time to really dig into this question. What emerges is an emotional self reflection about what she loves about the process and freedom of mothering, sprinkled with the voices of her mom and daughter. Hearing Myra talk about how there’s no defined roadmap and how she loved that this was something she could really make her own was an empowering perspective. She thought about all the things she had to learn and what she hopes for the future of her home and her daughter.
You could say that a lot of episodes of abandoned are about nostalgia. Or at least that they study and explore it in an interesting way. I loved the scene-setting monologue that opens this episode. It’s about dreams and our experience having them, then trying to explain them to someone else. Then Blake takes us to an abandoned school and this is where the nostalgia really kicks in. He reminisces about playing outside with his sister, the innocent and imaginative moments feel vivid. A giant is chasing them through the woods and I feel like I’ve had this dream before. But this is a dream that Blake’s had over and over again, throughout his life. He thinks about the ways he wishes he could’ve protected his sister back then. Wandering through an abandoned elementary school could surely ignite a lot of nostalgia in us all and Blake made me feel like I was there with him. Listen closely and carefully, it’s a good one. (transcript)
Home Cooking - Frankly, We Have a Lot to Ketchup On (with Latif Nasser)
The way I gasped when I saw a new episode of Home Cooking!! Chef Samin Nosrat paired with expert podcast host Hrishikesh Hirway results in the podcast chemistry that everyone dreams of. Every episode they talk about their favourite things they’ve eaten recently, banter and make fun of each other, and give the most thorough and helpful answers to audience questions about all kinds of cooking scenarios. Even though they hadn’t released an episode since November 2022, it was like they never stopped! Not only is this podcast my happy place, but Samin is so knowledgeable about food and flavour, she answers every question with options and common speed bumps you might run into. This time they actually got a lot of vegetable-related questions and it was so helpful to get some new ideas and tips for making veggies way more enjoyable. I need to go re-listen every time I’m meal planning.
Shell Game - Episode 1: Quality Assurance
This season of Shell Game sends host Evan Ratliff on an interesting experiment of hooking up a his own voice clone to an AI chatbot to see what it’s actually capable of. The first episode follows as long as Evan sets up the technology and demonstrates how helpful or unhelpful his clone is for some of the tasks that we are being told this technology can help us with. It’s filled with examples of the clone saying things to customer service representatives that make no sense! When it doesn’t know the answer, it pulls information that doesn’t really apply or is just straight up false. There’s a lack of contextual understanding and nuance that is revealed. By the third episode, he starts thinking about the relationship we have to our voice, how we present ourselves to the world, and what it’s like to hear our voices interact in this form. You wanna know the weirdest way to appreciate that? Have your voice clone talk to your voice clone. That conversation made me go “is this the way AI thinks we talk to each other based on what it’s been taught??” It made me cringe and laugh!
More sweet treats
If you read or even just knew about the Chicken Soup for the Soul books, you need to listen to this deep dive about how wild those books were.
This was a very helpful explanation and perspective on the impact of generative AI on the environment.
What does it mean to be an apocalyptic optimist?
Thank you for reading! If you listened to something this week that made your heart sing, your imagination wander, or your brain ponder, I’d love to hear about it!
Shell Game is SUCH a fun listen! Excited that you're diving in!