Podcasting through the chaos
Creativity during crisis, Juno and abortions, stem cell scam, shabbat, pig butchering scams, a heartfelt hyperfixation.
This almost got stuck in my drafts because I couldn’t decide what to write in this intro and then I was reminded of this meme my sister sent me. Yes, I am absolutely crafting through the collapse of society. I’m also baking through it. And I’m also desperately reliant on my podcast queue to escape from it, stay informed about it, and hear many perspectives on it.
This week’s podstack
Scriptnotes Podcast - 676 - Writing while the World is on Fire
At the beginning of the year, Dennis Palumbo wrote an article called “Am I just fiddling while Rome burns?” and unsurprisingly it resonated with a lot of people. Writers, and creatives in general, can get caught in a spiral of thoughts wondering where their work fits in when the world is being bombarded with overlapping crises. It can feel hard to justify doing art in difficult times. In the face of tragedy should you only write about or make art about that tragedy? Where do things like comedy fit in? Thanks to Dennis’ experience as a writer-turned-psychotherapist, he gives some very helpful advice and perspectives in this episode. Even if your work doesn’t specifically reference a current tragedy or crisis, it can still touch on the feelings and emotions that are being felt, just maybe within different contexts. And then there are the concerns about the future feeling so unpredictable and not knowing what or how your work will fit into that. If you’re having any kind of existential feelings about life right now and how creativity fits into it, you should listen to this. This isn’t the only question covered in the episode but it’s the biggest part of it.
Aborsh - Abortion in the Media
This episode begins by looking back on the movie Juno. It was such a big hit at the time and people loved it, myself included. But what Rachel, the host, and I have in common is that we didn’t fully realize what it was doing for the perception of abortion. Were we just young? Yes. Is this a pattern for the way abortion is portrayed in media? Also yes and it’s complicated. But this episode gives you the bigger, complicated picture. With the research being done by the Abortion On Screen organization, who have documented all the storylines in film and TV that involve abortion, you learn about what kinds of abortions are portrayed, which characters (main characters vs one-off patients in Grey’s Anatomy), what kind of people (age, race, financial status), and the reactions. It’s thorough and fascinating and makes you realize just how harmful it is that the depictions so rarely feature the more common scenarios of real life. If learning about big issues through pop culture and media is your jam, this episode is perfect. I know I hear a lot about reproductive rights in the US, so I’m very thankful for Aborsh and how it’s better educating me on the state of things in Canada. Listening to this soon after a disappointing election in Ontario was hard and helpful.
Lost Cells - Ep 1 - The Promise
We worry about where to store our money. We worry about where to store our data. And now, we worry about where to store our DNA. When parents needed somewhere to store the stems cells from their newborn children, CyroSave Stem Cell Bank was there. Literally in the delivery room telling them they needed to follow up with a certain form. Like barely out of c-section surgery… And then they were gone. These stem cells can be life saving for people, both the parents and the children, at least that’s what the marketing for these private banks emphasizes. But trusting a new technology like this proved to be a huge risk. I had never heard about this scandal but I was absolutely hooked on this series. You hear the heartbreak from these families and you wonder how the journalists are going to get to the bottom of this. Can you imagine being responsible for transporting your own stem cells from the storage facility to where you need them? You’d think that’s something the stem cell bank would help with! Or what about when you can’t find your cells all together?! The more the investigation unfolds, the more you begin to question everything. It’s predatory and speaks to what can go wrong especially when things like this are run by privatized organizations.
Shofar, So Good! - EPISODE 1: Shabbat, So Good!
Kate Mishkin is documenting her journey to reclaim and better understand the Jewish traditions and values that she never fully appreciated because she wasn’t raised with the religion. Something in her adult life is pulling her to learn more about this part of her identity and she’s taking us along with her. For anyone who feels like they’re always going and never resting and spending too much time on a screen, you might relate to Kate’s interest in Shabbat. By understanding what it means to slow down like this, it helps her appreciate taking time for the self and how important that can be. And even better when it also involves quality time spent with others. I’m not really religious in any way, but the style and honest curiosity of Kate’s storytelling has me wanting to hear what she discovers and how she feels about it.
The FAIK Files - The Butcher Will Scam You Now
The FAIK Files feels like AI 101 in the way it gives you the updates on what’s happening in AI and breaks them down in digestible ways. As someone who is very very very critical of AI, I might not be the best target audience for it, but Perry and Mason still have me hooked. I want their informed and critical analysis, and it also really helps that they have some of the most fun jingles in podcasting and I get them stuck in my head because they’re so good! Similarly, their pig butcher episode has been stuck in my head for months. It’s about these intense scams being run that end up convincing people to send huge amounts of money and how they use things like deepfakes, psychological tricks like love bombing, and recruiting for fake jobs. The scale of these scam setups is astounding on so many levels. From the amount of money they’re bringing in, to the harm being caused to so many people, not just the ones being scammed. Who needs to be educated about the extent of this? Everyone?! Governments, banks, people of all ages?! It’s financial grooming. It’s confidence scams. Basically assume scam until proven otherwise. If you want to know what the top signs to be aware of are, listen to this. I started listening kinda casually at first, and my jaw just kept dropping more and more until I was nervously tuned completely in.
Hyperfixed - Two Birds, One Hundred Stones
When I said that Hyperfixed is a show with heart, this is what I f*cking meant. The stakes don’t need to be monumental. It means a lot to one person, then two, then three, and by the end every single person who hears this will be invested in the stakes of this story. Alex risked it for the biscuit in this one and came away with a story with six perfect acts. At one point I thought I knew how it was going to end and then it shifts and it heightens and you’re crying along with Alex. By the end I’m falling in love with this medium all over again. This story means nothing to the grand scheme of our would but it means everything to how we feel about this world. Because it’s got a beautiful thing happening to regular people and I think we all really need those stories right now.
More sweet treats
Griffin Newman acting like a coked up Gary Vee on Tiny Dinos was way too funny
How "Reactionary Feminism" Infiltrated the Mainstream was my gateway episode into Diabolical Lies and now I’m hooked.
There’s a lot of talk about our over-consumption and doing “no buy” challenges, and Never Post did a great analysis of our relationship to our clothes thanks to the help of Avery Trufelman.
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!