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Tiffany Hansen: This is All Of It. I'm Tiffany Hansen, in for Alison Stewart today. Whether you're looking for your latest true crime fix, or excited about the new season of Serial, or want to relive every Lonely Island Digital Short from Saturday Night Live history, this latest slate of podcasts has something for everyone. Joining us to highlight some of his favorites is Nick Quah, podcast critic for Vulture and New York Magazine. Nick, welcome back to the show.

Nick Quah: It's a pleasure to be here.

Tiffany Hansen: Listeners, of course, we want to hear from you. What podcast have you really enjoyed lately? We're crowdsourcing your podcast recommendations. You can give those to us by calling or texting 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. Nick, a few years ago you wrote a piece called 'Podcasting is Just Radio Now'. I'm just wondering, first of all, when you look at the list of podcasts right now, that does seem the case, but I'm wondering if you think anything has changed since you wrote that piece back in 2022.

Nick Quah: I think it's become more of the case. [laughs] I think when I wrote that case, that piece a couple of years ago, it was just reflecting on the changing economics and the kinds of shows that were produced in response to those economics, which tends to be more personality-driven, tends to produce more shows that sound more like the stuff that used to thrive and continues to thrive on broadcast radio.

That continues to be the case, but however, there are still very clear pockets for, on the one hand, independent shows, stranger creation, stranger voices, and on the other hand, stuff that feels closer to audio documentary, which was the form that we, at least I, esthetically associated podcasting with through 2014 to 2020. There's still a lot of really good releases on both parts, on both types of forms, but yes, we're still trying to carve out good pieces of art in the middle of all this commerce.

Tiffany Hansen: I wonder, speaking of the line of commerce, [chuckles] I'm wondering what you think about TikTok stars having their own podcasts. Is it really just about more continued shameless self-promotion?

Nick Quah: Well, that's one way to put it, the way I believe their agents would put it, which is they're expanding the brand, right?

Tiffany Hansen: Right.

Nick Quah: In many senses, it's not very different from, say, Ryan Seacrest also having a show at SiriusXM. This dynamic has existed in the radio world for a very long time, and as long as one is a celebrity with influence and social capital, one would say, there are always places where they believe they can find more buckets of money, which is essentially what's driving those dynamics. They can reach more people, they can sell more stuff.

Tiffany Hansen: Right. Has anybody made that TikTok podcast jump successfully in your opinion? I guess I'm going to determine success not by money made, but by 'it's good'. It's actually good to listen to.

Nick Quah: It's actually good. Well, that's-- you're asking the wrong person about this. I have very complicated feelings about personality-driven shows [crosstalk].

Tiffany Hansen: Okay. We'll have you back for a whole show on that. Yes, right. Nick's complicated feelings. All right. Yes, [laughs] but yes, no, maybe so?

Nick Quah: Maybe so, we'll see. There's nothing that I can firmly say, "I think this is good," in any objective aesthetic sense, but if you like, say, Bobbi Althoff and her deal on TikTok, you might like her show, but if you don't like her, you're not unfamiliar with her, I'm not so sure why you would listen to something like.

Tiffany Hansen: Yes, right. All right, listeners, we need your podcast recommendations, 212-433-9692. You can text us, you can call us 212-433-WNYC. Nick, let's just dive in here. How about we go back to the original, well, not really the original, but Serial, right? There's a new season of Serial.

Nick Quah: Yes, absolutely.

Tiffany Hansen: Tell us about that and then, well, I'll ask you about-- first, tell us about it.

Nick Quah: Well, first of all, it's hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that it's been 10 years since [laughs] season one came out in 2014 or around the fall. With season four, they're taking a look at Guantanamo Bay. Here, they're continuing a project that had been done in seasons two and three in a sense of Sarah Koenig partners with Dana Chivvis, a longtime producer on that show.

They're providing an inside outlook of Guantanamo Bay. In a sense, you can think about it as an oral history from the inside based on direct testimony from people who've experienced the place firsthand, from former detainees to guards to warden and translator. The larger project that they're going after is to provide a sense experience on Guantanamo Bay as a way to explore the boondoggle that is the American War on Terror.

In many senses, it's similar to the third season, which did a very similar thing with one courthouse in Cleveland. This feels like where the project of Serial is now in its latter stages, in the sense of it is these big sweeping ambitious projects about American systems and justice, which I don't think a lot of people associate with the show, but it's really what it has become.

Tiffany Hansen: Yes, I was going to say, really this is a pivot from their true crime origins.

Nick Quah: Right. I would guess that they would not appreciate the association of true crime, but that is essentially what gave the show its name. The second season took on the really strange story of Bowe Bergdahl, the army sergeant who went missing, who went AWOL in Afghanistan and was kidnapped by the Taliban for a while, but that ended up being a story about why we send men to war.

Seasons two, three, and four just became these much larger, thinkier shows. I feel like a lot of people would say, "Oh, it's never lived up to the heights of the free season or whatever," but the fact of the matter is that they just ended up doing something very different, and I think that association maybe [chuckles] hasn't quite lived on in the culture.

Tiffany Hansen: I'm curious what you think-- You mentioned, what, it's been 10 years since the first Serial came out. What do you think has been their lasting impact on podcasting writ large?

Nick Quah: A statement that I would make is that it is the show that put podcasting as a cultural interest, as an art form, and as a business on the map. I say that knowing that, and with a full awareness that the business was building, the culture was building way before 2014 when it first came out, but it was the comet that hit the planet that had completely changed the terrain of the space. The fact that we live in a world where podcasting is not a word that you have to explain to other people, it's directly traceable to the phenomenon that was at for a season.

Tiffany Hansen: We're getting some texts in here, Nick. Waldo from Asbury Park, New Jersey, says the podcast unspooled about the greatest American movies, controversial and uncontroversial is fantastic. Someone says, WNYC's Matt Katz's Inconceivable Truth. Matt was on the Brian Lehrer Show this morning talking about that podcast.

I assume that's not Matt who's texting us. [laughs] Matt Katz's Inconceivable Truth. Favorite podcast is currently Nymphet Alumni, such a great analysis of contemporary trends, always feels actually insightful. They're able to actually describe current cultural movements very well. You know that one at all, Nick?

Nick Quah: I do. Nymphet Alumni was actually recommended to me by Jon Caramanica, who's a music writer at The Times. I wonder if he's the one who texted that.

Tiffany Hansen: [chuckles] Here's another. "Hey, WNYC, ahead of Immigrant Heritage Month, I'd like to recommend the Immigrant Jam Podcast, a podcast featuring a new immigrant or first-gen immigrant comedian artist every week, hosted by Lucie Pohl." Oh, that's Lucie. Hi, Lucie. Thank you for the recommendation. All right. Nick, you have on your list from WBUR in Boston Beyond All Repair, so tell us a little bit about that.

Nick Quah: Speaking of the first season of Serial, so this is a show that has come up a lot when I talk to people about, they're listening to. This is a show that I think I've heard a lot of people try to compare it to the first season of Serial. It's hosted by Amory Sivertson. She's usually the co-host of a BUR show called Endless Thread.

Through one of the episodes that she did for that show, she learns about the story of a woman who was once convicted of murdering her mother-in-law in quite brutal circumstances in the early 2000s.

She was later acquitted after a retrial but was deported back to Guyana where she's from. It's that kind of true crime story. It's a kind of true crime story that lives in a space between, "Did she do it? Did she not do it? What's happening here? Who is this person? What is the story that she tells about herself and about the situation?" It sits in that tension because she continues to allege her innocence while a lot of people in her orbit continues to believe that she did it.

It is that very sticky, pretty dynamic true crime show in this vein. Sivertson is a really good host. She spent three years, I believe, working on the story, and it's very hooky. It's a very, very good addition to this particular subgenre within true crime.

Tiffany Hansen: Got it. Nick, I want to bring our listeners in. Alice in the East Village. Good afternoon, Alice.

Alice: Hi, I want to give a shout out to the Anthony Cooper podcast, which you can look up, which is incredible. Julia Louis-Dreyfus's podcast, Smarter-- oh, Wiser Than Me.

Tiffany Hansen: Wiser Than Me.

Nick Quah: Wiser Than Me.

Alice: It's incredible. Then, the podcast that I just keep coming back to is We Can Do Hard Things by Glennon Doyle, her sister Amanda Doyle, and her wife, I forgot her name, but anyway. You can find it.

Tiffany Hansen: Got it.

Alice: It's really, really good. She deals with so many different things. It's wonderful.

Tiffany Hansen: Alice, thanks so much for the recommendations. Nick, we got a couple of other people who mentioned Wiser Than Me.

Nick Quah: Yes, that was on your list as well.

Tiffany Hansen: It was on my list. Tell us about that. Have you heard it?

Nick Quah: I have. I have. I've dipped into it. Julia Louis-Dreyfus, legendary comedian, star of Seinfeld, Veep, she has conversations with a variety of older women, women in their one could say golden years. Essentially, she's taking life lessons at that stage of her life. It's a very good show. It's a very good iteration of this kind of celebrity podcasts. I know a lot of folks, and myself included, who have reservations about the celebrity podcast genre in general, but if you're going to do it, this is a good way to do it.

Tiffany Hansen: Yes. We were talking about Beyond All Repair from WBUR, there's another Boston podcast that I've heard folks talking about, and that's the one about The Big Dig. I don't know what it's called.

Nick Quah: It's called The Big Dig. [laughs]

Tiffany Hansen: All right. There you go. [chuckles] I'm wondering why The Big Dig is such an enduring talk about boondoggle.

Nick Quah: Yes. I was going to say. The Big Dig, it's a symbol, right? For this notion that we cannot build things anymore as a country. It's that old Sobotka from The Wire. I love that documentary. I love that series because it's this study of despite the association with Boondoggles that The Big Dig was, it turned out to be ultimately an effective piece of infrastructure funding. That tension, it's not explored very well [laughs] in the way we understand American politics today.

Tiffany Hansen: We have a public radio fan who likes Spooked, which is from the show Snap Judgment. It's a podcast from Snap Judgment. It's a ghost story, that's a simplistic way to put it. This particular listener is wondering if there are any other good podcasts for people who like that kind of thing like Spooked.

Nick Quah: Oh, like creepy things, scary things?

Tiffany Hansen: Creepy things, yes.

Nick Quah: Oh, there's a lot. Spooked is unique in the sense that it's nonfiction, or it's nonfiction adjacent, I think [crosstalk]

Tiffany Hansen: Quote, unquote. Right.

Nick Quah: Some of the episodes. It's a very rich community of fiction podcasts that explores creepy things. Welcome to Night Vale has been there for very long time, they're still pumping out shows. Archive 81 is an old fiction podcast that was recently adapted into a Netflix series. That's pretty good. It's classic found footage conceits, which I think podcasting likes to explore quite a bit. There's a bunch. The BBC I think also has a variety of these nonfiction horror shows. I can't quite recall the specific name of one, but there's a pretty long running good one. I'm sorry, I can't quite [crosstalk].

Tiffany Hansen: No, that's all right. You mentioned the BBC, one of their podcasts is on your list, Things Fell Apart.

Nick Quah: Yes. Things Fell Apart is a creation of Jon Ronson, who's a magazine writer, non-fiction writer, author. He was also a screenwriter, he wrote Okja, which is that Bong Joon-ho movie. As a non-fiction writer, he spent a better part of his career working on somewhat strange stories. The Psychopath Test is one, The Men Who Stare at Goats, which was also adapted into a movie was another. With Things Fell Apart, and this is the second season it came out this year, it's a repository for his stories focused on the COVID present.

The thing that he's trying to explore is how society lost its hold on reality. A lot of stories about the culture wars, it's a lot of stories about conspiracy theories and institutional collapse. He does this thing where he connects what feels like extraneous stories to very direct things that we're grappling with today. Like how, say, a mysterious spate of killings of Blacks sex workers in Florida in the '80s, how that connects to the uprisings around George Floyd. That is, on paper, a distant two things to connect, but the way he finds these connections and explores certain strains of sociological outcomes is quite compelling. I highly recommend his shows. He's really good. He's a really, really fascinating creator.

Tiffany Hansen: Give us the title again.

Nick Quah: Things Fell Apart.

Tiffany Hansen: Got it. All right. I want to bring Philemona in from Montclair, New Jersey. Good afternoon.

Philemona: Hello. I'm really enjoying this. I have a favorite podcast called Pep Talks for Artists, and it's a wonderful podcast by Amy Talluto. She's an artist, and she talks to other artists and creatives about their work, about exhibits they've seen. She really, I don't know, she captures the person and not the 'artist.' I listen all the time in my studio to it because it brings-- I feel like I have company, that I'm really getting to know people. I think she's a genius, [laughs] anyway.

Tiffany Hansen: That's--

Philemona: She's very friendly. I happen to have been on the podcast, too, because I like it so much.

Tiffany Hansen: It's Pep Talks for Artists.

Philemona: Pep Talks for Artists.

Tiffany Hansen: Yes. Excellent. All right. Thank you so much for the call. Nick, we got another one in, The Black Guy Who Tips is a podcast from the minds of Rod and Karen, a Black Southern married couple who enjoyed pop culture, politics, and comedy. Have you heard of that one?

Nick Quah: I'm not familiar, but you can check it out.

Tiffany Hansen: All right. On your list, one we know you've heard of, Stolen, hosted by Connie Walker. Tell us about that.

Nick Quah: Yes. This one is a flag that there's a new season of Stolen. Connie Walker, who's a journalist, she specializes in stories about missing and murdered indigenous women both in Canada and the US. The last season she did, which came out last year or two years ago, it was both Pulitzer and Peabody Award-winning. That one was called Surviving St. Michael's, about indigenous reform school in Canada. This new release, well, the larger context here is that it's unclear what the future of the show is, which is why I wanted to flag it.

It was a Spotify-produced and distributed show. Spotify has been doing a huge amount of cuts to the way they're producing podcast. It's unclear and it seems unlikely that they'll continue funding the show. They are still putting out this fourth season, and it sees Walker going to Navajo Nation to chase down a story of two missing women. The first is Ella Mae Begay and the second is Kristina Carrillo. It's Walker doing what she does really, really well, which is this really in-depth, really robust reporting on other part of the country that we should be paying more attention on.

Tiffany Hansen: Nick, one of the things that I love about podcasts is that if you have an interest, you could probably find a podcast on it. We had a recommendation from one of the producers here in the newsroom who is a Formula 1 fan called Red Flags. There are a lot of niche podcasts that if you say, "I like stamp collecting," you could probably go find a podcast on it. Do you see that changing anytime soon?

Nick Quah: Oh, no. Absolutely not. That is the wonderful thing about podcasting, at least on a structural level, right? The question is whether those niche shows is enough of a business to help those creatives make a living, but that is the thing that I personally love about podcasting. I also listen to a lot of niche shows. That's a little hard for me to recommend in a space like this, because I don't know how many people, say, enjoy [laughs] a knitting podcast as much as I do, for example.

Red Flags, I believe that's a comedy show about Formula 1, and I actually do listen to a ton of Formula 1 shows because I'm a viewer. [laughter] I should also say that right now, it's funny I'm giving you all these recommendations of limited series, and miniseries, and podcasts of this sort. Right now, I'm listening to a lot of basketball podcasts because of the playoffs.

Tiffany Hansen: Oh, sure.

Nick Quah: Go Knicks.

Tiffany Hansen: Give us the top basketball podcast.

Nick Quah: Oh, there's The Bill Simmons Podcast, he does a really good job over there. Dunc'd On is one that's really for the wonks, sort of statistically-minded, I should say. Six Trophies is a really fun pop culture basketball podcast hosted by Shea Serrano and Jason Concepcion. I'm also an Oklahoma City Thunder fan, so I have to shout out Down to Dunk, which is a very, very, I would say poorly edited, but lovely local Oklahoma City show. [laughs]

Tiffany Hansen: Poorly edited and yet still lovely. [laughs] All right.

Nick Quah: Absolutely.

Tiffany Hansen: Last one here, let's get to Lost Notes really quickly.

Nick Quah: Yes. Lost Notes, it's the fourth season. I really love this anthology show. They do music documentaries basically, that tends to center on Los Angeles. It comes from KCRW, which is a Santa Monica station. In this fourth season, it's hosted by Novena Carmel and Michael Barnes. They're specifically looking at the backdrop of the LA's soul and R&B scenes between the '50s and the '70s. They produced essentially a set of eight or nine stories, around there, that try to tie various songs that you might know of and how it found those roots in the soul and R&B scenes during that era. I think it opens with an episode about the song Tainted Love which was, I think largely known as an '80s anthem, but was originally a, I think 1964, 1965 B-side by Gloria Jones.

Tiffany Hansen: Nice.

Nick Quah: Chasing that history is super fun.

Tiffany Hansen: Nice.

Nick Quah: If you like that kind of thing, it's a great show. Go back, listen to all seasons. It's back-to-back. It's a really, really lovely document.

Tiffany Hansen: Nick Quah, thank you so much for your time today.

Nick Quah: My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Tiffany Hansen: Nick is podcast critic for Vulture and New York Magazine. Listeners, fear not, we will have all of these podcasts recommendations and the book recommendations from Jordan Lauf on our website. You can always find all of that there. Coming up tomorrow, a nice day for Billy Idol. He's on tour to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Rebel Yell. He will be in studio to discuss. Join us tomorrow. I'm Tiffany Hansen filling in for Alison Stewart. This is All Of It.

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