The Playlist: Podcasts for the Plane

In just a few short weeks, Staci and I will be heading over the Atlantic to Scandinavia. While Norwegian Airlines supposedly has great in-flight entertainment, I'm still preparing to listen to a few podcasts on the trip.

Here's a few of the ones I've been into lately:

Getting Curious

If you haven't yet watched the new seasons of Queer Eye on Netflix, WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH YOUR LIFE?? Seriously, it has even been nominated for an Emmy. One of the new Fab five is a real Renaissance man. Not only does he style hair, but he's also a podcast host, and a damn entertaining one at that. He spends 30 minutes covering a single topic with a guest and manages to make even the mundane topics interesting (see: How Can We Be Less Rude To Bees?). He covers everything from Renaissance Art to Saudi Arabian politics to Gender Bias in Film Scoring with so much genuine curiosity that it makes you want to do a deeper dive even after the show is over.

My Favorite Murder

So many people have told me to listen to this show (including Staci), especially after Serial and Felonious Florida ended. I just can't get enough of true crime, apparently. Lifelong fans of true crime stories Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark tell each other their favorite tales of murder and hear hometown crime stories from friends and fans. Seems like a winner.

Song Exploder

I learned about Song Exploder through Getting Curious and have been interested in checking out a few key episodes like Solange, Weezer, and Black Panther. The host, Hrishikesh Hirway, takes one song and does a deep dive into everything from the artist's state of mind to lyrics to melody to process. It's a must for any music nerd.

Keep It

Host Ira Madison III, a favorite guest of Bitch Sesh (another one of my favs), is joined each week by comedians, journalists, actors, musicians, activists, and politicians for a conversation about pop culture. Ira is insightful, but still entertaining and hilarious in this member of the Crooked Media family of podcasts that Staci constantly posts about.

Sandra

I'm still not sold on podcasts as fiction, but this one seems promising. The cast includes Kristin Wiig, Alia Shawkat, and Ethan Hawke. Shawkat (Helen) plays a real-life version of Siri/Alexa named Sandra who listens to an endless cascade of customer queries and manually deals with queries on the fly. But working behind the curtain isn’t quite the escape from reality that Helen expected.

If nothing else, I can at least listen to them during a long tour ride somewhere!

-Jen