podcast

#TryPod: 14 Podcasts You Should Be Listening To

In the spirit of NPR’s #trypod social media campaign to combat “podcast unawareness,” Sean Tuohy, Lindsey Wojcik, and I compiled a list of our favorite shows. We’ve met some wonderful podcasters during the last few weeks, proving that the medium is still a vibrant home for both aspiring and established storytellers. Feel free to share your favorite podcasts by tweeting us @WritersBone using the hashtag #trypod.—Daniel Ford

“Crimetown”

Sean Tuohy: Who knew that the smallest state in the union had some of the biggest criminals? “Crimetown” visits Rhode Island's criminal underworld. The show is filled with crooked mayors, charming crime lords, violent enforcers, and a cast of characters so wild they seem made up. 

“How Did This Get Made?”

Sean: This funny and over-the-top show is the perfect podcast for movie buffs. Hosted by Paul Scheer, June Diane Raphael, and the always funny Jason Mantzoukas, “How Did This Get Made?” reviews an awful movie and tries to figure out how ended up on the big screen.

“Women of the Hour With Lena Dunham”

Lindsey Wojcik: “Girls” fans will undoubtedly gravitate to Lena Dunham's “Women of the Hour,” and I admit my “Girls” fandom is what initially intrigued me about Dunham's podcast. While she may not be everyone's cup of tea and has a habit of inserting her foot in her mouth, which usually creates a flurry of controversy, Dunham and the “Women of the Hour” team are skilled at finding women with riveting stories to tell on a variety of topics that are both silly (Season Two's "Cats" episode, for example) and serious (Season Two's episodes "Trauma & Triumph" and "Choice"). “SNL” cast member Aidy Bryant often drops in to play a fictional character that is going through an experience directly related the episode's topic—and I find Bryant is a skilled radio talent that always makes me laugh.

“The Tony Kornheiser Show”

Daniel Ford: I can’t remember why I started religiously listening to a D.C.-based radio show starring a bald, cranky, orange man. All I know is that I wouldn’t have survived grad school or the rat race of New York City without Tony Kornheiser and his funny and insightful supporting cast, which includes Jeanne McManus, Gary Braun, David Aldridge, Torie Clarke, and Leon Harris on a rotating basis.

Kornheiser, who also co-hosts ESPN’s popular sports show, “Pardon the Interruption,” announced last year he was leaving his radio gig so he could start a podcast. Sheer lunacy. Despite taking what I can only assume is a massive pay cut, Kornheiser has essentially duplicated his radio show (with the tragic loss of ESPN Radio’s Kip Sheman), but now has more time to complain about D.C. traffic, bemoan Washington Redskins’ dysfunction, take deep dives into “great” license plate numbers, and yell at Bob Ryan about the true nature of March Madness upsets.

Thanks to Kornheiser’s brand of humor, the show always skews sarcastic light-hearted, but it also tackles weighty issues like the 2016 Presidential Election, local politics, and other concerning national news stories with aplomb. I’ve been a “Loyal Little” for some time now, so I say, “La Cheeserie” to you, and suggest you download this show today!

“Hey Sis!”

Daniel: Nicole Blades has become a Writer’s Bone favorite (her book recommendations are divine), so it’s no surprise that we love her newly launched podcast, “Hey Sis!” Blades and her sister Nailah plan to talk about “women finding their focus and place in business, art, culture, and life.” In their second episode, the sisters interview Margaret Jacobsen, “a mom, writer, activist, and social justice warrior based in Portland, Oregon.” More, please!

“CHOICE/LESS"

Lindsey: I would not have found “CHOICE/LESS” without Lena Dunham's “Women of the Hour.” The show was mentioned during the aforementioned "Choice" episode of “Women of the Hour,” and I immediately subscribed to it. The podcast delivers compelling personal stories about reproductive injustice and "the laws, politics and people beyond the headlines." In a time when the future of reproductive rights seems uncertain, “CHOICE/LESS” offers fuel for Americans to keep fighting for justice.

“Stranglers”

Sean: This unsettling show follows the investigation of the Boston Strangler, starting back in the 1960s. Examining the evidence, speaking to wittiness, and reviewing the case files, the host tries to find out if the right man was captured for the crimes, and, if, who the true killer is. Also, Writer’s Bone guest F. Lee Bailey is featured in “Stranglers!”

“Modern Love”

Lindsey: From The New York Times (you've heard of it, right?), it's “Modern Love” the podcast. The podcast features the popular New York Times column—reader-submitted essays that explore every facet of love—read by notable personalities and updates from the writers. “Modern Love” editor Daniel Jones also joins each episode to reveal why the essay was selected for the column. I'm a sucker for romance and a realist that understands the tribulations of love, so I often find myself relating to the emotions layered in each essay and learning from obstacles others have had to face in the name of love. Also what writer isn't hoping to find the key to getting an essay published in the New York Times? I'm hoping to find that answer in the podcast.

“The West Wing Weekly”

Daniel: Considering I wrote a post about Leo McGarry being the perfect spokesman for Johnnie Walker Blue early in our run, it should come as no surprise that I love this podcast. My love for “The West Wing” knows no bounds. Hosts Joshua Malina and Hrishikesh Hirway have great chemistry, and I could listen to their nerdy explorations of my favorite television show all day long. They also bring on actors from the show (any episode with Richard Schiff is a must listen) and public policy veterans to explain the some of the real-life implications of the issues featured in “The West Wing.” Considering our current political dumpster fire, this show, and the show it obsesses over, is a breath of fresh air.

“In the Dark”

Lindsey: After listening to the first season of “Serial,” I wondered what the next compelling podcast dedicated to investigative journalism would be. Enter “In the Dark,” which in its first season explored how law enforcement mishandled a widely reported child abduction case in Minnesota in 1989. In investigating the unsolved abduction of Jacob Wetterling in rural Minnesota, the show’s reporters question law enforcement at every turn while detailing the intricacies of the case. Interviews with Wetterling's parents, key witnesses, lead suspects, and others linked to the case simultaneously provide answers and raise questions about it. While the case was solved during the production of the podcast, it doesn't take away from its intent on "shining in a light in some dark places."

“The Unwritable Rant”

Daniel: Whiskey, entertaining tall tales (which may actually be true), and did I mention whiskey??  What more could you people want?! Host Juliette Miranda has recently interviewed everyone’s favorite Everyman Mike Rowe, as well as comedian Nick Di Paolo. We raise a glass to this podcast and hope for many more lewd stories to come!

“Detective”

Lindsey: While “Serial” and “In the Dark” offer alternative perspectives on crime and how it is investigated by law enforcement, “Detective” goes "behind the yellow tape" to tell the stories of the seasoned investigators that put criminals behind bars. Each season features a different storyteller detailing how they became detectives and what they have learned during their years on the force. Some episodes feature graphic descriptions of dead bodies, but it's worth the perspective to stomach the content. 

“The Bowery Boys: New York City History” and “Bowery Boys Archive: The Early Years”

Lindsey: Calling all history buffs and New York City lovers! “The Bowery Boys,” Greg Young and Tom Meyers, offer fascinating tales of the history behind the city I have called home for the past eight years. Each episode explores an historic facet in New York City, whether it be landmarks, hidden gems, historic events, or pop culture moments that have become synonymous with the city. Listening to the podcast as the W train approaches Queensboro Plaza really makes me think of the city in a different way. There's a lot of history in New York, and both residents and admirers of the city can enjoy uncovering it through “The Bowery Boys.”   

“Missing Richard Simmons”

Sean: I stumbled onto this charming gem last week and listened to three episodes in one day. The podcast follows one man's journey to find workout guru Richard Simmons, who went into self-exile three years ago. The show sheds new light on Simmons and really makes you respect this goofball who made millions of dollars and helped millions of people.

Update: Stephanie Schaefer may know where Simmons really is...

Sean and Daniel Watch Television: “Fire in the Hole”

By Daniel Ford 

Sometimes it’s better to relive the beginning than focus on the end.

The finale of the sixth season of “Justified” aired last night and it sets up an epic final season sure to include Raylan Givens and Boyd Crowder’s last stands. As Sean says, “they both need to die and have their blood be soaked up by the soft Kentucky soil.”

Those thoughts are for another day.

Recently, Sean and I sat down to watch the pilot episode of the series, titled “Fire in the Hole,” and discussed how perfectly it depicted Elmore Leonard’s short story. This video podcast also features us drinking cans of Miller High Life, my awesome hat, and plenty of Raylan Givens gunplay.

For posts from The Boneyard, check out our full archive.

The Boneyard: Why Being A Good Reader Will Make You A Good Writer

The Boneyard features the best of the Writer’s Bone crew's daily email chain. Yes, we broadened the definition of “best” to make this happen.

What the lobby will look like at Writer's Bone's future office.

What the lobby will look like at Writer's Bone's future office.

Daniel Ford: Here's the problem I've had recently. I can't read one thing at a time. I blame beign in grad school and having to read a bunch of stuff all the time. I'll get hooked on something and then flutter back to something else. I finally finished a bunch of stuff I had been reading for most of 2013, but now the pattern has started again. I mentioned I was reading to Sean at one point I was reading Colonel Roosevelt by Edmund Morris (which I just finished!), but really, I’m also reading:

Plus, I have a stack of books that I've been trying not to crack yet, including:

Okay, fine, I also have a ton of books on my Kindle that are in various states of being read. How often do you read and what is your reading process like?

Sean Tuohy: Mother lover, I read every day. I have to read something or I feel like a junkie who hasn't gotten his fix for the day. I read on the bus going to work in the morning, on the bus going home, and then I try to fit in between half an hour to an hour of reading time before passing out. But I can’t read one book at a time. At the moment, I am reading three books and I have more on the list.

Rachel Tyner: I am always in the middle of multiple books. Right now it is Cuckoo's Calling, The Boss of You (about owning your own business), and a “Charmed” comic book Sean got me (don't tell anyone). I also began and abandoned some books too, which I do intend to go back to, including A Clash of Kings, The Birth of Venus, The Hunt for Red October, Primary Colors, among others.

Wow, this is making me depressed.

My problem with reading is that it is not an activity that you can multitask. I am in the car for three hours a day, and if I want to survive I can't exactly read while in traffic. I usually get home and want to clean, and so I can put on Netflix (or the latest Writer's Bone podcast!) and be productive.

It is such a leisurely, wonderful activity, reading, but I find that I only really sit down to read when I have nothing else I feel like I need to do or comes above it on my priorities. I definitely will make it a goal going forward to read more every day. In 2014, it is my goal to finish all of the books on the list above. No excuses!

Daniel: Okay, fine, I’ll admit it. I’m also reading The Unnamed, a book by Joshua Farris about a guy who can’t stop walking, Hunter S. Thompson’s The Rum Diary, Elmore Leonard’s Rum Punch, and Craig Johnson’sThe Cold Dish.

I’m sucked in to pretty much every one. I have a serious problem.

But you know what? The more I read, the more I want to write. And the more I write, the more I feel like a writer. The more I feel like a writer, the less scotch I have to consume.

How does reading affect your writing? And what is it about Elmore Leonard that makes his prose so irresistible to the point you abandon all other reads and devour each morsel of hardboiled goodness (sorry, I’m sucked into Rum Punch at the moment)?

Dave Pezza: I am a large proponent of studying literature. I don't mean that in the contemporary liberal arts sense of study. Like anything else, you and learn your craft, and then you apply what you have learned. Writing, I feel, is the same way. You read as much as you can and absorb as much as you can. For me, writing and reading have always gone hand in hand. When I am reading a lot and reading more difficult authors or books is most definitely comes out in my writing. Dialogue, diction, syntax, they all naturally draw from your influences. That is how Ernest Hemingway changed American prose. Everyone began to read Hemingway, he became an institution, and more writers naturally absorbed the style.

As far as Leonard is concerned, he is one of the few authors who managed to successfully walk the tightrope between literature and entertainment. He is easy to read, mostly. His themes are rather pulpy. At face value, Leonard should be a dime novel author, but his simplicity isn't derived from lack of skill or thematic development. Leonard writes the American spirit well, the individual well. His characters, for the most part, are simple people, and I mean that in no offensive way. They're motivations and emotions are easily grasped or empathized with or judged. That's why he is easy to devour, he gives you the best of both words. A little crime, a few shootouts, but you still walk away with more than when you started page one.

Daniel: Sean and I talk about libraries in the video that we posted earlier this morning. Our staff consists of some of the younger members of the Millennial generation (you bastards), so do any of you have any memories of going to the library? What are your best and worst experiences related to the library?

Also, Here’s something I just read in Rum Punch that ties into our conversation:

“He said, ‘You name it. We’re living in the arms capital of America, South Florida. You can buy an assault rifle here in less time than it takes to get a library card.’”

Stephanie Schaefer: I loved going to the library. I remember when it was your birthday as a kid you got to "donate" a book to my school library (aka your parents paid for it and you got to put your name in it). Since I have a summer birthday, I donated a book before the end of school. All I remember is that it had ducks wearing rain boots on the cover.

And my town library used to host teddy bear picnics...badass.

Matt DiVenere: Ohhhh, the library. Let's see. In elementary school, my mom signed me up for the reading club that they had. I was able to borrow two books a week for the entire summer, and every time I read a book, I got a prize. I also got a star sticker next to my name on the bulletin board (of course this was the real reason why I was reading, to brag about how many stars I had.). I'm pretty sure I just gave away some of those prizes to my uncle for my cousins to enjoy.

My worst experience would be going to my high school "library" where we spent two hours learning the Dewey decimal system in order to get our books. Clearly, everyone in class already knew it, but it was mandatory to go to this workshop. In high school, the library was either a place to catch up on some sleep between periods or a quick route from one side of the building to the other without having to go all the way around and past all of the teachers. It's two hours that I will never get back in all of my life.

Sadly, I wouldn't go back to a library again until I had to cover an event that happened at a town library in Vermont. It was a local historian group discussing plans for an upcoming parade. That's the last time I've ever been in a library.

Dave: Libraries are paramount of successful democratic culture. The state pays for and operates a free facility dedicated to learning and self-empowerment. Amazing, even in 2014. I had a very close relationship with the Cranston Public Library in Cranston, R.I. as a youngster. I would frequent it on a regular basis, borrowing books and VHS movies, and was even part of a young reader's group there. This early relationship is most likely the reason for my fascination with the mysterious Dewey decimal system and the physical joy I feel when I step into a library or a book store; the sheer amount of knowledge contained in those locations awe me.

Amount a year ago I was coaching volleyball at my old high school and realized I have never been inside the Warwick Public Library, a place I had driven by countless times over the years. At the time I was also interested in writing a pseudo-fictional account of the 1st Rhode Island Regiment's involvement in the Battle of Bunker Hill, and I was scouring Rhode Island libraries for sources. I hadn't used my card in so long that I needed to renew. Admittedly, I don't use the library often. I tend to buy my books now. I like my bookcases in my home with my books, and I like to annotate when I read. It is most likely that we will lose libraries soon, which is a marker of the failure of democracy. I wish there was a way to signify their importance in the digital age, but I can't for the life of me think of a reason why. Could you imagine the Boston library empty of all that knowledge, like a cobra without its venom?

Also, without libraries, my hot, redheaded librarian fantasy also fades away into the realm of impossible. I'll be a very sad man/boy the day that happens. Hopefully it never will.

Sean: That Leonard statement is very true.

Look, when I say South Florida has comic-like crimes I'm not kidding. It’s kind of like the land of misfit toys down there…if all the toys were doing lines of cocaine and buying M4 rifles.

It takes about two to four weeks to get your concealed weapons permit in Florida and that's mostly waiting time. You have to do a four-hour gun safety course, sign some paperwork, and then get finger printed and photographed. You mail this off—along with a $117 check—and in return you get an ID back with your picture and the right to carry a gun.

"Concealed" is a broad word in Florida. I could take my pistol, put it in a zip lock fanny pack, go to a restaurant, and then put the gun holding pack on the table while eating. I have seen that happen before! The man came in with his family, set the pack on the table, and downed chicken wings while watching the FSU game. He freely admitted to having the gun in the pack. This was all within the law.

I decided to get my permit when I was 21. I had a friend who gave me the card for a man named "Chuck" and said his course was only $50, which was $25 less than most places. Yes, my gun safety class was done on the cheap. I showed up at a private gun range and was welcomed in to a nicely outfitted trailer by a man in his fifties with grey hair and a big smile. He stuck out his hand, which I took in to mine and discovered he did not have a thumb. No thumb! Just a stump of what was left on his hand. Mind you in his other hand was a freshly opened can of beer. Chuck it turns out was a Vietnam vet who had been an ex this and ex that. He was an all-around nice guy and a guy who knew his guns.

I know what you are thinking. He got his thumb taken off in ‘Nam, right? Yeah, that didn't happen. Turns out it gotten taken off at the gun range years after ‘Nam. I don't know the details of what happened. Now, I am sitting down at a table with a thumb-less gun safety teacher who is drinking his third beer in less than an hour and the other student who was a woman in her fifties, too much make up, talked about her cats a lot, wore a t-shirt from the musical “Cats,” and was getting a gun permit because her ex beat her up and she wanted to shoot him.

I am going to skip over the part where the teacher pulled out a .45 from a briefcase randomly, the part where the woman showed pictures of her black and blue body post-beating, and the part where the teacher and the woman start hitting on one another. Now, remember when I said the course was four hours? This class was 89 minutes long. He skipped over everything, told some stories, and then gave me some paper saying, "This guy can carry gun safely." I left that trailer very...worried.

Well, after this whole permit-getting adventure, I decided to do the next big step in South Florida gun world and go to a gun show! A gun show looks like a comic book show. People dress up in weird outfits, the tables are filled with useless junk, and the one black guy at the show seems out of place. While waiting in line—yes, there was a long line to enter the gun show—the couple in front of me struck me as odd. Not because they were a good looking couple that was really well dressed, but because the man had a Carbine rifle slung over his back and the woman had a lovely Glock clipped to her belt.

Once I got inside, I spent a couple of hours strolling around looking at every kind of weapon; hand guns, shot guns, assault rifles, World War II weapons, swards, knifes, and ninja stars. I was with a friend who was slightly older than me and he told me I could buy a hand gun. I told him I couldn’t because I did not have a permit yet. He shrugged and said, "I have my permit. I can buy the gun right now and then we go to the parking lot and I sign the paper work over to you and you give me the money."

I asked if that was against the law. He smiled and replied, "Nope."

Yeah, that whole statement had some issues. Let's start with this: No background checks. In Florida, at this time at least, you could go to a gun show and buy a gun without the seller doing a background check as long as you had your permit. That seems like a huge flaw in the system. Second, if I was a felon who needed a gun badly I could pay some fool with a permit to buy the gun for me! Another huge flaw in the system. I decided not to buy a gun that day. Mostly because at one point a man in his seventies yanked a Glock .40 pistol from between his legs and asked if I wanted to buy it.

Florida is insane. I lived there for 10 years. Is it as bad as the 1980's during the cocaine wars? No, it's much better now, but that doesn't mean that crazy left.

For posts from The Boneyard, check out our full archive.

Writer's Bone Bloopers: Sean and Dan Can't Say Hello

Is it possible the outtakes from Writer’s Bone's intro video are better than the edited version?

No, no it is not. Sean and Dan are idiots.

However, enjoy watching Sean’s slow, bitter descent into testicular pain and Dan's giant head and his inability to keep a straight face for more than five seconds.

For posts from The Boneyard, check out our full archive.

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