The Pod Piper

It's becoming a trope to note how long it's been since this newsletter has graced your inbox. So...instead I'll plug the survey one last time! Click here to reveal your suppressed rage at my sporadic publishing schedule  share a couple thoughts about the Pod Piper. And now, on to the shows. THE LIST 1. Wild  - "How Do I Love Somone? Starring Megan Tan" I listened to the whole first season of Wild since we last convened, which means this list of episodes could well just be my favorite installments of that show. It’s really that good. But this one stands above the rest for its intimate and gripping portrait of a pandemic love story. I don’t know that I’ve found something that touches on a serious subject in quite this way - with lightness that doesn’t extend to parody while also giving proper respect for the gravity of the situation. I still find myself thinking about this weeks after listening.  2. The Last Archive  - "The Word for Man Is Ishi&quo

Like a tulip emerges from a long winter, The Pod Piper returns! Perhaps also like a tulip (if you’re me), you forgot that The Pod Piper existed and only noticed because a neighbor complimented you on the newsletter that beautifully frames your inbox. OK fine, it’s not a perfect comparison, but at any rate I hope you’ll find something here to love. Oh, and the survey is still open if you’ve not had the pleasure. THE LIST 1. This Is Love  - " 'The show is coming back!' " You might think this pick as my number one episode is a credit to me having a small child, but I’m pretty confident my daughter has never heard of Blues Clues. This is just a delightful look into the actors behind the children’s show rooted in my own youth, and I’m not afraid to admit it. I just missed the age at which I might’ve had an earnest appreciation for the program, and so the biggest association I have with Blue is my summer camp counselors singing the Mail Time jingle at lunch when the

  Well it’s been what, five months or so? I suppose I could blame this lapse of a newsletter on the arrival of my second child, but truthfully I owe it more to my own lack of discipline and poor sleep habits. Which, to be fair, have ramped up considerably since August, but all things considered it's been a relatively easy go of it. I’ve changed the name of the google doc that held my attempts at crafting this newsletter from ‘September 2022?’ to ‘October 2022?’ to ‘November 2022?’ and didn’t even manage to ever name it ‘December 2022?’ I can honestly claim to have been distracted in the past month or so by my annual year-end music list , so I guess that's something. In the spirit of starting fresh (albeit 3 weeks into 2023), I’ve decided to empty my draft document of pods to review and deliver this to you in one epic edition of The Pod Piper. This is the sort of thing that would be ***exclusive bonus content*** if I followed any kind of paid subscription model. But that would r