Five Podcasts You Should Listen To
Podcasts are like great conversations, and it's my job to turn you into a podcast lover.
I’m in a podcast phase, which means I’m listening to at least one podcast a day — but not on walks, which was my favourite way to consume podcasts pre-pandemic. Maybe it’s because I’m travelling more and need a companion on bus trips and train rides. It’ll probably be this way over the next couple of months.
My favourite thing about the podcasts I’m discovering is that they’re always stories I won’t have dreamed of: stories of real people defying expectations. For example, when I started listening to this podcast about a 13-year-old boy who shot a woman through her jaw, I had no idea that it would end with his release several years later and that this release would be with her help. Or that the judge would sentence him to life imprisonment, which is putting it mildly. What makes a woman forgive her attacker in this way? What makes her willing to listen to him, to form a relationship with him? These stories don’t prescribe how to live; they share new ways of life and ask: what do you make of this? Increasingly, I’m less likely to judge anyone.
On a call with my sisters over the weekend, I acknowledged the role of oral storytelling in my writing career. I grew up listening keenly to adults tell stories. After my uncles travelled to Zamfara for his compulsory national youth service, he told strange tales of Almajiri and dusty streets. I remember one where he’d gotten dust in his eyes so bad he couldn’t open them. He went to the hospital for help, and they used something — a biro cover maybe — to open them (or scoop out the dirt). A woman arrived in the hospital right before this, assumed he was her husband and started administering ‘juju’ on him. Or maybe she didn’t think.
My uncle’s stories were impressively told. He recently retold a story of how my older siblings ‘jokingly’ wrote weird names (names they’d seen on television) on his bible or church jotter (without his knowledge). On Sunday, a child at his church ‘jokingly’ took the bible away and somehow, it ended up being announced as a lost and found item, with the preacher saying, ‘who is [weird names]? We have your book/bible,’ I howled at the evident pain in his voice even after all these years. A stranger would only find it funny if he told them; I’m not sure it’ll make for a good written story.
So podcasts, I realise, have that same power oral storytelling has. They can teach us how to be better humans and even better writers. I enjoy the conversational tone and how easy it is to dive into them without feeling lost. That’s the feeling I want when I enter into a story.
Another gripping podcast I listened to is this story of a guide dog who saved its owner on 9/11.
This is Love, and Criminal are top podcast recommendations, if not for anything but Phoebe’s beautiful voice.
This evening, I was in a conversation about religion and feminism (spun off this podcast that I’m featured in!), and Kawthar, one of the speakers, shared a reminder that most historical texts are written mainly by men, which explains a lot of gender bias. 99-year-old Betty Reid shares similar sentiments on this podcast on how history [especially black women’s] was dependent on people like her remembering.
When people die, and all that’s left of them is their letters, and people’s memories of them, a podcast comes in handy. I’ve been sharing ‘The Turning: The Sisters Who Left’ for a while, and that’s because I genuinely think it’s a masterpiece. Listen to this episode about Mother Theresa’s troubled life.
Be good. Until next time. ❤️