Episodes

Kelly Corrigan is blunt but compassionate, serious and funny, a straight shooter with heart and soul who is deeply curious about how we can tackle the world’s biggest problems — while also noticing the smallest of details and delights. For this last episode before our holiday break, I’m delighted to be able to bring her to you. We can all learn how to be better interviewers from Kelly, and also better practitioners of curiosity and wonder. Kelly Corrigan has written four remarkable memoirs, each of which was a New York Times best seller. Between her podcast, Kelly Corrigan Wonders, and her PBS show, Tell Me More, she’s interviewed authors, actors, philanthropists, and leaders of all kinds — everyone from Katie Couric and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to Melinda Gates, Anne Lamott, Michael Lewis, Margaret Atwood, and famed human rights attorney Bryan Stevenson — the list goes on.

How did Lemonada grow from one podcast in 2019 to a network of nearly 50 shows in 2023? Today on the podcast, we’re excited to feature a conversation from Podcast Perspectives, produced by our friends at The Podglomerate (the podcast firm specialized in producing, distributing, and monetizing podcasts for high-profile clients including Freakonomics Radio, PBS, NPR stations, Harvard Business School, and more). Podcast Perspectives brings on audio leaders and industry executives to walk through the biggest news of the day and to go deep on topics that podcasters need to know - like IP and rights issues, ad tech, podcasting’s role in media at-large, and more. In today’s episode, Podglomerate founder/CEO Jeff Umbro sits down with Lemonada co-founder and CEO Jessica Cordova Kramer. Listen to more episodes of Podcast Perspectives and follow the podcast: https://listen.podglomerate.com/show/podcast-perspectives/

Do you speak publicly or moderate discussions live on stage? Or do you dream about spending more time speaking to live audiences? If so, this episode is for you. Anne Bogel of What Should I Read Next is one of the original book podcasters. She’s so beloved that she is frequently asked to host conversations in front of live audiences – which can feel like being poised on a knife edge between success and failure. As she says, “Good panel moderation is invisible if you do it well. But if you do it poorly, there's a whole room of disappointed people who won't hesitate to let you know.” In this hilarious episode from our archives, Anne shares her hard-won secrets moving between two worlds: the intimate, personal world of talking with readers to the big, fun, performance-driven world of public speaking. Plus, Anne offers book recommendations for giving holiday gifts to your favorite audio storytellers.

If you’ve ever worked on a serialized narrative podcast, at some point you may have gotten all tangled up. Did Miss Plum find the gun in the library in episode 1? Then why is that same dialogue here again in episode 4? Why was the victim found dead in episode 2 but somehow you forgot and he's alive and kicking three episodes later? Keeping a complicated narrative straight across multiple episodes is hard enough when you’re sure of all of the facts. When you’re investigating a compulsive liar, it’s almost impossible. That’s the situation showrunner Karen Given walked into when Dear Media hired her and reporter Sara Ganim to investigate a serial scammer for Believable: The Coco Berthmann Story. Coco claimed to have been sex-trafficked for years, after which she gained acclaim as an advocate for trafficking victims. She also claimed her therapist locked her in a basement, her mother killed her sister, and that she was dying of cancer. The more Given and Ganim investigated, the more i…

It's another stop on my quest to answer the question: What does it take to become a beloved audio storyteller? This time, the answer is that magical, almost impossible-to-define-quality: presence. My journey takes me to Nikki Boyer, the celebrated creator of Wondery's Dying for Sex and now, the co-host and executive producer of Near Death. Her magnetism is undeniable — so much so that it helped catapult Dying for Sex to win The Podcast Academy Podcast of the Year Award in 2021. But getting there took more than skill building. It took a personal transformation from being a self-admitted attention-seeking actress to a storyteller who now shines the spotlight on others. In this episode, we're looking at the inner, value-driven qualities of a great audio storyteller. (This episode includes a discussion of suicide, and conversation about the Death with Dignity (End of Life Option Act) and the dying process. Listen with care.)

Some scientists say we think 70,000 thoughts a day. And a lot of those aren’t all that great. This episode is about how to make a narrative podcast about the thoughts we obsess about, and the thoughts that sometimes run our lives. Weight for It’s Ronald Young, Jr. shows us how to bring our inner lives to life in a way that makes for compelling, transformative storytelling, and that might call attention to the things we need to change in our outer world — in this case, how we, and society, feel about being fat. In this episode, you’ll learn how Ronald transforms ideas into compelling, propulsive narratives; about the roles rhythm and music play in writing and performance; and about the one thing Ronald believes makes the difference between failure and success in audio storytelling — and storytelling of any kind.

There's this thing people say about podcasts. As if saying the earth is round, they say, "Podcasts are intimate." Because we listen to them by ourselves. In our ears. But we do that with a lot of things. How intimate is the ad you hear on hold? In truth, podcasts are only as intimate as we—the producers, hosts, and editors—strive to make them. Anna Sale, creator and host of the award-winning show Death, Sex & Money, is a master of making podcasts intimate. On this episode, Anna shares how she does it. In the course of breaking down the DS&M episode “Bells and Bills: The Price You Paid for Your Wedding,” Anna talks about asking blunt questions, carefully; the detailed ways she prepares people so they feel comfortable revealing their most personal stories; how to balance sharing highly personal conversations on an enormously public platform; and about making mistakes, repairing them, and having compassion for herself and for her guests and sources. And she talks about what she is mos…