For this New Pods, we are bringing you some recommendations from some new writers. We’re looking forward to sharing some more from these writers on the Pod Bible website in the coming months. But for now, check out the new podcasts they think are worthy to grace your headphones…

Digging With Flo
Recommended by Isabella McDonnell, Xeno podcast

Digging with Flo is a new weekly podcast from NTS Radio hosted by the station’s Breakfast Show presenter, Flo Dill. Flo shares her love of gardening by interviewing guests as they do gardening tasks together on her allotment. Music artists, from rappers to post-punk musicians, get their hands dirty with mulch and compost, while listeners explore the roots of their creative lives. Being on Flo’s allotment transforms the interview environment. Metaphors powerfully emerge around ideas of creativity and cultivation, and listeners get deeper conversations that unveil the artists’ nurturing and surreptitious sides. Listen on your podcast app >>

Session Zero
Recommended by Joshua Watson, Freelance Video/Audio Editor

Session Zero is a role-playing podcast with a therapeutic twist. Hosted by Ben (an experienced game master) and Mike (a therapist and avid player) the show isn’t afraid to tackle topics like imposter syndrome or using role-playing as a form of therapy. That being said, it sometimes strays into the realm of a regular DnD podcast, focusing more on the game than therapy. With engaging hosts and a strong premise, I believe Session Zero just needs to more consistently focus on this unique idea to be a “natural twenty” of a podcast. Listen on your podcast app >>

Shiny Bob: The Devil’s Advocate
Recommended by Zainab Amer, Freelance Writer

Scotland during the late 1980s and early 90s was gripped with rumours of a conspiracy – that gay lawyers and judges were perverting the course of justice – and Shiny Bob had the “list” of their names. Award-winning journalist, Myles Bonnar, unravels a news story that threatened the Scottish legal system, and wiped out reputations along with it. His sensitive commentary provides a powerful listen, as well as insight into a time where homophobia and fear were used as cover-ups. It transpires that a master manipulator was using this fear as a diversion tactic from his own horrific crimes. Listen on your podcast app >>

Objeks & Tings
Recommended by Jelena Sofronijevic, EMPIRE LINES podcast and freelance journalist

With its first release on Windrush Day, Objeks & Tings is perfectly timed to celebrate 75 years of Caribbean people, culture, and their contributions in the UK. Each episode explores the story behind an object deeply cherished by an individual, from dutch pots to hot combs. But listeners also get to enjoy personal stories from Catherine and Lynda – the mother-daughter duo behind both the podcast and Museumand, The National Caribbean Heritage Museum. Their bickering over sound systems and who is doing the cooking gives the listener as much food for thought as their fascinating conversations about Black histories and contemporary experiences. Listen on your podcast app >>

The Louis Theroux Podcast
Recommended by Mimi Jones (they/them), Young City Laureate

When I tell you that I never expected to care so deeply about Shania Twain’s personal history, believe me. But after listening to Louis Theroux so gently exploring her past on his new podcast, I couldn’t help but get invested. Theroux is sitting down with some of the world’s most ‘fascinating figures’ and you can’t miss it. With all the same care and genuine interest from his documentaries, the podcast brings a mix of heart-wrenching, deep, and hilarious interviews. So far, seven celebs have taken the dive into their lives with Theroux and it looks like things will only get more interesting from here! Listen on Spotify >>

Perfect Pitch
Recommended by Sara Essa, Freelance Writer

Ever wondered what goes into creating the perfect advert you hear on the radio? If yes, then this could be the new release for you! Each episode, host Hunter March takes us through a fun game-show style programme. After hearing the brief from big brands such as Doritos, Indeed and Athletics Greens, two creatives battle it out by pitching their ideas for the perfect ad. Perfect Pitch is the perfect pod to learn from their ingenuity to perfect your next pitch. It’s the type of podcast I’d enjoy on a walk when I’m taking a midday break from work to re-energise, and I’m quickly adding it to my “need inspiration” playlist for those days I’m lacking creativity. Listen on your podcast app >>

Witch
Recommended by Katie Stokes, Freelance Producer

Following the hit 28ish Days Later, India Rakusen brings us another deeply feminist, investigative docuseries. Rakusen unravels what we think we know about witchcraft through lessons in history, science, self-discovery, and a gathering of witches – perfectly balancing the hard evidence against pure, unexplainable magic. The show captures the modern gravity and relevance of witch trials, taking us through Europe, Africa and the Americas (though disappointingly missing the prevalence of witchcraft around Asia). This is a personal, eye-opening, bewitching journey tempting the listener to question, could you be a witch? Listen on your podcast app >>

A Black History of Art Presents: A Shared Gaze
Recommended by J.A.Lovelock, Podcast Creator and Host

Want to know what’s happening in the world of Black artistry? Then tune in to A Shared Gaze. Hosted by Cambridge grad Alayo Akinkugbe this podcast is a conversation, between her and too often overlooked Black contemporary artists and creatives and their work. It introduces you to names and artwork that you have most likely never heard of but wish you did. This podcast is freshly minted and so brand new that only three episodes have so far been published. Listen in if only to savour Akinkugbe’s authoritative, dulcet tones. Listen on your podcast app >>

This Is Awkward
Recommended by Suze Cooper, Big Tent Media

In a world filled with pleasantries, This Is Awkward dives into the heart of difficult conversations. In the first episode, hosts Lyanne Nicholl and Kristy Macleod interview Cate Sevilla, author of How To Work Without Losing Your Mind. They explore giving and receiving feedback, and the balance between boundaries and authenticity at work. The series promises insights into those chats you would rather not have, from talking money with your partner to discussing embarrassing health issues. This is a fresh and empowering perspective on the impact of language and how our words shape our relationships.  Listen on your podcast app >>

History’s Secret Heroes
Recommended by Katherine Collins, Freelance Writer

History’s Secret Heroes is a brand new BBC podcast presented by the talented actress Helena Bonham Carter, and consists of ten 30 minute episodes. Each episode focuses on people throughout history who for whatever reason, have been overlooked. Examples of those include Bela Hazan who went undercover to fight the Nazis in WW2, as well as George Takei (Star Trek) who was a Japanese American imprisoned without trial during the same war. I have a lifelong love of history and am already learning so much from this podcast. Helena is a fantastic presenter. Listen on your podcast app >>

The Retrievals
Recommended by Oli Seymour, Producer 

The Retrievals takes us inside a fertility clinic at Yale, where a procedure is causing patients unbearable pain. We discover that this is due to a nurse stealing the facility’s fentanyl. Journalist Susan Burton takes us through the ensuing investigation and trial with sensitivity and tact,
examining how women are listened to when it comes to their pain – if they’re listened to at all. The Retrievals feels important to me. In the fast paced world of print media, this story might get lost, but the podcast takes the time to help victims’ voices be heard. Listen on your podcast app >>

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The post The best new podcasts of SUMMER 2023 appeared first on POD BIBLE.

When Burn It All Down started in 2017, what made the group decide that a podcast was the right medium for this particular discussion?

Jessica: It all initially started as a private DM group on Twitter put together by Shireen Ahmed. The point was initially and throughout to encourage each other’s work and to commiserate about being women in sports media, a very male-dominated field, but naturally turned to us discussing and debating issues at the intersection of sports and culture.

Shireen: A podcast was suggested by former co-host Julie DiCaro. She worked in radio and felt it would be a good fit. We all have very distinguished voices but live in different parts of the US and Canada. A podcast was something we could do remotely and from home. Plus, no one was offering us a T.V. show. 

How do you all feel podcasting has changed in the 3+ years you’ve been creating your program?

Jessica: Podcasting continues to grow as a medium. There is more diversity in sports podcasters than what we were seeing 3+ years ago. Burn It All Down recently joined a sports podcasting network, Blue Wire, which is not necessarily something we could have even conceived of 3 years ago, either that such a network would exist or that our very feminist, very pointed sports and culture podcast would have a place on such a network.

Shireen: The video and audio quality have improved hugely for those who do not have access to a studio (ergo: us). I know little about technology but I also appreciate Aaron (Jessica’s husband) advising us diligently to restart our computers.

How has the program itself changed over its lifetime?

Shireen: We took a break for August and recharged. We hadn’t had a break since we started. We are very committed to this show and love our team greatly. But getting a break was essential. Martin Kessler is our producer extraordinaire, along with Tressa Versteeg, who produces our interviews. We changed the format so the interviews are stand-alone and I think that works well. Shelby Weldon came on to do our social media and website roughly 18 months ago and has been a wizard. She has revamped our website, created marvelous social media posts and been on top of everything on our social media accounts. We are very lucky to have a team as talented as ours. We are all so beautiful and smart.

Jessica: The first major change was the co-hosts ourselves. Within the first few months of production, Julie DiCaro left BIAD to pursue other opportunities and we were very fortunate to add Dr. Amira Rose Davis to our co-host quintet. It’s hard to imagine the show without her at this point. We have also subtlety shifted the format over time, though the basic framework — a weekly podcast during which a combination of the co-hosts, whoever is on that week, talk about an issue or issues within sports, metaphorically burn things that week in sports that have made us angry or sad, uplift women and non-binary athletes and people in sports doing great work, and interviewing someone within the sports world with an interesting story to tell — has remained constant. But we added on “hot takes” (get it?) for special episodes that are more timely even than a weekly show can be or are more narrow in scope. Most recently, when we brought on our producer, Martin Kessler, during our break in August 2020, we decided to break the interview off into its own episode each week, and streamline the main episode so that it comes in as close to 45 minutes as we can get it. We wanted space for the interviews to breathe instead of cramming them into a show and we wanted to tighten up the conversations we were having each week.

What is it like creating a podcast as a team? Do you create episodes with each person assigned a task, or do you all participate in every aspect of the show?

Shireen: It was a lot of collaboration, discussion, and discussion in Slack. Google docs and calendar helped us strategize. The team got even stronger when Amira came on board. She recently got us hooked on Asana for project management software. We all have different ways of operating and that’s something we have had to adjust to and work out. There is a lot of trust and mutual respect. That’s the only way it can work.

Jessica: It can be challenging to create as a team but mainly, it’s very good and very rewarding. We are definitely better because there are five co-hosts. We each have our own expertise and experiences that we bring to the discussions and interviews, and that only serves to make what we do more well-rounded. As for each episode, every week, one co-host is in charge of the episode (this is on a rotating basis and based on each person’s availability that week). They are in charge of shepherding everyone participating in that week’s recording through the brainstorming process, leading the pre-production meeting, and hosting the episode itself. We all participate in interviews: contacting people, scheduling them, doing the interviews themselves. And our producers then do the editing to tighten all of this up and create a final product we all are proud of.

What is your relationship like with your producer/editor and how important are they to Burn It All Down?

Shireen: MARTIN KESSLER IS THE MOST TALENTED AND DEDICATED PRODUCER ON THE PLANET!

Jessica: For most of the life of the program, we were our own producers. We record every Sunday and the goal is a Tuesday turn around. Whichever person was the lead on that episode would write up editorial notes — where to cut audio, where to add bumper music, etc. — and we’d send it off to We Edit Podcasts, a service that would then, per the name, edit the podcast. Last year, we hired the talented Kinsey Clarke, who is now with Vogue’s podcast team, as our first-ever producer. We worked with her for a few months and we learned more about what a producer can do for us. In August, Martin Kessler came on as our senior producer and he has helped us tighten the show up, has shown us how important pre-production is (we were mainly relying on post-production changes up to this point), and has encouraged us to bring in outside audio to enhance the listening experience. Even more recently, we hired Tressa Versteeg to work with us on the interview episodes and she now edits those for us.

I think it’s safe to say that we have learned that producers and editors are incredibly important to putting out a quality product and for keeping us focused on track. I have always been proud of Burn It All Down but am more proud of what we are creating now than ever before. I know our producers are a large part of that.

In the past, podcasts had often been referred as a place for mostly white men to discuss sports like associate football or the NFL, and was not thought of as a medium welcoming to a diverse array of voices. How have you seen this change during your tenure as a show, and what do you hope your contribution to that change is?

Shireen: Our existence challenges that exact notion. We are redefining what Sports Talk can be. It can be anti-oppressive; it can be smart; it can be relevant; it can be funny; and it can include other people than white, cis het men.

Jessica: I second Shireen’s comments here. Our continued existence and success is our contribution — showing that you can put together a sports show where women are the co-hosts, where we almost exclusively interview women and non-binary folks, where we are explicitly feminist in our analysis. I think we are seeing more of this kind of work as time goes on and I like to think we have helped that along.

What is the relationship between Burn It All Down and the listeners? How do they factor in to each new episode you create?

Shireen: We get a lot of emails and suggestions- particularly about The Burn Pile. Some of them we try to incorporate, and we also take the interview suggestions into account. We love our listeners. We call them “Flamethrowers” and they have been so dedicated and invested since day one.

Jessica: We love our listeners. They are so passionate and dedicated. We have long had a Patreon and without the financial support of our patrons, what we do would be impossible. We try to use that platform to give them behind-the-scenes access to the production of the show, to us the hosts, to additional discussions you can’t find anywhere else, things of that nature. There’s little that can make my heart soar as high as it does as when someone tells me they listen and love the podcast because I know we wouldn’t be here without those people. We hope they understand that, too.

During the lockdown and the halting of live sports, how did you decide to go on and keep creating content, and what drove you to continue?

Jessica: Well, in short, we did it because for 3 years we have always done it. As my co-host, Lindsay Gibbs, has said before, Burn It All Down is the one truly consistent thing in our lives. I think I was the one to say that I worried we’d run out of topics to cover and things to burn, but I was proven wrong week after week. Of all the many things laid bare by COVID, the importance of sports to our society was one of them, and so we continued to have things to talk about even as live sports stopped.

We are human, too, though, so we did end up taking a month-long break in August 2020 — our first ever since we started. But that point, lots of sports had already returned in some form so we were back on the content train. 

Shireen (centre) and Jessica (far right) along with the other hosts of Burn It All Down. Photo by Michael T. Davis. 

Listen to Burn It All Down on Spotify, your podcast app or the Burn It All Down website. You can follow them on Twitter and Instagram. 

The post INTERVIEW // Burn It All Down appeared first on POD BIBLE.

There are so many topics we could all use a primer on, so starting with what’s interesting or valuable to you is key. For us, this week we wanted to learn a bit more about climate change and sustainability. We’re always on the lookout for podcasts that promote intersectionality (especially if they’re talking about something from a feminist perspective) which is how we found Mothers of Invention, “a podcast on feminist climate change solutions from (mostly) women around the world.”

Back for its third season, Mothers of Invention is hosted by former Irish president Mary Robinson, comedian Maeve Higgins, and producer Thimali Kodikara who welcome listeners in with ease. If you’re feeling intimidated by the weight of climate change as a topic, Mary, Maeve and Thimali’s chemistry will quickly make you feel welcome. Titles aside, these three individuals are here to learn and share with their listeners, a lesson we can all forget as podcasters when we’re discussing a theme we’re passionate about.

Along with our trio of hosts, Mothers of Invention offers us interviews with experts in climate change, from scientists and researchers to activists and politicians. These guests come from all over the world to talk about aspects of climate change that some listeners may have never considered before, like climate reparations to countries who are disproportionately impacted by increasingly devastating droughts, floods, and other extreme weather conditions.

A key aspect to building the sense of community within the programme is how listeners are encouraged to participate. Those tuning in at home are invited to record sounds from their lives and send them in to be featured. But we are also asked to participate and see ourselves in the hosts, as when Maeve and Thimali decide to write a letter to a local official about the dumping of waste into the Hudson River in New York. Here we can easily see ourselves in the discussion of two women who have possibly never written their local elected officials before, and are unsure where to start or how to be effective. With Mary offering insight into what an official is likely to read or respond to, our own anxieties are eased about making sure the issues important to us are being confronted by our local government. We, too, can write a letter about climate change, education, or any other topic that moves us. (And we should!)

To learn more about climate change and experience the atmosphere of Mothers of Invention for yourself, check out mothersofinvention.online. New episodes are available on Wednesdays through the website, Spotify, and everywhere you get your podcasts!

The post Knowledge is Power – Mothers of Invention appeared first on POD BIBLE.