Servant of Pod with Nick Quah

Welcome to Servant of Pod. To kick things off, Nick tries to build a (very) brief picture of where the podcast world is right now with the help of Team Coco’s Adam Sachs and Earios co-founder Priyanka Mattoo. He also gets advice on how to be a decent podcast host from a great podcast host: Death Sex and Money’s Anna Sale.

The Hilarious World of Depression, hosted by public radio veteran John Moe, was built around a kind of provocation: is depression funny? It takes the question to some of the most talented comedians, musicians, and performers in the world, going lengths to illustrate the universality of depression. Tragically, the show was cancelled earlier this week, but we’re airing this conversation because we believe in its mission and how it tried to de-stigmatize discussions around mental health. In this episode, Nick talks with Moe about his work, the origins of the show, and how the subject of mental health has now become central to his life.

Avery Trufelman’s Articles of Interest is a show that explores fundamental ideas about fashion: What is its significance? Why do we give it value? How does it materially impact the world? In this episode, Nick talks with Avery about her work, which combines storytelling with a strong and evolving worldview. He also pulls apart the latest news with Ashley Carman, senior reporter for The Verge.

Composers Ramtin Arablouei of NPR and Gimlet’s Haley Shaw join Nick to talk about scoring podcasts, their favorite podcast music, and how they got where they are in this relatively new field. And to go over the week’s big news stories, Nick calls up Caroline Crampton, Hot Pod’s UK writer.

Last night, we learned that Stitcher is being sold to SiriusXM in what is now the largest podcast deal to date. Hot Pod’s UK writer Caroline Crampton joins Nick to talk through the ramifications of that news, plus what’s been going on at WNYC.

As a veteran YouTuber, Hank Green is familiar with what happens when a quirky community starts seeing serious money, and grows up to become something else. This week, Nick talks to Green, who also makes podcasts, about whether he sees the same thing happening to podcasting.

The numbers for kid’s podcasts have risen noticeably during lockdown. Nick talks to Molly Bloom, of American Public Media’s Brains On and its spin-off Smash Boom Best, and Lindsay Patterson, co-creator of Tumble Media and co-chair of Kids Listen, about the genre’s appeal, history, and power. Plus, Kameel Stanley joins Nick to dive deeper into the recent industry conversations involving creators of color and intellectual property.

Slate's Slow Burn is one of the best podcast documentary series around, with each season driven forward by a simple framework: what was it like to live through a prominent historical event? For its fourth season, the team examines the rise of David Duke in the late '80s and early '90s, centering its attention on a major recent effort by a white supremacist to gain formal political power. Nick talks with Josh Levin, who hosts the season, and for whom the story of David Duke is a personal one.

The 2016 presidential election cycle left a deep mark on the podcast world. Few know this better than Jody Avirgan, who produced the popular FiveThirtyEight podcast through that cycle. Though he’s sitting the 2020 cycle out, opting instead to make This Day In Esoteric Political History with the Radiotopia network, Avirgan still has a lot to say about the way podcasts cover the elections. In this episode, Nick and Jody look back on the 2016 politics podcast explosion.

The job of a podcast editor can be hard to efficiently explain, because they do many little things in the service of one big thing: to make the show better for more people. They think about structure, emphasize tension, tighten language, and consider how the presentation of the story comes across to different types of people. Podcast editors — particularly for narrative nonfiction shows — used to be really hard to find, but this has changed a little bit over the past few years as the podcast industry grew in complexity. Nick talks with Catherine Saint Louis, who works at Neon Hum Media, about the role of the podcast editor, how she became one, and its increasing importance to the business.

Here’s something a little different. There’s this somewhat parodic but also very real assertion that pornography tends to be at the forefront of new technologies: high-speed internet video, virtual reality, that kind of thing. Podcasting isn’t a new technology at all, of course, but we were interested in the question: how does pornography — and erotica, which is different but related — intersect with the current boom in on-demand audio? This week, Nick spoke with three guests who come at this question from different angles: Caroline Spiegel, the CEO of Quinn, an audio erotica startup; Alex Klein, a representative from Pornhub, and Girl on the Net, an independent creator.

College football and Major League Baseball are hanging by a thread. A Floridian bubble is home to multiple sports leagues, all playing out experimental seasons. Stadiums and arenas are largely empty, filled in with artificial crowd noises and, in some cases, papered over with digital fans. Persisting within a pandemic, the sports world has never been stranger. So what is it like to make a daily sports podcast? This week, Nick spoke with Pablo Torre and Eve Troeh, the host and senior editorial producer of ESPN Daily, about the delicate balance involved in sports coverage during a most irregular time.