This Week in Podcasts is a weekly roundup of the goings-on in podcasting, from highlights to pitfalls to updates and more. Have updates or crowdfunding campaigns you want listed? Check here for directions on how to get in touch.
As a note, this will be the only This Week in Podcasts for August, as the rest of the month will be devoted to Podcast Movement and a vacation.
Highlights
Love and Luck
“Episode 94 – Break Free”
Release date: 7/30/19
Runtime: 14 minutes
Transcript
Love and Luck, a fiction podcast about two queer men falling in love and finding out they have magical abilities, tackles generational trauma in their 94th episode, “Break Free.” Don’t be intimidated by the episode count; at just about 15 minutes per episode, Love and Luck is easy and delightful to marathon. As Kane listens to recordings from his mother, he hears her explain that “Trauma leaves ghosts in people,” a simple statement that grows in truth and profundity the more you sit with it. While Love and Luck ultimately promises happy endings, hearing how tenderly and effectively it delves into heavy discussions like assault, the AIDS crisis, and family disapproval has given us some of its most beautiful moments.
Updates
Podcast Movement 2019 Begins Next Week!
Podcast Movement 2019 will be held from August 13th – August 16th in Orlando, Florida. Podcast Movement’s inaugural fiction track is curated by myself and my colleague Elena Fernández Collins. I will be participating in four panels, which you can see here. Tickets are still available for the event. Will I see you there? Let me know in a comment or a tweet!
Apple Rolls Out New Categories
Apple has rolled out its new categories for Apple Podcasts, which means creators should check whether or not they need to update their podcast’s categories. You can find the full list here.
Podcasters Sarah Golding and Fiona Thraille Launch a Script Competition for the London Podcast Festival
Winners of the Dashing Quirky Audio Fiction Script Writing Competition 2019 will have their scripts performed live at the 2019 London Podcast Festival. The contest is interested in “Brilliant fun scripts of comedy, tragedy, thrillers, horror, sci-fi, comedy, romance, LGBQT+, mystery, action and advennnntuuuure, AND MORE! and…did we mention comedy? We’d REALLY LOVE to see some comedy… Scripts with opportunity to create soundscapes and sound effects and atmosphere with live with foley.” You can find details on entry here.
Luminary Launches Tabloid: The Making of Ivanka Trump
Luminary-exclusive podcast Tabloid: The Making of Ivanka Trump is “a full-life inquiry into the making of Ivanka Trump, from child of very public 1980s divorce to teenage party girl and then her trophy-collecting father’s very favorite trophy.” It is certainly something that now exists.
LA Times Studio Launches Room 20
LA Times Studio, the LA Times’s studio behind Dirty John and Man in the Window have released Room 20, distributed by Wondery. Room 20 is “a new podcast that brings listeners on a search for the identity of an anonymous man who remained on life support for more than 15 years – and the truth behind how he ended up there. [. . .] The podcast unfolds as Faryon quits her job to investigate how the man, believed to be a Mexican migrant who was in a car crash while crossing the border, ended up in a California nursing home for nearly two decades. Using his accident report as a roadmap, Faryon travels across international borders and state lines as she discovers his true identity – landing at the doorstep of a woman in Ohio who has feared the worst for years.”
A RadioPublic embed of the podcast’s trailer, which can also be found here.
New Indie Fiction Podcast Sidequesting Announced
Sidequesting is an upcoming indie fiction podcast set to debut on September 1st, 2019. “Sidequesting follows Rion, a budding adventurer who’s willing to help out just about anyone (as long as they don’t have to deal with that scary wizard everyone keeps talking about). Each episode is about a new sidequest of Rion’s as they travel from town to town, meeting new people and doing new things. It’s a fun, light-hearted, and exciting adventure.”
A RadioPublic embed of the podcast’s trailer, which can also be found here.
Jad Abumrad Announces Dolly Parton’s America
Jad Abumrad of Radiolab and More Perfect announces Dolly Parton’s America, a none-part series coming this fall via WNYC Studios.
Night Vale Presents’s It Makes a Sound Returning for a Second Season
Fiction podcast It Makes a Sound will be returning for its second season “soon.” Its first season, which follows a woman trying to find the musician Wim Faros while caring for her mother, can be listened to in full now. It is, in my opinion, one of the most underrated podcasts from Night Vale Presents.
A RadioPublic embed of the podcast’s trailer, which can also be found here.
Discover Pods Lists Its Best Podcasts of 2019 So Far
Discover Pods has released its list of the best podcasts of the year so far, with industry professionals like Helen Zaltzman, Paul Bae, and myself.
PAX Cancels Controversial Sacred Symbols Live Podcast
As reported by Kotaku (CW: ableism, transphobia), the live Sacred Symbols podcast at this year’s Penny Arcade Expo, PAX West, assumedly due to the podcast and hosts’ distasteful, harmful jokes. PAX has not specified a reason for the event’s cancellation. Other speculation guesses the cancellation is due to the podcast’s fanbase versus the podcasters themselves. Reporter Ethan Gach writes:
The absence of an explanation has been filled with theories about why the podcast panel was cancelled, largely centering on Moriarty and Maldonado’s politics, but also the behaviors of their fanbases. Moriarty and Maldonado have also been accused of garnering fan bases with a propensity for harassing those who the two occasionally target on Twitter or in discussions on the podcast.
Campaigns
International Podcast Month Crowdfunding its 2019 Event
Annual event International Podcast Month is crowdfunding for 2019 via IndieGogo. The campaign has a flexible goal of $3500 USD and will be running until Agust 15th, 2019. The event hopes to “to cross-promote, celebrate each other, and share the love of podcasting with the world. In its inaugural year (2018), [International Podcast Month] crossed 10,000 Downloads and had over 70 different podcasts represented. This year [they are] aiming for larger content variety and even more representation of marginalized creators. For 2019, there will be Audio Drama/Fiction Minisodes, Creator Conversations, Non-Fiction Minisodes, RPG Actual-Play One-Shots, and the month-long blog.”
Fiction Podcast The Van Crowdfunding its First Two Seasons
Fiction podcast The Van is crowdfunding for its first two seasons via IndieGogo. The campaign has a flexible goal of $2500 USD and will be running until August 15th, 2019. The podcast is “an audio fiction series, a coming-of-age story about kids with superpowers. In a van. In the desert. It’s about poetry and emotions and finding your family.”
Fiction Podcast The Ghost in 3B Crowdfunding its Limited Run
Fiction podcast The Ghost in 3B is crowdfunding its limited-run series via IndieGogo. The campaign has a goal of $666 USD (nice) and will be running until August 16th, 2019. The podcast is “a horror-comedy podcast miniseries to release in the first three weeks of October. A sleepy apartment complex in the idyllic town of Dawn Springs has had a hard time keeping new renters since the shocking death of a tenant in 2017. Some say their spirit remains, possessing home electronics for a true 21st-century haunting. Unfortunately for the ghost, the newest tenant is aggressively tech illiterate.”
Wil Williams Writes 
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