A pair of perspicacious and perspicuous podcasts

Perspicacious, adj.: of acute mental vision or discernment: keen.

Perspicuous, adj.: plain to the understanding especially because of clarity and precision of presentation.

— Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Podcasts have been an important part of my media diet for a long time, but they became even more dear to me during the pandemic. Listening to a podcast is calming, it’s educational, and it’s just all-around enjoyable—especially when I pair it with a creative project of my own.

It’s heavenly to paint, animate, or design something while listening to a good podcast. It’s also very useful: having this auditory input while working serves to calm the squirrelly part of my neurodivergent brain that digs holes—I mean, wants to distract the rest of me. So, putting on a good podcast allows me to focus!

And, as a relative newcomer to multimedia, I appreciate how much I can learn about good storytelling from podcasts. Each series has its signature style; I have been plucking little tidbits from each one that I listen to and weaving it into my own approaches to storytelling.

Here are two that I’ve particularly enjoyed and learned from in the past year:

Ear Hustle, hosted by Nigel Poor and Earlonne Woods

This insightful podcast was founded at San Quentin State Prison in California’s Bay Area. It began as a means to tell the stories of people incarcerated at San Quentin—and as they enter their twelfth season, that is still a primary focus. And now, Ear Hustle also shares the experiences of people incarcerated at other facilities (including stories from prisons in Japan, Thailand, and Iran and prisons in Norway), people transitioning into life after incarceration, and other people impacted by the carceral system—including those with loved ones in prison, people who work at prisons, and more.

One of the core tenets of Ear Hustle is conveying the humanity of incarcerated people, rather than exclusively focusing on the hardships they face. The Ear Hustle team deftly avoids falling into toxic positivity by creating honest, emotive, and comprehensive stories that highlight the creativity and agency of incarcerated people, while not glossing over their struggles. The episode “Boots and Max” has it all: persistence and barriers, tenderness and brutality, commitment and uncertainty, and, of course, love and hate. With each topic they cover, Ear Hustle’s multifaceted and uncompromisingly human storytelling fosters greater empathy and understanding.

One sure path to greater understanding is humor. Some of my favorite episodes (and moments!) make me guffaw aloud. Since I share an office with my husband, I often end up being asked what’s so funny and replaying hilarious highlights for him, including this episode about the significance of mail—particularly 28:30-32:20, when Michael Williams receives a letter for someone else who shares his name. Content warning for mentions of white supremacy—but what we enjoyed so much was the scheme to take advantage of white supremacists!

Ear Hustle co-founder and sound designer Antwan “Banks” Williams created the illustrations for each episode for the first nine seasons. Pictured is a self portrait from the day he was released.

Antwan is the creator of the podcast’s intro song and signature “sound collages,” layered ambient sounds from the environment of San Quentin. Now, in addition to working for Ear Hustle, he’s a recording artist and educator.

Aside from being informative and enjoyable to listen to, Ear Hustle has also taught me a LOT about successful audio storytelling—and is informing a story I am working on about an organization that supports the development of incarcerated youth at a facility in Oregon. (Shoutout to Ezequiel for recommending this podcast to me!)

I could go on for a while about the tricks and lessons I’ve gleaned from Ear Hustle (and I did during my capstone defense for my master’s degree!), but I don’t want to delay your listening to this podcast much longer. I’ll just give two examples. First, the sound collages. These are created by Ear Hustle co-founder Antwan Williams, who also did the illustrations for each episode for the first nine seasons (see inset). Antwan’s sound collages are layered with various ambient sounds from the environment of San Quentin. They’re atmospheric, rhythmic, and wonderfully artistic. It will take me a long time to get on Antwan’s level, but I am certainly inspired to try!

Last but not at all least: the banter. This is one of my absolute favorite parts of Ear Hustle AND it’s one of my absolute favorite parts of hanging out with the young men I’ve been filming and volunteering with at that organization I mentioned. (Another thing that makes me crack up at my desk is listening to audio I’ve collected from moments when they’re busting each other’s chops!)

Ambient banter is such a wonderful way to convey the atmosphere of a gathering, to characterize the people in the story, and to demonstrate that, no matter the circumstances, people have an impressive ability to create community and share humor. So, without further ado, I recommend listening to the first 10 seconds of Ear Hustle’s first-ever episode for the banter—and staying for the rest of this hilarious, haunting, and utterly human story about cell-mates (otherwise known as cellies). Enjoy!

Ologies, hosted by Alie Ward

This podcast covers scientific and academic topics in an utterly delightful manner. Host and reporter Alie Ward not only selects great speakers who are experts in their field, but also, she injects so much enthusiasm, energy, and humor into each episode that she even makes colonoscopies fun!

I rediscovered Ologies this spring thanks to an Instagram post heralding the episode “Field Trip: My Butt, A Colonoscopy Ride-Along.” (As a number of reviewers note, some of the best episodes are about the least appealing and/or most obscure topics!) Like Ear Hustle, Ologies does not shy away from sharing the full breadth of life, and the colonoscopy episode was a wonderful combination of hilarious, informative, and poignant. The latter is because host Alie’s father passed away from colon cancer. Her willingness to share hard, personal truths makes the podcast so human and easy to connect with.

Another key part of Alie’s approach is to “ask smart people stupid questions,” which… well, I can’t say that I’ve ever heard her ask a stupid question. I will admit, I was surprised that she wasn’t familiar with Chacos (rugged outdoor sandals), but at least her interview subject educated her, and it led to a lovely aside about Choco-Tacos! That’s from the awesome Pelicanology episode. More to the point: Alie asks awesome questions and is a personable and skillful interviewer.

I’m a nerd, not a scientist, but I will say that each episode has the requisite complexity to be compelling for newbies and experts alike. Alie covers everything from the basics, including the origin of the name of a field of study (its etymology), to the job duties of people engaged in that field, plus a whole host of other, well-researched, nuanced questions. The sheer breadth and depth is breath-taking, and yet it is done in such an accessible and engrossing manner that it feels easy to learn about the topic at hand.

Some episodes even intersect with my areas of expertise, including “Curiology,” which is about emojis. As a social media marketer, I am an avid user of Emojipedia AND SHE INTERVIEWED ITS FOUNDER, Jeremy Burge, and its editor-in-chief, Keith Broni, as well as emoji designer Jennifer Daniel. They spent a lot of time discussing emoji-etymology, which was fascinating both for me and for my linguistics-student-turned-translator husband. Collectively, we give that episode four thumbs up, plus two grinning faces with big eyes.

I also LOVED the episode about neuroendocrinology, which focused on the myriad, fascinating ways in which hormones, brains, sex, and gender interact. For that episode, Alie Ward interviewed Dr. Daniel Pfau, a queer and nonbinary scientist who is in part driven by the fact that not enough is known (yet) about this subject.

As evidenced by that episode, as well as the awesome episode “Black American Magirology (food, race, and culture)” with Dr. Psyche Williams-Forson, Alie Ward is thoughtful in selecting her subjects. She prioritizes people whose lived experience AND professional expertise intersect to make them that much more insightful on the featured topic. That’s good journalism, period, and serves as an important reminder to all of us who work in the field.

Listening to Ologies has also encouraged me to utilize my enthusiasm and quirks as a storyteller, like Alie does! Plus, her episodes about ADHD are not only informative, but also wonderfully affirming. I’ve gone through periods in my life where I tried to sand off all those “rough edges” otherwise known as neurodivergence. But sanding also diminishes the size of the newly-smoothed object, and I’ve realized I do not need to make myself smaller or more palatable. Ologies reaffirms this conclusion for me. Through her selection of stories and the style in which she tells them, Alie reminds us that being unabashedly who we are is the best way to move through the world.

So thanks, Podcast-Dad-Ward!

And, dear readers, happy listening!

PS: The Oreamnology (mountain goats) episode inspired me to create the comic below, which is based on my experiences hiking the Enchantments near Leavenworth, WA. It’s also featured in my illustration portfolio!

Click image to enlarge.