The Ballad of a Hollywood Madam (and v More Podcasts Worth Trying)

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Happy Midweek, everyone. So yeah,Everything Everywhere All at Once was excellent. I doubtable it'south going to be a very long fourth dimension before I have another experience watching an older arthouse moviegoing crowd here in Idaho react to an extended butt-plug gag — the gasps! — and I'll always take Daniels to thank for that.

As e'er, tell me what you're listening to. Y'all tin can reach me at nicholas.quah@nymag.com or find me on Twitter. And hey, if you similar1.5x Speed, wrap this email in a corn husk and laissez passer it on.— Nick Quah

L.A., confidential.
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There was once a woman who rose to fame in the early '90s for operating a high-cease escort business that drew the patronage of the Los Angeles elite. Her name was Heidi Fleiss, and at the height of her power, she lived in a multimillion-dollar mansion (purchased from Michael Douglas, manifestly), co-owned a nightclub with the daughter of Peter Sellers, and threw lavish, star-studded parties. Simply her reign didn't terminal all that long. Fleiss's ascendance was built on a double cross, and within a few years of her rise, an onetime foe would orchestrate a series of events that turned her into the target of a sting operation and the subject of a national media circus. Fleiss went to jail, and subsequently her release, she stayed in Hollywood for a fourth dimension, living a life that was every bit as dramatic every bit what came before. It wasn't pretty.

Fleiss's ascension, fall, and afterlife is the discipline of a new Hollywood history serial past the writer Molly Lambert (previously of theNight Call podcast), who reads her as a kind of symbol for the collateral damage of America's puritanical relationship with sex, a double standard in which women are commonly made to unduly bear the consequences of their actions in a way that men rarely are.

Based on the first episode, the only one I've heard so far,HeidiWorld conducts itself as a largely straightforward historical accounting, with Lambert serving equally an active, opinionated narrator. The product also involves a adequately sizable cast giving voice to various characters beyond the Heidi Fleiss story, led by the extra Annie Hamilton, playing the titular madam. Those vocal performances serve as recreations of certain scenes and texts, standing in for the archival sound y'all'd typically expect of other sound documentaries of this sort. It's a move pulled fromY'all Must Retrieve This, which is just also given that Karina Longworth appears inHeidiWorld equally a guest alongside a who'south who of indie-flavored podcast and comedy types, including Jamie Loftus,Chapo Trap House's Felix Biederman, theHow Long Goneguys,Who? Weekly'due south Lindsey Weber, andSNL'sSarah Squirm.

The execution has been a little crude in exercise so far — Lambert's narration could be tighter, the script could be neater — just her treatment of Fleiss's story is intriguing. It fits neatly into the blended vibes of the '90s revival and a afterthought of women from the era that we seem to be bouncing around in these days.

Jack Ryan and Jack Reacher are two dissimilar people, apparently.
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Keep your scrunchies on, we're staying in the '90s.

At that place's a subset of the political-thriller film genre, borne from the '90s, that's perhaps best described as the ultimate dad movie. Assuming you're over 30 — and hither I'one thousand making a huge gauge about theone.5x Speed readership — you're probably familiar with these flicks: They tend to star Gene Hackman, Harrison Ford, Sean Connery, maybe Alec Baldwin; they sometimes feature brass-heavy orchestration that recalls Westward. M. Snuffy Walden's score fromThe Due west Wing; they ordinarily feature men dealing with high-stakes political situations that spill into violence and/or threaten the fate of the free globe; they can be surprisingly thinky for a popcorn engagement; they are exemplary weekend-afternoon cable watches. You know the kind:Patriot Games, The Hunt for Cerise October,Enemy of the Land,Clear and Nowadays Danger, and so on. As the maxim goes, they don't brand movies similar that anymore, for reasons that are partly structural (i.eastward., the collapse of the mid-budget moving-picture show) and office cultural (i.e., 9/11 changed the kinds of stories America would like to tell itself about itself).

Anyhow, films like these are the subject ofUnclear and Nowadays Danger, a relatively new independent chatcast by Jamelle Bouie and John Ganz. Both men in their 30s, they're on the younger side in terms of the generation who came upwardly with these films. But they however think these films with a nostalgic fondness, and now that they both write about politics as a profession — Bouie is a columnist for the New YorkTimes, Ganz is writing a book about the early '90s — they've decided to offset a podcast (as you do) exploring their shared interest in these films, how those movies reflected the times inside which they were fabricated, and looking past the nostalgia to assess the credo of those films within context. It's prime nerd-king shit.

I feel similar I've been hearing Bouie on podcasts for a very long time, through his appearances on theSlate Political Gabfest over the years or through his occasional guest spots talking movies onBare Check or talking about diverse historical ephemera onYous're Wrong About. (He too sporadically writes reviews of cereal for Serious Eats, and they are practiced.) I'thou less familiar with Ganz'southward work, just similar many freewheeling political writers of this era, he maintains a Substack, which I'one thousand finding interesting.Unclear and Present Danger is still really early in its life cycle, so it tin can exist pretty rough around the edges, but as with many niche podcasts, if the subject field matter is up your alley, the upstart awkwardness doesn't really matter.

You get a podcast! And you get a podcast!
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Oprah Winfrey has been so powerful, then famous, and and then rich for so long that her presence as an American cultural strength strikes me equally akin to the New York City skyline. Of form, Iwould think this, speaking as an individual who came of historic period during a time whenThe Oprah Winfrey Bear witnesswas already a staple on daytime television. Frankly, I'm understudied in all the ways in which her ascent to distinction was a revolution and how her influence continues to shape American culture to this very day.

EnterOprahdemics. Hosted by Kellie Carter Jackson and Leah Wright Rigueur, two historians who also happen to be great friends, this new Radiotopia podcast pitches itself every bit a longform report of the Oprah miracle — to understand "who she is, what she represents, and why she matters." The show'south construction speaks to its intent on depth: Each installment hooks onto a specific episode ofThe Oprah Winfrey Show and unpacks it beyond several layers of context. Worth noting: The testify is a spiritual sibling toThis Day in Esoteric Political History, another Radiotopia podcast that also features Jackson as a co-host. (Jody Avirgan, the creator and a co-host on that show, is the executive producer onOprahdemics.)

At this writing, in that location's only ane fullOprahdemic episode available, which dives into a 2011 episode in which Oprah and her Harpo Studios staff attempted to go vegan for a full week. It's a strong start. Here are just a fraction of the things you'll glean past the end of the episode: the public formulation of "healthy eating" in the early 2010s and its human relationship with privilege, capitalism, and race; Oprah'due south own human relationship with health and body paradigm over the class of her daytime career; the notion that the comedian Dick Gregory was the first major public figure known for his veganism; the importance of syndication to the development of Oprah'due south empire; and the crowd aesthetics of anOprah Winfrey Show taping. And that doesn't even cover half of it. All of which is to say, Jackson and Rigueur are able to pack a stunning amount of information and insight into a 45-minute chat that feels a lot brisker than that. It says a lot not only virtually their pedagogical strengths but also about the fun, lively chemistry of their friendship. (The bear witness is produced past Nina Earnest.)

1 thing I'll be curious to track with this show is how it balances celebration and critique.Oprahdemics is broadly reverent to its subject, which is admittedly justified. At the same time, at that place are aspects of the Oprah phenomenon that need scrutiny: Consider, for example, the function that Oprah played in the development of Mehmet Oz, who'south been heavily criticized for his questionable promotion of pseudoscience and who is now attempting to court Trump as office of his entrada to be the adjacent Republican senator of Pennsylvania. (And let's not even talk about Dr. Phil for the moment.) I'chiliad sure this team volition do merely fine on that front end, though. Later on all, truthful appreciation involves the consideration of a person in their full complication, warts and all.

Tights and fights.
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For some years in the early 2010s, at that place was a group of costumed civilians that patrolled the streets of Seattle. They considered themselves existent-life superheroes and called themselves the Pelting City Superhero Movement. At times, their contributions took the form of simple acts, similar helping boozer people find their way home. Other times, their work sounds broadly similar to mutual aid, like providing water for the unhoused and administering outset aid to the injured. Sometimes, they direct fought crime. Between their actions and presentation, the grouping drew media attention, which was typically bemused or mocking in tone just notwithstanding expanded their profile and brownie. And as 1 would expect, they besides had a very complicated relationship with formal police enforcement.

Yep, information technology'southward exactly likeKick-Ass, just as the first episode of this new limited-series podcast outlines, the phenomenon of ordinary people inspired by comic books to don a cape and independently fight crime has a fairly long lineage, one stretching dorsum decades. This is a miracle that'southward rich with weirdness and complication: On the one mitt, there'due south a mode in which one tin think about the existence of such individuals as perfectly understandable expressions of community response to outrageous systemic failures in state appliance. On the other hand, it takes a very specific kind of personality and psychology to express that response by literally modeling themselves subsequently superheroes.

This bundle of questions and curiosities is alive inThe Superhero Complex, which runs them through the specific tale of one of these Seattle superheroes: Phoenix Jones. A semiprofessional MMA fighter named Ben Fodor in existent life, Phoenix Jones was mayhap the virtually prominent figure in the Rain City Superhero Motion. He's also the one with the natural hook for a documentary: Once a media highlight for the move, his stature was ultimately cut to pieces when he was arrested for selling MDMA to hush-hush law officers.The Superhero Complex, then, presents itself equally a story of a rise and a fall.

"What exactly is existent in the earth of real-life superheroes?" asks David Weinberg, who hosts and writes the series. He'due south backed by Amalie Sortland and Caroline Thornham, who concord reporting and product duties. Weinberg is the Los Angeles–based producer responsible forWelcome to LA, perhaps i of my favorite nonfiction podcasts ever. Flashes of his signature style still come through the piece: a light melancholia in the cadence of his narration, razor-sharp attention to the details of things like chugalug buckles and beer bellies. Compared to the gentle sensitivity ofWelcome to LA, Weinberg'southward writing inThe Superhero Complex feels a lot wrier, a good deal more than sarcastic.

There are, yet, turns in the script that strike me equally more than clichéd than I would look from Weinberg: "Is he a shining example of a brave denizen fighting for justice?" he asks at one betoken in the pilot, referring to Phoenix Jones. "Or is he a misguided vigilante who used a superhero persona to disguise his own criminal activity?" And so again, every Curiosity movie has its formulaic beats, even if you plug Chloé Zhao in as director.

➽ This Twitter thread, in which a journalist accuses a podcast chosenSoldier of Misfortune of blatantly ripping off his reporting without attribution, made the rounds earlier this week. Stories like this have popped upwardly time and time again within the true-crime podcast scene in particular; this is just the latest. For the writers and journalists in the crowd, has something similar this happened to you before? Hit me up.

➽The Experiment, the sound mag serial co-produced by The Atlantic and WNYC Studios, is coming to an end on May 26. Co-ordinate to an internal WNYC memo, this development comes as a effect of The Atlantic deciding to motion its podcast strategy in "a new management." (Of notation: The magazine hired a new executive producer of audio, Claudine Ebeid, in December.) Staffers onThe Experiment volition be distributed across the residuum of WNYC Studios, which also attached another announcement to the memo: The publisher is bringing backMore Perfect, theRadiolab spinoff focused on the Supreme Courtroom, and it volition be rebooting the serial around Julia Longoria, who hostedThe Experiment.

➽ The New YorkTimes'However Processing returns with a new season tomorrow. Jenna Wortham is off this season, leaving Wesley Morris to lead the stretch with a series of guest co-hosts.

➽ Speaking of Morris and Wortham, they're set to be guests onPartners, Hrishikesh Hirway'south side project with Mailchimp about creative duos, which is dorsum with some other season today.

➽ Gimlet Media's caput of content, Lydia Polgreen, is leaving the Spotify division to return to the New YorkTimes, where she'll exist an "Opinion" columnist. The search is on for a new caput honcho. Speculate away almost what this means for the in one case-buzzy Gimlet Media. In related Spotify news, the Parcast Wedlock has reached a tentative deal with the Swedish sound streaming platform, averting a potential strike. As well, the company continues its attempt to make alive audio a meaningful component of its experience. Say, what happened to Clubhouse?

➽ Missed this last week, only plain iHeartMedia wants to build a "new NFT network for podcasts," whatever that means. "This is really pushing the envelope to pressure test the assumptions we have around what is IP, what is a host, and what is talent," Conal Byrne, president of iHeart'southward podcast division, told Axios. Like, what is time, human being? What are nation-states, actually? [Hits blunt.]

And that'due south a wrap for ane.5x Speed ! Hope you lot enjoyed it. Nosotros're dorsum next week, but in the meantime: Send podcast recommendations, feedback, or just say hi at nicholas.quah@vulture.com .

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The Ballad of a Hollywood Madam (and 5 More Podcasts to Try)