CNN's Was James Brown Murdered : Spotify Mic Check On Racism: Talkhouse's New Podcasts: Hard Fork On Musk

  CNN Releases Podcast On James Brown's Death

  CNN Audio premieres The James Brown Mystery today – a new eight-episode, limited-series podcast investigating the suspicious death of legendary musician, James Brown.

 A strange phone call reveals a question from the grave – was The Godfather of Soul murdered? Almost 40 years ago, a songwriter found herself in musician James Brown’s inner circle. The relationship would nearly destroy her career. Decades later, she’s trying to solve the mystery of James Brown's death...and her own life. When she makes a call to CNN Reporter Thomas Lake, the two stumble into a world of secrets, intimidation, and suspected foul play.

The James Brown Mystery is the first podcast hosted and reported by Lake, who in 2019 published his exclusive CNN investigative series, Lost in the Woods with James Brown’s Ghost, exploring unanswered questions around the singer’s death and the many people still calling for an autopsy and criminal investigation. The James Brown Mystery expands upon Lake’s reporting and covers Brown’s complicated past, the mysterious death of his third wife, and the biggest questions surrounding his demise.

The first two episodes are available now to listen:

 Episode 1, The Circus Singer: In 2017, CNN reporter Thomas Lake receives a phone call from a circus singer who tells a wild, hard-to-believe story: James Brown didn’t die of natural causes in 2006; instead the Godfather of Soul was murdered. After months of calls from the circus singer, Lake decides to fly to Chicago to meet Jacque Hollander in person. There Jacque proves her connection to James Brown and shows Lake a videotape of a polygraph test she took in 1995 that was administered by a former FBI agent.Episode 2, Daffodils: Still struggling to wrap his mind around the circus singer’s story, Thomas Lake investigates Jacque Hollander’s role in the Atlanta music scene, learns how she first met James Brown and his third wife Adrienne, and finds out how Jacque became part of Brown’s inner circle. Jacque in turn reveals the events of one harrowing night she spent with James Brown in 1988, the night her life changed forever.

The James Brown Mystery will debut new episodes every Friday and will be available to listen on CNN Audio or wherever you get your podcasts.

 Thomas Lake is a reporter for CNN and the author of Unprecedented: The Election That Changed Everything. Before covering the 2016 presidential election, he wrote about bourbon thieves, B.B. King's funeral, and a buzzer-beating shot in a college basketball game that actually saved people from a tornado.

 Spotify: Mic Check Interviews Author About Racism

 Spotify and Lea Palmieri debuted the latest episode of “Spotify: Mic Check,” featuring an interview with New York Times bestselling author and host of Spotify and Higher Ground’s “The Sum of Us”, Heather McGee. Coming off the success of her book, The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together, Heather joined the audio world in late July 2022 to continue her journey across the U.S., telling stories of people coming together to create change in their communities. 

In Thursday’s episode, Heather joined Lea to discuss her experience creating “The Sum of Us”, her transition from author to host, and why she thinks it feels like we can’t have nice things in America and what it will take to fix that. You can check out the full episode here available now, only on Spotify. 

Some notable moments from today’s episode include: 

• 03:06 - Heather talks about how her book The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together inspired her to create a podcast 
• “I wanted to hit the road again and really just focus on this idea of people coming together in communities, across their differences, really rebuilding the kind of America that our people deserve. And I brought this idea to Higher Ground, the Obamas’ production company and Spotify. And they were excited about it, too. So I've spent the last nine months on the road finding new stories of people coming together to win in their communities.” 
• 05:25 - Heather shares what she found going from Author to Podcaster 
• “You know, the first part was that I really kind of tossed the book up in the air and decided the “Sum of Us” podcast is not an adaptation of the book The Sum of Us, it's sort of a spinoff, a takeoff, another journey that's guided by the same principles that need to come together across lines of race. The way that racism has a cost for everyone, a real inquiry into what builds empathy and solidarity. Those themes are the same in the book and in the podcast, but the stories are mostly completely new and different.”
• 10:35 - Heather shares what it took behind the scenes to travel across the country and produce a meaningful story
• “There were just a team of producers, of engineers, of researchers. There were usually three or four people on the road helping to wrangle sources and scout locations and obviously be the ones holding the mics and making sure that everything sounded good. And so the series was really created by me at the very highest level. But it has been a real labor of love of so many people.” 

Coming off the success of her New York Times best-selling book, The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together, author Heather McGhee is now joining the audio world. With her new podcast under the same name, The Sum of Us, Heather continues her journey across the U.S., telling stories of people coming together to create change in their communities. Heather joins us on Spotify: Mic Check to explain why she thinks it feels like we can't have nice things in America and what it will take to fix that.

 

Talkhouse Releases Two New Podcasts

This week, Talkhouse continues its busy season of programming to date with the launch of two brand-new podcasts created and hosted by Santigold (Noble Champions) and Kimbra (Playing With Fire). 

Released on October 31st, the first episode of Santigold's Noble Champions includes a roundtable talk about art and spirituality with Yasiin Bey and Sanford Biggers. A modern day salon, each installment of the weekly series will see host and creator Santigold sit down with some of today's leading artists, authors, activists and progressive thinkers who stand up, stick up and speak up for important causes, from Olivia Wilde and Questlove to Angela Yee, Bun B, Dan Kovalik, Idris Elba, Mary Anais Heglar, Rebecca Walker, Resmaa Menakem, Saul Williams and Tunde Adebimpe. 

Inspired by the artist Kandinsky, when he said that periods during which art has no noble champions are ones of retrogression, these intimate no-holds-barred conversations are where Santigold and her fellow "champions" try to make some sense out of our world, to push culture forward.
 

NYT Hard Fork On Musk & Twitter's Weird Future

“Hard Fork,” a new podcast from The New York Times, explores stories from the wild frontier of tech and the future that’s already here.

From the Metaverse to Generative A.I., veteran tech journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton discuss the latest stories in the world of tech and business with curiosity and humor, bringing listeners news, interviews and analysis from the bleeding edge. 

“The tech industry we’ve both covered for more than a decade is transforming into something new and strange, and this show is our way of trying to understand what’s happening and explain it to listeners,” said Roose and Newton. “It’s a smart, casual conversation that tells you where tech and business are going without overwhelming you — and might even give you some reasons for hope.”

The first four episodes of “Hard Fork” are out now. 

In the recently released episode, the hosts discuss Elon Musk and Twitter’s weird new future with New York Times tech reporter Kate Conger.