In addition, there is a new tool for indie podcasters for website creation, which is a key step for growth.
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Next Question with Katie Couric
Katie Couric Media and iHeartPodcasts’ series, Next Question with Katie Couric, has returned for its 11th Season.
Award-winning journalist Katie Couric is back to ask the tough questions, filter out the chaos, and focus on the headlines that matter. Guests include the Meiselas Brothers, former Rep. Adam Kinzinger, Anthony Scaramucci, Laverne Cox, Rep. Jasmine Crockett and more.
In the first episode, Katie Couric sits down with journalist, documentary filmmaker, and best-selling author Chris Whipple, whose latest book Uncharted captures the human drama behind the 2024 election. Together, they pull back the curtain on how loyalty, fear, and misjudgment shaped the race—and why no one stopped Joe Biden from running again.
Katie Couric does have one of the better celebrity podcasts. It's refreshing to have an actual journalist asking questions these days.
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Death County, PA
Death County, PA premiered April 14 on Wondery+ and will premiere on April 28 for all of us non-exclusive types. This new true-crime show delves into the shocking and mysterious deaths of dozens of inmates in the Dauphin County Prison (DCP) in Pennsylvania, uncovering a web of corruption, abuse, and systemic failures. More info and the series trailer here.
Local PennLive journalist and host Josh Vaughn first began reporting on suspicious deaths at DCP years ago and in the podcast series, links up with Harrisburg City Councilman Lamont Jones, who spent time in the prison and is now fighting corruption from the outside after his family member becomes one of DCP’s many victims.
Listeners are taken on a journey through harrowing anecdotes and never-before-released investigative details, unpacking just how these deaths were covered up by prison authorities and the local government. This cabal includes the county coroner Graham Hetrick, a larger-than-life figure who found fame with a reality TV show and boasts the questionable tagline, “I speak for the dead.”
The show confronts listeners with the question: what does our treatment of the most marginalized people say about us?
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Go-Boy!
In the brutal world of mid-century Canadian prisons, Roger Caron learned to survive by becoming tougher than the system itself. iHeartPodcasts’ Go-Boy! follows his journey from a 16-year-old inmate to a man who escapes prison, robs banks, and ends up in police custody time and time again. His cycle of self-destruction is only broken when he discovers writing.
After publishing his first book, Roger becomes a best-selling author and a sought-after speaker. But as the spotlight fades, he faces a new battle: confronting his true self. Tune in on Wednesdays to hear more from this series about self-worth, redemption, and the struggle to break free from the past.
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Podsites adds features for indie podcasters
Here's a quick update from the team at DeepCast that can support independent podcasters. Deepcast has just rolled out a major expansion of Podsites—its one-click website builder for podcasters—adding premium features like custom domains, embedded media, and sleek new themes.
"It’s designed to give podcasters a fully branded, SEO-ready site without the usual tech headache," notes Faybeo'n Mickens, Senior Manager, Marketing.
Open To Debate travels to Mars
Trump said in his State of the Union that “we will pursue our Manifest
Destiny into the stars, launching American astronauts to plant the Stars and
Stripes on the planet Mars,” throwing down the gauntlet for the next space
race. Is that a goal worth pursuing?
In the new episode of the Open to Debate podcast, two experts
debate the question "Should the U.S. Prioritize Settling Mars?" Ars Technica
space editor Eric Berger argues Yes. Science writer Shannon Stirone argues
No. They debate the logistics and economics, whether Earth will
become uninhabitable, the future of private space travel, and the Elon of it
all.
Here are four short highlights, find the full episode at the bottom.
Eric Berger (Yes):
How much of a redemptive story for a species would it be if we could take on another world, a dry and desolate place like Mars, and renew conditions for life there? That is what is possible in the future by taking the first steps towards space settlement today…So I choose to expand humanity rather than chaining us to a single world.
Shannon Stirone (No):
The amount of money it would take to build any kind of infrastructure on Mars––whether that's for three humans or for a whole settlement of people–– is trillions and trillions of dollars. And it is absurd that we would even entertain the idea of investing that many resources into a world that is so deadly when we have a perfectly wonderful planet here that desperately needs our help. We need help living here.
Eric Berger (Yes):
I realize that Elon Musk is a pretty toxic person to a lot of people. They don't like what he's doing with the US government. They don't like the things he says and the way he behaves. I completely understand that and am sympathetic toward that. But the reality is that over the last 20 years, we have seen a revolution in reusable space flight , and we are potentially on the cusp of having reusable, large reusable rockets that can put lots of payload into orbit. And so I think the interesting thing, and I think the reason why this debate is valuable to have right now is that yes, starships are blowing up, but at some point they're going to stop blowing up and they're going to start flying into orbit pretty frequently.
Shannon Stirone (No):
If you talk to a psychologist about our obsession with becoming interplanetary, there really is ultimately this denial of death and this resistance to our limits as being humans. And I think that that's a totally natural thing to struggle with. But no matter how far out you look, there are endings. Things end. And I think that that is ultimately what makes life meaningful and beautiful as human beings that have managed to live on this planet. Resisting against that fights back at our very nature of humanity and forces us to look elsewhere for distractions instead of thinking about what actually really matters here.
Listen or watch the entire episode at Opentodebate.org, YouTube, WNYC, Apple Podcasts, or any other podcast platform.
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What We Spend premieres
Audacy announced the launch of What We Spend, an original weekly series hosted by Courtney Harrell that explores the financial habits of people from a wide range of backgrounds and economic standings via audio diaries and interviews.
On What We Spend, people from across the country and the financial spectrum open their wallets—and their lives—to tell listeners everything: what they make, what they want, and, for one week, what they spend. In accompanying interviews, the guests discuss everything the week of spending brought up for them.
Guests include Kellie, a med spa director feeling trapped by student loan debt; Michael, a teacher and single dad raising twins; Jay, a religious studies professor worried about the cost of being a parent and raising kids; Cherry, a recently retired social worker concerned about her retirement plans; Maxine, a long haul trucker who no longer makes enough to afford her housing; and Olivia, an actress navigating the uncertainty of life after the end of her Broadway show.
Perhaps, What We Spend could spend time with Elon Musk and show him that firing entire departments of people is not the way to save money, especially if you still need those services, like weather forecasting, nuclear weapons control, meat inspection, and coal ash regulation.
What We Spend is written and hosted by Courtney Harrell an award-winning writer and Senior Producer at Audacy’s Pineapple Street Studios. She has made more than a dozen series, including The Competition, the Peabody-nominated series Running from COPS, and Dupont finalist 9/12.
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