This Week’s Indie Star: Freddy Cruz
Freddy Cruz of Speke Podcasting in Houston was a popular radio DJ who transitioned into being a successful podcaster and producer. His live podcasting events included Speke Fest 2025: Night of the Living Pod, a live event to help end the zombie podcast plague. His next event is in October, called Illuminate. Finally, Freddy produced two of our feature podcasts in this weekly edition!
Beyond The Brain
What’s This Podcast About: Beyond the Brain is the official podcast of the Texas Neurological Society (TNS) and features real conversations with clinicians, residents, fellows, and patient advocates about clinical advances, healthcare policy in Austin and Washington, D.C., and the business of running a modern medical practice. Each episode features neurologists, residents, fellows, advanced practice providers, and patient advocates tackling the issues that matter most: clinical advances, telehealth, mobile stroke care, reimbursement, practice management, policy at the state and federal level.
Who Will Enjoy This Podcast: Anyone concerned about their brain health, which should be all of us. Neurology nerds will be all over this.
Creator/Host: Dr. Eddie Patton Jr. is a board-certified neurologist and clinical assistant professor based in Houston, Texas. He specializes in neuromuscular disorders, stroke care, and general neurological conditions, and practices at UTHealth Houston Neurosciences. The Texas Neurological Society (TNS) developed the show.
What I love about the show: Dr. Patton doesn’t act like a doctor. He’s plainspoken, fun, and always interesting. His topics are timely, and his interviews are fascinating.
Recommended Episode to start listening with: June 11, 2026 — Mobile Stroke Units: Bringing the ER to You. Every minute after a stroke, two million brain cells die — and mobile stroke units are racing to close that gap. Stroke pioneer Dr. James Grotta joined host Dr. Eddie Patton to break down how these “emergency rooms on wheels” are transforming acute stroke care in Texas and beyond, from the science of clot-busting drugs to the legislative battles required to fund and sustain them.
Let’s Talk About Your Breasts Podcast
What’s This Podcast About: Let’s Talk About Your Breasts by The Rose Houston is a dedicated breast health and breast cancer podcast featuring survivor stories, local Houston healthcare advocates, and medical insights. Other relevant local episodes include the CanCare Podcast, which features interviews with Houston-area cancer survivors and prominent local figures.
Who Will Enjoy This Podcast: Just as the subtitle states: cancer survivors, those battling breast cancer, doctors, and the healthcare community.
Creator/Host: CEO and co-founder Dorothy Gibbons is the co-founder and CEO of The Rose Breast Center of Excellence, a high-volume mammography and breast healthcare nonprofit in Southeast Texas.
What I love about the show: First, Dorothy Gibbons. Her commitment to helping others via The Rose Breast Center of Excellence and the podcast is commendable. Second, it’s heartwarming to hear tales of women beating breast cancer and the strides made in this area.
Recommended Episode to start listening with: Uninsured but Not Alone: A Woman’s Gratitude for The Rose — Look, the U.S. is the only developed nation with healthcare coverage for all. In this episode, we heard from Judy Pareya, a breast cancer survivor and dedicated volunteer at The Rose.
She joined Dorothy to share her powerful story and emphasize the life-saving importance of early detection. Judy’s experience underscores The Rose's vital role in providing care for uninsured women.
Since surviving her battle with breast cancer more than twenty years ago, Judy has been actively involved in raising funds for The Rose through the annual Shrimp Boil. Her efforts help The Rose continue its mission to serve uninsured patients across forty-three counties in Southeast Texas.
Shofar So Good
What’s This Podcast About: Let’s let creator/host Kate Mishkin explain: “It’s an audio documentary about my quest to unearth my Jewish roots by diving head-first into life’s trickiest questions.”
Who Will Enjoy This Podcast: Anyone who loves captivating storytelling; people on a religious journey; people searching for their Jewish roots; family historians
Creator/Host: Kate Mishkin is a Los Angeles-based journalist/podcaster/podcast producer.
What I love about the show: It’s no surprise that Kate Mishkin is such a captivating narrator. Not simply because it’s her life, but also because she is a born storyteller. You’ll love the characters you meet in the episodes, and Mishkin allows listeners to tag along as the audience in her inner voice. Kind of like the podcasting version of Inside Out.
Recommended Episode to start listening with: January 22, 2025 — EPISODE 1: Shabbat, So Good! — “Growing up, many of my friends’ families had Shabbat dinners. It wasn’t a tradition in my house, but I’ve always liked the idea of slowing down and sharing a communal meal after a long week. But I’ve also found it incredibly daunting.”
Kate Mishkin starts strong in this pilot episode, calling on two rabbis—one who sees Shabbat as a slowing of time, and one who sees it as an opening of space.
Kate announces: “We’re back for Season 2! This time, the show’s distributed by My Jewish Learning and will focus less on my personal journey and more on dissecting Jewish rituals. The show’s DNA remains the same — this is an audio documentary-style exploration of identity with music by my mom, Nan Schwartz, and interviews with rabbis who keep telling me they ‘didn’t expect to go there.’”
Ex Appeal
What’s This Podcast About: The Ex Appeal Podcast is a relationship and interview show hosted by Los Angeles-based actor and writer Miriam Katz, where she sets out to interview every single person she has ever had a romantic connection with. The host revisits her romantic past to seek closure, examine emotional blind spots, and explore the nature of human intimacy. The interviews actually span her entire life, featuring unconventional subjects such as a childhood crush from a fifth-grade pizza date, an orthodox rabbi, a stripper, and a former partner facing a terminal illness.
Who Will Enjoy This Podcast: Women, high achievers, entertainers, people with an ear for fascinating conversation, and anyone curious about intimacy.
Creator/Host: Miriam Katz is an actor, improviser, and writer with a background in journalism and curating for institutions like MoMA, PS1, and The Kitchen. She also works professionally as a public speaking coach. Least you think she's another vain actor, Katz volunteers with hospice patients.
What I love about the show: The show mixes comedy, vulnerability, and raw personal storytelling. Too often, celebrities and would-be celebrities share to shock and get attention. Not done here. Miriam Katz enables us to use her life as a cipher for ours, sizing up what she does against what we’ve done. Her frankness and candor on sex, the disarray of sexual orientation and proclivities, and her understanding that we are who we are at a specific time in our lives and perhaps someone different later on propel the episodes forward with a faster-than-thought acceleration.
Recommended Episode to start listening with: I’m Also Hella Queer — Hooking Up with a Stripper Hottie — Miriam Katz interviews dancer Noël about their sexy encounter in a strip club, the healing power of sex work, and re-awakening sensuality. Before that, Miriam does a mini interview with her friend Danielle about the mostly hetero host’s strong attraction to women, as well as the effect of parenting on sexual orientation. Christians beware. This episode will puncture your black/white POV on sexuality.
Creative Adventures
What’s This Podcast About: Steve Xoh has a Substack newsletter there. In fact, the number of people with newsletters could one day surpass the number of people with podcasts! He describes his newsletter/podcast as an opportunity to offer Steve therapy. “… It is also a window into my world for those who are interested in the kind of things that I think about. And if reading isn’t your thing, I produce a lovely podcast edition of each Substack which you can listen to here or on your favorite podcast players. And whilst the podcast and the Substack are based on the same themes, they are subtly different to each other.”
Who Will Enjoy This Podcast:
Creator/Host: Creative Adventures — Steve Xoh, who calls it “A scrapbook of my mind.”
What I love about the show: Steve Oh is onto something here. That is the subtle difference from his written newsletter and his audio podcast. Too often, we ignore the medium by which we communicate a message. Steve is smart because he understands that the form we use to communicate is at least as important as what we communicate. Moreover, Steve captures the trend of integrating newsletters and podcasting.
Recommended Episode to start listening with: All the episodes possess the same random, quantum mechanics aspect of our internal reality — which is to say that our daily thoughts are as messy, disordered, contradictory, and convoluted as our conscious/unconscious mind conjures for us. Steve Xoh knows that if our minds can be classified as Felix Unger or Oscar Madison from the Play/Movie/TV Show The Odd Couple, we’d all be Oscar.
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Check out books by Frank Racioppi. Everything from novels and nonfiction to podcasting books and essays. Coming in 2027: The Best Independent Podcasts Of 2027.
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