With my headphones on most of the day and a subscription list longer than I ever realized, it was only a matter of time before I joined the many writers for the post calvin before me to write about the podcasts they love. There are too many to fit into one post, so I want to showcase some shows that don’t get the attention I think they deserve; shows that have ended, gone on indefinite hiatus, or are just quietly updating regularly without the love they deserve.
An agoraphobic woman lives in a lighthouse, which travels from place to place. Eventually she gains confidence to explore her new surroundings every day. She meets people along the way, searching for her brother. It’s heartfelt magical realism with a little suspense, and feels good to listen to. The show is incomplete, as the second season ended in 2019. An indigogo campaign to fund the third was fully funded in 2022, but there has been no communication since about if and when the final season will be released.
I am not a man who could tell you anything about wrestling. The Rock and John Cena are best known to me as actors, and if you asked me about the Attitude Era, I’d assume you were talking about a toddler’s terrible twos. That said, listening to wrestling fans evaluate WWE from the quality of storytelling is something I could (and have) listened to for hours. This show is “Good enough to listen to on 1x speed” and the person running the recording’s confusion is wonderful. Unfortunately, the most recent episode is from early 2020, and there are no plans for the show to return.
Also from LoadingReadyRun, Qwerpline is a morning news show about the goings on of municipalities in the fictional Thurpston county. Semi-improvised, part of the charm of the first season is hearing the cast make each other break character, in addition to recycling workers complain about all the raccoons residents bring to the recycling center, the person who owns a home in the middle of the highway, the people lost in the historic rum trafficking tunnels, and the mayor, who is a box of paperclips. The traffic reporter uses the helicopter for every conceivable side hustle, the sports reporter lives in a closet in the studio, and the summer intern will never grow up. The third season of Qwerpline ended in April, so it will probably be a few years until the next one.
If readers are familiar with one show from the Rusty Quill Network, it’s likely The Magnus Archives, a horror anthology podcast with an ongoing story. Stellar Firma was coming out at the height of Magnus’s popularity, and is quite the opposite: a show about worldbuilding, in the literal sense. It’s an improv comedy about two people working at a company that designs custom planets. They design a moon shaped like a trough in the first episode, and the designs get crazier from there. The sound design reflects what they envision, up to and including snowboarding down a mountain of paper. Stellar Firma ended in 2021, completing the series.
I appreciate the wide variety of your podcasts; very cool, each very different.