That always bothered Aline Laurent-Mayard, who spent their teenage years feeling alienated from peers because of their own lack of interest in sex. Clear of Focus, which won Tribeca’s Narrative Nonfiction Audio Storytelling Award, is an elegant reflection on Aline’s understanding of their asexuality and becoming a single parent. In a storytelling style that feels like a private whisper, Aline opens up about russian vs american women growing up in Paris, The City of Love, in the ’90s, feeling free from desire. They talk to experts, sociologists, and friends about our culture’s obsession with coupling in the most traditional sense. Free From Desire gets asexuality right in a way that’s driven by personal experience, making it triumphant, graceful, and intimate.
Foretold
At 17, Paulina Stevens’ cards had been dealt for her. Growing up in an insular Romani American family, she had left school, ily, and joined her in-laws in the family fortune-telling business. Foretold is what happens when Paulina risks everything to step away and chart her own path. Reported by Faith Pinho, who was approached by Paulina years ago as a rookie reporter, Foretold corrects Romani stereotypes with empathy while honestly reporting on the cultural problems that drove Paulina away. It’ll have you on the edge of your seat, rooting Paulina on and wondering how she’ll break free without losing her children. Enter through the neon “Psychic Readings” sign and emerge forever changed.
Let us Make a nightmare
On the Let’s Make… series, Ryan Beil, Maddy Kelly, and Mark Chavez spend entire seasons writing screenplays for a film, interviewing other directors, writers, and experts in the genre along the way. Season one was all about writing a sci-fi screenplay, season two was all about writing a rom-com screenplay, and the newest season, Why don’t we Make a nightmare, is all about writing a horror screenplay. Just like the previous seasons, they’re talking to film- and spook-makers to figure out what goes into a good horror film, but this time, they’re actually going to film it. Another twist: They don’t know anything about horror, and some of them (Maddy) don’t even like it. They kick things off by talking to the director of The Blair Witch Project, Eduardo Sanchez and trying to pinpoint what makes them scared. (Some things on the list…horses, “being alone in a field and someone comes running,” kidnappings, and being buried alive.)
Nuts
Hosted by Erick Galindo, season one of Nuts was a time capsule of the kinds of moments captured during a global pandemic that left a lot of us growing up again while stuck at home for more than a year. Season two brought on Megan Tan for a fictional love story inspired by the wildest thing Erick once did for love. This show starts out in Los Angeles and has a strong sense of place as it takes you on a road trip with a woman who stole Erick’s heart. He’s narrating the story to Megan the whole time, and it feels like you’re at a diner, hearing the story shared over brunch with friends. You’ll have to listen to find out if Cupid’s arrow hits-the answer will have your mind blurring the lines between fact and fiction, and will leave you feeling optimistic about love.
Expensive
Jonathan Menjivar was a blue-collar Latino kid who grew up in a working-class family, and found himself as an adult in public radio, alongside people with much different backgrounds. (Like, ahem, Terry Gross.) Classy is a podcast that lets us hear him grapple with the dissonance of living in a world of oysters and cashmere, while remembering a past of food stamps and factories. He’s asking himself, “Am I a class-hole?” Episodes feature intimate looks into Jonathan’s life and background, and explorations into budget shopping and how the military preys on poor people. Every single episode of Classy feels like the best of the series. It’s thoughtful, probing, and personal, forcing us to consider how class shapes our perspectives of the world and how we belong in it.