Jan 30, 2017 7:00 AM

Obama's Exit Interview and 9 Other Must-Listen Podcasts

Listen up for post-apocalyptic fiction, dubiously dead turtles, and a con man curing flatulence.

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Did your resolutions for 2017 include figuring out a healthier relationship with social media? Or engaging with political issues? Or finally figuring out how to create a convincing sonic car explosion? Then you’re in luck! These 10 excellent podcast episodes will tell you everything you need to know. They also feature a 1920s Kansan demagogue, Solange's instrument from Toys "R" Us, and a post-apocalyptic mall, created by the guy behind "Too Many Cooks." Listen on—this year of podcasts is just beginning.

Crooked Media
Pod Save America, "Obama’s Last Interview"
For his last interview, President Obama sat down with Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, Tommy Vietor, and Dan Pfeiffer, his former speechwriters and the former hosts of election podcast *Keepin’ It 1600*. Obama speaks candidly about what he hopes his impact on history will be, whether his roast of President Trump influenced the election, and the advice 2017 Obama would give 2009 Obama as he stepped into the presidency. And he's not done: Obama also discusses how he wants to contribute to an online public square for political discourse going forward. [Listen here](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/obamas-last-interview/id1192761536?i=1000380154886&mt=2).
KUOW
How to Be a Girl, "The Window"
Raising a transgender kid is hard. On *How to Be a Girl*, Marlo Mack talks about life with her daughter, now nine years old, who was assigned male at birth. In "The Window," Mack and other parents of trans kids discuss the shifts of public opinion on transgender issues during the past eight years and the challenges of readying for a Trump presidency, as Mack prepares to change the last document identifying her little girl as a boy: her social security card. [Listen here.](http://www.howtobeagirlpodcast.com/episodes/episode-xvii-the-window)

Dr. John Romulus Brinkley made a fortune implanting goat testicles into people to cure impotence, dementia, and flatulence—but that’s not close to the weirdest part of this story. Brinkley goes on to run for governor of Kansas, promote the Carter Family, and commission a swimming pool paneled with tiny swastikas. But it’s his medium that’s most chilling and prescient: Brinkley used the radio to become a 1920s demagogue, a con man reaching his listeners with a message of down-home authenticity.
Movie audio tracks contain a whole lot more than music and dialogue. That revving engine in *Mad Max: Fury Road*? That's a bunch of sewing machines. On this episode of *Twenty Thousand Hertz*, Chris Aud, the movie’s sound designer, explains how to create a movie explosion and gives tips for how to listen for sound cliches: hawking crows to signal a villain, off-stage cop sirens, etc. Plus, Ann Kroeber tells listeners about her days tracking down Bengal tigers and getting close with howling monkeys to record the sounds used in *The Lord of the Rings* and *Jurassic Park*.

Public Radio Exchange
On Being with Krista Tippett, "Anil Dash — Tech’s Moral Reckoning"
In *On Being*, Krista Tippett hosts conversations about how to live thoughtfully and responsibly—and on this episode she talks to Anil Dash about the intersection of civics and tech in an America shaped by technology. Dash speaks to the duties of technologists, the ways that digital formats—like the size of text boxes on blogs—have shaped online journalism; and the risks of visually dramatizing data. [Listen here.](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/anil-dash-techs-moral-reckoning/id150892556?i=1000379900590&mt=2)
What happens to your old iPhone or laptop? *Reveal* investigates where that electronic trash actually goes, from a wall of typewriters in Silicon Valley to Guiyu, a toxic dumping ground in China known as the “Chernobyl of e-waste,” to Seattle, where an intrepid environmentalist implants tracking devices into old electronics to catch lying companies in the act. Plus, how legislation has—and hasn’t—changed how we dispose of electronics.

If you haven’t been listening to *Crimetown*, the sordid story of Providence’s own Buddy Cianci, convicted-felon-turned-mayor, you’re missing out on dubiously dead turtles, a glass of Scotch in maximum security, and police armed with shotguns riding on the back of garbage trucks—plus, wiseguys and underbosses with accents you’ve just got to hear. Start at the [beginning](https://soundcloud.com/crimetown/chapter-1-divine-providence?in=crimetown/sets/crimetown)—or join for the seventh installment, “Power Street,” as FBI Agent Dennis Aiken and Operation Plunder Dome enter the scene.
The Outline
Sound Show, "Scenes From an Italian Astronaut"
Some residents are bothered by the whirring sounds of airplanes taking off and landing, so they file a complaint with their local airports. But at least one person is *really upset* by the sounds, and determined to fight back with some noise of his own: 52-year-old Italian astronaut Roberto Vittori, who lives three miles away from the Reagan International Airport in DC, filed 6,500 complaints in 2015. Meet the guy responsible for 75 percent of the airport’s annual tally of gripes—and hear the precise, poetic way he words each complaint. [Listen here](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/6-scenes-from-italian-astronaut/id1180808186?i=1000379597395&mt=2).

Radiotopia
The Truth, “The Dark End of the Mall”
In this episode, fiction podcast *The Truth* takes you back to a mall in the 1950s. Or does it? It’s a post-apocalyptic story in an American mall concocted by Casper Kelly, the guy behind "Too Many Cooks," with a dash of *Westworld* thrown in—just try it. [Listen here.](http://www.thetruthpodcast.com/story/2017/1/11/the-dark-end-of-the-mall)
“Cranes in the Sky” is a tender, soft moment in Solange’s *A Seat at the Table*—and one that required urban expansion, cockroaches, and a 12-inch plastic harp from Toys "R" Us to create. Hear Solange dissect the song, and explain how a lost instrumental track led her to turn the song into a meditation.