New and notable podcasts
The Gift (BBC Podcasts)
Think hard before you give someone a home DNA test as a gift, said
Fiona Sturges in the Financial Times. Many customers of 23andMe and Ancestry.com have enjoyed unlocking the secrets of their genetic heritage, “but, for some, the findings can turn their lives upside down.” This new BBC series digs into six such cases, and the result is a true-crime anthology that is “variously sad, gripping, and brimming with plot twists.” It’s also one big cautionary tale. No one should be surprised that the first big reveal sometimes exposes an unexpected father, said Miranda Sawyer in The Guardian. But these stories take improbable turns, and host Jenny Kleeman proves “the right mixture of serious and light.” The first episode begins with two women who might have been happy if they’d merely unearthed an unexpected affair. Instead, “the truth is revealed as something creepier, involving rogue fertility experts.” The second show spotlights a DNA revelation that chillingly resolved a decadesold unsolved murder. “Old secrets cleared up—what’s not to like?”
Weight for It (Audible)
“A lot of Ronald Young Jr.’s life has been spent contemplating his weight,” said Alex
Jhamb Burns in Vogue. The veteran podcast host, who characterizes himself as a fat Black man, has created a new series that essentially “exposes his ongoing inner monologue about existing in his body.” In each episode, he “dives into tricky issues” such as the intersections of weight and desirability and of weight and clothing. At one point he plays a recording he made of a visit to his doctor, said
Lauren Passell in Podcast: The Newsletter. If the ridiculous advice he hears is typical,
“we have been undersold the horrors of what doctors say.” In another episode that’s truly award-worthy, he interviews an “interesting, incredibly sweet” ex he dumped years before because she was overweight. Now that she’s slimmed down, she admits she wouldn’t date him for the same reason. “Every episode is packed with nuanced epiphanies, and though Young Jr. is going deep—very deep—it feels like he’s just scratching the surface of something much bigger.”
Dear Alana, (Tenderfoot TV)
“Some stories stick with you for a long time; some even haunt you,” said Heidi Schlumpf in the National Catholic Reporter. Alana Chen was a quiet, sensitive teenager when she began attending daily Catholic mass and put her trust in a priest who told her to tell no one that she was attracted to girls. For the next seven years, she was counseled to reject her sexuality, and “the constant message that she was somehow broken took a toll.” At 24, she took her own life, and this heartbreaking podcast uses Chen’s own “gut-wrenching” journal entries to retell the story. The host, Simon Kent Fung, had endured a similar experience in his youth, said Elizabeth Hernandez in The Denver Post. He had considered becoming a priest. Chen had thought about being a nun. Fung moved to Colorado to immerse himself in Chen’s experience, and though he “didn’t intend to include his own story in the podcast,” the two tales “soon became inextricable.” The response to Dear Alana,—which hit No. 1 on Apple’s podcast chart—has been “overwhelming.”