Telling Stories "From Below" w/ Chris Stedman (Issue #88)
The Minneapolis writer, podcaster, and all-around amazing person takes over this week's issue!
Hi friends!
Please join me in giving the warmest welcome to my friend
!! He’s a brilliant writer, talented podcast producer, and all-around phenomenal person who truly lives his values through everything he does. He’s taking over today’s issue, and he’s offering the perfect range of insight, recommendations, and thought-provoking reflections that I just know you’ll love!But, before I pass it over to Chris, I want to make sure to share the description for the Truer Crime episode we released this week!
Alice Sebold / Anthony Broadwater (listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or by seraching “Truer Crime” wherever you get your podcasts!)
You might know Alice Sebold from her bestselling novel “The Lovely Bones.” But before that, she became famous for her memoir “Lucky,” where she recounts the brutal assault she survived in a park near her college campus—and the trial that followed. The man convicted in that trial was Anthony Broadwater, who has maintained his innocence for more than 40 years. This episode is about forgiveness, resilience, and the devastating consequences of getting it wrong.
Check it out if you’d like, but only after you’ve read the below takeover from the wonderful
!!
Last week I had the honor of joining Celisia for a live conversation about our efforts to make podcasts that take the “view from below.”
The view from below is a concept I take from my day job teaching religious studies (I’m a nonreligious religion professor, but that’s a story for another day). It comes from one of my favorite figures, the Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He lived in Germany at the time of the rise of the Nazis, and I believe he has much to teach us in this present moment about resistance, and what it means to really live out your values in consequential times.
One of my favorite ideas of Bonhoeffer’s is the concept of taking the “view from below,” which, to quote Bonhoeffer, means adopting “the perspective of the outcasts, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless, the oppressed and reviled, in short from the perspective of the suffering.” In other words, it means centering the marginalized in your consideration of the world around you, as opposed to the already privileged.
I’ve decided to use this as the framing model for the kinds of stories I want to tell through my new podcast studio, Good Judy Productions. Building on the spirit of my first podcast Unread (which I’ll tell you a little more about below), I want to create limited series narrative podcasts that change the way people think and act in the world.
This is what I think Celisia’s podcast Truer Crime does so well, too, which is why I was thrilled to team up with her for an event last week.
When Celisia and I discovered last year that the launch of Good Judy would line up with the release of season 2 of Truer Crime, we decided to have a joint launch event. The event, held last week in our city of Minneapolis, was part celebration and part discussion of how we approach the stories we tell as podcasters.
We were so fortunate to have an amazing turnout and a really meaningful conversation at this event, as well as to be able to support our programmatic partners that evening, including Women’s Prison Book Project (for which we did a book drive), Queermunity, Black Garnet Books, and Plymouth Congregational Church.
If you weren’t able to join us for this conversation, you can check out an archive of the livestream here. Thank you again to Celisia for doing this wonderful event with me, and for inviting me to take over Sincerely, Celisia this week!
A round-up of things to watch, read, and listen to as you head into the weekend.
Movie: Pride (available to buy or rent on numerous VOD platforms, or to see at a free screening on 2/28)
Pride is a 2014 movie based on the true story of a group of queer activists in the 1980s who banded together to raise money in order to help families impacted by the British miners’ strike. It’s an amazing story about the importance of solidarity, and how it can bring together people across lines of difference to build understanding. As an LGBTQIA mutual aid advocate with PFund (the upper Midwest’s only LGBTQIA community foundation) and an advocate for building coalitions for the common good, this movie speaks to so many of my passions. Pride has so much heart, is beautifully made, and features an incredible ensemble cast (including a pre-Baby Reindeer Jessica Gunning). I have watched this movie a bunch of times, and each time I’ve cried. I love it so much that when I visited London on a UK speaking tour in 2023, my primary objective was to get a “Lesbians and Gay Men Support the Miners” pin (which I did).
If you’ve never seen Pride, you can rectify that at a free event I’m super excited to be part of next month in Minneapolis. It’s an installment of a series called “Writers Go to the Movies,” and will be hosted by Milkweed Books at the awesome Open Book center in Minneapolis on Friday, February 28. Doors are at 6 PM, and there will be free popcorn and candy, a screening of Pride, and a conversation between me and Sarah Jones, author of the powerful new book Disposable: America’s Contempt for the Underclass, who is visiting Minneapolis just for this event. Learn more and RSVP for free here. I hope to see you there!
Book: Pure Innocent Fun: Essays by Ira Madison III
You may know Ira Madison III from his popular podcast Keep It, or his writing for various outlets, or from the time he got banned from Twitter for impersonating Beto O’Rourke. Now he’s coming out with his first book, Pure Innocent Fun, and if you’re an Ira fan (or you’re just learning of him now) you’re gonna love it. I’ll be joining Ira for a conversation hosted by Magers & Quinn Booksellers at Queermunity on Wednesday, February 12. It should be a blast. Click here to get tickets, which come with a copy of the book.
Podcast: Unread
This is a little plug for my own podcast series called Unread. It was a labor of love, and at just four episodes, it’s a pretty quick listen. It’s about suicide loss, the difficulties of living in the world as it exists now, how we can challenge harmful structures and be there for one another, and also about why Britney Spears is so amazing. If you’ve never listened to it, I hope you’ll consider checking it. And if you enjoy it, I hope you’ll consider supporting our efforts to make a new series at Good Judy Productions here.
Playlists to add to your music library.
Every December since I was young, I’ve made lists of both my favorite albums released that year and my favorite songs. It’s a practice I maintain to this day, even in the era of Spotify Wrapped. Data is interesting, sure, and there is of course a good amount of overlap between my Wrapped and my year-end list. (For example, my top 3 songs of 2024 were also the top 3 on my 2024 Wrapped.)
However, just because some songs had less “replay value” (which, in an age of music designed to gamify algorithms, could simply be an indication that, for example, they were more than 2 minutes long) than others doesn’t mean they shouldn’t make the list. And then there are the songs that come out after Spotify stops their tracking for the year.
My main point here is that your Wrapped is raw data, which has its merit, but curating a list isn’t just about raw data. It’s also about feeling. When you look back on 2024 ten years from now, which songs will you be thinking of? What songs are going to give you a rush (or pang, as the case may be) of nostalgia? I find making, and later returning to, a year-end list to be such a fun and useful exercise in revisiting, reflecting, and marking time, and I don’t really see myself ever stopping this annual practice.
Anyway, here’s a playlist of some of my favorite songs from 2024 for anyone wanting to take a look back on the (my) year that was. Personally, I’m finding it useful as I prepare for all the challenges (and some joys, I hope!) that 2025 will bring.
Things to try + share in the group chat.
This is one of my favorite Instagram accounts, not only because it features cute animal videos, but also because it regularly offers interesting thoughts on modern life and our disconnect from the rest of the natural world. I’m actually writing about this page in my next book, so I’m biased, but even if the latter doesn’t sound like your thing, we can all get behind cute animal videos.
I Need God in Every Moment of My Life
Another Instagram account I’m writing about in my next book, this page features some of the most bizarre religious memes you’ll find online. You can often find people in the comments of their posts arguing about whether the admins behind this account are sincere or trolling, and I wonder what you think. (The truth is that I actually do know the answer, but I’m not going to give it to you… yet.) Whatever your answer, you’re likely to find something on this page that will surprise or confound you.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
I’m going to end this takeover like I started it, with a quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He’s got so many good writings and sayings, but here’s a short one I try to ask myself regularly: “What do we really believe? I mean, believe in such a way that our lives depend on it?”
Thanks for having me this week, Celisia!