5 Exceptional Podcasts Episodes to Listen to

Topics include pandemics and poop, data gender equality, what is “bad” English, public transit pricing, and lawns.

Below I summarize 5 podcast episodes, highlight key points, and provide links to other things that they made me think about! You can listen to them all here on Spotify, from the websites linked below, or wherever you find your podcasts.

In this week’s newsletter, I highlight:

1. Saving the World with Poop — What’s Your Problem? (35:14)
2. Privacy vs the gender data gap — Visible Women (41:02)
3. Why Nonnative English Speakers Actually Speak The Best English — Rough Translation (34:54)
4. Should Public Transit Be Free? — Freakonomics (45:32)
5. Yardwork — Outside/In (27:10, 23:55, &37:36)

4 hours and 5 minutes total listening time
23:13 female to male featured voices

Photo by Lee Campbell on Unsplash

Saving the World with Poop — What’s Your Problem?

Mariana Mutas is the co-founder and CEO of Biobot Analytics. Mariana is improving global health through creating a wastewater surveillance data platform.

She talked about how she got to where she is (her childhood, her education, and her views on entrepreneurship), the challenges she’s faced (sexism, assumptions about public health entrepreneurship, being an immigrant, employee safety, and pandemic supply chain issues), and her hopes for how wastewater management could help global health in the future (even in places that currently do not have waste infrastructure).

Poop — I mean wastewater — is not a sexy field to study. But it is so important. Mariana quickly found her passion for poop while pursuing her PHD at MIT in computational biology and has already demonstrated its world changing value through the covid pandemic.

[Wastewater epidemiology] was perfect for me as a combination of cutting-edge science but also a very big societal impact — Mariana Matuas

Surprisingly, this is not the first time I have heard about the public health impact of sanitation infrastructure. Wish for Wash is an organization dedicated to ensuring people can access safely managed sanitation, which is something that over 4 billion people lack and disproportionately affects women, girls, and other marginalized groups globally. Wish for Wash started as a toilet concept for a senior design project and went on to win First Place and the People’s Choice at the Georgia Tech InVenture Prize Competition, the largest undergraduate invention competition in the United States. It has now become a 30-person strong company making a global impact.

Additionally, in Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez, Chapter 2 is dedicated to the issues women face when it comes to using the bathroom. Everything from challenging the idea that even floor distribution is “equal” (since urinals take up less space than toilets, women take up to 2.3 times longer to use the restroom, and women make up more of the elderly and disabled populations who need more time in the restroom), to more serious issues like water contamination, urinary tract infections and purposeful dehydration caused by limited bathroom availability, and sexual assault of women who walk at night to use the restroom in private in places without waste infrastructure.

I hadn’t listened to “What’s Your Problem?” despite the loving the host Jacob Goldstein on Planet Money and hearing ads for the show many times across the NPR shows that I listen to regularly. But Tim Wilson mentioned it on The Analytics Power Hour (a podcast that I’m sure will make my roundup soon), and from then on, I think I’ve listened to every episode because they’re just so great. Thanks Tim for the recommendation.

Privacy vs the gender data gap — Visible Women

In this episode, Caroline Criado Perez, author of (previously mentioned) Invisible Women — a book that has literally changed my life, explored how her life mission of closing the gender data gap might be detrimental and dangerous to women.

The gender data gap is created by the fact that we collect less data on women, and the data that we do collect is often not sex disaggregated, so we cannot determine negative outcomes that predominately affect women. For example, women are more likely to be injured or die in car accidents because the only crash test dummies used are designed to emulate male bodies, and doctors misdiagnose heart attacks in women because we don’t tend to involve women in the medical studies where these symptoms are documented.

So how could closing this gender data gap be dangerous to women? Well, because of the overturned supreme court decision of Roe v. Wade.

“I think for some people, men especially, it’s hard to understand why women might find a legal decision made over 4,000 miles away frightening. For me, this legal decision reminded us how fragile our rights are.” — Caroline Criado Perez

The 1973 Supreme Court ruling was based on the liberty right to privacy of decisions. However, women’s privacy has never been as important as men’s privacy. Don’t believe it? Some states allowed rape in marriage on the basis of family privacy into the 1980s.

There are data brokers, or people who sell data like app data or online searches, that are fully focused on female health history like rapes, miscarriages, and abortion clinic visits. 1/3 of women are using health apps (like period tracking apps), and this might be due to the fact that women are more likely to be misdiagnosed or not get the information they need from their doctor which caused by the gender data gap in medical research. And this app data is not protected on the basis of privacy and has been used in court to prosecute women and by “abortion bounty hunters” in Texas.

Honestly, it was so hard for me to not just paste the entire transcript in here as a quote because it is filled with so many heartbreaking facts, but at the same time it creates motivation to take action. Caroline Criado Perez already changed my life with her book. This podcast is just another example of her life changing work.

Want more? Read Invisible Women, listen to the other episodes of Visible Women, and subscribe to the Invisible Women Newsletter.

Why Nonnative English Speakers Actually Speak The Best English — Rough Translation

400,000,000 people are born into speaking English, while 2,000,000,000 are learning English in classrooms. Why are we trying to get the two BILLION people to try to learn “good” English (along with sports idioms), rather than helping the 400 million learn to understand non-native speakers?

Heather Hansen is an English teacher who focused on connection, not perfection. Rather than using the typical methodologies for teaching grammar and accent reduction, she helps to understand why people want to “speak like her”, and helps them realize together, it’s about intonation and clarity of speech, not the accent itself.

She talks about accent recognition instead of accent reduction — which means if native speakers learned to recognize accents, we could understand non-native speakers better. It is easier to train 400 million ears to hear, than 2 billion tongues to speak. For example, the “th” sound can be replaced with a “tu,” “du,” “ju,” or “shu” sound and be completely understandable, although not always acceptable.

Heather discusses the challenges of going against the industry of accent reduction, especially when working with c-suite leaders.

“But it should be good enough. But the way it should be, versus the way that it is, is not always in sync.” — Heather Hansen

Heather also has a Ted Talk, How to speak bad English perfectly.

Thank you Amirsina Eskandarifar for leading a “Diversity and Inclusion Guided Conversation” for our team at work about this podcast episode, and to the multiple team members who talked about their experience speaking English as a second (or third or fourth) language. In particular, it was so interesting when so many people commented about how challenging the “th” sound is for them to speak, and how gratifying it was to hear that it doesn’t affect their understandability! These stories and lessons have been stuck in my head ever since and has really challenged how I view the world.

Should Public Transit Be Free? — Freakonomics

Stephen Dubner, the host of the Freakonomics podcast and co-author of the Freakonomics books, brings on a variety of voices discussing the positives and negatives of making public transportation free.

His guests include:

• Marcus Finbom, a “public transit advocate” and former (and maybe current) member of “Planka” meaning “Fare Dodge Now” that pays tickets of its members who dodge train fares
• Michelle Wu, the Mayor of Boston who has run a pilot of free public transportation and claims that free public transportation is the single biggest step toward economic mobility, racial equity, and climate justice
• Robbie Makinen, former president and C.E.O. of the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority, who made Kansas City, Missouri, the first major US city with free public transit
• Brian Taylor, professor of urban planning and public policy and directs the Institute of Transportation Studies at U.C.L.A.

“Free public transportation is the single biggest step toward economic mobility, racial equity, and climate justice” — Michelle Wu, Mayor of Boston

Some of the advantages of removing public transit fares are the fact that money is saved (from the time/efficiencies of not selling/collecting tickets), crime decreases (since most law enforcement involvement is due to fare disputes), ease of use for those who have trouble with mobility (whether it is a disability or a mother with a stroller) and the fact that on average only 30% of public transportation operating costs are covered by fares.

The arguments against free public transportation are the effects of latent demand due to service and price elasticity, the room for enhancements to the current system (like improving the payments systems), the possibilities to subsidize transportation that affect low-income people more (like local, rural bus services) than high-income people (like BART in the Bay Area), and making driving more expensive rather than public transportation cheaper.

As usual, Freakonomics taught me a ton about a new topic, brought in voices from both sides of the argument, was entertaining, made me think, and made me laugh (specifically from this Onion article they referenced: Report: 98 Percent Of U.S. Commuters Favor Public Transportation For Others (theonion.com))

Yardwork — Outside/In

Lawns, or turf grass, is the single largest irrigated crop in the US with 63,000 square miles of turf grass — that’s bigger than my home state of Georgia! This 3-part podcast series (I know — this isn’t 1 episode, so it kind of breaks two of my rules below, but as I said my rules are flexible) walks us through the history of lawns, about if the vegetables that you grow are safe to eat, and tells us about the predominately Chinese Berkly Community Gardens of Boston.

In the first episode, Lawn and Order, we learn about the how lawns and housing discrimination have been intertwined through the stories of Malin Curry and his dad Ira Curry. We also learn about the environmental, ecosystem, and health impact of lawns. And, with Zach Frankel, founding director of Utah Rivers Council, we explore untouched ornamental grasses soaking up water.

In the second episode, Gardening is Heavy Metal, Marueen points out that she scrutinizes vegetables she buys at the grocery store but assumes that what she grows in her garden are safe — despite finding coal in the dirt in her yard! We learn how easy, but not necessarily clear, soil testing is for your garden to learn if eating what you grow is safe. If you want to find out how you can test your own soil and what the results mean, you can see the links in the episode page here.

In the last episode, A Bitter Melon Grows in Boston, we hear from gardeners from the Berkley Community Garden, a predominately Chinese garden. In this episode, we learn about the history of the Berkly Community Garden, urban vertical gardening, discrimination and racial bias against what is grown (specifically bitter melon and fuzzy squash) and how it’s grown (upcycling trash for growing trellises), and how community gardens can bring people together.

“To have something that is so weird and funny looking and foreign… is that idea that: how do you help people understand differences of value to different communities and cultures?”— Jeremy Liu

This series reminded me of

• How Stupid Is Our Obsession With Lawns? — Freakonomics — another podcast about lawns
• Googling Strangers and Kentucky Bluegrass | The Anthropocene Reviewed | WNYC Studios or read the same story in The Anthropocene Reviewed Book — John Green (johngreenbooks.com). John Green rates Kentucky Bluegrass (the plant, not the music genre) on a 5-star scale, and rants about lawns. If you want a real vlogbrothers throwback, John ranted about grass on his youtube channel: Your Yard Is EVIL — YouTube
• Ginkgo Love — Outside/In (outsideinradio.org) — specifically the third episode reminded me of this one. This is a “rebroadcast” of a 2016 episode that Outside/In produced where they unintentionally used racist language. Producer Felix Poon create this episode to celebrate ginkgo trees, point out what was wrong in the previous release, and producing this rebroadcast edited the way it should have sounded before.
• (This is a stretch) Patient Zero (patientzeropodcast.com) — Patient Zero is a 7-part podcast series about Lymes Disease. It doesn’t really relate to lawns much outside of “outside”, but it is another multipart podcast series produced by Outside/In that I always love to share. Outside/In does a great job with their series

I listen to a lot of podcasts — it’s honestly a personality trait at this point. I am always saying “oh, that reminds me of a podcast”, and sending podcast episodes to friends.

With the number of podcasts that I listen to, there are some that are just absolute standouts. I talk about them for weeks or months after listening to them. Some change the way I think; some change the way I view the world; and some just make me laugh. And they all make me want to tell people about them!

So, I am hoping to make this a monthly-ish series! If you have suggestions for a snappier title, what rules I should add, or feedback on how to make this more engaging, please let me know. I want to use this as a way to share great content, document the life changing podcast episodes that I’ve listened to, and as a sort of journal to look back on over time.

I’m making a few rules for myself:

• Each blog will have 5 podcast episodes
• A podcast can only be featured once per blog
• Podcast episodes do not have to be recent
• Each blog includes more female voices than male
• Where possible, link to creator’s websites rather than apple podcasts/Spotify to give them credit
• If someone recommends the podcast to me, give them a shout out
• Rules can change
• Rules can be broken