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Welcome in! I’m Arielle Nissenblatt, founder and curator of the curators here at EarBuds. This week, I went Threads viral for a post having nothing to do with podcasts, so naturally, I plugged this newsletter. A bunch of you are here from that plug — welcome!
This issue of EarBuds is curated by Alex Dodenhoff. Let’s have an earful!
History is built by people like you, and Past Lives, a history podcast, is here to bring their stories to life.
5 Honest Podcasts About What Happens When Love Stops Working
These podcast episodes, along with their descriptions, were curated and written by our curator, Alex Dodenhoff.
1) Lust to Dust: My Horny Dead Dead
The episode opens with the hosts reading salacious passages from the so-called romance book their father wrote before his death. It begins abruptly with the father’s account of going down on a woman.
From there, his sons unpack the absurdity of growing up in the orbit of a post divorce serial dater whose romantic life was as chaotic as it was prolific. The result is a darkly funny and unexpectedly reflective look at how intimacy, grief, and legacy collide when a man’s love life is permanently preserved on the page.
2) Savage Lovecast
This episode moves fluidly between sex, identity, and post breakup confusion, landing on the question of whether dating newly divorced people is a red flag or just part of modern romance.
Through candid voice clips and absurdly honest conversations, callers admit what they want, what they fear, and how strange desire can feel once long relationships end.
3) Modern Love
In this episode, comedian Jordan Carlos looks back on how being the lovable, low responsibility dad slowly hollowed out his marriage.
When the pandemic forced him to confront the work he had been avoiding at home, he realized how absent he had actually been. It is an honest and uncomfortable reckoning with how love can erode not through cruelty, but through neglect disguised as charm.
4) Guys We F****d
This episode leans into the absurd ways people justify love, breakups, and emotional decisions when grief and desire get tangled together.
Through blunt humor and listener stories, it captures how loss often gets folded into dating logic in ways that are irrational, funny, and painfully human.
5) Death, Sex & Money
In this episode, Ian Coss reflects on how generations of divorce shaped his understanding of love, commitment, and fear.
He traces how emotional damage gets quietly inherited, influencing decisions to stay, leave, or endure relationships long after the original marriage ends.
I chose this theme because I noticed how rarely men (in this case, divorced men) talk honestly about love once it's broken so unceremoniously. These episodes capture men admitting confusion, grief, desire, and emotional damage with a mix of sincerity and absurd humor that feels closer to real life than polished advice.
There is something dark and funny about how badly we explain love while still being completely haunted by it. There simply is not enough space where we are allowed to sound unsure, sentimental, and a little ridiculous about relationships, so this theme felt overdue.
History is built by people like you, and Past Lives is here to bring their stories to life. Every week, Past Lives focuses on the lived experiences of real people in the past, from the Stone Age to the near-present.
Thank you to our new (free!) supporters: Oswin from Trapped History, Julian, Josh, and Fallon.
If you have a podcast recommendation that you think we should share (or you want to suggest your own show), all you need to do is fill out this form.
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Community
📣 In Podcast The Newsletter, Lauren Passell writes… In my podcast bubble, Jamie Bartlett is a well known journalist and podcaster. He’s the one behind The Missing Cryptoqueen! But he gets mixed up with another Bartlett with a mic, Steven Bartlett, the Diary of a CEO guy. Jamie kicks his new podcast, Everything Is Fake And Nobody Cares, off with Steven’s backstory because not many people know how Steven lied his way to the top. Read more.
✈️ Discover podcast recommendations for parents of kids looking for flexibility and depth in their education plans. Read EarBuds Kids.
📰 Workshop: How & Why To Start a Newsletter For Your Podcast - April 14th at 10AM ET.
📞 Call for submissions: Audio Flux Circuit 07 is open for submissions and they want to hear your work! Learn about this audio-making challenge and submit by April 6th.
📋 Here’s a big ole list of the podcasts that the people who went to On Air Fest are listening to.
Spotlight Podcast
For decades, the Georgia Guidestones were nothing more than kitschy roadside Americana…a curiosity people visited for fun, intrigue…and the occasional pagan ritual. Nicknamed “America’s Stonehenge,” the Guidestones' arrival was just as mysterious. Wrapped in rumors, the Guidestones became magnets for religious panic, conspiracy theories, political extremism, and online rhetoric. But something changed in 2022.
The Guidestones became a flashpoint. One that resulted in a real-world act of domestic terror. It's a mystery that to this day, has never been solved. This show takes listeners to the small town of Elberton and on a wild ride through granite quarries, graves, cults, Confederate monuments, a swatting raid, and A LOT of explosives.
Podcast news from Podnews
Podtrac published its global multi-channel podcast ranking for February. The MeidasTouch Podcast is still #1, but The Rest is History has jumped up to third place.
Acast has become the first global platform to join Spain’s Audio Academy. The organisation aims to support Spanish-language audio’s professionalisation, and strengthen its institutional representation.
Transcripts are coming to Overcast, and will be free for everyone, says developer Marco Arment. We first reported on this feature in July. The service doesn’t yet use creator-produced transcripts, relying on AI; and the current beta says (see it here) that each transcript “probably contains errors”.
