Whenever looking for new podcasts, the first thing that always stands out to me is a series that fills a vital societal need or shines the spotlight on a perspective oft-ignored by hegemony. This was most certainly the case for the weekly news/interview show Strange Fruit. Produced by 89.3 WFPL News Louisville and hosted by NPR, Strange Fruit “examines black gay life through the voices and stories of those of us who live it….and live it well!” The series, hosted by Jaison Gardner and Dr. Kaila Story, often spends each of its approximately 30-minute-long episodes focusing on a single subject within the realm of politics and pop culture, with the pair interviewing guests who have written on the topic or, in some cases, the creators of the work they are discussing.
For the purposes of this assignment, I listened to two episodes whose titles caught my attention most, each one taking a different approaches towards the podcast’s overarching goals. One of the most recent episodes finds Gardner and Story replaying interviews they conducted with musician/actress Janelle Monae and playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney from weeks or years past shortly following the film Moonlight’s Best Picture victory at the Oscars. The film itself fits right into the focus of the podcast, but where this episode stood out to me was in how it exploded my expectations of what these discussions would be about, covering everything from afrofuturism to the power of theater. Both of the guests in this episode provided some very insightful commentary about the ideologies and art that mattered to them, creating a multifaceted reflection on blackness that stems directly from these interviewees’ passions.
The second episode I listened to was more of a traditional roundtable dialogue between Gardner, Story, and Dr. Brittney Cooper as they dissect their complicated and evolving reactions to Adele’s win for Album of the Year at the Grammys and her speech directed at Beyonce where she made reference to “my black friends.” This discussion, in particular, really struck me for how nuanced and analytical the conversation got, with each participant in this talk grappling with their visceral and reflective thoughts on the matter, along with their criticisms directed at the awards ceremony’s recurring tendency to have black musicians perform but fail to adequately award black talent. This would be a lot for any podcast to cover in under 30 minutes, but it’s a testament to the hosts and their guest that all three of them manage to deftly cover all this ground seamlessly. I’m already greatly looking forward to delving into the Strange Fruit backlog even further and listening to these hosts discuss so many more subjects.
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