PleasureTown, 30-minute episodes, free, WBEZ
A storytelling podcast with a crowd-sourcing twist, WBEZ’s “PleasureTown” chronicles the rise and inevitable fall of a hedonistic, utopian Western town. Set to a banjo-heavy soundtrack, the fictional oral history features a wide range of storytellers all hosted by rough-and-tumble town founders Cyrus and Claude (voiced by Chicago live lit favorites Keith Ecker and Erin Kahoa).
In building “PleasureTown’s” lore, the podcast calls for listeners to contribute their own art, ideas and writing to create an “ever-growing interactive narrative.” Looming hints of the town’s demise lend a melancholic, chilly tone of ghost stories in the making. “PleasureTown’s” sharp writing elevates what could have been a hokey premise into an entertaining and sometimes eerie production.
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Twice Eggs by Alexandra Johnson, 1-hour read, $1.99, Ploughshares Solos
“In Italy, there’s nothing odd about digging up the past,” writes Alexandra Johnson in “Twice Eggs,” an Italian travel memoir grounded in nostalgia and strung together with vibrant descriptions of home-cooked meals. When she returns to the town of Viggiano to visit her former boyfriend, Giorgio, Johnson quickly gets swept up in the traditions and superstitions of a family that might have once become her own. She ruminates on Italy’s struggling economy — and Giorgio’s desire to leave his beautiful homeland behind.
Johnson’s gift for descriptive metaphors brings the rural town to life, where hills are filled with “houses thrown like dice, chalk white in the afternoon sun.” But the essay’s real heart shines through in Johnson’s relationship with Giorgio’s mother, Anna, a stern and practical woman full of well-timed Italian adages and generations-old wisdom.
Why Do So Many People Pretend to be Native American? by Russell Cobb, 20-minute read, free, longreads.com
Russell Cobb examines the “Wannabe tribe” in this long essay about people who falsely claim Native American heritage — a list that includes Miley Cyrus, Bill Clinton and Johnny Cash. Cobb touches on the Americana appeal of claiming a native lineage while simultaneously dismantling the myth of the “Hollywood Indian” — the hodgepodge of Lakota language, Crow tepees and Mandan lodges thrown together under the label of “Indian Culture.”
He spends much of the essay discussing Iron Eyes Cody, best-known as “The Crying Indian” from the famous ’70s environmental ad. Cody wrote memoirs about his Cherokee and Creek heritage, and lobbied for accurate depictions of “the authentic Indian” on movie sets. Predictably, though no less ironically, Cody had no traceable ties to any native bloodlines.
Originally published in the print journal “This Land Press,” the essay is available for free on longreads.com.
— Megan Kirby