This 4th episode in our For the Love of Podcasts series speaks to the powerful way podcasts can affect change. In fact, we’ve seen podcasts start important conversations and transport us to moments in history we’d have never encountered otherwise. Jen talks to a few of her podcaster friends who are bringing the heat to their spaces: The Red Couch Podcast’s Jason Petty (aka rapper Propaganda) and his wife, Dr. Alma Zaragoza-Petty, and Catlick’s BT Harman (Brett Trapp!). First, Prop and Alma give us a deep dive into the world of the Red Couch, where they empower the experiences of people in non-majority culture who may not have conventional degrees, but can school us on politics and economics all the same (because everybody comes up against money and power, no matter where they live). Prop and Alma invite folks in majority culture to spend time in a space that’s not designed for them—because experience breeds empathy. In the second half of the show, we catch up with BT Harman, who was on the show last spring when we still called him Brett Trapp. Today we learn about the podcast BT’s been working on for four years: a true-crime story filled with complicated Southern history reaching back across centuries that he unearthed right in his own backyard: Atlanta’s Cabbagetown neighborhood. These storytellers encourage every generation to retell the hard stories, and to make room for voices from the margins to move to the center of the discussion.
