That Blackass Show celebrates Girlfriends’ well-deserved Netflix renaissance
Driving The Green Book
Little Harlem, MS
If Lovecraft Country has piqued your curiosity about the real-life Negro Motorist Green Book, the guide to places Black folks could safely stop while traveling during the Jim Crow era, this ten-week podcast series will connect the dots. Driving The Green Book is a podcast/adventure/history lesson about Black communities and the folks who helped shape and uplift them. The audio road trip, hosted by journalist and activist Alvin Hall and social justice trainer Janée Woods Weber, starts in Detroit and proceeds down to New Orleans, gathering the lore of those who depended on the book. In this episode, the team heads to Jackson, Mississippi, to talk to local residents (one a former Motown musician) about the historic Black district Farish Street, known as Little Harlem, detailing its rich music scene and the secrets of what made it thrive. The podcast drives home the importance of safe and welcoming towns like this one, as well as the healing power of collective action. [Morgan McNaught]
Scriptnotes
Loglines Are For Other People
Hosts John August and Craig Mazin use Scriptnotes to discuss “screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters,” but far from alienating those outside the industry, the level of detail in these conversations is compelling podcasting for anyone who’s curious about the way things get made. Does it get a bit technical at times? Sure, but gaining a clear sense of what’s going on with, say, the negotiations between the WGA and various agencies is well worth it. On this episode, August and Mazin go over pitches, discuss the ways writers navigate rights for biopics, and talk loglines, “the one- or two-sentence description of a story or screenplay.” For folks who remember the writers’ strike of 2007-2008, not to mention the resulting cancellation of some amazing TV series, Mazin and August demystify what’s currently going on behind the scenes of the top movies and shows. Considering the time and energy we put into watching this stuff, learning about the mechanisms that drive entertainment is a whole new level of insight. [Jose Nateras]
That Blackass Show With Dulcé Sloan
Girlfriends (w/ Solomon Georgio)
For those of you curious (and pale) social-media scrollers who dipped into Black Twitter a couple weeks back wondering what is this Girlfriends show that people were posting about, this podcast is here to give you all the details. Each episode, comedian and Daily Show correspondent Dulcé Sloan invites a guest to talk about a movie/TV show/play that’s beloved by Black folk. This time around, she and fellow comic Solomon Georgio break down the sitcom Girlfriends, which ran for eight seasons on long-gone UPN (and still-around The CW) throughout the aughts. While Sloan admits she’s not as big a fan as Georgio, she does agree with him that it was refreshing—and empowering—to see a multi-camera sitcom about four young Black-and-beautiful ladies (led by a pre-Black-ish Tracee Ellis Ross) on the air for that long. And as Netflix has made clear, it’s still adored by fans. The pair also slides into such funny tangents as Georgio recalling the weird-ass white kids he knew while growing up in Fresno, Sloan’s not-so-transcendent experiences smoking weed, and the pair of them debating their views on trap music. Man, this show is so much more blackass than the programs that are usually covered. [Craig D. Lindsey]