Three Podcasts That Will Make You Want To Always Listen To Old People

Old people are very good storytellers. This could be because of many reasons. Awesome voices. Existing on public transport before headphones and smartphones were a thing. Statistically more stories to tell, about times so long ago they feel fictitious.

Here are three podcasts featuring awesome old people telling their stories: a bra saleswoman, a journalist, and an apple farmer.

1. Radio Diaries: ‘Selma Koch, Bra Saleswoman’

February 2009

Radio Diaries gives people recorders and helps them report on their own lives. This results in some awesome storytelling: teenagers interview each other and their parents; people narrate their own day-to-day lives.

Selma Koch is a 94-year-old bra saleswoman in New York, and she’s one of my favourite of the older Radio Diaries Portraits. The episode includes the following phone conversation with a customer, presumably about bras:

“Hello Town Shop. Yes. Tell me are you putting them in a washing machine? Tell the truth! Are you? That’s what’s doing it. You don’t put the baby in the washing machine do you?”

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2. Longform Podcast: Gay Talese

October 2013

The pure excitement with which Longform co-host Max Linksy says his guest’s name — “Gay Talese!” — is the same tone I use to recommend their most recent podcast episode to everyone, ever. The talk is a recording of a live interview Linsky did with the 81-year-old writer. “It was weird to, uh, fall in love with someone in front of so many people,” Linsky says in the intro.

While some Longform Podcasts appeal mainly to writers, Gay Talese is so awesome, his voice so excellent, and his stories so rich that anyone could enjoy this episode. The conversation rambles from eavesdropping in his mother’s clothing store during World War II, to his famous Esquire profile of Frank Sinatra (which he annotated earlier this month), to journalism in general.

At 38 minutes, he talks about making a good first impression. At 64 minutes, he talks about the importance of best friends, and I get something in my eye. And 78 minutes he advises young journalists to go work in a restaurant.

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3. ‘Long After I’m Gone’, by Georgia Moodie

July 2013

Sorry Gay Talese, I won’t be becoming a journalist or working in a restaurant; I’ll be too busy being adopted by Francis Fenton and working on the last apple orchard in Mercer, Maine.

This is one of those stories that has stayed with me months after I first heard it, and it’s an example of how well-produced and presented audio can make you care more about a story than writing would have been able to. Fenton is a wonderful old apple farmer, well into his 90s and still doing most of the farm work by himself.

“I’m the last of the Fentons, so I don’t know who’s gonna be there, after me,” he tells Australian producer Georgia Moodie, while his truck trundles in the background. He talks about the decline of the apple farmers in Maine with so much grandfather-ly charm that you just want to pat him on the shoulder and have him be proud of you.

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Did we miss a thing? Leave it in the comments.

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Jess O’Callaghan produces the Meanjin podcast. She writes for Right Now, Something You Said and Farrago.