Favorite Podcasts of 2020

Podcasts are more popular than ever, and it can be tough to find the gems. I can’t promise that my favorite podcasts of 2020 will be ones that appeal to you — they are perhaps somewhat niche — but I hope some of you will really enjoy these.

In no particular order:

Feminist Survival Project 2020: Emily and Amelia Nagoski wrote an indispensable book in 2019, “Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle,” and this is their podcast companion to the book. They had a feeling 2020 would be a difficult year, but they had no idea how difficult it would be when they launched this podcast in late 2019. Each episode is full of chatty, useful science and tools for getting through life. Favorite episode: “The Madwoman.”

I Weigh: Hosted by Jameela Jamil (“The Good Place,” “Legendary”), each episode features a deep, vulnerable interview with someone who’s making a difference in the world. I love how honest and cathartic these conversations are. Favorite episode: “ALOK.”

How to Survive the End of the World: Sisters Autumn Brown and adrienne maree brown’s podcast about “learning from apocalypse with grace, rigor, and curiosity” feels a little too relevant in 2020. Early this year, Autumn did a series of wonderful solo interviews that focused on different survival skills: housing, health care, agriculture and much more. My favorite was the two-part interview with Queer Nature, which connected wilderness survival skills to trauma survival, nervous system regulation and much more: “Tactical Hope” and “The OODA Loop.”

Maintenance Phase: Aubrey Gordon (Your Fat Friend) and Michael Hobbes (“You’re Wrong About”) launched this brilliant new podcast late this year, with deeply researched episodes on aspects of the weight loss industry, including Snackwells cookies and “wellness” culture. They’ll be back with new episodes soon. Favorite episode: “Anti-Fat Bias.”

Rebel Eaters Club: Writer and teacher Virgie Tovar’s podcast features a lively and fun interview each episode on food, diet culture, and feeling good in our bodies. (Each one also features one of the guest’s favorite snacks). Catch up now and get ready for season 2, which begins on Jan. 5. Favorite episode: “Food is Life” (with SF Chronicle food writer Soleil Ho).

Feels Like the First Time: It might be cheating to include this one, since it’s only available to people who are Patreon supporters of “The Storm: A Lost Rewatch Podcast” or “Buffering the Vampire Slayer.” In this bonus podcast, culture writer Joanna Robinson (“The Storm”) introduces activist Kristin Russo (“Buffering”) to major movie franchises she hasn’t seen before, quizzing her beforehand to see if she can guess key plot points and catch phrases. Sometimes Kristin turns the tables and shows Joanna a movie she hasn’t seen before. Either way, they are hilarious and charming — and now there’s a slack where subscribers can live-watch movies with them each month. It’s some of the most fun I’ve had this year. If you’re already interested in either “Lost” or “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and want to invest in a quality podcast, it’s worth it to get this bonus podcast.

How to love your double chin

A Galápagos sea lion. Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

I was sitting at a bus stop at the corner of 40th and Telegraph in Oakland a few months ago when an older man sat down next to me. He was slender, wearing fitted black trousers and a slightly oversized sweater of the sort that Dwayne Wayne might have worn on A Different World. His dark face was etched with deep lines.

He started telling me, his voice thick with southern twang, about his latest trip to Kaiser to get the dressing changed on a wound — from what, he didn’t say. It had taken too long and he’d been given the runaround and he had to go back tomorrow to do it all over again. I nodded and smiled, and said a few encouraging words here and there. He was pleasant enough.

He paused in his story to look at me, then pointed to my double chin. “You should get that jelly roll looked at,” he said, hoisting himself up as the bus drew near. “That can mean all sorts of trouble.”

My enjoyment of the banter evaporated, replaced with shame as a hot flush spread across my face and my stomach turned to stone.

I’m plus-sized. Zaftig. Curvy. Chubby. Voluptuous. Fat. For each of us, body fat settles in different spots. Our asses. Our thighs. Our arms. In my case, it’s mostly my belly. And my chin. Even when I was at my thinnest, I still had a roundness under my jaw. When I look at other plus-sized folks, I notice that the ones I find most beautiful are the ones with sharp jawlines. No “jelly rolls” underneath.

And yet, I don’t like feeling hatred or disgust toward a part of my body. “There’s good reason we’re afraid of our double chins,” fat activist and author Virgie Tovar wrote last fall. “We live in a culture that is openly hateful toward fat people. Friends, family and social media reward us for appearing as close to the (thin) standard as possible in photographs. I understand the impetus completely.”

Tovar moved past these feelings by embracing photos of herself taken from low angles that accentuated her double chin — or at least no longer hid it. I’m nowhere near that point yet, but last year I found myself opening up a Google search window and typing “how to love your double chin.”

Google assumed I’d made a typo. “Did you mean ‘how to lose your double chin?’” Pages of search results related to cosmetic surgery, jaw exercises or weird nighttime contraptions followed.

Great. Even the search engines were fatphobic.

I showed the results to my partner, D., who works at Google, though not in the search-engine department. We tested the results again in an incognito window to make sure Google was showing this “correction” to others as well, and it was.

Google has internal forms that allow employees to report when they notice something is awry; those reports do make their way to the right teams, sooner or later. A few months later, D. checked the search query again and realized Google was no longer spell-correcting the phrase, and was offering better results in the links. The body-positive ones are still mixed in with exercise videos and other body-shamery, but it’s better than it was.

I still struggle with loving this part of myself (despite how delicious a jelly roll is). But at least I contributed to something that will make it easier for other people to love theirs.