Medium Playback

Hear some of the best stories on Medium, straight from the authors who wrote them. On each episode of Medium's flagship podcast, we invite an author to the studio to perform a recent story they wrote for Medium and then talk with us about it. Hosted by journalist Manoush Zomorodi and writer Kara Brown, Playback features insightful, first-person stories on timely topics affecting the world today — and then gives you the story behind the story from the writer.

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Episodes

"The Edge of Adulthood"

The final episode of Medium Playback's first season is about those who are just peering into the adult years that lay ahead. Right now, teenagers face a deeply unstable future — but maybe that's always been the case. Journalist Alyssa Giacobbe was one of the nine reporters who interviewed 46 teenagers for the collection The Edge of Adulthood. The results are both intriguing and familiar. This episode includes the original audio from four interviews Alyssa conducted so that you can hear from each...

Nov 14, 2018•40 min•Ep. 10

Douglas Rushkoff: "Survival of the Richest"

This week’s Playback gets into the psyche of some big-money overlords — the ones who can’t make it to Mars with Elon, anyway. In his wildly popular story “Survival of the Richest,” researcher Douglas Rushkoff starts off writing about an invitation he received last year to give a keynote speech to some wealthy investors at a deluxe private resort. On the face of it, they wanted Douglas’s advice on how to escape environmental collapse. But quickly, he realized that these one-percenters just shy of...

Sep 05, 2018•34 min•Ep. 7

Ben Blum: "The Lifespan of a Lie"

This week's Playback features an investigative showdown. Journalist Ben Blum looks into the reality of the most famous psychology study to ever be conducted, The Stanford Prison Experiment, and makes some shocking discoveries himself. Embedded in Blum's story, you'll hear clips from his interviews with psychologist Philip Zimbardo and participants, as well as real archival audio from the experiment Blum uncovered in his reporting. The experiment became famous for the finding that people can be i...

Aug 22, 2018•58 min•Ep. 6

Kristi Coulter: "Enjoli"

This week, Playback is a throwback, but the story timeless. Society is fine-tuned for hardworking women — executives, moms, daughters, creatives, and yogis alike — to get drunk. In “Enjoli,” writer and former Amazon employee Kristi Coulter constructs a diary that turns into a radical reframing of what a “having it all” culture actually looks like: socially accepted forms of alcohol dependence in overspent women. “I’m newly sober and dog-paddling through the booze all around me,” Kristi begins. T...

Aug 08, 2018•41 min•Ep. 5

Jonathan Parks-Ramage: "Jesus, Mary, and Joe Jonas"

Episode three is all about Jesus Christ and his superstars. In his piece “Jesus, Mary, and Joe Jonas,” writer Jonathan Parks-Ramage discovers Reality L.A., an evangelical Christian church that attracts the lost kids of Hollywood with top 40-like ballads and an attractive promise of love and absolution. Unfortunately, the gospel is not so sweet for Jonathan — the hip-seeming church is truly conservative, and non-belief, abortion, premarital sex, and gay sex will each earn you a one-way ticket to ...

Jul 11, 2018•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 3

Roxane Gay: "What Fullness Is"

For the first episode of our first-ever podcast, there was only one guest we had in mind: bestselling author Roxane Gay. Her powerful and devastatingly honest essay “What Fullness Is” is one of the most read stories on Medium this year. In the piece, Roxane discloses her decision to undergo bariatric surgery — from the instant in her car when she made up her mind, to the painfully awkward moment with the nurse post-surgery, to her fears about how her fans might respond. It’s the type of story th...

Jun 13, 2018•41 min•Ep. 1

Welcome to Medium Playback

At Medium, we love a good story. So when we were dreaming up our first podcast, we knew it should center on what our readers come to Medium for — compelling, insightful stories and the people who write them. We’re launching our flagship podcast, Medium Playback, next week, and this is the trailer for season one.

Jun 05, 2018•2 min