What’s in My Buds? With Vanessa Ishii from Stitcher

Welcome to the February edition of “What’s in My Buds?”. This month we talked with Vanessa Ishii from Stitcher. Vanessa serves as content editor and partner manager there, where she gets to listen to incredible stories all day long. But the listening doesn’t stop when she leaves the office—she can be found listening to content in the car, in her kitchen, and in public, laughing or tearing up to her favorite podcasts. Her favorite part of her job is working with content creators, learning about their storytelling process, and connecting their work with the right audience. From Vanessa: “For what it’s worth: I keep catching myself asking new people I meet what podcasts they listen to, assuming everyone listens as much as I do. Not everyone does. But they should, and I tell them that.”

Check out some of her favorite shows below.

What is your go-to podcast and why? Initially, I thought my go-to podcast was either The Worst Idea of All Time or Earwolf’s Ronna & Beverly but according to my Stitcher listening stats (screengrabs attached), it looks like I lean most heavily on My Brother, My Brother, and Me from Maximum Fun. This is probably my go-to because their show is a blend of what I expect from a podcast: it’s published on a regular schedule, it makes me laugh, it’s informative at times, and the McElroy brothers do a splendid job of making me feel included, like I’m part of their tribe.

What show do you wake up to? I wake up to a personalized feed of news updates from sources like the AP, NPR, FOX, APM’s Marketplace, PRI’s The World, CBC and so on.

What show do you fall asleep to? I enjoy falling asleep to the archives of Nerdist Industries’ Thrilling Adventure Hour or The Dead Authors Podcast. Both of which are sunsetting production of new content, unfortunately.

What is your favorite listening environment? My car. Otherwise I catch myself surfing my phone or computer and have to rewind 30 seconds to hear something I missed.

Check out your own listens stats Stitcher.com

What show do you rave to your friends about? Superego; it was my gateway podcast. Once I finished binge-listening to their available episodes, I discovered Ronna & Beverly, which led to Comedy Bang Bang, and now I can’t stop adding to my Favorites playlist. I just saw Superego perform live for the first time at SF Sketchfest this year. Why do I rave about Superego? I listen to a variety of hard news, politics, science, and tech content all day for work. So I look forward to high-quality comic relief when I’m listening purely for pleasure.

Who is your favorite podcast personality? Paul F. Tompkins, hands down. Best interviewer with the best guests, best interviewee, best improviser, best impersonator, with a breadth of knowledge that never ceases to entertain. Basically, he’s King of Podcasts.

How do you envision the future of the podcasting industry? I imagine that film studios, TV networks, perhaps even record labels will begin to pump out supplemental podcasts for viewers to consume as an audio equivalent to the “second screen” experience. Right now, there’s a lot of fan recap, fan fiction, even punishment podcasts (Worst Idea of All Time), but not a lot of the original content producers are investing resources into their own “official” podcasts. The argument can be made that their wheelhouse is video not audio, but they all have websites, Twitter accounts, etc. Why not podcasts, too?

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