Luminary announces initial 2020 podcast content lineup
Returning shows for Luminary Premium Subscribers from Trevor Noah, Lena Dunham, Roxane Gay & Tressie McMillan Cottom, Russell Brand, and more; new original shows debuting with Soledad O’Brien, Alex Gibney, Franklin Leonard, and Evan Narcisse; more 2020 content to be announced soon
New York, NY, January 8, 2020 - Luminary Media, a podcast content and technology company, announced new and returning original podcasts for Luminary Premium subscribers in 2020. Luminary is a free podcast app and premium subscription content network, where Luminary Premium subscribers have access to podcasts from some of the most recognizable voices in podcasting, legendary entertainers, and diverse and emerging voices. The shows on Luminary range from politics and long-form journalism to comedy, music, true crime, sports, pop culture, and scripted fiction.
“Luminary is thrilled to share with podcast listeners top quality content from our talented group of award-winning creators,” said Simon Sutton, Luminary CEO. “At Luminary, we want to be the network where creators go to do their best work, and listeners come to discover quality audio content, and we’ll have even more 2020 content to announce soon,” he added.
Luminary creators were recently honored with 2019 Podcast of the Year Awards from AdWeek, and named in 2019 “best podcasts” and “best podcast episodes” lists by The Atlantic, Time, The New Yorker, The Guardian, Marie Claire, IndieWire, O The Oprah Magazine, Esquire, Vulture, The AV Club and Good Housekeeping.
The following new shows will be debuting on Luminary in 2020:
From FilmNation, with host Soledad O’Brien: Award-winning journalist Soledad O’Brien hosts a new true crime miniseries about the 1964 murder of Mary Pinchot Meyer in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, DC, and the resulting trial that rocked the country and became a time capsule of all the racial tension, scandal, and distrust of the 1960’s. This original audio documentary is a story about rebellion; about two exceptional women who couldn’t be more different -- a connected Washington socialite and artist, and a civil rights activist and legal trailblazer -- but both pushed against the confines of their station in American society. Mary’s death remains one of the most fascinating unsolved cases in U.S. history. Though this mystery drives the podcast, its true core lies in how the decade’s politics and culture shaped a tragic moment, forever intertwining two women and their legacies. The podcast is being produced by FilmNation Entertainment with Neon Hum Media (Bag Man,This Land, Room 20). FilmNation Entertainment is a leading producer, financier, and distributor of independent films (Arrival and The Big Sick), television (I Know This Much Is True), theater (The Band’s Visit) and audio (Hyper-Thetical). Soledad O’Brien is an award-winning journalist, speaker, author, and philanthropist who has anchored, reported or produced programming for many networks, including HBO, PBS, and CNN. She anchors the weekly political magazine show "Matter of Fact with Soledad O'Brien" for Hearst TV and is a correspondent on HBO RealSports.
The Black List Podcast: The Black List Podcast, co-hosted by Franklin Leonard and Kate Hagen, will showcase the very best unproduced film scripts as contemporary radio plays, as well as thoughtful, in-depth conversations with filmmakers, producers, and creators of all kinds. Leonard is the founder of The Black List, the yearly publication highlighting Hollywood’s most popular unproduced screenplays, and the company birthed to continue its mission. More than 250 Black List scripts have been produced as feature films, earning almost 200 Academy Award nominations and 37 wins. The podcast will be executive produced by Jimmy Miller and Hans Sahni for Ninth Planet Audio, the podcast production arm of Mosaic Media.
Lies We Tell: Why do we lie? From Academy Award®-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney’s Jigsaw Productions, Lies We Tell contemplates the mysteries of deception and all of its manifestations. Alex Gibney and Ellen Horne (former executive producer, Radiolab) -- along with producer Clare Sloane Vance and a team of reporters -- explore character-driven puzzles, each with a central lie at the heart of the story. Alex Gibney has been called “the most important documentarian of our time” by Esquire and “one of America’s most successful and prolific documentary filmmakers” by The New York Times.
Corner Wolves: From Marginal Mediaworks, Corner Wolves is a fictional narrative set in Harlem in the mid-90s, by acclaimed writer/journalist Evan Narcisse with music supervision by multi-Platinum, Grammy Award®-winning producer Just Blaze. The story centers on an Afro-Latina character who is out to avenge her father’s murder, and is set against a backdrop of the convergence of the war on drugs and the birth of hip hop. Evan Narcisse is a journalist, cultural critic, and author, having written for The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Time, i09, Kotaku, and others, as well as Marvel Entertainment. He is the co-author, with Ta-Nehisi Coates, of the popular Marvel graphic novel series Rise of the Black Panther. Just Blaze’s music work spans from Jay-Z classics like The Blueprint and The Black Album, to Drake’s Take Care, Kendrick Lamar’s Good Kid, and M.A.A.D City and Beyoncé’s Lemonade.
The following shows will have new seasons debuting on Luminary in 2020:
On Second Thought with Trevor Noah
The C-Word, with Lena Dunham and Alissa Bennett
Celeste & Her Best, with Celeste Barber
Tabloid, from New York Magazine
Snap Judgment presents Spooked
Karamo
Fiasco
Wisdom from the Top, with Guy Raz
Love + Radio
The AM Archives
Stoop Talks
From journalist Leon Neyfakh and Prologue Projects comes the second season of Fiasco, exploring the Iran-Contra affair. It is the story of a secret war, a secret arms-for-hostages deal, and a scandal that threatened to destroy a presidency -- until it didn't. Starting in 1985, senior Reagan administration officials covertly facilitated the sale of weapons to Iran, which was officially considered a state sponsor of terrorism. The proceeds from the arms sales were then used to fund the Contras in Nicaragua, as part of a war that Congress had prohibited the White House from fighting. Using dozens of original interviews and reams of archival footage, Fiasco's second season will bring the story of Iran-Contra back to life, while sounding a familiar echo to current political and international events.
Fiasco Season 1 earned an AdWeek Producer of the Year award for executive producer Andrew Parsons. Neyfakh and Parsons previously co-created Slow Burn, the award-winning podcast covering two previous modern Presidential crises—Watergate and the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal.
The following shows currently running on Luminary will continue into 2020:
Under the Skin with Russell Brand
I AM RAPAPORT STEREO PODCAST
LGBTQ&A
Note to Self
Guys We F****d
Hear to Slay
History on Fire
The Trip
Metaphysical Milkshake with Rainn Wilson and Reza Aslan
Food Actually with Tamar Adler
Vocal Point with Martina McBride
Making a Killing with Bethany McLean
Media contact:
Sarah Rothman, The Lede Company