Oct 3, 2016 7:00 AM

Dope Queens, 70-Year Beefs, and 3 More Must-Hear Podcasts

This week's best podcasts feature acrophobia while building skyscrapers, footlong parasites, and Ilana Glazer.

Eating lunch atop the support beams of the World Trade Center, family meddling after a 70-year fight, using electric shocks to get a date—this week, podcast guests are taking the everyday to new heights. Plus, stand-up that will certainly make you laugh on your morning subway ride, and how Cathy Hughes built a $400 million broadcasting company on a different idea of what radio could be.

Buzz, 80, and Sheldon, 85, are brothers who haven’t seen each other in 20 years. They’ve each got a long list of grievances to explain why—missed bar mitzvahs, a ruined bris, shirked responsibilities at a funeral—but Buzz’s meddling son, Jonathan Goldstein, is determined to bring the brothers back together. On *Heavyweight*, Goldstein will help people fix something from their past; the first episode, so close to home, is a delight.
NPR
How I Built This, “Radio One”
As a kid, Cathy Hughes knew she wanted to be the first African-American to have a syndicated radio show. But to build Radio One, now a $400 million broadcasting company, she had to spend years persuading her family, her bankers, and a Washington, DC audience that a black woman could bring a different kind of radio programming to audiences. [Listen here.](http://www.npr.org/podcasts/510313/how-i-built-this)

Mohawk Indians have helped shape the Manhattan skyline for six generations, working from heights where a gust of wind can (and does) toss people to their deaths. *The Kitchen Sisters* talk to the ironworkers about what it’s like to eat lunch perched atop a beam 50 stories in the air, how it felt to watch the World Trade Center topple, and the culture of coming home from such a dangerous job.
WNYC
2 Dope Queens, "Hamilton Adjacent"
*2 Dope Queens* is back! If you haven’t already listened to the first season of Phoebe Robinson and Jessica Williams hosting comedians, get ready to be that person chuckling to yourself on the subway. This episode has it all: stand-up from Godfrey and Michelle Biloon, *Broad City'*s Ilana Glazer considering some very important questions, an audience and two hosts laughing for a full hour. After listening, you will have been too. [Listen here.](http://www.wnyc.org/shows/dopequeens)

NPR
UnFictional, "A Shock to the System"
In a time of shocks to our national system, *Unfictional* brings stories of people who experienced a far more bracing shock: a college student who became a big man on campus because of a footlong parasite, a man struck by lightning, a woman who found her job through psychosis, and how one man used electric shocks to get a date. [Listen here.](http://www.kcrw.com/news-culture/shows/unfictional/a-shock-to-the-system#)

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Charley Locke writes about growing up and growing old for publications including The Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine, and WIRED. ... Read More

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