Jul 4, 2016 7:00 AM

Celebrate America Right With the 5 Best Podcast Episodes of the Week

Time for some aural fireworks. Light ’em up, people!

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Are you stuck in traffic on your way home from the long weekend? Staring up at the stars after the last firework? Maybe you're back on that morning grind to the office, in which case you have our condolences. No matter where you're listening this week, though, we've got you covered—from a hidden kitchen in San Francisco to a murder mystery across the pond, to soundscapes recorded on the rings of Saturn. Turn on, tune in, pod out.

*Fugitive Waves* stories are intricately rendered portraits of American subcultures, full of archival and contextual sound. This week, the Kitchen Sisters go to a hidden corner of San Francisco: a street corner outside of the yellow cab lot, where Brazilian Janette sets up a nightly kitchen offering salgadinhos, samba music, and a taste of home to the cab drivers working late nights.
Most podcasts---even those about outer space---are recorded on Earth. This week, host Miles Traer collected audio from NASA missions to stitch together an interplanetary soundscape. Hear the whirrs and clunks of moving across Mars’ surface, the Tibetan singing bowl-like tones of Uranus’ rings, the eerie whistles moving towards the heliopause. Best listened to with good headphones, at night.

As the first major-party candidate for the presidency, Hillary Clinton will make history. But she follows a long history of women running for the highest office in the land. In the first of a series on failed presidential candidates, *Radio Diaries* takes a look at a few of the 35 women who applied for that job before Hillary: Victoria Woodhull, a clairvoyant who listed Frederick Douglass as her VP when she ran in 1872; Margaret Chase Smith, a senator who sought the Republican nomination against Goldwater and Rockefeller in 1964; and Shirley Chisholm, who won New Jersey’s Democratic primary in 1972 and paved the way for both Clinton and Obama.
The Heard
How to Be a Girl, “Bathroom Bill”
On *How to Be a Girl*, a single mom and her eight-year-old daughter, a self-described “girl with a penis,” talk about what it’s like to grow up trans. Having a loved one who's nonbinary can change one's understanding of gender in an immediate and fundamental way---and *How to Be a Girl* proves the intimate, personal power of podcasts. In this episode, Marlo Mack goes to town halls and protests in Seattle about the bill that would prohibit transgender people, including her child, from using the bathroom they identify with. [Listen here.](http://www.howtobeagirlpodcast.com/episodes/episode-xi-bathroom-bill)

BBC
Untold: The Daniel Morgan Murder, “Luckiest Mugging in the World”
In 1987, private investigator Daniel Morgan told friends that he had found evidence of corruption within London’s Metropolitan Police. A few days later, he was brutally murdered with an axe. The case has gone unsolved for almost 30 years, but in *Untold*—which is topping the British iTunes charts—Peter Jukes reexamines the case, the methodologies of police officers in the initial investigation, and the culture of the South London neighborhood where it all happened. Start with episode one, "Luckiest Mugging in the World," and catch up with a few hours of British intrigue. [Listen here.](https://soundcloud.com/user-441226646/1-luckiest-mugging-in-the-world)

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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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