WINNETKA: A Memoir - Podcast Rankings and reviews

This is the charming tale of a large family in the 1950s and 60s. The stories are sometimes cute, sometimes disturbing, but always feel authentic. The telling is slower-paced than most pods, beautifully narrated and punctuated with songs, interviews and historical references.

Overall, this podcast is more about style than content, but if you’re looking for something with a cozy feeling or for a long family car ride, this should meet your needs perfectly. If you’re looking for action or investigation, this isn’t for you, although you might enjoy an episode or two to get a taste of a different way of using podcasting to tell a story.

Highly recommend this podcast, especially if you are of the baby boomer generation. I enjoyed Jessica Harper’s sly wit in relating to younger folks who may not understand some of the cultural references. Her family’s story is absorbing and poignant. Made me wish I had come from a large family like hers.

It feels like Jessica has captured my own childhood years as a 60s kid. This is poignant, funny, sad and irresistible. It is amazingly accurate of the times and captured like a mental movie. I binged this whole series caught in the feelings and memories of growing up a baby boomer.

This podcast is a testament to the power of independent podcasters telling meaningful stories. It is well written and wonderfully narrated. The storytelling highlights the complexity of the family with refreshing honor and honesty.

This memoir could have been a mostly-fun nostalgia trip for Baby Boomers and fans of mid-century history. . . think A Christmas Story, fast-forwarded a bit, and for all seasons. I actually really enjoyed the heavy use of original music! It was very cute, and elevated the podcast above a simple recounting of everyday memories. I also found it cool that the voice of the children’s mother was used, and she was able to give her honest perspective on a lot of the events. She wasn’t over-used to the point of bogging down the story, but it seemed like the very best parts of her commentary were pulled and highlighted. Jessica’s voice was very pleasant to listen to as well; while she has family recordings, she does narrate a lot of the story herself, and she does so with good humor and very tranquil but engaging delivery.

Unfortunately, these positives were ultimately overshadowed for me by the BIG FAMILY SECRET teased in every episode. Listeners should know that the secret doesn’t appear until the final installment, and the content of the secret does not, to my mind, drive a 10-episode podcast with eight bonus segments. This commodification of the information discovered felt tacky to me and left a bad taste in my mouth. I felt that she made this “about them,” when it was really about the devastation of others, and the privilege of the entire family radiates glaringly against this backdrop in a way that the author seems unaware of. Additionally, because of the information surrounding the secret, listeners know that it can only possibly be so many things. . . most conclusions you will come to as possibilities will make the actual secret look even worse.

Very fun to listen to overall, but sadly marred by the exact mystery overused as a plot device.

It’s a nicely told family tale but there’s nothing extraordinary about it. I do believe, however, with all the weirdly placed children’s songs, that the true purpose of the podcast was to give exposure to her career as a singer-songwriter in the children’s music genre. I’ll give her credit that was a clever thing to do but it just doesn’t work. Weird.