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Longtime podcaster makes the jump to the airwaves for 'It's Been a Minute'

Brittany Luse, co-host of For Colored Nerds photographed August 2021, in Brooklyn, New York.
Sarah Jacobs
Brittany Luse, co-host of For Colored Nerds photographed August 2021, in Brooklyn, New York.

Brittany Luse has been a host for 8 years, but for the first time, she'll now be on the radio in addition to podcasts. She’s stepping into the chair held by Sam Sanders for about five years, taking over duties on NPR's It's Been a Minute.

“There is something that you can’t match – I think, with being able to broadcast not just through a podcast, but also on public radio stations across the country,” Luse said. “I’m still learning how NPR works, (but) I think having crash courses on how to put together a show over the years – that has helped me a lot.

She’s about to wrap up her time with the pop culture podcast For Colored Nerds, launched by Luse and her longtime collaborator Eric Eddings. The two also worked on The Nod, which ‘told stories of Black life that don’t get told anywhere else,’ and ended production in late 2021.

Luse, who has written for Harper’s Bazaar and Vulture and worked as an editor for NPR’s Planet Money podcast, says some of her most cherished colleagues have spent large parts of their career in public broadcasting.

She started off as an independent podcaster working with Eddings (the IPhone podcasts app had only launched a year before.)

Working later for an established podcast company, Luce says she faced some pushback, saying “advertisers didn’t want to invest in Black programming,” executives at Gimlet Media ultimately decided to collaborate on The Nod. She and Eddings also produced a video series for the mobile streaming platform Quibi.

“It took too much convincing for my taste,” Luse said. “But I am ultimately grateful for that experience, because what it allowed me to do is to learn strategies, and to gain resilience. Because that’s not going to last time something like that ever happens in my career.”

It’s Been a Minute airs Saturdays at 12pm on Radio IQ. For her first show, she talks with Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams.

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Jeff Bossert is Radio IQ's Morning Edition host.
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