We are officially in the middle of summer, and it seems to be hot everywhere? Good times.

So today we are going to zig where we have previously zagged. Consider this your Good Humor ice cream cone in the heat: tasty, fun, and it leaves you feeling good, uplifted, and just a little bit more human.

Which is, admittedly, a bit of a tall order. So what magical podcast panacea is capable of evoking all that, and how does it do it? Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Wiser Than Me with Julia Louis-Dreyfus, an absolute delight of a podcast that continues to deliver.

I will admit, when I listened to the debut episode, I had a different kind of reaction. As is sometimes the case in podcasting, and in media in general, there is the concept of parallel thinking: multiple people arriving at similar ideas at the same time. Theoretically, this is also why Hollywood keeps handing us the same idea twice, No Strings Attached and Friends with Benefits landing in the same year, being the pair I can never unsee.

When I was working at Paramount, we were developing a podcast with a very similar concept, with a great female talent attached, a bit older, an amazing storyteller, and we were piloting. And we felt great. And then I had the moment you dread as a development executive, when you listen to, or watch, or read, a very similar idea executed either better than or as well as you thought you could. The key in podcasting is differentiation, creating something people have never heard, so we ended the pilot.

With more distance, I feel very good about that decision. Because, wow, her pod started off good and just kept getting better.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus, owner of more Emmys than any performer in history, spends each episode with a woman older than she is, Jane Fonda, Carol Burnett, Joan Baez, and Jean Smart (amazing list of humans), and asks them to tell her everything they know. It is funny, it is disarming, and it ends every week with a call to her ninety-something mother that is worth the listen on its own.

Why does this one work when the format is the most oversaturated in podcasting? I have a theory, and it comes down to one move almost no famous host is willing to make. That's on the other side.