CAA Signs Podcast Startup Lemonada Media

Creative Artists Agency has signed Lemonada Media, a Minneapolis-based podcast producer that plans to double its slate of scripted and unscripted offerings this year.

Founded in 2019, Lemonada currently offers a handful of shows, most of which focus on serious topics like the COVID-19 pandemic, substance abuse, and police brutality.

Its first series, Last Day, premiered in September 2019, and covers the current U.S. opioid epidemic. Both the company’s cofounders–CEO Jessica Cordova Kramer and CCO Stephanie Wittels Wachs–have lost brothers to opioid addiction, per Variety. Last Day’s episodes have, to date, been downloaded more than 4 million times, and season two began airing last fall.

Lemonada has so far raised a total of $2.5 million, $1.5 million of which came from a 2020 seed round led by venture capital firm Blue Collective. Earlier this month, it unveiled 10 new shows that will debut over the next year, including its first scripted series, Here Lies Me, which is written by YA author and podcaster Hillary Frank and is “about the intensity and absurdity of middle school.”

“We weren’t exaggerating when we said we’re committed to making our listeners’ lives better—and that means producing more of the content the world needs as soon as we can,” Cordova Kramer said in a statement about Lemonada’s programming plans.

Wittels Wachs added, “But we’re approaching each of our podcasts as solutions-oriented resources, albeit entertaining ones. And that is rewarding.”

Lemonada was previously represented by UTA.

You can see a complete list of its upcoming programming below (with descriptions provided by Lemonada).

• Good Sex: A series about what we never talk about, when we talk about sex. It features 10-minute takes by a body-positivity activist, the LGBTQIA community, a Hollywood intimacy coordinator, sex therapists, and more. (Debuts March 2)
• No One Is Coming to Save Us: A story-driven series about the childcare crisis and the people crushed by it (in partnership with Neighborhood Villages). (Spring)
• Untitled: Change-making storytelling hosted by a healthcare economist, about the state of healthcare in America and where we go from here. (Spring)
• Good Grief: The third spinoff of our “Good” franchise — a soundscaped, immersive experience about how we mourn. (Summer)
• Written Off: Young, current, and formerly incarcerated individuals writing their way out of prison. A social-justice podcast, it will be hosted by Walter Thompson-Hernández and executive produced by Jay Ellis and Aaron Bergman. (Summer)
• New Day: Following the global success of Last Day, an expert leads illuminating conversations to help listeners create a life worth living. (Fall)
• In Giro Con Fra (Translation: On Tour with Fra): An Italian-language show that follows Francesca Lazzarin — mom, sociologist, and the Italian wife of The Lumineers’ Jeremiah Fraites — as she navigates life on tour with The Lumineers. (Summer)
• Believe Her: Nikki Addimando is a young mother serving a 29-year jail sentence. Her crime: self-defense against her abusive husband. Lemonada is partnering with new lit house Spiegel & Grau to tell her story, reported and hosted by Justine van der Leun. (Fall)
• Here Lies Me: Lemonada’s first foray into scripted podcasts, a fictional series about the intensity and absurdity of middle school by Hillary Frank, award-winning YA author and podcaster (The Longest Shortest Time). (Fall)
• BEING: An “audio reality” series from the forthcoming Lemonada BEING Studio about what it’s like to walk in different people’s shoes. (Early 2022)