‘funny,’ not funny: Recent Episodes
Jim Infantino and Lionel Cassin
Conversations about books, music, movies, shows, tech, culture, and more. Jim is a songwriter and leader of the band Jim’s Big Ego. He is also an author of The Wakeful Wanderer’s Guide series. Lionel Cassin is an IT security specialist and a voracious reader of Science Fiction and History. They enjoy lively conversations and are now sharing those with you.
This week we are joined by playwright, rowing coach, meditation teacher, songwriter/singer and all around fascinating human being, Mark Basquill to predominantly discuss the play he co-wrote with Jay Sefton.
Unreconciled is the true story of an adolescent actor cast as Jesus in a school play directed by a parish priest. The story chronicles a survivor’s journey as he confronts his past, navigates a victims’ reparations program set up by the Catholic Church, and discovers the courage to use his voice. This 80-minute piece is a poignant and at times humorous exploration of family, place, and the meaning of reconciliation.
At the end we talk about the details of rowing overseas, and our love of music.
For music makers, a producer/engineer can be a unique sort of friend. For all of us, except Lionel in this conversation, that unique friend came with the name "Ducky Carlisle" and helped us make the best music we could make, all while having the time of our lives. Bleu McAuley, Shaun Wortis, Mike Gent, and Jim tell the tales of the studio days and nights with the late great Duck Carlisle and we play some of examples of the songs he helped us bring into the world as recordings. Thanks so much to our guests for this episode.
This week we were fortunate to have songwriter, singer, producer, creator, Jeff Tareila on the pod. Jeff has toured internationally with his band and solo, has recorded and produced "tons of records" in his words, and shared a history back in the distant past with Jim, stomping around the SoHo folk scene in New York City. He talks about the creation of his own releases as well as work he's been doing in the Virgin Islands with Dan Ackroyd, Motto, and G-Love. This was a really fun podcast to record. I hope you enjoy it.
This one was recorded while Jim was in New York City at Rivendell (Peter Cooper Villiage) in the last homely house (his mom's apartment) with his daughters visiting his mom. We talk about Norman Cantor's In the Wake of the Plague, and touch on some other books about similar subjects before veering off to discuss Napoleonic surgeons, The Watchmen, and Lionel's idea for R.U.N.A.I.
Refrences
This week Lionel and Jim talk about the TikTok algorithm, Roy Casagranda, AB testing at PayPal in the 2000s, Survey Groups and Polling, The Bonfire of The Vanities ny Tom Wolfe, the real date of the Fall of the Roman Empire, The Printing Press As An Agent Of Change by Elizabeth Eisenstein, and Autonomous by Analee Newitz.
References here: https://funnynotfunny.bigego.com/links/f/S5~dot~02-Bang-on-Killer-Virus/
We start our fifth season by considering a change of genre for our podcast, either to sports or economics, but ultimately settling on not giving a crap. We move on to considering the difference and origins of both Science Fiction and Fantasy, and then ponder the origins of Vanishing Point Perspective Drawings and whether human beings are biologically the same from a few thousand years ago to present day.
References coming soon.
In our final episode of a very long Season 4, Jim and Lionel talk about soundtracks, synthesizers, the limits of AI growth, political assassinations, and communication skills. From Ennio Morricone to Vangelis, from the Yamaha CS-80 to the Oberheim OBX, from Ed Zitron to The Paris Peace Talks, from Condoleezza Rice to the George Clemenceau shooter, we cover everything.
References coming soon.
IMPORTANT: This was recorded July 17th, 2024. We have an enormous backlog of shows right at the time when everything is changing rapidly. So Kamala was not the candidate at the time of this recording.Lionel and Jim talk about riding bikes along the Empire Trail, The Watchmen franchise, Gattaca, Ernest Borgnine, and more. References forthcoming at funnynotfunny.bigego.com/links/
Jennifer Kimball, songwriter, performer, singer, horticulturalist and landscape designer joins the pod. One upon a time, she was in a legendary band called The Story with Jonatha Brooke and now she lives on an island, making music, and designing lawn free (or almost free) gardens of local flora and fauna.
References coming soon.
A lazy summer conversation between Lionel and Jim in which Jim talks about his adventures in recording his band’s new album and checks in with Lionel to discuss books, movies, and tv shows of interest. Check the references for information and links for each item discussed.
Jason comes back to talk more about his life in games. During his time at Gamewright and now at Happy Camper, Jason has explored the world of perfect logic games, cooperative games, games of chance, but always board or analog games, not the digital variety. We wonder what the first game ever played was, and Jim comes up from a past-life regression with a suggestion. We talk a little about Soul Coughing's new tour and the problem of playing what the fans want to hear vs. what the band wants to play. Examples of games and more are listed in the references section of the website for this episode.
Thumbnail for this episode by Elmir Jafarov
The multifaceted Jason Schneider joins us to talk about his life in fun and games. Jason has started his own game company after working for decades at someone else's. Jason started studying philosophy, then went to clown college. From there, he worked on Sesame Street, Zoom, and Fetch! with Ruff Ruffman. He discovered scores of games at Gamewright, and helped develop them into popular products for the company. His own company is called Happy Camper Games. Check them out.
References
I chose this episode to encore because the amount of data centers in use for AI has recently been in the news. Damien was talking about this a year and a half ahead of time. - Jim
Brothers revisited! This week, Lionel’s brother Damien joins us to talk about big construction, data centers for crypto mining and AI, modern art in the Hudson Valley, The M1 Abrams Tank, hybrids vs. electric cars, problems with money and guns, the end of work, and what’s still great about the United States of America.
References: https://funnynotfunny.bigego.com/links/f/S3~dot~04-Damien-Cassin/
Jim Hood, a graphic designer experienced in naming and brand development, typography, communication, and environmental graphics joins the podcast to talk about typography. One important thing we learned is that it was his class in the 90s that developed the standard for the typeface pictogram on Wikipedia. We discuss this, and many, many typefaces. Jim Hood came to my (Jim I) office, so the microphone drifts a little bit. I (Jim I) did my best to fix it after the fact. Adding all typographical references to our website: https://funnynotfunny.bigego.com/links/f/S4~dot~45-Jim-Hood/
https://hooddesign.com is Jim Hood's website.
Andrew Silver is a research affiliate at MIT where he leads a seminar on leadership and film. He is a film director, producer, and writer of many films including Radio Cape Cod, Next Door, and Profiles In Aspiration.
Jim recorded his half of this podcast from his home, where champagne was added to the mix of the conversation. Andrew, Jim, and Lionel discuss a variety of films with regard to leadership in varying degrees, starting with Oppenheimer, but with attention paid to the previous attempts at a biopic of the "father of the atomic bomb," then Barbie, and Dune, which shared multiple attempts at telling the story, the latest being a huge success at the box office.
The idea of the power of the box office comes up over and over again. Lionel and Andrew try to land on what can make a successful release of either music or a movie, and after an hour, we decide to have Andrew back to talk more about these topics.
Ben Solo rejoins the pod to talk about 1 book and two short stories. We start by discussing a book by Rory Sutherland. The full title is Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don't Make Sense, although, it was previously called Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life.
We move on to talk about a short story by Jorge Luis Borges called The God Script, which we all felt was profound. Finally, we talk about a short story by Andy Weir called The Egg. There are spoiler for these short stories but a person could read them quickly before listening if a person wanted to.
A theme shared by the two stories is the infinity of dreams. which reminded Jim of a song, which turns out to be a poem by Calderón de la Barca and you can hear a reading of it here.
First, apologies for missing a week. Producing these takes a lot of work and I needed I week off.
- Jim
Our guest this week is Balazs Szelenyi, Associate Teaching Professor at Northeastern University.
From his university bio: Balazs Szelenyi received his Ph.D. from UCLA in 1998 and teaches classes on Philosophy, Globalization, Sociology and History for Northeastern University. His first major area of research was on urban history and urban development. Based on that research he published his first book called The Failure of the Central European Bourgeoisie (2006), and an article on the dynamics of urban development in the early modern period in the American Historical Review. His second area of research was on the origins and causes of genocide, for which he received fellowships from the National Endowment of Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Fulbright Commission, and the German Marshal Fund. In 2003 he was named a Fulbright New Century Scholar for his research on genocide and the Holocaust. He has published articles in the academic journals Past and Present, Theory and Society, Social History, and the Austrian History Yearbook. Balazs has also co-edited a book called Cores, Peripheries and Globalization (2011). Currently Balazs is finishing his book on the Holocaust called From Minority to Übermensch, as well as developing a new interest on the impact of technology on society and the moral dilemmas involved in the evolution of transhumanism.
We talk about his work teaching with a focus on AI and transhumanism and the future of thinking/learning. We discuss mind-extension technologies such as AI and earlier, starting with writing and the telegraph. We touch on Kurtzweil and his singularity, the new purpose of higher education, and what happens when all the inputs and outputs are filtered by machines.
Balazs says that rather than use AI for avoiding work, his program is developing AI to better interactively teach students how to delve deeper into a topic.
We had a great time talking with Balazs, and this discussion went on for an additional hour, which will be released as bonus material on http://patreon.com/jiminfantino/ our Patreon member's site.
Peter Mulvey joins the pod in person, sitting side by side with Jim in the Slabmedia offices this week. We talk about his career in songwriting, hitting a little on themes and methods, but also on inspiration, and a long history of work. Jim mentions Peter's TED talk about his book Vlad the Astrophysicist. We talk about the creation of his recordings: Notes from Elsewhere and More Notes from Elsewhere and play some clips from recent albums, Are You Listening?, There Is Another World, and Love Is The Only Thing featuring SistaStrings.
On the literary front, Peter talks about reading The Pugilist at Rest by Thom Jones, the works of Lorrie Moore, and the poetry of Tom Hennin, notably, Darkness Sticks to Everything and The Herron with No Business Sense.
Jim mentions that Lionel compared some of Peter's work to the guitarist Nic Jones, especially his song, Canada-i-o. We talk about Norwegian prisons and the case of Anders Breivik being sent to a humane prison there, which, interestingly, he calls inhumane in this article.
Our conversation continues to trend in increasingly philosophical directions, including some discussion of meditation and groundlessness until we land on the topic of redemption for the crimes of popular figures, specifically Louis C.K.'s apology. Peter mentions an interaction with Amanda Palmer on forgiveness in this vein.
Ben Soto joins the pod to talk about The Monk and the Philosopher: A Father and Son Discuss the Meaning of Life which is an extensive conversation between Matthieu Ricard and his father Jean-François Revel. Ben found this book particularly fascinating, given his interest in Buddhism, science, and the nature of mind. We also talk about The Ego Tunnel: The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the Self by Thomas Metzinger and Jim and Ben get very heavily into the nature of mind, while Lionel listens and adds his thoughts at the end.
We begin by espousing the benefits of corduroy jackets, move on to quality problems at Jim’s childhood bagel shop, lambaste The Onion, and wave the flamethrower of curmudgeonliness at perceived modern production optimization techniques. We then talk about our varying perceptions of the state of Connecticut. Jim mentions Rein’s Deli, where a photo of his band hangs on the wall. Lionel remembers his time growing up in that state.
On to the sujet de la semaine–The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O., a novel by Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland. Jim is a fan of the character Grainne; a super powerful Irish witch who lives during the Elizabethan era, however, we feel that this book suffers from the caricatures in his other novels, regardless of Galland’s influence and writing. One of our key issues is the treatment of magic in the book, which is written like science fiction, but borders on fantasy. We praise his books The Diamond Age, and Anathem, but start to point to a common structure that speaks to the predictability of his plots. We compare his formula with other authors like Michael Crichton. Jim stops Lionel from spoiling the plot of Anathem which is a real surprise, even though it follows the Stephenson formula.
We contrast this novel with our previous two reads: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, and The Midnight Library, as well as Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel.
The connection gets dropped and we pick up by talking again about 2010: The Year We Make Contact which was inarguably horrible and points back to the idea that we make the best decisions we can at the time.
Lionel asks Jim to read a J.G. Ballard’s short story called Prima Bella Donna, and then we make promises we probably won’t keep about reading Ulysses, The Dubliners, and Finnegan’s Wake. We talk about not finishing Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon. Lionel says Ballard narrative is impossible to predict and the style has such a light touch, it’s easy to get disoriented in exciting ways. The Martian Chronicles comes up as well, and Lionel implores Jim to read the first story in that Ray Bradbury collection. Jim brings the conversation back to D.O.D.O. and the philosophical idea behind it, which he finds fascinating, but ultimately thinks were not fleshed out enough.
Jim mentions that he’s been working on a short story called The Paradox Principal. Lionel says Jim has written lots of short stories the form of songs. They talk about the opposite sort of song that is generally not a short narrative but a kind of suggestion: the love song. Lionel talks about wanting to set up his home studio differently. We talk about our motivations for creating music and stories and everything we do in a world of abundance of creative effort and a relative shortage of audience. Lionel says Vangelis has one answer, which is we write so that we do not feel alone. We talk about how an audience of one can sometimes be enough.
Lionel mentions watching Generation Kill on Max. The story is based on a book he read, which he liked. He says the show is worth a visit. Jim says his TV watching time is radically curtailed. We rifle through a series of TV shows and guage our reactions. Back to Generation Kill, we briefly discuss the history of the second Iraq war. We both say we want to watch Shogun. We both remember how the first TV series captivated America at a time when Japan was seen as threatening to our economy. This brings up the issue of having to subscribe to an increasing number of platforms to see everything we want. We talk about possible alternatives.
We try our best to put an end to this madness, but end up relaunching a discussion of several more films before we lose our legs and topple over.
We start by talking about what we like and don’t like about the band Cheekface. It’s mostly like. Then we talk about the novel Heavy Weather by P.G. Woodhouse. We talk about the line through Red Dwarf from that author and style of writing. We go on to discuss The Curious Incident of the Dog In the Nighttime by Mark Haddon and we discuss what we find dark and light about that novel. Lionel felt a lot of the influence of the band XTC in the story, which takes place in Swindon.
We move on to discuss Charade and somehow find ourselves comparing movies in the 1960s landing on the hit musical Singing In The Rain, which Lionel has not seen but will watch in the future.
We make plans to talk with film maker Andrew Silver to compare 3 treatments of the J. Robert Oppenheimer story.
We try to end by slamming 2010: The Year We Make Contact but discuss a book retelling the making of the original film, The Making of 2001: A Space Odyssey by Stephanie Schwam.
Jim says he started reading The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. and we agree to discuss in a future episode.
Lionel says what he wants to do is complete a reading of Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter. The conversation devolves into two old men kvetching about various health concerns and this episode croaks.
Julia Tenney joins us for what we are pretty sure is the 100th episode of our obscure podcast. Depending on how you count, considering that Jim forgot to press record on episode 2 of Season 1 (so, not counted) and there were some encore episodes (so, not counted) this one should be the actual 100th.
We start by talking about Jim’s new apple watch and then veer perpendicularly headlong into Pokémon Go. Then we discuss the recent eclipse and all of our various vantage points. Julia says that she thinks the dawn of science must have coincided with experiences of eclipses, which is an opinion shared by PBS.
We discuss The Midnight Library (referenced in a previous episode), as recommended by Julia, and the Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. (to be referenced in a future episode), which was also recommended by Julia, which links back to our eclipse discussion. Lionel mentions The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime (which we will discuss in the very next episode). We talk about the TV show Resident Alien, and the refreshing way the show deals with Native American communities and characters.
Julia talks about work she is doing for the Independent Film Festival, processing images for their website.
Of the movies that are coming to the festival, Julia is most excited about Janet Planet, which is playing at the same time as The Road to Ruane, about a person that Jim says he saw all around the Boston rock scene of the 90s. Janet Planet triggers Julia’s memory of ushering for the Boston production of Sleep No More, and we talk about that for a good long while before Jim and Julia bash out the details surrounding Jim’s band playing on Julia’s porch for PorchFest in Somerville, MA, May 11 at 2pm.
As if our conversation couldn’t get more self-involved, we shift deftly to discuss the merits of ice cream and beer. Then we hit again upon { feuilleton } and Johnathan Coulthart. In this way, we land on the topic of Optima, and other typefaces. We are reminded of the old press-type kits called Letraset, and long lost art of manual layout. At this point, over an hour in, we find our theme and play the intro music. Then we quibble and mumble on about waxers and typography until our 100th episode expends its final fuel and collapses in on itself.
This week we talk about The Midnight Library by Matt Haig. Suggested by Julia Tenney, this book deals with regrets we've felt throughout life and wishing we could go back and fix things. Lionel contrasts this book with The Curious Incident of the Dog In the Nighttime by Mark Haddon. The conversation turns to a book Jim wants to write about acceptance and meditation. We finish up by talking about the recent total eclipse, and our two vantage points, and how unlikely and precious our earth and universe is. Short description this time, but this pretty much covers our conversation this week.
This week, we welcomed Bing Broderick as our guest.
Bing Broderick comes to justBook-ish after years in marketing, community organizing, and nonprofit management. Early in his career, he marketed and sold music into niche outlets across the country (including bookstores) as Director of Special Marketing for the Cambridge-based record label, Rounder Records. Mid-career, Broderick shifted his focus to food justice, arriving at the Boston-based nonprofit Haley House to manage the newly launched social enterprise Haley House Bakery Café. Located in Nubian Square, Roxbury, the Café; provided hearty heathy food, a vital community space, and a workplace for men and women who faced significant barriers to employment. In December 2013, Broderick succeeded Haley House‘s founder as Executive Director of the non-profit organization, stewarding (in addition to the cafe) its soup kitchen, food pantry, housing, farm and educational programs. Bing transitioned out of this role in April 2022, having welcomed Haley House‘s new Executive Director, Reggie Jean. He will be opening justBook-ish in Dorchester with co-founder, Porsha Olayiwola, in Summer 2024.
We talk about his past and present projects, the history of Haley House, poetry slams, the business of running a bookstore, and his experience at Rounder Records.
For books, we discuss Bing’s reading of Morgenthau: Power, Privilege, and the Rise of an American Dynasty by Andrew Meier.
Lionel talks about reading Ulysses S. Grant: A Biography by Robert P. Broadwater and The Hare With Amber Eyes: A Family's Century of Art and Loss by Edmund de Waal
We touch on Oppenheimer and Maestro, which Lionel asserts are variations on the same movie.
Bing says he read In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin by Erik Larson.
In our discussion of Rounder Records, we mention a startup called Hear Music. The Wikipedia article omits most of its early history, but it was originally a music catalog that was eventually bought out by Starbucks.
During his time at Rounder, Bing met Iris Dement who was on the label for a number of years.
We end with a discussion of the summertime opening of justBook-ish in Fields Corner in Dorchester, MA.
Lionel talks about The Three Body Problem, both the novels by Liu Cixin and the Netflix series. We contrast the style of this series with our recent reads. Lionel contrasts the tv show with Red Queen on Prime. Back to The 3 Body Problem again, we discuss the ideas of Alastair Reynolds (not Ian) and killer alien traps.
We then launch into an enervating discussion of doing taxes and finding a general practitioner. This only lasts 12 minutes, so you might want to fast forward.
We talk about the different styles of writing in Science Fiction and the origins in pulp fiction started by writers like Asimov and evolving to present day fiction.
Dar joins the pod to tell us about her experience writing What I Found In A Thousand Towns, her songwriting and creative process, her experience in Beacon New York with Roger Ailes, the remarkable Jaimie Raskin, our relationship to art, the environment, and each other, Active Citizenship, and so much more.
I could not find the live performance of The Mark Rothko song. If someone knows where it is, please send an email so I can post it here.
Dar's Website
Writing A Song That Matters (her retreat)
References
All song clips included with permission from Dar Williams.
Lionel and Jim start by inexplicably talking about oat and almond milk. Lionel talks about how he considers upstate New York New England as per American Nations by Colin Woodard. We run through some of the "Nations" again. They touch quickly on tax season before Jim talks about his read of Burn Book: A Tech Love Story by Kara Swisher. Naturally, this leads us to Calvinism in America. Jim asserts with no real authority, that John Calvin was a kind of logician who was a religious writer. His point is that Americans tend to imbue the rich with knowledge and wisdom they may not actually possess. Lionel mentions the PBS series Triumph (not revenge) of the Nerds and talks about how luck figures prominently into the story of success of most tech billionaires. We touch on our impressions of The Social Network again and Jim talks about the Winklevoss twins and their role or non-role in the creation of Facebook as well as other supporting characters in that story. Naturally, we discuss the dawn of file sharing apps like Napster and Kazaa.
Jim returns to Burn Book and Kara Swisher’s writing and speaking style, highlighting her writings on Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. They contrast their two approaches to the dawn of personal computing. Jim mentions the print ads his father worked on for Apple. He also talks about working on the Xerox computer that was the inspiration for the MacIntosh.
Jim moves on to talk about MacKenzie Scott, misrepresenting her original pile of money which was 40 Billion, not 100 Billion, touching back on Kara Swisher's book. Lionel talks about the possible origins of the nature of the philosophy of wealth in the USA.
Jim talks about the dangers of allowing for the creation of billionaires. Lionel says the interesting issue is that of inheritance.
Lionel and Jim have both read Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel and both really liked it. Lionel talks first about the tone of the novel and they both move on to talking about elements of the plot they liked. Lionel wonders of St. John Mandel was thinking about the book Blackout by Connie Willis, seeing parallels between that book and Sea of Tranquility. And yes, of course, Lionel mentions Piranesi by Suzanna Clarke. They talk about the autobiographical notes that pop up in Sea of Tranquility.
Lionel talks about watching Resident Alien with Alan Tudyk. Jim talks about watching The Gentlemen by Guy Ritchie. Lionel mentions watching Tenet which he found exasperating and inexplicable. Jim brings up the movie Primer, which he says is way more cryptic. Lionel says he finds time travel movies and books a bit exhausting, but loves William Gibson’s approach in his later novels. Jim reminds Lionel of Timebomb by Scott K. Andrews, and Scott’s meticulous approach to overlapping timelines. Sea of Tranquility doesn’t aggravate Lionel in the same way as these other novels. Jim talks about how science fiction is becoming elevated in status lately with advances in tech.
They veer into the breakdown lane and lurch to a stop.
We start by talking about the possible death of TikTok in the USA and move on to introduce Julia Tenney and marvel over her pysanky eggs, the methods for their creation, and their Ukrainian and eastern European roots. Lionel discusses the historical Piranesi and his sketches. This leads us to talk about dreams and their origins and consequences. We launch into a discussion of Dune, the books by Frank Herbert, and a little about the first recent movie. None of us had seen the second. Lionel mentions his enjoyment of the movie Bullet Train, directed by David Leitch, not Guy Ritchie with Brad Pitt.
We talk a bit about The Fifth Element and Valerian and the City of A Thousand Planets which Lionel says taps into the aesthetic of the artist Moebius.
Julia recommends a book called House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski which must be enjoyed physically as a printed book. She is also reading S. (Dorst) (Ship of Theseus) by Doug Dorst and J.J. Abrams which is also full of printed marginalia. Finally, she says she read The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O by Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland which is about time travel and witchcraft. Julia also mentions The Midnight Library by Matt Haig about someone with regrets who moves into the multiverse to experience alternate timelines.
Jim mentions that he has some Charlie Jane Anders and Annalee Newitz books to return to Julia. Jim is a regular listener to their podcast Our Opinions Are Correct. Julia mentions, correctly, that she was responsible for our podcast’s name.
We finally get down to the “Theme” which is Julia’s quantum daydreaming. She talked about going back to Pennsic Warwhich is a medieval reenactment festival in Western Pennsylvania. She found out recently that her ex, who fought for her in Crown Tournaments, is dying from something fatal and painful. So, she’s been thinking about quantum reality and doing meditations on it via The 3AM Reading and the Reality Shifting Reddit. We talk about lucid dreaming and meditation practices involving dreams. Jim quotes the title of a John Cougaralbum and Lionel quotes Miller from The Expanse. Lionel also mentions the German TV series Counterpart, where there are 2 Berlins superimposed upon each other. Jim brings up Robert Downey Junior today vs in the 80s and talks about his own past decisions.
Jim says he wants to see a fanfic erotic love story written about the podcast. We act out a little of what it would be like. Lionel says his fantasy is to make a porn movie with all the sex cut out. Jim says he wrote that song and Julia remembers him doing a mashup of Porno Plot with Meanies, sung in a Christopher Walken voice.
We agree to talk more about Vampires in our next meeting and Julia says it wasn’t Anne Rice who brought Dracula back but the Broadway Show and the movie with Frank Langela. Jim wonders why vampires are so sexy. Lionel contrasts the characters of Dracula and Frankenstein and says he wants to see the movie The Master and Margarita.
In closing, Julia plugs her website where you can view and buy her pysanky eggs, and Jim and she talk about their original meeting in Syracuse and Utica.
Discussion of Bram Stoker’s Dracula starts with Jim trying to do a Boston Brahmin accent, and talks about his daughter’s inexplicable accent when she was younger. They move on to talk about xenophobia in the book, alongside the treatment of the other in Frankenstein. We return to Mary Shelley’s work repeatedly to compare and contrast. Lionel mentions all the new technology occurring in Bram Stoker’s book. Jim compares the book favorably to the movie Bram Stoker’s Dracula with Gary Oldman. Lionel mentions the film Renfield with Nicholas Cage. Jim maintains that the book is really about the fear associated with rampant colonialism by Victorian England, Lionel is skeptical about this notion. They touch on the predecessors to Stoker’s book, including The Vampyre by John William Polidori, writing alongside Mary Shelley’s book.
Jim goes further out on a limb by suggesting the book can be read as a fear of aristocratic power, and ultra-wealth, pointing out that the story centers around a real-estate deal. We talk about Stoker’s treatment of the Romani people, and implicit bigotry there. We note the attitude to the lost Byzantine empire in the text as well.
Lionel talks about how improvements to quality of life in England feature prominently in Bram Stoker’s book. He wonders why this book is the leading vampire novel, rather than Carmilla or The Vampyre, or Nosferatu.
In the middle of this discussion, Lionel wonders why so many Phillip K. Dick stories were turned into films, rather than Samuel R. Delaney or other authors. Jim mis-titles Dahlgren as Grendal. Jim says that he used to go to Blade Runner over and over in the Theater when he was younger, and explains why he found it so deep. In Blade Runner, we find our modern tie-in to Frankenstein. We talk about Vangelis, and his important role in the film. Lionel mentions a documentary about him as well as Dangerous Days, which is the account of the creation of the movie. They talk about The Ladd Company and Sir Run Run Shaw. We poo-poo the sequel and the edits. Lionel mentions the deleted scenes he found on youtube.
The talk about how these two kings of the bad guys (Frankenstein and Dracula) continue to live on and be relevant to our modern minds.
Not knowing when to leave well enough alone, Jim continues back to his comparison to billionaires as vampires, contrasting The Lost Boys to Anne Rice, saying that some Dracula stories are replete with money-porn (his term, not colloquial). Lionel continues to resist this idea that fear of extreme wealth is an intrinsic part of the narrative.
Jim lists the Erratica from the last episode, as the life from this episode drains away.
Jim opens with a thread sent regarding the previous episode on Frankenstein. They incongruously launch into a debate about artificial sweeteners. We get back on track discussing the Transcendentalist movement and what came after, as written about in The Metaphysical Club. Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. is one of the main characters. Lionel asserts that he is the father of legal positivism, but that was Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.Lionel mentions another character, Charles Sanders Peirce (aka Chauncy), who handled a disputed will in a large whaling industry family with the case of a forged signature.
Lionel mentions that he re-read The Difference Engine by William Gibson & Bruce Sterling. He found it to be “rollicking good fun.”
Jim snatches the conversation back and reads the weekly “Erratica,” a list of errors from the previous episode.
Jim mentions that he re-watched Kung Fu Hustle, and Defending Your Life, with his kids with high marks for both. He mentions that he is currently reading Volume 2 of P.G. Wodehouse’s The Blandings Collection, on audio book, read by Stephen Fry, and enjoying it very much.
Lionel says he bought three books recently and says he struck out on all three. One was Soulless by Gail Carriger, which he described as romance mixed with Anne Rice. He also tried to read The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V. E. Schwab. This falls into the impossible Manhattan lifestyle series of entertainments and money porn.
We resolve to discuss Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandell and Dracula by Bram Stoker. Lionel and Jim return to the after effects of Piranesi by Suzanna Clarke. Lionel feels like the world in that book stays with him the way the game Myst did.
We talk about the vampire genre and its grip on the public and then talk about what makes zombie movies appealing. Jim brings up The Walking Dead, which Lionel hasn't seen. We also touch lightly on Dawn of the Dead by George A. Romero. Jim wonders if zombie movies started with Omega Man. We wonder if the precursor to the empty world trope is Mary Shelley’s The Last Man. Lionel wonders about the effect of Nuclear War, AIDs, and dementia. Jim mentions The Day of The Triffids as a possible analog, but it doesn't match.
Jim describes his recent trip and walk along the Farmington Canal, where he sent a photo of a plaque to Lionel to read, tying into our discussion of the Erie Canal. His father in law is working on a bike trail that will run the length of the Farmington Canal through Bristol.
Lionel says he tried to watch the live action version of Avatar the Last Airbender and was not alone in hating it. Jim mentions that his daughters are currently enjoying Gilmore Girls. They talk about what it's like for kids to watch shows that are so much older than them and how changes in the way we enjoy entertainment has changed our watching habits. Lionel says his life was changed by Monty Python. Jim wonders where all the family sit-coms have gone and we bumble to a close.
Sarah Elkins joins us to discuss the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. We start with a Filk song to the tune of Funiculi funicula. What is Filk?
Victor spentHis teenage years pursuing all the lore of alchemy (alchemy)Then he wentAway to college and he switched to modern chemistry (chemistry)
He was bentOn secret science studies in the lab
A descent:His obsessive glory-seeking grab!
Let’s go, let’s go, let’s become a god!I’ll create life with parts dug up from sod!Homunculi, homunculus, homunculi, homunculusMy genius grants permission; I’m allowed to do thus!
Sarah’s Notes and Links:The Creature
- Bag of books: He finds The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe, reads it over and over, and kind of imprints on this story of unrequited love from the proto-romantic "Sturm und Drang" (storm and stress) period in German literature.
- Poor lonely creature. Why oh why couldn't Victor have gotten him a puppy? Or a kitten?
- Seems like every character flaw in the creature traces back to Victor.
- In Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan series, on Beta Colonies, clones are automatically legally the children of their creators. So, I am totally fine with all the readers who call Victor Frankenstein’s creation “Frankenstein”.
Literary follow-ons
- Why is Frankenstein Swiss-Italian? English person writing about those wild non-French European folks, like Bram Stoker writing about Transylvanian folks later. That kind of wildness doesn't come from "us" English, of course!
- Chapter 12, when our monster secretly took care of that family and loved them and learned language from them, I was forcibly reminded of how Tarzan helped Jane Porter's family when they were stranded on the African coast. Also, the creature and Tarzan both learned to read with the help of books others had left behind. Of course, Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote Tarzan well after Frankenstein. Had Burroughs read Frankenstein?
- Fred Saberhagen’s take on Frankenstein story (he’s pretty pro-creature): https://www.amazon.com/Frankenstein-Papers-Fred-Saberhagen/dp/0671655507
ResourcesAudio Recordings
- Tantor media: https://tantor.com/frankenstein-or-the-modern-prometheus-mary-shelley.html
- Librivox has 6 different Frankensteins in English
Revisions analyses
- https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/e7d6qj/which_version_of_frankenstein_do_you_prefer_the/?rdt=52833
- https://www.coursehero.com/lit/Frankenstein/the-1818-and-1831-editions/
- https://lib.guides.umd.edu/c.php?g=741698&p=5306097 "the 1818 text, which is a mocking expose of leaders and achievers who leave desolation in their wake, showing mankind its choice - to live co-operatively or to die of selfishness"
- https://stanforddaily.com/2018/11/29/frankenstein-and-its-transformations/
- https://www.public.asu.edu/~hiroshi/eng400/frankenstein/project/editions.html
History
- Vulgar History podcast episode on Mary Shelley
- Galvanic responses & research https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galvanism
- Re-animators of the early 1800s https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-real-electric-frankenstein-experiments-of-the-1800s
- Sarah Avery, 2015 Mythopoeic Fantasy Award winner, on homunculi from Paracelsus on: https://www.patreon.com/posts/rules-for-98233171
- The Sorrows of Young Werther (Napoleon was also a fan, took it to Egypt!): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sorrows_of_Young_Werther
- "Sturm und Drang" period in German literature: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturm_und_Drang
- Romantic literature: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanticism
Funiculì funiculà - English and Italian lyrics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HH0TMmgPtjg
The inevitable Errata (thank you, Sarah):Tchaikovsky wrote the "1812 Overture" not 1815 (1815 was Waterloo); Bram Stoker was Irish & British, not English.
After some audio problems at the start, we start talking about Valentines Day and the variety of items available and not available at Trader Joes, and not unlike the olds that we are, we stop just short of listing all the items in our freezers. We quickly move on to our admiration of Katherine Ellis and her character Concordia Shwarma-McGraw on TikTok. We move on to a couple of additions to our list of musicians like They Might Be Giants. As before, we draw a line between the surrealist movement after the first world war to these bands, decades later.
Jim talks briefly about the beginning of the book Distraction by Bruce Sterling, which is, as far as we can tell, is widely unavailable now. We do get a little into the book Holy Fire, which is about a gerontocracy and is available both on audio, ebook, and paperback. Lionel mentions Love, Death, and Robots on Netflix, specifically Jibaro. Two of Michael Swanwick’s short stories are in this series as well, and we talk about these.
Jim moves on to two books he’s been reading, The Ego Tunnel by Thomas Metzinger, and Slouching Towards Utopia by J. Bradford DeLong. First, he gives his account of The Ego Tunnel and has many issues with the approach of the philosopher, trying to validate his philosophy with neuroscience. His main objection is that he takes an a priori stance from a materialist point of view and writes off all idealism as folklore. Lionel acknowledges Jim’s frustration, but takes the stand that such investigations are futile.
As we dig in, Jim and Lionel, talk through various ideas of materialism, idealism, and the mind-body split. Jim brings up a class he took with Aryeh Kosman years ago, which is the thumbnail for this episode.
Lionel talks about Our Mathematical Universe by Max Tegmark stating that the universe is fundamentally Mathematic. We agree that the nature of consciousness may be a hot topic right now because of AI, but Lionel doesn’t think this is a useful or answerable question. He feels the important question is what kind of stories we are telling each other and where are those stories coming from. We get deeper and deeper into speculation about intelligence and reason.
Lionel departs from this tedious subject to talk about A Gentleman In Moscow by Amor Towles, which he found charming. He also recommends Across the Spiderverse, which Jim has been meaning to view.
Back to The Ego Tunnel, Lionel brings up David Hume and Immanuel Kant, and Jim talks about his experience wrestling with these questions through meditation. We come back to a brief description of Slouching Towards Utopia which may be the subject of another episode. Nearing the end of this episode, Lionel quotes one of Jim’s songs to illustrate the importance of storytelling. We end with recollections of a recent Valentines Day/Mardi Gras/The Lunar New Year, and get ready for our discussion with Sarah Elkins about Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.
Lionel tells us all about the Garbage Plate at a restaurant in Rochester, NY. Apparently, it’s like Poutine. We talk a bit without fact checking ourselves about the creation of the Erie Canal and Dewitt Clinton, it’s creator. Somehow this references the demise of the Pony Express due to the advent of the telegraph.
We continue in this fashion, touching on a myriad of subjects. Here is a partial list:
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver - parallels are drawn between William Gibson’s The Peripheral and the above book. Jim talks about his experience reading Infectious Generosity by Chris Anderson
They Might Be Giants and albums: I like Fun, Book, John Henry
This leads us into a short discussion about surrealism, including: Remedios Varo a surrealist painter from Uraguay and Renee Magritte
Back to music, we try to find similar artists to TMBG and come up with: Cake and the album Comfort Eagle, Ween and the album Chocolate & Cheese, Beck, Daft Punk, and Laurie Anderson
We start to list musical inspirations like Lana DelRey, the documentary Summer of Soul by Questlove, Roots Manuva from a collection by Ninja Tune. We touch briefly on Amon Tobin, Juana Molina, The Cinematic Orchestra and their album Ocean, the song Birthday by The Sugarcubes, and Kaktus’ father Einar Örn Benediktsson
We close with a recommendation by Jim to look up Concordia Shwarma-McGraw aka Katherine Ellis on TikTok or YouTube.
Shawn Peters joins us to talk about his adventures in the publishing world and his two books out on Harper Collins The Unforgettable Logan Foster and The Unforgettable Logan Foster and The Shadow of Doubt. We talk about his writing origins, the creation of these two books and plans for future novels.
The Unforgettable Logan Foster is a middle grade superhero story that deals with neurodivergence, autism, foster parenting, and the trials and tribulations associated with defeating a supercharged tectonic-powered villian creating havoc in downtown LA. Shawn shares a lot about his past history writing screenplays and his descision to start writing stories for kids. We hear about Shawn’s quest for an agent and the process of getting published, along with the extended timelines involving editing and promotion. Jim shares comparisons between the Logan Foster stories and DC/Marvel comic book dramas and Lionel draws a parallel between Shawn’s book and other books about autism such as The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night.
Shawn talks about traveling to schools and the joys of reading his books to middle grade students and the excitement of being part of their early literary lives. We venture off to the excitement of creation and sharing that creation with others. We get some other inside stories about how the stories were created and Shawn shares another author he is excited about: Ernesto Cisneros and his book: Efrén Divided.
Follow Shawn’s future writing and find out more about his two published books at shawnpeterswrites.com.
Jim begins by listing his mistakes in the previous podcasts, creating new errors as he goes. A "detraction" is actually a term from Christian theology. Jim should have said "retraction."
It reminds Lionel of something he saw at the Newseum in Washington, DC. Jim talks about his recent move from his old office to the new one upstairs, listing some of his Uncle's old books and collectables. Notable among these is his copy of the DC Special #1: An All Infantino Issue.We launch into our reactions to Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler. It turns out, this was not our favorite of her great works. Comparisons are made to The Ministry for the Future, by Kim Stanley Robinson, which we discussed in past episodes. Lionel decides that an author presenting a future hellscape must accompany it with a sense of humor for him to be able to get through it. Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel is mentioned as well. Jim refers to another book from a previous episode to talk about how people cooperate in the face of catastrophe, A Paradise Built in Hell by Rebecca Solnit.We find our way back into Parable when Lionel talks about how it's more a story about what life is actually like today, for some, rather than what life might be like at some future point, drawing comparison to Margaret Attwood. Jim mentions that the idea of the drug pyro was fantastic and horrific, and the invention of the type of empath, the "sharer" concept was interesting. Overall, Jim preferred Kindred, and Wild Seed by Butler.Lionel says he finished reading Gideon The Ninth, which he loved. We talked about our plans to read and talk about Distraction, by Bruce Sterling, as an example of prophetic science fiction. That book will have to wait, as there are no copies available, and we have a guest next week.Jim mentions that he's reading Infectious Generosity by Chris Anderson.Lionel talks about the Craigslist Hall of Fame listing for a 1999 Toyota Corolla.Jim reacts to the song News by Kraftwerk. We talk about vocal processing, filtering out the words and leaving the notes and rhythm.Jim mentions he's be watching Blue Eye Samurai on Lionel's recommendation. We compare it to Samurai Jack, Zatoichi, and other Samurai westerns.Lionel says he watched Kung Fu Hustle and loved it. He also mentions he saw Maestro and Oppenheimer, neither of which Jim has seen. He talks about Hanford and Oak Ridge, which are untold parts of the story of the atomic bomb.Jim talks about Cillian Murphy, listing some of his past works, and focusing on Sunshine. Finally, Lionel finds the Erratum he was seeking. You will have to listen to hear it.We are reminded by this of the movie Defending Your Life by Albert Brooks. Jim compares it to The Bardo, thinking one could create scriptures based on that movie alone.We skid to a halt.
We launch into the pod by talking about a short Punch and Judy animation by Jan Švankmajer, Czech filmmaker and artist, which leads us into a talk about The Brothers Quay and then into reflections on Ridley Walker by Russell Hoban which leads into thoughts on Philip Glass, which leads to Lionel mentioning Kraftwerk, and electronic processing of found sound and spoken word when Jim says he wants to do a new project in Iceland in slow rap format. This all happens in the first seven minutes. We wonder aloud whether Iceland is still populated after the latest eruption in Grindavík.
Jim says he finished the novel Trust by Hernan Diaz and they proceed to rip it to shreds. They plan to read Demon Copperhead which shares the Pulitzer Prize with that book.
We talk about the difference between the New York Times Bestseller list and the New York Review of Books.
Jim speculates that A.O. Scott has been reviewing books at the New York Review of Books. Jim mentions that they went to camp together and he was super smart back then.
They talk about all the errors Jim made the previous podcast and then they talk about Landscape with Invisible Hand again, which Lionel said was too sad to watch.
Lionel says he’s listened to the AI generated song of Frank Sinatra singing Smells Like Teen Spirit which then launches a doom-filled discussion about the garbagification of all future free information, mentioning Yuval Herari along the way.
Jim mentions an article he read by Douglas Rushkoff about Narrative Collapse, comparing it to The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson.
Jim breaks the rules and mentions the Roger Stone recording and the decreasing weight that can be placed on recorded evidence.
Lionel brings up a book he read called Neither Black Nor White by Carl Degler about the nature of slavery in Brazil.
We end by prefacing our future discussion about Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
Jim starts talking about the transparent OLED display at the current CES. We move on to keyboards you stick on your iPhone and the new round of visors.
Lionel is inspired to go on 2 rants. The first is about youtube reviewers who get free gear. His second rant is about a story that shows how AI can be used to get around restrictions imposed on AI. Jim compares this to the Heartbleed exploit of the past decade but much worse. Given the carelessness with which these Artificial Garbage Generators have been put together, Jim expresses his concerns about twitter’s security now that Musk is cutting it to the bone. Lionel says the horse has left the barn.
Jim talks about the I Ching Oracle by Catherine Pilfrey and shares a card he picked to start his day. He then recaps his recent trip to Carmel, California and talks about recent churn in the Pacific Ocean, food, wine (Boekenoogen, Carmel Road, Parsonage), & relaxation. He mentions that he saw a grey whale and also saw a Hyundai Nexo, which is a hydrogen fuel cell electric car. They start talking about the nature of hydrogen as a fuel, but Jim insists that it's a sort of battery, referring it erroneously as a molecule rather than an element. Lionel brings up his feeling that fusion is the deal breaker, but Jim presses his idea that electrolysis should happen inside a car.
Lionel touts the benefits of petroleum products for manufacturing. We touch on Bakelite, Cellophane, and Mauve dye, which were synthetics created prior to the petroleum age. Jim comes back to hydrogen, unable to let go of his idea. Lionel mentions the Family Atomics from Dune, and the subject changes to Climate Change.
They talk about changes in culture and religion that relate directly to our preservation of the ecosystem. Jim talks about how doing the right thing can be made fun and feel futuristic, relating it to his experience renting a Chevy Bolt EUV (not a Ford, as he mistakenly says). Lionel wonders whether it's better to get a new electric car or to run his current car to the ground, mentioning the problems with that argument. They move on to find figures on the biggest greenhouse emitters today, googling franticly to get figures on power generation statistics and power use statistics by industry sector. Jim mentions hempcrete and Lionel despairs that everything is turning into Jim’s cyber-hippie novels. The conversation breaks down along super-nerd lines by mentioning the Pierson’s Puppeteers of Larry Niven’s books.
Lionel says another game changer will be the advent of the sodium battery in cars. We branch off into nuclear and solar energy, touching on France’s use of nuclear energy, and battery storage for renewable power. The fact that solar is decentralized makes it the most attractive option according to both Lionel and Jim. Jim mentions a cartoon he saw about how from the point of view of the energy barons solar power is not feasible.
Lionel mentions a documentary about Vangelis, the composer who created the soundtrack to Blade Runner. Jim says he wanted to read the book Trust by Hernan Diaz on his flight to California, but watched the Barbie Movie instead. Praises are sung. Jim also mentions a movie he saw, that felt like an indie called Landscape with Invisible Hand (not hidden hand, as he says, quoting his own song.) Robert Reich is mentioned tangentially as part of a discussion about what makes a great story.
Finally, they come back to the book Trust, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, which Jim had not finished, but which they will return to in future episodes.
This long conversation continues until Teletubbies are mentioned, and they reach a merciful end.
In our final episode of 2023, we talk about Trust by Hernan Diaz and the pulitzer prize, The Future by Naomi Alderman, and families as cults.
Lionel talks about his visit to Jim's childhood home in Peter Cooper Village, where a scene from Three Days on the Condor was filmed. Jim talks about going to the Speakeasy Open Mic on MacDougal Street when it was run by Dave Van Ronk.
Lionel recalls his visit to the Met, Central Park, Essa Bagel & Franks Trattoria.
We move into a discussion about the book Deadly Companions by Dorothy H. Crawford and The Great Nadar: The man behind the camera: by Adam Begley, which leads us into recollections of the Belle Epoch which leads to a mention of Hugo, the film, and The History of the Twentieth Century, the podcast by Mark Painter.
Finally, we talk about how the turn of the 20th century hinges on the Dreyfus Affair & the fascination with Netsuke and another year of ‘funny,’ not funny comes to a close.
Catherine Pilfrey returns to the podcast to talk about her new creation: The I Ching Oracle card deck: a 64-card illustrated deck and guidebook. Catherine Pilfrey is a designer, and meditation teacher who has been consulting the I Ching Oracle for 25 years. We start talking about the death of Norman Lear and increasingly long life spans for some people.
Catherine talks about the process of creating the deck, and her own experience using the I Ching in the past. She mentions the original methods of yarrow sticks and coins and how the cards are different. Catherine says she was inpspired by the book, The Laws of Change by Jack M. Balkin, who says that the method is unimportant.
Jim asks about the origins of the Book of Changes, and Catherine first mentions Richard Wilhelm, who did the first English/German Translation. Catherine says it pre-existed Confucious but that he added a moral quality to the augur method. In buddhism, Chögyam Trungpa was interested in the I Ching, and it was embraced by many of his students. Lionel talks about Philip K. Dick’s use of the I Ching and yarrow sticks in The Man In The High Castle. Lionel mentions a game/puzzle called House of Cards by the Eames Brothers, and Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies as welll as an article sent to us by Sarah Elkins espousing a theory that the I Ching was created to prevent human sacrifice in ancient China.
Catherine describes the hexagrams and their parts. She tells a story about how she consulted the I Ching for the first time to decide what to do in a relationship that was going south. Jim interrupts with a difficulty he's currently having during the recording of the podcast, and Catherine picks a card for him to decide whether he needs to end the podcast and deal with the issue, or keep going. He gets the answer, and the podcast continues. Catherine talks about how the I Ching can strengthen our confidence in our own inner wisdom.
Jim begins by talking about Kung Fu Hustle and suggests Lionel watch it. He then moves on to the AI songwriterthat’s going around the socials. Lionel remembers the song David Wilcox got an AI to write. Jim says that songwriters are the canary in the coal mine. Lionel likens the current situation to the loss of work for the U.S. autoworkers in the 1980s. Jim and Lionel dispute Shel Silverstein’s name for the Slitheydee or the Slithergadee and fail to decide which one it was.
From there we shift to the subject of Luddites. Jim mentions that he’s been reading Blood In The Machine by Brian Merchant, and discussion ensues about the historical Luddite movement. This dovetails into the topic of another book Jim’s been reading A Paradise Built in Hell by Rebecca Solnit. In her book, Solnit discusses about how revolutions and disasters tend to bring communities together, but that those movements are often disrupted when the bogeyman of property loss scares people. This reminds Lionel of garage door openers and lawsuits sighting garage robberies which were close to non-existent. Jim shares stories about getting mugged in New York City back in the day and shares a funny story about a near miss on a skateboard. Point being, robberies do happen, but that Solnit shows how disasters bring communities together despite our tendency to distrust each other. Lionel talks about his experience living in Texas which leads to our recollections of near catastrophes in southern diners by both Jim and Lionel.
We move on to talk about Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea and several of his other novels. We talk about Paris in the 20th Century, which was not published while Verne was alive, but was remarkably prescient. Jim says he’s looking for his next read, and Lionel recommends The Great Nadar, about a famous photographer in Paris in the 19th Century. Lionel mentions The Faun by Claude Debussy and we close.
We start with Hewitt retelling his favorite joke as told by his friend Jan Luby. Jim actually snorts. We resume the interview from part 1, and Hewitt talks about his reaction to his listening of Utopia Revisited. Hewitt then shares a story of his part in the origin of Jim’s band name Jim’s Big Ego. As punishment, Jim plays another clip from Hewitt’s album, The Only Drowning Goldfish: I Will Crumble. Jim makes a pitch for Hewitt to release his songs to the world ‘for the love of humanity.’ Hewitt tells the story of how he left the Boston area and his personal and creative journey since then. He talks about coming back from chemotherapy and how he found joy in making music again after his recovery. Lionel draws parallels between Hewitt’s story and that of Phil Broikos who visited us during season one of our podcast. We talk about the role of religion in both Phil, and Hewitt’s creative journeys. Lionel reflects on his friend who has scored a number of songs and doesn’t know what he can do with his music, reflecting on our conversation with Dave Herlihy as well. Jim pushes back against defeatism in the face of the flood of free music out there.
Hewitt talks about working with Jim Steinman before he passed. We talk about the effect of MTV on music and how lots of recording artists wouldn’t have been as successful without it. We also talk about the elongation of hits in the public eye because videos stayed popular longer than songs on the radio. Jim mentions a quote from Seth Godin: “people like us like things like this,” and the tribal aspect of letting viewers decide what they like. Hewitt talks about wanting to be surprised by music, which was more possible when bands put out a new record every year, rather than riding out an album for multiple years on MTV. Lionel talks about a time when Jim told him that monetizing music was dead and how he didn't believe it then, but does now.
Hewitt talks about wanting to support the artist Matt Pond, and how he wished people would be patrons of music. Naturally, Patreon comes up. Lionel wishes there was a way to support artists with micro-donations on YouTube. Hewitt points out that there is a feature in live chats that works like this. He mentions Philip McKnight and his channel Know Your Gear, and how he has support buttons in his live chats.
Jim breaks in to play clips from Hewitt’s songs but is derailed by Lionel asking about the naming convention used in the tracks he sent us. Hewitt explains that the secondary titles indicate the number of mixes. Jim plays clips from Evelyn, Howl, and Until the Sun Explodes. Hewitt mentions his friend, Christian Finnegan and his podcast Audio Spackle where he referred to Hewitt as “the Howard Hughes of music.” He talks about his plans to eventually get the music out there when they are ready. Jim pushes back, saying he should release the songs and work on the next ones. Hewitt also mentions how hard it is for new songwriters to be among peers who aspire to be artistic, rather than commercial. We mention Taylor Swift and how she is inspiring a new generation but how she lacks competition in this current environment.
Lionel mentions how he's been turned on to Lana Del Rey and some other artists and talks about how he demonstrates how many new artists are copies of older artists, Lana being the main exception. He says that collaboration like the kind Jim engaged with, with Kurt Uenala is so important. Jim stresses the importance of open mics in honing the craft of the singer songwriter. He stresses the unpredictability of which song is good, and how the artist is often the worst judge of this. We end with a discussion of how good or great is relative, and Hewitt mentions a song for which we had no clip, called The Shame of Diamonds, which he felt achieved everything he wanted. We will leave that song for when he decides to release it.
Just a note: Hewitt was recording into his tablet and there are lots of digital glitches that Jim could not remove. We begin with Lionel’s favorite part of the podcast which we almost never capture: the sound check before we press record. Obviously, we pressed record this time. Jim launches in with a tweet from Elon Musk and we reminisce about the movie Stripes. Jim introduces Hewitt Huntwork, one of his favorite songwriters and one who is invisible in the current music landscape. Jim talks about The Cantab Lounge and Geoff Bartley's open mic there, previously mentioned by James O'Brien. Hewitt talks about the first time he saw Jim at Passim. Jim mentions Hewitt’s first album The Only Drowning Goldfish and plays a clip of Your Pretty Head from it. We talk about the fallout for songwriters after the death of Kurt Cobain. Jim laments that the album is not available anywhere anymore, mistakenly thinking it was recorded by Tom Dubé. Hewitt talks about Tom as the subject of a book, and his near-death experience with Marc Cohn. Lionel points out the sticker on Hewitt’s glasses, which is shown in our poster image for this episode. His other glasses will be featured in next week’s episode: part 2 of our conversation, which lasted over 100 minutes.
Lionel talks about Roy Clarke and his appearances on Hee Haw. Lionel mentions a few of his favorite of Hewitt’s songs, made available to us for this podcast, first The Thief, then Leaning On You, and Just Rock and Roll. Jim added 2 clips in post-production. Hewitt mentions his conversation with storyteller, jewelry maker, Raelinda Woad. Hewitt talks about how his dad encouraged him to speak publicly at an early age, and express himself with music. When he was five, he stood up at a toastmasters banquet and gave a speech about dolphins. Hewitt grew up in New Brighton, MN which was mentioned in the movie In The Line of Fire. While we are on the subject of movies, Lionel mentions Burn After Reading, but we get back on track. Hewitt's family moved to Acton, MA, home of Bill Morrissey, Steve Carell, and Caroll Spinney. A friend of his from there, Christian Finnegan used Hewitt’s music in his standup show, Show Your Work.
At this point, Lionel derails us with a story about rodents being shipped by a humane society to another humane society. We hope this story is not too disturbing to listeners. We decided to keep it in. We meant no disrespect to the rodents. Jim tries to get us back on track by playing a clip from an unreleased song by Hewitt Huntwork: No Mistake. Hewitt talks about what inspired it and his recording history, and we end part one of our interview.
Dave Herlihy is an Intellectual Property/Entertainment Lawyer, a Teaching Professor on the Music industry at Northeastern University, a songwriter, and the leader/vocalist/guitarist of O Positive. We talk about his return to songwriting, his hits with the band, working with limited time, in both the daily sense and life sense, and how Dave instructs his classes in leading a musical life.
We begin by talking about Dave’s instruction on ‘heartbeat physics,’ positing heartbeats as a form of life currency. He talks about how hard it is to get noticed among the 120,000 songs uploaded to Spotify each day. The importance of having a team is emphasized in the enormous endeavor of getting noticed among the hundreds of millions of songs in the air.
Dave mentions how he recently has started writing songs again without any expectations. Club owners need people in the club, and those people usually need to be drinking. Jim plays a clip of a song from his new album Postcards From Kindergarden Vol. 1, 86 years. We talk about the idea of internal age and waiting for the dad download to transform us into what we are. Lionel mentions our conversation with Phil Broikos and his project A Day In Music, specifically, the song about Back To The Future. Dave says he focuses more on what we do with our time, and still being here, rather than the morbid dread of the clock ticking out.
We switch to Dave’s song The Invisible Girl, and the process of getting that guitar sound. Dave says it's by Jeff Neumann from The Filters. Dave mentions that he and Jim will be doing a show at Club Passim in February. Dave talks about the process of recording with Epic Records back when O Positive had a record deal with them, Jim plays Imagine That, arguably the big hit from that record. Dave talks about working with Pete Walsh and switching out drum heads between takes.
We talk about getting a vocal take right with minimum takes to keep the lines fresh, valuing verve over perfection. Jim relates that experience to his time in Iceland and working with Dan Cantor at his studio. Dave says he’s been working toward doing things alla prima. He says he's remixing a recording of O Positive songs from a cassette recorded at WERS in the 90s with Dan. Dan has software not unlike what was used on the recent Beatles single to separate out the tracks from the old recording and remix them.
Dave invites Jim to write a new song with him. He says he’s been cowriting with as many people as he can. We talk about songs as postcards, the inspiration behind Dave’s new album. Jim mentions that there is a song from an O Positive album Toy Boat, Toy Boat, Toy Boat that lives in his head to today.
We close by talking about the origins of music in the human species. Lionel mentions his reactions to watching both Stop Making Sense, the remastered version, and Home of The Brave. We end on an awkward note.
Leigh joins the pod with a conversation about their work at The Brooklyn Public Library and their pioneering program Books Unbanned. They are the Collections Manager and a librarian. This was a marvelous conversation, and like a great librarian, they have provided a bounty of references, which I'm including here:
All Things Brooklyn Public Library
- Brooklyn Public Library Books Unbanned page
- Brooklyn Public Library Books Unbanned merch
- Brooklyn Public Library Borrowed and Banned podcast
- Brooklyn Public Library Library of Things
- Culture Pass NYC
- Brooklyn Public Library Materials Selection Policy
- Brooklyn Public Library Submission Guidelines for Authors and Publishers
Book Bans & Challenges Stats
- American Library Association Banned & Challenged Books
- National Coalition Against Censorship Youth Censorship Database
- PEN America Book Bans page
- PEN America Index of School Book Bans 2022-23
Books Unbanned Partners
- Boston Public Library Books Unbanned page
- Seattle Public Library Books Unbanned page
- San Diego Public Library Books Unbanned page
- LA County Public Library Books Unbanned page
- PEN America Advocacy Institutes
Karaugh Brown joins us to talk about her return to the creative life after years of pursuing a career in Museum patron management at The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, The Guggenheim, The Frick Collection, and currently, her role as Vice President of Development and Partnerships at World Monuments Fund. We talk about balance between our professional and creative lives. We listen to her past recordings, including One Round Orange, and Favorite Daughter, and talk about her two upcoming projects, a new recording of her recent compositions, and an album of cover songs written by Bill Morrissey.
We begin by talking about the balance between the creative life and career, and how that balance is never equal. Jim reads the lyrics from Ottawa before playing a clip, saying he wishes he had the lyrics printed out because they are so good. He mentions having seen a video on TikTok about how lots of women pitch their voices higher to gain acceptance. Karaugh says that the pitch of her voice matches her writing voice. We talk about the production of One Round Orange and Favorite Daughter and the process of working with Billy Conway from Morphineand Bill Morrissey in the studio.
We talk about the next track San Antonio, and Karaugh shares a story about busking in Padua Italy. The song is about the basilica there. Lionel gets excited about the university which he calls the first university in Europe, however, it was the second. We talk about the joys and dangers of revisiting a magical place from the past. We discuss the ritual hazing of the graduates there and compare to other ritual events in our visits to Italy.
Karaugh talks about how great it has been to get amazing and famous musicians to play at little bars around Boston. Jim mentions Dave Mattacks as an example before playing a clip from the song Blackout City. This song features Rose Polenzani on background vocals. Karaugh says it was written about New York City during a blackout during the early 2000s.
Jim plays a clip from a song called Stealing Women. Karaugh relates the story behind the song, which took place in Boston at the time she was working at a women’s shelter. There had been a series of kidnappings in the area at that time. Jim mistook the place for something more rural. Karaugh and Jim compare writing styles.
Before playing a clip from the song Gone, and then a clip added in post-production of the original song All Good Men, recorded live at Club Passim, the Campfire. Jim talks about how James O'Brien, Karaugh Brown, Jim and his wife Catherine used to live in a carriage house in Davis Square, Somerville. We talk about the changes between the James & Karaugh version of the song and the original.
Jim plays another clip from The Campfire: Keep Giving. We talk about Karaugh’s plans for her next recording of her originals, and she talks about a plan to release an album of Bill Morrissey’s songs including Last Day of the Last Furlough and She Moved Through the Fair. Jim suggests that the Bill Morrissey album should be all synthesizers and recorded in Iceland. Karaugh thinks that would be something Bill would like. We discuss Bill’s music and why he was such an icon in New England folk music. Jim mentions the last time he saw Bill alive.
At this point, we lost Lionel to a computer problem. We close out with a clip from Favorite Daughter: the song I Can Save You featuring Kris Delmhorst on strings and Bridget Matros on backing vocals written during Karaugh’s time at the shelter.
After the outro, Lionel returns to talk more about the songs and the Gardner museum.
Jim starts by talking about a candy bar he’s eating. Lionel references The Simpsons. Jim talks about feeling under the weather and needing some sugar energy. We talk about putting our show on YouTube (some episodes are there now.) Lionel talks about visiting Sacramento. Lionel talks about his favorite cafe Recess Coffee. Jim recalls a music venue called Happy Endingsand Lionel mentions Kitty Hoyne’s Irish Bar.
On to books: Lionel talks about Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk. At this point, Jim asks Lionel to reposition his mic to avoid plosives. We think maybe our podcast should be retooled to feature nothing but the two of us adjusting the mic. We then resume our book discussion with some words The Books of Jacob and the issues of translation, referenced in Drive Your Plow. Lionel mentions a translation of Sex by Madonna being translated into Hungarian. Douglas Hofstadter’s writing on the problems of translation comes up. Then we address The 13 Clocks by James Thurber. Jim mentions that Keith Olbermann reads Thurber each Friday on his podcast Countdown, but never from that book. Jim talks about wanting to write a musical based on that book, thinking it had only been done in a high school somewhere, but unaware that it has already been written and published.
Jim says he’s been following a YouTube artist Andrewism who is a philosopher and historian, taking another look at our history and thinking. He is a Solarpunk advocate who discusses the benefit of Libraries of Everything. Specifically, Jim talks about Andrew’s piece on the Myth of the Barter Economy. We look forward to our interview with Leigh Hurwitz, a librarian at The Brooklyn Public Library, who pioneered Books Unbanned. Lionel advocates for drone delivery from the Library of Things and Jim pushes back citing issues Amazon faces with drones. We explore some ideas for what is practical for Libraries of Things.
We talk about existing shared resources, touching on robotic cars and the protest against them. Jim says he’s reading Piranesi to his daughters but that it’s been slow going with increased homework by his eldest. He talks about plans to see his wife Catherine race in the Head of the Charles regatta. Jim mentions he’s feeling like crap and they close... but...
The discussion continues offline, and Jim and Lionel realize, as Lionel gives his critical take on Andrewism that they should come back on the pod and discuss it further. Lionel says it’s really hard to determine how people actually lived, citing the charred scrolls at Vesuvius and the amazing advances in reading them. They seem to be a library of Epicurean Philosophy. Lionel mentions Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond and our Euro-centric concept of agriculture. We mention the Three Sisters and The Lenape People and their form of agriculture. We talk about returning to a discussion of Andrew’s work, and the problems with content on YouTube.
Jim brings up his notion, not an original idea, that money is the one true global religion and references his experience writing the latest volume of his book series. He proposes that monetary valuation is a category mismatch that leads to unhappiness. Lionel draws comparison to the age of railroads and the use of capital to create big works and talks about how technology forces all of us to change the way we order society.
Lionel says he’s hopeful that it is increasingly possible to question the basic tenants of the dominant culture without being labeled a commie. He wonders if there’s a way to do away with agriculture and just print food. He speculates how fusion energy might change all of this with molecular assembly. Jim mentions that we have a giant fusion reactor available to us right now, we just need to collect the energy and store it. Lionel says the fact that information transmission has become so cheap, the effects on the world are remarkable, and the idea of infinite cheap energy would change everything. Jim remembers his old college professor Eric Chaisson who said that even with a zero carbon world, we will still end up with a heat surplus.
In the end, we decide we need to become like Larry Niven’s puppeteers and move the earth.
This week, we talk with Robert Blake Whitehill, the author of the Ben Blackshaw thrillers. Deadrise, the first book, takes place in the Chesapeake Bay, on Smith and Tangier Islands and the surrounding areas. We talk about this history of those islands in relation to the books, as well as the meaning of the title, and boats called Deadrise, and work boats like the Winnie Estelle. Our conversation branches off into related authors Carl Hiaasen, and Elmore Leonard. The movie Jim mentions but can't remember is Barton Fink. Robert talks about a screenplay he is working on about Robert Smalls who commandeered a confederate gun ship during the civil war and went on to join the US House of Representatives.
We discuss Frederick Douglass, who was born in Robert’s home town. Lionel is reminded of two books we have discussed: American Nations, and Union by Colin Woodard. Impressed by Robert’s vocabulary, we veer off into nautical terms used by Patrick O’Brian’s use of language in Master and Commander, for example, what is a futtock shroud? We discuss the best way to define a thriller, and Robert draws the example to the TV show Banshee. We bring up other notable related novels in this genre including The Jack Reacher books by Lee Child, The John Clark novels by Tom Clancy, the Travis McGee series by John D. MacDonald, the Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte Series by Arthur W. Upfield, and Chesapeake by James A. Michener. Lionel is reminded again of The Shock of the New by Robert Hughes. Robert talks about flying his Cessna 152 out of New Jersey and Lionel and he get excited about the future of Air Taxis.
Thank you to Robert Whitehill for spending time with us talking about all these things. We’d love to have him back to discuss his later books.
Podcaster, musician, songwriter, artist, writer, thought leader, and our somnolent listener, James O’Brien joins the pod to talk about his many projects and how he gets it all done. We talk about his podcast, All Your Days, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Pump Club project, and his documentary about Betsy Siggins, Long Ago Way. We talk about the Wes Anderson film, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, Roald_Dahl and the evolution of children’s stories, and The Cement Garden, by Ian McEwan, which James has recently finished. James describes the taste of Paxlovid, and we close with an excerpt from the song Rabbit Run from his album Careful In The Future. This was a really fun conversation, and we hope James will come back to the pod in the future. An hour and a half seemed too short.
Jim starts talking about his adventures in social media and James O’Brien’s wisdom on how not to get noticed there. We tell 2 jokes and Lionel talks about discovering Literacy CNY at his local library and his volunteer work in digital literacy. Jim and Lionel talk about Lionel’s upcoming trip to Boston. They talk again about The Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. They talk about The Annotated Archy and Mehitabel by Don Marquis and The Annotated Alice, which includes various illustrations for Alice In Wonderland. They branch off into a discussion about trees in upstate NY, especially the Celebration Maple. Jim tries his hand at reading made up ads for the podcast, something we don’t expect to do for real. Lionel talks about his adventures in bike riding on the Empire State Trail. Naturally, The Library of Babel by Borges comes up again. Jim talks about reading to his daughters and working on the open source version of his web publishing platform. Jim stresses the importance of apple picking. Lionel talks about his readiness for winter.
In this episode, we welcome Nick Bruel. Nick is the New York Times best selling author and illustrator of Boing, Who Is Melvin Bubble, and the Bad Kitty books. We start the discussion with Jim and Nick's history together from first grade, where they met their common nemesis and how it continued in college, where Nick drew a comic strip called Kawala Bob for the bi-college newspaper. We talk about books store categorization and the evolution of the chapter book and the graphic novel. We talk about his school visits and how he has moved from a hybrid model of graphic chapter books, toward making full color graphic novels. We talk about how the graphic novel format has its own challenges and bonuses. We find out the origins of Uncle Murray from the Bad Kitty books. We mention his influence of Mad Magazine artists Sergio Argonés and Don Martin. Lionel mentions Don Marquis & George Herriman, the creators of Archy and Mehitabel. We touch briefly on Windsor McKay and Little Nemo in Slumberland. Jim’s uncle Carmine Infantino comes up a lot as a big influence. We talk about Dav Pilkey and Kazu Kibuishi and the different type of community of illustrator/authors now vs the past. We talk about Kibuishi's graphic novels Amulet and his process in creating them.
Finally we have a discussion about book banning and how it has impacted Nick’s life and career, branching off into the power and danger of books from the time they were invented. Nick talks about a larger threat of public and school libraries getting completely defunded, a process that is on the way in many states. Jim says the first book that should be banned for inappropriate subjects would be the Bible and Nick mentions that this was brought up in Utah. This was a fantastic conversation - thank you very much to Nick Bruel for joining us on the pod.
Jim starts things off by sharing his impressions of The Day of the Jackal, and Lionel and he talk about the historical background, touching briefly on Albert Camus and the feel of the film, the pacing and the cinematography. We split off into the genre the film pioneered. They move on to an initial impression of Deadrise by Robert Blake Whitehill. Jim talks about getting up at 5am and doing yoga. Lionel extols the benefits of a morning walk. We move on to a discussion of Tom Clancy and The Hunt for Red October, which is Lionel’s favorite novel by that author. Jim jumps back to The Day of the Jackal, to mention that Derek Jacobi plays a part in it. Lionel talks about The Color of Noize by Derrick Hodge which has been stuck in his head.
Then Lionel asks Jim about AB1757 in the California legislature the would curtail the actions of web developers perhaps everywhere and Jim explains what it’s all about. They begin a discussion of ADA, WCAG and accessibility on the web, at the university, and everywhere. Jim brings up Designing with Web Standards by Jeffrey Zeldman. Jim mentions his partnership with the software company accessibe and Lionel shares his stories regarding accessibility at the university level. They close by talking about how organizations need to be able to listen and how accessibility benefits everyone.
Jim launches into a diatribe about the use of the word ‘mindset,’ matcha vs. coffee for increasing combativeness, the Clover Machine that used to be at Starbucks, Lattes and the word puerile. Lionel extols the virtues of Syracuse and its surrounding towns, replicable results in chain cafes, and the conversation continues from there. References to: Too Much Coffee Man by Shannon Wheeler, Planetfall by Emma Newman and the hoarding of memory, Low Density Parity Check Code, Dust (Lionel actually meant Shift) by Hugh Howey, 1984 by George Orwell, and rebelling against the surveillance state. Jim talks about returning to social media and his sense of time while away. Notable exceptions are Slaps and Wattpad. Jim mentions his new video for Spinning by Snorri Bros. Jim recommends sending questions to the pod via the website. We discuss The Magician’s Nephew by C.S. Lewis and its relationship to sociopaths and Piranesi by Susanna Clarke.
The rest of our conversation centers around the use of humor in speculative fiction, including works by Stephen R. Donaldson, Mark Leyner, Susanna Clarke, & Neal Stephenson. Jim brings up Malcom Gladwell’s definition of story. Lionel recommends watching The Day of The Jackal. We make a plan to read some Robert Whitehill. Jim watched Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves and they discuss the role of the game in that movie. Jim mentions his invite as a guest speaker at a college English class at Defiance College. Jim quotes his friend Barry Crimmins. At the end Jim has a question for our listeners about moving the podcast to Substack. You can reach him via the email address he mentioned or via our contact form.
If you want to support this podcast and Jim’s other creative projects, become a patron or subscribe to his Substack.
It was Lionel’s big birthday when we recorded this one. We talk inexpertly about cigars and the crash of 2008, Jim being mistaken for Stanley Tucci, the Bats Man, the J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek movies, Piranesi (BIG SPOILERS), and our first email from a listener. Warning to people who haven't read Piranesi, you might want to skip this one. Also, Jim’s mic was all wrong during the recording of this episode. Jim vows to be more careful in the future.
Sarah and Ben met with us once before to discuss Jim's novels, and now they return to talk about what they've been reading. The books and movies are too numerous to list here but we start our conversation with the novel Inferno by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle and move on through the new Teen Age Ninja Turtles movie to Drive Your Plow Over The Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk and How to Live by Derek Sivers. This is our first official meeting of The Parasocial Book Club and we hope to have many more.
To see all the books we talked about, check out our references page for this episode.
This episode is resplendent with expletives. You have been warned.
Greg Olear joins the pod to discuss his novel “Empress: The Secret History of Anna K.” Greg Olear is an author, novelist, journalist, and podcaster. His substack, PREVAIL tackles the currently mad political news cycle as both weekly articles and podcast episodes. His Friday YouTube podcast is called The Five 8 featuring well known political guests. We leave the politics to one side for most of this conversation to focus on this heartbreaking fictional autobiography of the life of Anna Komnene, first daughter to the usurping Byzantine Emporor Alexios Komnenos and her thwarted rise to power. The book covers the life of this amazing woman during a period of history left largely untouched by modern historians. Eventually, we drift off to touch on the songs of Taylor Swift and Joni Mitchell, and his warning about Leonard Leo. This was a special interview for us. We hope you enjoy it.
While Lionel gets settled in to his new home in the northeast, enjoy this episode from 2022. We will be back with a new epsiode next week.
Bill is a professor of the evolution and epidemiology of infectious disease at Harvard and the co-director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics. Jim met him while on tour with Jim’s Big Ego in London. We talk about English Football, Thanksgiving from a UK perspective, Doctor Who, Billy Butcher, Frank Herbert, Zombie Math, and the World of Warcraft disease. You might recognize his voice from his interviews on NPR in which he as appeared as an expert in virology on the topic of the COVID pandemic. I promised him we would talk about anything but epidemiology, but it crept in anyway.
References: https://funnynotfunny.bigego.com/links/f/S2~dot~08-Bill-Hanage/
Ellis Paul joins the pod and we discuss his new album “55” as well as what it was like growing up in northern Maine, how his work changed during the pandemic, reacting to the Beatles documentary, transitioning from competitive running to playing guitar, bad study habits, TransAtlantic by Colum McCann, Ellis’s upcoming retreats in Connecticut, England, and Ireland, and the book Virgin Territory by Craig Virgin.
All audio clips used with permission from Ellis Paul.
New Theme music: “Hum” from Utopia Revisited by Jim Infantino
This episode is our Season 3 closer, released late, due to the total collapse of my (Jim's) Mac. We start by talking about the website Slaps.com and move on to Jim's depressing read of The Ends of the World by Peter Brannen, which launches us into a discussion of the history of stratigraphy, and a questioning of the origins of the scientific process and the delay of discovery in the west and around the world. If you enjoy these episodes, please tell your friends about our podcast.
Kurt joins the pod again to review the work Jim and he did on the album Utopia Revisited, which is available now, streaming everywhere and on bandcamp. We talk about the process, how it was different for both Kurt and Jim, how being in Iceland informed the sound, the nature of ambient music, production techniques, happy accidents and Kurt's laser show.
This week we talk with James Meyer, a photographer and artist who did 12 deployments in Afghanistan as a flight engineer on C130s, moving cargo during the war. We talk about his life as an artists and how his tours of duty inform his work.
Lionel and Jim talk about the release of Utopia Revisited by Jim, which is the album he recorded in Iceland. Jim has created a video out of stock clips. We talk about the possibility of doing a podcast from the road as Lionel drives north. Then we get Lionel’s take on Foundation on Apple TV as well as Silo, comparing both to The Expanse, which still remains a favorite. We discuss the Netflix show Reality as well, now that Jim has seen it. Now that Lionel has seen The Flash, we get into his impressions of that movie. We get into unsatisfying endings to what might be decent shows. We talk about Vermont and Jim's recent trip there. Finally, we get into books and talk about Kwame Alexander’s The Crossover, and Street of Crocodiles.
Lionel and Jim talk about Jim’s experience at the Hollywood premiere of The Flash, the upsides and downsides of cloud storage, The Silo novels and TV show, Wayward Pines, Mr. Beast, Work as narrative, the Apple Vision Pro, Hard Fork, the question of who owns your information in government and non-government organizations, the TV show Reality, and why you don’t want to get on the wrong side of bureaucrats.
This week Lionel and Jim talk with Keith Smith, longtime friend of Jim and Lead Engineer at MongoDB. We talk about Jim's misconceptions of noSQL databases (see the title) as well as Gotham and the history of New York City including a little bit about Peter Cooper Village and Stuyvesant Town where Jim and Keith grew up. Keith is a fantastic guy and we were glad to have him on to talk super-nerdy with us and clear things up a bit.
Lionel and Jim talk about Birkenstocks, Uggs, scorpions (not the band), the Men at Work lawsuit, Borges & The Lottery of Babylon , algorithms and black boxes, Mozart In Mirrorshades by Bruce Sterling, Walkaway by Corey Doctorow, the problem of explainers in speculative fiction, The Diplomat on Netflix, Hugh Howey's Wool and the Apple TV show Silo , The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins, Susanna Clarke's books Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell , and Piranesi , the quality of Apple TV's speculative fiction shows, Jim's adventures in writing and publishing, Lionel's impending move, Hiemal's music, badvertising, unnecessary quotation marks, and cake disasters.
Jim and Lionel talk about the Andy Warhol case at the Supreme Court, discussing parody vs sampling, Two Live Crew, artists and inventors who began with a craft, graft, difficult listening hour, Meghan O'Gieblyn's book God, Human, Animal, Machine, The Book of Job, more stuff in The Bible, Calvinism, Jim's invitation to an LA premiere, the origins of The Flash, Carmine Infantino's view of Manhattan, and some upcoming ideas for new episodes.
Matt Smith, the managing director of Club Passim joins us to talk about his love for vinyl records, outdated recording formats, and his history of involvement at Club Passim. This is a follow up to our previous episode and fills out the history of the club and the evolution of the music scene in Harvard Square. At the end, we decide to have Matt and Abby back some day to talk about their love of Star Trek.
Abby Altman, Club Manager of Passim joins us to talk about her experience guiding the iconic music club, located in the heart of Harvard Square Cambridge, MA through its many programs. We discuss the mission and history of the club and its importance to the music scene not only in the Boston area, but worldwide. Abby is the second millennial to appear on our podcast. We look forward to talking more about this amazing venue next week.
Jim, the producer's note: I almost didn't put this one out - it didn't feel like an episode until I listened to it. So here it is. We talk about Lionel's impending move away from Texas to upstate New York, new book recommendations, Jim's vinyl pressing adventures, progress on book 3 of the Wakeful Wanderer's Guide, Orchestral maneuvers, Bob's new car, The Goldberg Variations, and finally, why Jim needed to change the name of his Iceland recording project.
Lionel and Jim start with an abortive return to the horrors of AI and pivot to talk about a new book Lionel is enjoying about the Osage tribe in the 1920s when we get a surprise call from Ellen, who will be helping out with running the podcast in the future. The three of us talk about her experiences in Ecuador, cartoons she's watching with her daughter, notably My Little Pony, and talk about our process going forward.
This interview was mind blowing. Phil is creating 24 hours of music 5 minutes at a time and it's amazingly good. Lionel and I talk with him about his very detailed process and the story behind some of the songs starting at 12am and continuing until 2:59am as of the time of this podcast. That may sound confusing, but all becomes clear as we talk with Phil. Listen to the full project here: https://adayinmusic.bandcamp.com/ References: https://funnynotfunny.bigego.com/links/f/S1~dot~20-Phil-Broikos/ All song clips included with permission from Phil Broikos.
Jim starts by talking about his recent substack article about AI and the end of money. Lionel takes off with his ideas about the importance of work in society, and what its end might mean to us all. We talk about how we might move forward in the presence of super-expert thinking machines.
Jim was down in North Carolina last week and recorded this conversation with David Wilcox in his home studio. Lionel joined us from San Antonio. We talk about songwriting, the lightness and darkness behind the songs, emotional buoyancy, and just soak up the perspective of this singular artist. All song samples included with permission from David Wilcox.
Lionel and Jim continue their discussion of AI, and move into the idea of human understanding through modeling, Isomorphism, stories, and the importance of forgetting.
In this episode, Jim and Lionel talk about what everyone is talking about, the advances made in AI this month. We tackle questions like “what are we going to do?” and “does it have agency?” and “what is compassion?” and “how do we know what we want?” as well as diving into the cheerful subject of how we are killing the planet. An uplifting listen, if you like to paint your walls a color darker than black.
John Chin is a Jazz musician and composer based in New York City. He has 4+ albums available and is working on a new live album recorded during the pandemic. His recent release “Anything Mose” was recorded with guitarist and vocalist Richard Julian. We dig into that album, as well as two of his other albums, “Undercover,” and “Fifth.” Check out his music at https://johnchin.com. Resources coming soon.
Jim invites Lionel, Sarah Elkins, and Ben Burnes to tear into his novels The Wakeful Wanderer's Guide series, to his own horror and delight. Lionel, Sarah, and Ben share their reactions to Jim's novels with honesty and candor. What transpires is a lively discussion about not only the books, but thoughts on meritocracy, villains and heroes, self-deception and forgetting, names and identity, ideas for a cookbook, Wakeful Wanderer fan-fiction, related books and tv shows, and the nature of flawed Utopias in speculative fiction. Jim's Books: https://wakefulwanderer.com References: https://funnynotfunny.bigego.com/links/f/S3~dot~10-Back-to-Humanity/
Jim and Lionel take a moment to dig into the things that keep coming up in our recent conversations. We talk about the nature of money, work, AI, worth, what we want, what we should do, what do we want to be.
Chuck Robinson of Peepers Puppets stops by to talk about the creative side of coding. We get into food choices in New England vs Texas and Georgia, the nature of coding, and the process of building something that works. We end with some discussion of the rise of the machines and end up wondering where the nearest bunker can be found. References: https://funnynotfunny.bigego.com/links/f/S3~dot~08-We-sell-holes/
Recorded February 15 from TónLab studio (recorded on my ipad for convenience). Jim went to Iceland to record a collection of songs with producer Kurt Uenala. We discuss the first three songs we recorded, an ambient music event in Reykjavik, swimming in Iceland's hot springs, a couple of books, Brian Eno's process, and more. [:imgblocks-2x:]
Lionel and Jim talk about Jim's upcoming trip to Iceland to record a “phonogram” with Kurt Uenala, we talk about The Scottish Play, The All Thing, volcanic gardens, whiskey and the history of that drink, the steam engine, Otto von Guericke, drinking at Iota with Steve Negrey, extremely expensive bourbon, Louisiana cuisine, the music of Mike West, the problem of flying with guitars made with Indian Rosewood, the Milkman “amp,” touring with tubes, The Irish National Stud Farm, genealogy tests, university podcasts, and possible future guests.
Lionel and Jim discuss email woes, Bitcoins and Blockchains by Antony Lewis, Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson, more Neal Stephenson, The Cloud, Jim's reading of Chromaspace Conscript by Megan Alnico, the nature of money, and Jeff Bezos' yacht (again.) Photo credit: Fred Romero from Paris, France , CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons. References: https://funnynotfunny.bigego.com/links/f/S3~dot~05-Iron-Maiden/
Brothers revisited! This week, Lionel's brother Damien joins us to talk about big construction, data centers for crypto mining and AI, modern art in the Hudson Valley, The M1 Abrams Tank, hybrids vs. electric cars, problems with money and guns, the end of work, and what's still great about the United States of America. References: https://funnynotfunny.bigego.com/links/f/S3~dot~04-Damien-Cassin/
We have our first caller! How this happened is a mystery, I suppose. Perhaps it's all fake. However it happened, we ended up with a lively conversation with Tim on line one. We discuss phone hacking viruses, the future of crypto, DJs, record stores, tastemakers in the age of instant access, leisure, work, and the pandemic response. References: https://funnynotfunny.bigego.com/links/f/S3~dot~03-Caller-Tim/
Jim Rosen, Catherine Pilfrey, Matthew Bellows, and Jim Infantino have been teaching meditation online for almost 3 years as part of a twice weekly session that meets Tuesdays and Thursdays called Mindful Aware. In this episode, Matt, Jim, Jim, and Catherine answer Lionel's questions about meditating online and discuss the practice of teaching meditation from a western perspective.
A new season for the new year! Professor Donald Smith returns to the pod, post haste to deal with Jim's misconceptions about gravity, a discussion of neutron stars and the James Webb Telescope, mental models in physics, Tycho Brahe, Kepler, Ptolemy, and more. References: https://funnynotfunny.bigego.com/links/f/S3~dot~01-Donald-Smith-2/
Lionel and Jim look back at a little more than a year of making this podcast. We remember conversations with our guests, our growing reading lists, talk about the origin of the podcast and what we want to see in 2023. References: https://funnynotfunny.bigego.com/links/f/S2~dot~14-Johnny-Gottadoo/
Donald Smith manages Guilford's introductory and advanced physics laboratories, laser optics laboratory, and rooftop observatory. He joined us to talk about Chat GPT and education challenges, the search for life and the startling size of the universe, German Science Fiction currently streaming, and his reading list. References: https://funnynotfunny.bigego.com/links/f/S2~dot~13-Donald-Smith/
We touch on two books Jim is reading, A Canticle for Leibowitz , and The City & The City , as well as The Hunger Games , which Jim is reading to his daughters. Then we talk about the new Texas Governor's governmental bans on TikTok and certain types of drones. From there, we move on to topics we don't fully understand and get lots of things wrong, including Quantum Computing (Lionel may be more correct than Jim on this,) and Nuclear Fusion (Jim said it was neutrinos, but it was neutrons). Finally, we talk about Jim's upcoming portrayal as an eccentric billionaire for Dr. Hanage's class. Late release due to time constraints. References: https://funnynotfunny.bigego.com/links/f/S2~dot~12-Superstition-Ain~rsquo~t-The-Way/
Ben is a musician and game developer who focuses his energy on creativity, positivity, and community. Ben does a weekly YouTube show called the Two Hour Music Challenge. We talk about his music work and what he's reading and watching and just generally chill out to a selection of his hundreds of tunes. References: https://funnynotfunny.bigego.com/links/f/S2~dot~11-Ben-Burnes/
Jim and Lionel return to the subject of the traditional Thanksgiving feast, discuss Ridley Walker, A Clockwork Orange, possible shortcomings of The Peripheral TV series, Andor & Rogue One, Iceland travels, and Heima, by Sigur Ros. References: https://funnynotfunny.bigego.com/links/f/S2~dot~10-Upside-Down/
Kurt Uenala (aka null+void & Kap10Kurt) has produced, programmed, mixed, and remixed giants like Depeche Mode, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, The Kills, Dave Gahan, Soulsavers, Yelle, Erasure, The Ravonettes, The Kills, The Big Pink, and Moby. We talk about his gadgets (heavy nerd warning), touring with Jim, his recording process, alarms going off in the middle of the night, learning Icelandic, touring solo in Europe as an electronic artist, and many other things. References: https://funnynotfunny.bigego.com/links/f/S2~dot~09-Kurt-Uenala/
Bill is a professor of the evolution and epidemiology of infectious disease at Harvard and the co-director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics. Jim met him while on tour with Jim's Big Ego in London. We talk about English Football, Thanksgiving from a UK perspective, Doctor Who, Billy Butcher, Frank Herbert, Zombie Math, and the World of Warcraft disease. You might recognize his voice from his interviews on NPR in which he as appeared as an expert in virology on the topic of the COVID pandemic. I promised him we would talk about anything but epidemiology, but it crept in anyway. References: https://funnynotfunny.bigego.com/links/f/S2~dot~08-Bill-Hanage/
We are joined by the amazing Vance Gilbert and talk about nostrils, voting in MA and TX, Vance's Monday Acoustic Pajama Party, his incredible songs, the songwriting scene in the Boston of the 90s, our favorite songwriters from that time, especially David Goldfinger, being on tour with a comedian and more. References: https://funnynotfunny.bigego.com/links/f/S2~dot~07-Vance-Gilbert/
Jim starts by telling us about his favorite hot sauce . Then he talks about the extensive references page on the website , which is still in process, thanks to Johnny Gottadoo. Then they launch into a discussion of The Peripheral on Amazon Prime, and discuss the book Educated by Tara Westover, before finishing with some concerns about the inevitable demise of Affirmative Action by SCOTUS. References here: https://funnynotfunny.bigego.com/links/f/S2~dot~6-Secret-Aardvark/
John Infantino is a writer and director, known for Regular Show , Star vs. the Forces of Evil , and Despicable Me , as well as his work on The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack , Adventuretime , Chowder , and Camp Lazlo, to name a few. He is also Jim's brother. John talks with us about creating cartoons, writing the stories we watch, adaptations & mutations, shows he's watching, and the books he is reading, including: Neon Genesis Evangelion The Book of Strange New Things A book his friend is writing about an Orc in Mordor The Flashman Papers Rendezvous with Rama Riddley Walker Finally, we reminisce about our trip to Italy together and end up with our admiration of Mark Hamill and Roz Ryan as voice-over actors. Reading list This is correct imdb page. We look forward to having him back.
Jim and Lionel discuss streaming shows and books including the Rings of Power, the upcoming show based on William Gibson's The Peripheral, Chef's Table: Pizza, N.K. Jemisin 's The Broken Earth Trilogy , Left to Tell by Immaculee Ilibagiza , and Hero of Two Worlds : The Marquis de Lafayette in the Age of Revolution by Mike Duncan. Listen to The History Happy Hour Podcast with Mike Duncan
Jim starts by sharing his weight loss hack for getting on the scale in the morning, which leads into a discussion of The War of Jenkin's Ear, which leads into a discussion of the role of money in the creation of multicultural cities, which leads to a talk about barter, goats on drones, the library of things, torx wrenches, rat tail files, super yachts & the economy, and tries to get back to Caribbean Piracy, but doesn't quite get there. Photo by Brenda Timmermans: https://www.pexels.com/photo/selective-photo-of-white-goat-58914/ Actual historian Robert Gaudi on the War of Jenkin's Ear: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lga2xHDZvOs
Dan Cantor, drummer, songwriter, producer of rock, folk, hip hop, and world music, visits the podcast to tell tales of recording overseas and in his studio, problems with travel and food, the power of rap music, and more.
Lionel and Jim discuss the end of summer, Mark Leyner, Kate Bush and the return of the 80s, New shows, old movies, Sherlock Holmes, Wars and our sense of humanity, The Ministry For The Future by Kim Stanley Robinson, and how to save the world with either a new religion, compassion for future generations, or AI.
Lionel and Jim talk about what makes a great character in a story. What works? What appeals? Why do some fall flat? Why do some capture us? They also speak a little about their upcoming discussion of The Ministry For The Future by Kim Stanley Robinson.
Sarah Elkins has been in science fiction fandom since putting on a Doctor Who convention in the 80s. She joins the podcast this week to continue our coversation about science fiction and feminism. We discuss books by Vonda Macintyre, Ann Leckie, Octavia Butler and more.
Amy Robinson is our guest on the pod this week. Amy is a creator of puppets, an engineer, a mom person, a creative thinker and maker of things, and a knower of cool books and refined queries, a frequent guest on The Morning Stream. You can find her brand of puppets at peeperspuppets.com . We talk about creativity, puppets, coding, and narcolepsy.
Thank you to Patron Sarah Elkins for suggesting the book The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood to us. We spend most of our time trying to suss out the meaning of that tremendous book by James Gleick in this episode. Discussed are entropy, encryption, memory, logic, and language. In short we manage to mangle a lot of deep thinking.
Julia Tenney joins us again with a conversation about feminism and science fiction and what makes a science fiction story feminist. We discuss Starhawk, Margaret Atwood, Marge Piercy, Vonda N. McIntyre , Ursula LeGuin, and decide we need more reading material to continue this conversation at a later date. Send us book recommendations from the contact form on our website.
Lionel and Jim talk about Riverside.fm , our podcasting platform, Claude Shannon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Shannon, Lionel's new home full of stuff, Swat Teams & Active shooter drills in Boston, Jim's short story in progress about the super volcano under Yellowstone park, Lionel's new synthesizer, inspirational musicians and what is accessible in music, and burger chains in Texas. And Lionel Was right, Downtown Train was on Rain Dogs.
Dar joins the pod to tell us about her experience writing What I Found In A Thousand Towns, her songwriting and creative process, her experience in Beacon New York with Roger Ailes, the remarkable Jaimie Raskin, our relationship to art, the environment, and each other, Active Citizenship, and so much more. I could not find the live performance of The Mark Rothko song. If someone knows where it is, please send a tweet to @jiminfantino so I can post it here. Dar's Website: https://darwilliams.com Writing A Song That Matters (her retreat): https://darwilliamsretreat.com You can support this podcast on Patreon: https://patreon.com/jiminfantino
This interview was mind blowing. Phil is creating 24 hours of music 5 minutes at a time and it's amazingly good. Lionel and I talk with him about his very detailed process and the story behind some of the songs starting at 12am and continuing until 2:59am as of the time of this podcast. That may sound confusing, but all becomes clear as we talk with Phil. Listen to the full project here: https://adayinmusic.bandcamp.com/ Phil has a podcast about the project here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a-day-in-music-the-podcast/id1527851955 and https://anchor.fm/phil-broikos pi video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-amvQCKeT8s&t=98s back to what it was video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCXHhi8aYCw&t=16s Laurie Anderson's comic book illustrations: https://comixjoint.com/baloneymoccasins-sample1.html and https://comixjoint.com/baloneymoccasins-sample2.html
From man hole covers to equal protection under the law, Lionel and Jim go to town over subjects in which they have little to no expertise. They go down the rabbit holes of International Law, the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, legal personhood, the Bill of Rights, natural rights, abortion, guns, and other things they just can't help talking about.
We were graced with the voice over artist Walter Dixon on our podcast. We discuss the process of narrating an audiobook, the days of radio and cutting tape, Leo Kottke, and the emergence of AI on the audiobook scene. Visit his work at https://dixonvoice.com
Julia to the rescue! There are too many books and authors to list here, but we cover a lot of new possible reads. Julia also brings some worthy shows to our attention. We start our conversation about the 14th Amendment, T he Second Founding by Eric Foner, and Allow Me to Retort by Elie Mystal but find our way back to sci-fi and fantasy before things get too out of hand. Incomplete list of authors: Charlie Jane Anders, Robin Hobb, Bill Bryson, Max Gladstone
Lionel and Jim discuss Mastodon, social media, or lack thereof, USB alarms going off in Lionel's headphones, and modern modes of communication. They talk about the possible dwindling need now for office space for businesses and universities in the new reality. Jim gets Lionel to list is college band names. Bladerunner 2049, Cowboy Bebop and The Fifth Element come up. In they end they decide that new reading material is needed and revisit. Finally, Lionel returns to discuss { feuilleton } and his perspective on Led Zeplin IV and the chosen typeface for the album at johncoulthart.com/feuilleton/2022/05/02/led-zeppelin-iv-jimmy-page-versus-little-bo-peep/ .
Lionel and Jim discuss the novel Uprooted by Naomi Novik the novel The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins the novels Anathem and Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson John Coulthart's unusual website: johncoulthart.com/feuilleton/ The Shock of the New by Robert Hughes Chris Burden's (not Eric Burden's) sculpture The Other Vietnam Memorial
David decided after graduating NYU in the late 80's that he did not want a traditional desk job. He joined the Seafarers International Union as an unlicensed deckhand. Eventually he joined the Sailors' Union of the Pacific and finally got his officer's license in 2013. He has sailed all over the world on US flagged vessels. He worked as a licensed deck officer in the Masters, Mates & Pilots union from 2103 until the COVID pandemic, as a Third Mate, on vessels stationed in South Korea and Saipan. David is an inveterate reader and collects books portraying mariners.
Lionel and I talk about my upcoming lecture on Speculative Fiction and Society, Laurie Anderson, why agriculture may have been a bad idea, and more.
Lionel and Jim discuss a lecture by Nick Weaver of Berkley regarding crypto currency and blockchain from the computer security perspective. You can view the lecture here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9nv0Ol-R5Q We also talk about Lionel's college tour of the Northeast, and his experience at an actual Chris Chandler show.
We had a nice sit down with the intrepid Chris Chandler who joined us from a park bench near his current home in Austin because there was construction going on in his dwelling. We talk about his life as a troubadour poet, Texas, Georgia, and when you are really in trouble with the police.
Bob Loy is Director of Orchestra Personnel and Librarian at Opera Philadelphia. We discuss classical music in the time of the pandemic, production of orchestral, opera, and chamber music, and music in general. Bob was a wonderful guest and we know he has many more stories to share. We hope to have him back soon.
Lionel and Jim discuss Jim's exodus from Spotify, Napster, the business of music, the DMCA, common misused words like non-plussed, fixing the mess that still is email, the idea of Merit in Jim's Wakeful Wanderer novels, Malcom Gladwell, and Moneyball. The audio mix on this was terrible. Jim is too loud, Lionel is too quiet. After trying his best to mix this one, Jim decided to move to a more expensive Streamyard plan to get separate audio tracks to mix. Apologies, future episodes will be better.
Lionel and Jim discuss the French Toast Alert System, Ursula K. LeGuin's The Disposessed , William Gibson's The Peripheral , Jim's adventures with Spotify and streaming, and Jim's theory about the movie The Social Network .
Lionel and Jim discuss finding office space, The Rings of Power, Tolkien and England, Station Eleven HBO adaptation, The Expanse finale, Company Email, and Jim's reflections on having joined a cult. Mentioned: The Rings of Power, William Morris, Gary Gygax, Coal: A Human History, Station Eleven, The Expanse Book series, Uncoverage by Una Morera, My Struggle by Karl Ove Knausgård, Corrections: The town in Italy was Vernazza , and it's The Valar , not The Valor.
Lionel and Jim talk about the dawn of broadband and the internet in Texas and New England, invasive technologies, Jim's novels, and more.
In this episode, Lionel and Jim talk about Mark Bittman's new book Animal, Vegetable Junk .
Lionel and Jim discuss Lionel's new purchase, Station Eleven , Foundation , and other books and movies you should never recommend to Lionel.
Thank you to Julia Tenney for suggesting the name of our podcast. In this episode, Lionel & Jim discuss American Nations & Union by Colin Woodard, Distraction & Holy Fire by Bruce Sterling, Station Eleven , and Notes from the Burning Age by Claire North. Credit to Barry Crimmins for the title of this episode.
Our first episode. We talk about the book Hitler's American Gamble by Brendan Simms , Jimi Hendrix, & Paolo Bacigalupi's Pump Six and Other Stories .