Episodes
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Content warning: there are discussions of mental health, substance abuse, and brief discussion of suicide (42:48-48:55). Take care of yourself first; this may not be the episode for you.
We address some experiences we've had together over the past several months and as individuals. Mara finally talks about The Band, specifically the songwriting of Richard Manuel. She also gets into some Band/Dead connections and her interest in how creative relationships fall apart.
Anna frames songwriting as a conversation between contemporary female singer-songwriters, and talks Lawrence Lessig and Kendrick Lamar. Also, we could never stop talking about patron saint of the pod Owsley Stanley, "step on me, Mommy Janis," and a very extra college party.
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Mere (@stimtok on TikTok) returns to talk about autism, cat costume school, dog language and that time we met up for the Taylor Swift concert.We get a song write-in from Mara. We don't try to boil the ocean. But if you need an Autism 101 breakdown, here's one Anna wrote for friends and family with lots of handy resources.
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Missing episodes?
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Today we give you a piece of friendship ephemera that we had thought was lost to time.
15 years ago, yr intrepid hosts planted the seeds of Iovis via a little podcast called House of the Winds. Anna and Mara (feat. a red-dirt Georgia poet named Shelly) freestyled a bit on country music's relationship to capitalism and Christianity, and sang songs of their own. The sound isn't great - we were all speaking into the hardware mic of a Macbook Pro from various feet away, and the servers could only hold so much. But the spirit, cadence (in spite of Mara's stronger Michigan accent and higher pitch), and content feels like an episode we would record today. Anna tries valiantly to get everyone to focus for five seconds while also kind of doing an audio version of cinéma vérité, Mara's obsession with hillbilly cultural appropriation apparently goes way back, and we were celebrating Dolly Parton's impact well before it was trendy for non-Appalacians.
Give it up for the 2008 Smoothbrain World Champions -
This month Meredith (stimtok on TikTok) returns and Lyndsey (blankspacebeliever on TikTok) joins us for a serious discussion of clowns, fools and dialectics. Not a single thing was fact checked. Mara is on hiatus (temporary) so we talked brit lit. We need her to come back and remind us why empire is garbage.
Some links:
Taylor Swift - Trouble (Goat Remix) 7 super common chord progressions and why they work Anna-lante shit (Kendrick edition) Our mysterious playlist: Songs of Innocence and Experience -
When your March "episode" turns out to be a phone call with your best friend instead
Just a short and sweet episode for an album Anna loves
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Did you know Pitchfork gave this one 10/10?
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Welcome to Iovis Szn Two. We’re back with our first-ever guest, Meredith (@stimtok on TikTok). Cooked up some Michigan cryptid stories, fame and fandom as cults and how to spot a cult, cosmic trolling, and of course songs. Also, some news: Anna has been Deadpilled.
Follow us @iovispodcast on Twitter
Email us at [email protected]
Our Spotify playlist
Listener Questions:
Where are the Deadlors? Who all is behind wb? What’s next for wb? Want to be friends? [email protected]Links & ephemera:
Steven Hassan's BITE model of Authoritarian Control Tia Mara’s Band (January 2022) “The Legend” by Steve Cook Wednesday, 3AM version -
A quick grat and our first album on the list
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So we did it again, we picked a topic that could’ve been a series. This month we discussed our fantasy 3 record starter pack, and we started a dive into the complicated history of rock music.
Since the episode ran long, we’re going to release the individual record picks throughout the next few months as individual episodes. So this week you’ll get the regular pod, and then you’ll get the specific records separately.
It’s real winter doldrums hours. We missed the opportunity to make an “Exile on Tay Street” pun. Also, a little on why we hate “new year, new me” mindset, goal-setting, etc. We’ve got playlist fodder and are both officially old people now which means this is in fact a wisdom pod.
Follow us @iovispodcast on Twitter dot com.
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All I want for Christmas (or any winter solstice-adjacent holiday) is yooooouuuuuu! Yr intrepid hosts are here to celebrate the real rzn for the szn: namely, extremely weird winter holiday traditions. Baby Jesus gets hit with willow switches; the Lord of Misrule and disciplinarian daddy planet Saturn cut loose and party down; Anna shares an IRL encounter with Krampus! Also, songs: we got some circa-2001 indie sleaze, and a modern xmas classic from the patron saint of Iovis herself. Technically not the gayest podcast we could make, but the title stuck.
The devil's chord: https://aleteia.org/2018/10/25/a-medieval-forbidden-musical-sequence-the-devil-in-music-or-the-devils-chord/
Fair folk podcast: https://soundcloud.com/fairfolkcast
The bitter withy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bitter_Withy
Some Notes on Attunement: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/12/17/some-notes-on-attunement
Music: On top of it by blue dot sessions
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In this bonus episode, Mara explains the deep lore behind the song Iko Iko by the Dixie Cups, covered in the late 80s by the Grateful Dead.
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In this Thanksgiving episode, we discuss Taylor Swift's latest album Midnights, Ticketmaster and make some extremely tenuous connections to the ruins of our past. Mara discusses a late-90s family vacation to Fun Mountain, which was anything but fun yet resides deep in the lore of her batshit childhood. We also chat about our home state and the romanticization of “ruin porn” in its major city. This episode is truly a conversation between a gaylor and a deadhead.
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Note: this episode is a bit more explicit than usual. We were going to talk about denisovans, but we’re going to come back to them at a later date because Taylor Swift decided to announce a new record. Yr intrepid hosts are back at it again with some niche interests. Anna is fist-deep into the gaylore the upcoming Midnights album. Also lost in the woods, Mara illustrates the connections between humans and bears and lemme tell you, it gets dumb! And a little something for the playlist.
Music: On Top of It by Blue Dot Sessions -
Last episode was kind of an “eat your vegetables” discussion, so we’re bringing the Hot Cheetos and GummiSavers this time. Have you ever done a “Wikipedia deep dive” or heard about something and just wanted to indulge your curiosity? DUH. Yr intrepid hosts chat about the absolute derangement of European royalty. Anna tries to determine if Rasputin was hot and introduces Digital Hapsburg Theory, all of us living in an age of circular, inbred content. Mara admits to the depth of her Phish phandom. Also, some songs for the playlist!
Music: On Top of It by Blue Dot Sessions
The Las Meninas Painting
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We gestured toward this in our very first ep: is adulthood a capitalist scam? Yes. There’s so much that young-ish middle class professionals are “supposed” to be doing: we keep flailing, accumulating more debt, and feeling straight-up joyless sometimes, whether we hit “milestones” or not. Yr intrepid hosts explore definitions of adulthood and childhood, being born as the neoliberal turn picked up steam, and generations. How might we build a little joy (and lean into our dirtbag histories) in our adult years. Of course, songs for the moment.
Music: On Top of It by Blue Dot Sessions
Relevant links:
Generations are an invention: Here's how they came to be (The Atlantic) The Master's Tools will never dismantle the Master's House (Audre Lorde) -
Gratitudes and platitudes! But srsly, in this era of “good vibes only” and performing happiness, serenity, etc. on the socials, what do we make of gratitude? Yr intrepid hosts explore what cultivating sustained attention to gratitude looks like for them, how gratitude practices can thrive in community and help communities thrive in turn, and the challenges of expressing genuine gratitude in a culture that often leans toward toxic positivity instead. Nota bene: while this is a vibe-friendly pod, vibes don’t have to be, and are often explicitly, not good. Also: songs for the moment.
Music: On Top of It by Blue Dot Sessions
See the Austrian Pride Burger
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A group text leads yr intrepid hosts to rediscover some un-remembered foundational experiences with books from childhood (for Anna: LGBTQ family life in a magical-realism Los Angeles, plus queer-coded young adult novels of the 90s; for Mara: folkloric animalistic girlhood and female martyrdom in Maine. Do take care at the discussion of necropants.) How does memory work (an unscientific exploration, we are obviously not neuroscientists!), does it matter, are we in a nostalgia trap? Also: songs for the moment; Mara cries about owls.
Music: On Top of It by Blue Dot Sessions -
In the second part of our discussion on our music and other obsessions, Mara briefly discusses her favorite writers and the importance of personal geographies. Then, she takes us on a long, strange trip to a world of brokedown palaces, JAMS, and possible CIA psyops - it’s the Grateful Dead! Yr intrepid hosts discuss the human need for creativity and play, and how creative processes are sometimes as or more interesting than an end product. Mara outlines the case for how at their best, the Dead make “process” audible in innovative and sublime ways. Also: Anna discovers the “Birds Aren’t Real” mythos via group text; songs for our moment.
Music: On Top of It by Blue Dot Sessions
The Eleven - Grateful Dead Live at Shrine Auditorium on 1968-08-23
Listen as we build our playlist: Songs of Innocence & Experience, or Anna & Mara’s Infinite Playlist
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Anna and Mara get into some of their many art and culture obsessions in this two-parter. Friends don’t have to love all the same things - be happy for someone you care about discovering something to obsess over and literally never pay attention to it yourself! Yr intrepid hosts share their love of Joni Mitchell’s Blue. Anna gives a personal and cultural history of textiles, and finds the connecting threads, layered worlds, and subtexts of Taylor Swift’s albums. Mara admits to enjoying some Tay bops. Also: songs for the moment.
Music: On Top of It by Blue Dot Sessions
Some lyric analysis from: The Archers Podcast
Listen as we build our playlist: Songs of Innocence & Experience, or Anna & Mara’s Infinite Playlist
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Anna and Mara discuss how they met, some of the reasons they became and have stayed friends, pandemmo isolation, and the joyful reunion of yr intrepid hosts and their gang of friends. Also: being queer and “gay-adjacent,” how adulthood is a capitalist scam, a cross-country ski injury, and what we’re listening to lately.
Music: On Top of It by Blue Dot Sessions - Show more
