Episodes
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The Revolting Biopic Starring Danny Devito and Pauly Shore. The Revolting biopic is a comedy and a cautionary tale, a bildungsroman and a French period drama. Sure, it’s got panache and style. The costumes are outstanding, but what are the lessons we’re meant to learn from it and why does the plot seem so incoherent? […]
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For a Brief, Shimmering Moment We Were Gods. We may look like only slightly abnormal human beings, but oh, you should have seen us back in the day, or rather, on that one day, when we were really good at something, so good that we remember it and base some not insignificant amount of our […]
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Missing episodes?
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The Motivation is the Message. Marshall McLuhan, who was Canadian and had a great name, thought the “medium was the message,” but it was the ‘60s, and apparently he also thought a mustache was a solid move. Anyway, since then media has exploded into a million little messages, and it seems more clear than ever […]
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Coup d’etat! Coup d’etat! It was 1984 and Repo Man was in the theaters, a couple of them anyway. The suburban United States suddenly became aware of a little LA band called The Circle Jerks. Forty years later, some large part of the US custom bike building community converges unironically on Portland, and a whole […]
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How Heavy is Your Record Collection? You can measure it a couple ways. Raw weight. Number of Slayer albums. Quality vs. quantity. This is all really just an excuse to talk more about music and how we consume it and to express even more of our questionable opinions. Music pick of the week: Robot – […]
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The Fine Print in the Social Contract. Just cause we’re introverted malcontents doesn’t mean we’re not on our second-best behavior when we’re out in public. Out there in the streets it’s a collaboration. Teamwork makes the dream transpire in a more agreeable fashion. So how do we get more people to understand there’s no ‘them’ […]
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Excuse Me, Can I X-ray your Xylophone. We’ve both been back to places we might have come from to revisit our roots, and all the while you think you’re finding a deeper part of yourself, the connections are breaking down in time. Maybe you realize you’re just a random collection of genetically encoded dust, or […]
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Caring Carers Who Care. We can all agree that it’s much better to not care than to care, but sometimes you have to, and more specifically, sometimes you have to take care of something or someone you didn’t expect to. This can be mentally and emotionally draining. Why is it so hard to care for […]
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As Punk as Kettlebells and Scented Candles. When you’re just a pimply-faced teen trying to establish yourself as an iconoclast and quite possibly a voice of your generation, things are pretty simple. You pull on your bondage pants and your Chuck Taylors and show the world who’s boss. Then you get old as shit and […]
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The Struggle is Surreal. We want everything to be easy, but if everything comes easy, it doesn’t have a lot of value. So we need some struggle but still hate struggling. Is this why human people are so stupid? Music pick of the week: Robot – Vanishing Life – Surveillance Stevil – Poison Idea – […]
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Pivotal Moments in Dirt Bag Development. In a deterministic universe, there are no surprises. From the moment we emerged from our mothers’ wombs we were meant to be the dirt bags and derelicts we have become. But there were warning signs, critical junctures at which we might have followed different, more stable and lucrative paths, […]
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Our Current Tally of Major Awards. So far we have zero Webby, iHeartRadio or People’s Choice podcast awards, the same total as George Clooney. Also no Pulitzers or Nobels, but usually those get awarded years after your major accomplishments, so we’re not sweating it. This week’s topic is figuring out how to go on with […]
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For Our Next Trick, We’ll Need a Volunteer. We always say we’re doing the only things we know how to do, but that’s a cop out. We could be carpet salesmen or tree surgeons. We could be the Sigfried and Roy of a casino in a minor media market. We could be satanic priests or […]
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The Best Defense Is to Be Extremely Offensive. We’re living in the age of outrage, and to be fair, there’s plenty of outrageous stuff happening. At the same time, it’s worth asking what the value of being offended really is. Is it a way to drive change, or just a way to drive people more […]
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Lightning in a Bottle, Thunder in a Can. We’re taking a break from the deep, philosophical explorations this show is known for to reengage with our monkey brains. It’s another lightning round of questions that don’t really deserve answers, though those are exactly the questions this podcast was designed for. Music pick of the week: […]
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Stapling Bananas to the Wall. This one is partially inspired by a question from listener Oliver Beckers and partially by the deaths of Rick Froberg, Gary Flloyd and Steve Albini, and partially by the #MeToo movement and partially by the complicated business of consuming art in the information age. This week we’re talking about what […]
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Emerging Patterns from the Swirling Chaos. Ain’t it just the case that you reach these points in your life where you think you have some things figured out, you can see the way forward, and you feel hopeful and optimistic, but as sure as the sign rises in the East, chaos comes to scatter your […]
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When the Wedding Band Stretches Out. This is a show about Steve Albini, who is probably really dead, despite both of us hoping the news of his passing was some elaborate prank he was pulling. When people think about the pure ideals of punk rock, they usually think of Ian MacKaye first, but they should […]
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Karma Is a Failure of Both Pattern Recognition and Ligaments. We musta said and done some pretty not cool stuff to deserve the level of negative physical consequences doled out by daily life lately. Today we’ll talk about the possibility that there actually is justice in the universe, or whether we’re just ignoring the normal […]
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If Dungeons and Dragons Was Real, Metal Would Make a Lot More Sense. Listen, not everything has to be so literal. You don’t have to talk about your heart to express your love for another human being. Maybe that’s why Candace left you. You’re boring and predictable. Today, we’re talking about ways to open your […]
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