Episódios
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Questions Kyle and Jennie join me for a close look at three of the wildest weeks in recent American political history - we talk the Trump assassination attempt, Biden's brain, JD Vance, and (checks notes) former Buffalo Bills kicker Scott Norwood. You are currently listening to the first half (free!) of a two-part episode; Part II is available to Patreon subscribers here, so go ahead and sign up for as little as 1 American Dollar.
Please support Mass for Shut-ins, an independent and ad-free podcast, via Patreon. Contact me on Bluesky at edburmila.bsky.social.
Thanks: QK, QJ, the bands that contribute music (IfIHadAHiFi, The Sump Pumps, Oscar Bait), Zachary Sielaff, Question Cathy, and all Patreon supporters, subscribers, and listeners.
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Kassia St. Clair, author of the 2017 best-seller The Secret Lives of Color and the Sunday Times Book of the Year follow-up The Golden Thread: How Fabric Changed History (2019) joins me to talk about her new book, Race to the Future: The Adventure that Accelerated the 20th Century. It's the story of the utterly bonkers 1907 auto race from Peking to Paris, which didn't let things like the fact that roads and gas stations didn't exist stop some adventurous competitors from trying it. All 8000 miles of it.
The widescreen artwork accompanying this episode is Kassia's map of Russia, laden with thread and post-it notes, which she references during our chat.
Please support Mass for Shut-ins, an independent and ad-free podcast, via Patreon. Contact me on Bluesky at edburmila.bsky.social.
Thanks: Kassia St. Clair, the bands that contribute music (IfIHadAHiFi, The Sump Pumps, Oscar Bait), Zachary Sielaff, Question Cathy, and all Patreon supporters, subscribers, and listeners.
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In 1972 a middling team from the Scottish Premier League played four exhibition matches in Nigeria and distinguished itself so profoundly with its pitiful play (and boorish attitude) that its name became a synonym for stupidity. Grousing about how much your host country sucks while losing 4-1 to a team of amateurs called "Stationery Stores FC" leaves a pretty profound impression, I guess.
The comedian through whom I became aware of this fantastic story is Nabil Abdulrashid.
These podcasts are ad-free and self-produced; I value your support on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/ginandtacos.
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Question Kyle and Question Jennie join me as we discuss the 18th century fad of using the emerging understanding of the phenomenon of electricity to entertain. Men who considered themselves worldly natural philosophers and amateur scientists found it relatively easy to blow the minds of party guests by demonstrating some basic concepts that we're too jaded to appreciate today. Nowhere was this made clearer than with the Flying Boy stunt, aka the Hanging Boy. A child or small adult was suspended from the ceiling with non-conductive silk ropes. Then, electricity would be introduced into the lad's feet and guests would amuse themselves by making objects stick to him or watching him discharge tiny bolts of lightning to metal wires.
We lament the death of planning live entertainment for social events and consider the possibility that the time is right to bring back the Flying Boy.
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Perhaps you've heard of Operation Gladio, the infamous post-World War II NATO program to train "stay-behind" agents to fight guerilla-style against a future hypothetical Soviet invasion of Western Europe. Believe it or not, the United States Air Force, briefly in partnership with the FBI, devised exactly such a program it carried out in Alaska between 1951 and 1958. This went beyond the planning stage - it was actually implemented. At least 89 civilians in Alaska were paid, trained, armed, and prepared to do...something...if the USSR charged across the Bering Strait and occupied what at the time was a US Territory.
Here is the exhaustive five-part FBI tell-all on the now-declassified project.
These podcasts are ad-free and self-produced; I value your support on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/ginandtacos.
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Dr. Laine Nooney (NYU) joins me to discuss the early days of personal computing - particularly how people figured out what to do with home computers after they became convinced that they needed one - in their 2023 book The Apple II Age: How the Computer Became Personal. If you were alive in the pre-internet era, this book is both a great trip down memory lane and a new way to think about the usual hagiographic "Great Man" retellings of the early years of the industry. If you're a bit younger, you'll get great insight into just how not obvious it was what in the hell we would do with computers at home, even though it seemed like everyone wanted one.
Please support Mass for Shut-ins, an independent and ad-free podcast, via Patreon. Contact me via twitter (@edburmila), at least for now. I am on Bluesky at edburmila.bsky.social as well.
Thanks: Dr. Laine Nooney, the bands that contribute music (IfIHadAHiFi, The Sump Pumps, Oscar Bait), Zachary Sielaff, Question Cathy, and all Patreon supporters, subscribers, and listeners.
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Professor and author Nicholas Dagen Bloom joins me to discuss his new book The Great American Transit Disaster: Austerity, Autocentric Planning, and White Flight (University of Chicago Press). You know transit is a mess in the United States but take my word for it: after reading this book you will understand how and why in a brand new way. If you think you already know the story, you don't!
Question Cathy is traveling the world, so Question Kyle and Question Jennie pinch-hit for her in a truly stellar Mailbag. Half of the Mailbag is included in this episode, and then the rest is available as bonus content on patreon, because capitalism.
Please support Mass for Shut-ins, an independent and ad-free podcast, via Patreon. Contact me via twitter (@edburmila), at least for now. I am on Bluesky at edburmila.bsky.social as well.
Thanks: Nicholas Dagen Bloom, QK & QJ, the bands that contribute music (IfIHadAHiFi, The Sump Pumps, Oscar Bait), Zachary Sielaff, Question Cathy, and all Patreon supporters, subscribers, and listeners.
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Continuing a topic we broached on a recent bonus episode on Patreon, Questions Kyle and Jennie join me as we sort through the wonderful if baffling world of school assemblies submitted by listeners and readers. You have to hear some of this stuff to believe it, but suffice it to say America's educational system is very concerned about abstinence and marijuana.
Please support Mass for Shut-ins, an independent and ad-free podcast, via Patreon. Contact me via twitter (@edburmila), at least for now. I am on Bluesky at edburmila.bsky.social as well.
Thanks: the bands that contribute music (IfIHadAHiFi, The Sump Pumps, Oscar Bait), Zachary Sielaff, Question Cathy, and all Patreon supporters, subscribers, and listeners.
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Question Cathy returns for a long overdue dip into the mailbag. We hit a range of topics including: how the recent Supreme Court ruling will affect college admissions, 90s cultural fads, the mind-bending heat affecting much of the planet this summer, what the DeSantis campaign's flop tells us about the war on "wokeness," and how some state-level Democratic parties have gotten so much done with razor-thin majorities. Plus I drop the least obscure hints yet about my forthcoming book and we reveal the most appealing presidential candidate for a post-Biden Democratic Party.
Cathy mispronounces "Patreon" creatively and I recognize mid-recording that Bath & Body Works and Bed, Bath, and Beyond are two different things.
Please support Mass for Shut-ins, an independent and ad-free podcast, via Patreon. Contact me via twitter (@edburmila), at least for now. I am on Bluesky at edburmila.bsky.social as well.
Thanks: the bands that contribute music (IfIHadAHiFi, The Sump Pumps, Oscar Bait), Zachary Sielaff, Question Cathy, and all Patreon supporters, subscribers, and listeners.
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Artist and author Brian Brown joins me to discuss his new book The He-Man Effect: How American Toy Makers Sold You Your Childhood. We talk about our memories of toy advertising and cartoons from the Eighties and the political and regulatory changes that opened the floodgates to marketing at children. Inhumanoids, M.A.S.K., SilverHawks, and Sectaurs are just a few of the D-list intellectual properties of the era that we recall with accuracy I can only describe as alarming. Brian's earlier books on Andre the Giant, Vladimir Putin, and the criminalization of marijuana are all worth your time too.
Please support Mass for Shut-ins, an independent and ad-free podcast, via Patreon. Contact me via twitter (@edburmila), at least for now. I am on Bluesky at edburmila.bsky.social as well.
Thanks: Brian Brown, the bands that contribute music (IfIHadAHiFi, The Sump Pumps, Oscar Bait), Zachary Sielaff, Question Cathy, and all Patreon supporters, subscribers, and listeners.
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Question Kyle and Question Jennie join me to discuss one of the most poorly thought-out, pretentious stunts in the history of pop culture, wherein an early UK techno-electronica duo churn out a novelty song, one hit single, and a book about how to write a novelty song before topping it all off by burning one million pounds, one £50 bill at a time. It's the kind of anti-capitalist, Art School edginess that blew your mind at 20 and I sincerely hope does not blow your mind as a functional adult.
After scoring a gimmick hit about Dr. Who called "Doctorin' the Tardis" in 1988 as The Timelords, the duo rebranded themselves as KLF to release the minor Nineties hit single "3am Eternal." Somehow that was enough for them to amass £1,000,000, which in 1994 they fed into a roaring fire in a video called "The K Foundation Burn a Million Quid." If you ever wondered what kind of face a person makes as they are actively ruining their own lives on camera, check it out.
Please support Mass for Shut-ins, an independent and ad-free podcast, via Patreon. Contact me via twitter (@edburmila).
Thanks: Kyle and Jennie, the bands that contribute music (IfIHadAHiFi, The Sump Pumps, Oscar Bait), Zachary Sielaff, Question Cathy, and all Patreon supporters, subscribers, and listeners.
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David Roth (@david_j_roth) of Defector (@DefectorMedia) joins me to talk about one of the most memorable ad campaigns in the history of sports and pop culture, Reebok's $30,000,000 1992 "Dan vs. Dave" commercials that briefly turned two decathletes into household names and was supposed to culminate with one of them being crowned the world's greatest athlete at the Barcelona Olympics. Along the way we remember plenty of guys and dig deeper into the way pop culture references from early adolescence tend to have great staying power and an inflated sense of importance.
Please support Mass for Shut-ins, an independent and ad-free podcast, via Patreon. Contact me via twitter (@edburmila).
Thanks: David Roth, the bands that contribute music (IfIHadAHiFi, The Sump Pumps, Oscar Bait), Zachary Sielaff, Question Cathy, and all Patreon supporters, subscribers, and listeners.
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Question Kyle joins me for musings on concept albums as I fondly recall the 1999 gimmick-compilation "Short Music for Short People" from the pop-punk mavens at Fat Wreck Chords. The idea: 101 bands, 101 songs, each one 30 seconds long. The royalty of the genre all contributed - Blink-182, NOFX, The Offspring, everyone you remember from the late Clinton years. An impressive, if not especially listenable, idea for an album.
The podcast opens with a brief sample of "Ketchup Soup" by the Teen Idols, their contribution to this album. To purchase the album, please visit the Fat Wreck website for a digital download or other format.
Bonus: 29 minutes in I start singing "Uptown Girl."
These podcasts are ad-free and self-produced; I value your support on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/ginandtacos.
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Motivated by the Chinese balloon story that recently if briefly dominated the news, Kelsey Atherton (@AthertonKD) joins me to talk about PROJECT GENETRIX (1956), a Pentagon scheme to float almost 600 balloons over remote parts of the USSR and China. Turns out balloons are not well-suited to espionage duty for reasons that should be obvious to anyone over the age of ten.
We also talk plenty about the recent balloon incident, the link between GENETRIX and the phenomenon of UFO sightings, and about how a crashed GENETRIX balloon is indirectly responsible for mankind's first photos of the dark side of the moon.
Check out Kelsey's substack, Wars of Future Past, and his recent contribution to Slate on the China incident.
Please support Mass for Shut-ins, an independent and ad-free podcast, via Patreon. Contact me via twitter (@edburmila).
Thanks: Kelsey, the bands that contribute music (IfIHadAHiFi, The Sump Pumps, Oscar Bait), Zachary Sielaff, Question Cathy, and all Patreon supporters, subscribers, and listeners.
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At the height of the Cold War, the looming existential dread of human extinction in a nuclear holocaust was punctuated by a three-way battle for the Grand Ballroom of New York City's famous Waldorf-Astoria Hotel fought by Nikita Khrushchev, the US State Department, and the American Dental Association. You'll never guess who won.
These podcasts are ad-free and self-produced; I value your support on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/ginandtacos.
The book referenced in this episode is available wherever you like to buy books.
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Labor journalist and author Max Alvarez (@maximillian_alv) takes a break from hosting the essential podcast Working People (@WorkingPod) and reporting for Real News Network to talk about the recent labor issues on America's freight railroads. Also joining us is Matt Weaver, a maintenance of way crew member based in Toledo working for freight giant CSX. He’s active with BMWED-IBT 2624, a Teamsters-affiliated union for whom he has recently been chosen to serve as legislative director for his state. He has worked on the railroad since 1994.
If you're interested in learning more or finding out what you can do to help, Matt asks that you visit the Railroad Workers United online or locally.
Max's recent book The Work of Living: Working People Talk about Their Lives and the Year the World Broke is also highly recommended. Be sure to check it out.
Please support Mass for Shut-ins, an independent and ad-free podcast, via Patreon. Contact me via twitter (@edburmila).
Thanks: Matt and Maximillian, the bands that contribute music (IfIHadAHiFi, The Sump Pumps, Oscar Bait), Zachary Sielaff, Question Cathy, and all Patreon supporters, subscribers, and listeners.
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Dr. Erin Thompson (@ArtCrimeProf), the Art Crime Professor, joins me to talk about her book Smashing Statues: The Rise and Fall of America's Public Monuments. We cover the illusory permanence of monuments, the politics of taking them up (and down), and the fate of removed monuments sitting in storage right now, waiting for a more reactionary political climate to re-erect them.
Question Cathy joins me for the mailbag, where we discuss the Denver Broncos, Starbucks workers' organizing efforts, the scourge of paywalled scholarly research, and the ultimate fate of Twitter.
Please support Mass for Shut-ins, an independent and ad-free podcast, via Patreon. Contact me via twitter (@edburmila).
Thanks: Dr. Thompson, the bands that contribute music (IfIHadAHiFi, The Sump Pumps, Oscar Bait), Zachary Sielaff, Question Cathy, and all Patreon supporters, subscribers, and listeners.
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In which I stoop to being my own guest on my own podcast to talk about my book, which is available from wherever you prefer to get books in Ebook, Hardcover, and Audiobook formats.
If you listen to this podcast you're almost certainly aware by now that I have a book, and in fact you may be sick of hearing about it. Nonetheless, here's a little teaser if you're still on the fence about checking it out.
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Two vagabonds with great luck and big balls perpetrate a hoax that made them extremely rich and hoodwinked some of the finest, most respectable citizens of early Gilded Age America. In our modern era of boring electronic fraud, the romance of walking into a bank with a bag of dirty diamonds you claim you pulled out of a hidden mine is hard to match.
These podcasts are ad-free and self-produced; I value your support on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/ginandtacos.
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Dr. Olufemi Taiwo (@OlufemiOTaiwo) joins us with his new book Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else). We talk about the future of organizing and activism and what those of us without power should be doing to avoid falling into the traps more powerful actors set for us. I also do my best to embarrass him by recalling an incident from ~2005, when he and I first met in a classroom at Indiana University.
Please support Mass for Shut-ins, an independent and ad-free podcast, via Patreon. Contact me via twitter (@edburmila).
Thanks: Dr. Taiwo, the bands that contribute music (Waxeater, IfIHadAHiFi, The Sump Pumps, Oscar Bait), Zachary Sielaff, Question Cathy, and all Patreon supporters, subscribers, and listeners.
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