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Category Archives: Podthoughts

Podthoughts: The KunstlerCast

Vital stats: Format: interview-conversations about “the tragic comedy of suburban sprawl” Episode duration: 12m-1h20m Frequency: weekly Suburbia sucks, and ever-rising energy prices will soon destroy it. There you have the collected ideas, in caricature, of self-styled public intellectual James Howard Kunstler. For twenty years, he’s worked the city-planning, architecture, transit and urbanism/New Urbanism beats, territory […]

Podthoughts: The Big Ideas

Vital stats: Format: elucidation of oft-name-checked but thinly understood ideas Episode duration: 9-20m Frequency: monthly, almost My brain has filed Benjamen Walker, host and producer of WFMU’s Too Much Information, as one of our time’s major public radio martyrs. Yes, the man seems alive and well, but public radio martyrdom doesn’t require literal death. He […]

Podthoughts: Allan Gregg in Conversation

Vital stats: Format: interviews about politics, history, science, and culture, both Canadian and non- Episode duration: 8-28m Frequency: 10-20 per month Though it strays more often than it used to, I do keep an eye on Canadian politics. I do it for the same reason I keep an ear on Canadian media. The products and […]

Podthoughts: The Subaltern

Vital stats: Format: one young writer interviewing others Episode duration: 30-50m Frequency: weekly, in series of ten episodes If you’ve passed through an institution of higher learning in the last twenty years, you twitch, almost imperceptibly, when you hear a word like “subaltern.” You do the same when upon hearing the terms “hegemony,” “rearticulation,” or […]

Podthoughts: Travel with Rick Steves

Vital stats: Format: a travel guide talks to travelers and tourists Episode duration: exactly 53:30 Frequency: weekly Growing up in Seattle, I thought of Rick Steves as a guru for locals aspiring to European travel just as I thought of Dan Savage as a guru for locals suffering sexual complications. But even though both men […]

Podthoughts: CB Radio

Vital stats: Format comedian interviewing comedians (but in Austin!) Episode duration: 12m-45m Frequency: twice weekly Cameron Buchholtz interviews comedians. This places him alongside several well-known podcasters, including public radio’s own Jesse Thorn (and public radio’s nearly nobody else). Cameron Buchholtz also does comedy, which places him alongside several well-known comedian-podcasters, including Marc Maron, Pete Holmes, […]

Podthoughts: Dave Hill’s Podcasting Incident

Vital stats: Format: Dave Hill talking to comedians and other people he knows, bracketed by Dave Hill talking (or shredding) Episode duration: 45m-2h Frequency: one or two per month I feel the time has nearly come to define a new genre of podcasting: comedians interviewing their friends and, if they seem entertaining enough, their acquaintances […]

Podthoughts: How Did This Get Made?

Vital stats: Format: discussion of the various unbelievabilities of non-respected movies with comedians — and sometimes the filmmakers themselves Episode duration: 35m-1h30m Frequency: biweekly (with previews on the weeks between) When I grew old enough to watch, I began watching films. When I grew old enough to read, I began reading film criticism. I’ve never […]

Podthoughts: How Was Your Week?

Vital stats: Format: Julie Klausner talking to comedians and other people she knows, bracked by Julie Klausner talking about her week Episode duration: 40m-1h30m Frequency: weekly Besides the red hair and gay fanbase, do I have any reason to think of Julie Klausner as “the good Kathy Griffin?” Undoubtedly not, but I can’t force the […]

Podthoughts: The Vinyl Countdown

Vital stats: Format: Canadians talking about everything and nothing, continually ratcheting up the stakes of elaborately unappealing sex or general disgustingness, usually in public Episode duration: 30m-1h30m Frequency: 3-9 per month “A bunch of guys get drunk at a bar, and some dickhead keeps recording it.” The prospect does not immediately appeal. Several of you […]