August 5th, 2021
Summer, we hardly knew ye. You gave our family vacation (a road trip to New York and Illinois, a weekend with friends in northern Michigan, a wedding weekend in Ohio) multiple rendezvouses [rendezvise? rendezesvous?!] with far flung family members, a wild march to the NBA Finals with the Phoenix Suns, multiple hospital visits for our daughter who remains resilient if a bit more particular about everything than she used to be, a very expensive but so far effective fortnight of obedience training for the dog, a seemingly never ending chain of free coffee offers from a certain fast-casual bakery cafe chain restaurant, and a wealth of PTO days coming due after holding back on travel for most of the last year. Oh, and still, as ever, so much podcast listening. My ears are slowly weaning themselves from a firehose of NBA content, but even in that stream I managed to land on a slew of (mostly) non-basketball content to promote.
THE LIST
This pod tackles the newly mind blowing concept of ownership. We take it for granted, but when you think a lot about it the rules of owning something are really fluid.
Basketball personality Bill Walton is full of life and overflowing with gratitude for the lovely and depressing things that have happened to him in his life and playing career. There is very little for host Bryan Curtis to do here; Walton launches into an answer about Halberstam’s famed embedded sports journalist tome, and just kind of keeps himself going and going.
Children do, in fact, grieve. This devastating short between Heavyweight seasons opens up a window to that grief via an amazing organization that helps kids talk about death in a way that society is largely not able to understand.
School ratings are a sham…right? What does it take for a school to rise to the top of the infamous U.S. News & World Report college rankings? Malcolm Gladwell is on it.
I love a good critical dissection of lowbrow culture, and there is arguably no more widely influential lowbrow figure in my lifetime than Rush Limbaugh. I’ve never taken the time to give him credit for being anything besides a blowhard shock jock, and to be clear, that’s what he was. In the context of his rise to notoriety, however, we find a microcosm of media and politics and American life over the last several decades.
Life imitates art. But sometimes art imitates other art. Not in the intellectual property theft sense, but in the way that a photograph birthed an iconic type of film shot that you’ve probably never thought about but definitely recognize.
HONORABLE MENTION
The Anthropocene Reviewed - "Ginkgo Biloba"
How I Built This with Guy Raz - "Mailchimp: Ben Chestnut"
SOMETHINGS NEW
70 Over 70
It’s always worthwhile to examine the life of someone who has been around for a minute, and that’s precisely what Max Linsky’s new show purports to do - interviewing 70 people aged 70 or older. So far, I like the mix of famous people/those with very high profile jobs vs. the intro segments with almost exclusively unknown folks. Conversations remind me a little bit of the Time Sensitive podcast, but I appreciate the more directed focus on people whose years of life alone are a default for perspective on life. That said, the show does have some amount of pretension, but not enough to bother me. Each show also features music from septuagenarian+ artists, and the episode artwork is done by Max’s mom Lynn Staley - great subtle touches that make this show feel like a true celebration of aging.
The Ringer Guide to the Summer Games
Just in time for the end of the Olympics, here’s a podcast rec! Host Rodger Sherman strikes the perfect tone of impassioned onlooker with an admitted lack of real knowledge. But his reporting and research are top notch, which means listeners get the “I’m just like you” intimacy while also walking away with an earful of previously unknown narrative tidbits about the stars. And with episodes running just about 10 minutes, it's perfectly digestible for a thing which - let’s be honest - you’re not going to care much about in another week. Nevertheless, it is an excellent companion pod for Olympics-watching regardless of your commitment level. I’m already looking forward to a spinoff to accompany the imminently approaching 2022 winter games.
Campu
Japanese internment camps are a topic that seem to be getting some much deserved traction in recent years. George Takei’s musical “Allegiance” was the first thing that caught my attention, followed by Kishi Bashi’s concept album (and yet-to-be-released companion documentary) “Omiyari.” Then this year’s ‘The Best God Damn Band in Wyoming’ off of No-No-Boy’s album “1975” and now Campu enter the fray. The show is a great lens through which to view a largely unexplored history - or at least something that I personally knew very little about. Each episode uses some physical object to center the tragic stories of mass, unjust imprisonment on American soil. It’s produced by siblings Noah and Hana Maruyama, who are descendents of family members who were forced into various concentration camps. Densho, a nonprofit dedicated to preserving oral histories from Japanese Americans who were incarcerated during World War II, backs the show. This means there is a lot of incredibly meaningful audio integrated into the storytelling, which gives the show an extra serving of emotional resonance.
It’s always worthwhile to examine the life of someone who has been around for a minute, and that’s precisely what Max Linsky’s new show purports to do - interviewing 70 people aged 70 or older. So far, I like the mix of famous people/those with very high profile jobs vs. the intro segments with almost exclusively unknown folks. Conversations remind me a little bit of the Time Sensitive podcast, but I appreciate the more directed focus on people whose years of life alone are a default for perspective on life. That said, the show does have some amount of pretension, but not enough to bother me. Each show also features music from septuagenarian+ artists, and the episode artwork is done by Max’s mom Lynn Staley - great subtle touches that make this show feel like a true celebration of aging.
The Ringer Guide to the Summer Games
Just in time for the end of the Olympics, here’s a podcast rec! Host Rodger Sherman strikes the perfect tone of impassioned onlooker with an admitted lack of real knowledge. But his reporting and research are top notch, which means listeners get the “I’m just like you” intimacy while also walking away with an earful of previously unknown narrative tidbits about the stars. And with episodes running just about 10 minutes, it's perfectly digestible for a thing which - let’s be honest - you’re not going to care much about in another week. Nevertheless, it is an excellent companion pod for Olympics-watching regardless of your commitment level. I’m already looking forward to a spinoff to accompany the imminently approaching 2022 winter games.
Campu
Japanese internment camps are a topic that seem to be getting some much deserved traction in recent years. George Takei’s musical “Allegiance” was the first thing that caught my attention, followed by Kishi Bashi’s concept album (and yet-to-be-released companion documentary) “Omiyari.” Then this year’s ‘The Best God Damn Band in Wyoming’ off of No-No-Boy’s album “1975” and now Campu enter the fray. The show is a great lens through which to view a largely unexplored history - or at least something that I personally knew very little about. Each episode uses some physical object to center the tragic stories of mass, unjust imprisonment on American soil. It’s produced by siblings Noah and Hana Maruyama, who are descendents of family members who were forced into various concentration camps. Densho, a nonprofit dedicated to preserving oral histories from Japanese Americans who were incarcerated during World War II, backs the show. This means there is a lot of incredibly meaningful audio integrated into the storytelling, which gives the show an extra serving of emotional resonance.
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