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Season Finale!
This episode features a couple of clips from standup comedian Kellen Erskine's Dry Bar Comedy special. Here he talks about the questionable legality of bike locks and a neighbor with a baby monitor.
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This episode features a clip from Late Night with Seth Meyers taking a Closer Look at the right’s newest lunacy: The War On Thanksgiving! I guess The War on Christmas is played out. I’d say Seth’s Closer Look segments are the best thing on TV these days.
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No sound clips, but the music I talked over was "Mulberry Jam" by Allah-Las; "Funkytown / I Feel Good" by Lucky Chops; "The Islander" by Frank LoCrasto; and "Lazy Hibiscus" by Monster Rally.
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This episode features a clip from HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher. Trump gets booed and runs for his safe space, which is apparently where he really belongs: Florida.
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This episode features a clip from EconTalk where host Russ Roberts engages Tyler Cowen on his position that social media is a net positive. Despite it often being a libertarian nonsense fest, I still enjoy EconTalk. Tyler's podcast Conversations with Tyler is a wonderful show.
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This episode features clips from Saturday Night Live's Weekend Update with Colin Jost and Michael Che talking about Trump's impeachment, and the Catholic Church toying with the idea of letting some priests not be celibate.
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This episode features clips from Radio Sweden reports about a program where female refugees learn Swedish and how to ride a bike, advice from the oldest Swede, and a Swedish school where students demanded an all-vegetarian menu. Also we heard the pride of Sweden, Greta Thunberg's moving UN speech and appearance on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah where she explains the difference between how climate change is discussed in the US vs Sweden.
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This episode features a couple of clips from the not very good NBC sitcom Welcome to Sweden, as well as from a very classily produced BBC Newsnight segment juxtaposing the dueling narratives about Sweden that you routinely find in the media. I only excerpted the utopia bits, but the whole segment was quite good. Music I talked over included the theme for NPR's All Things Considered, "You've Got Your Troubles" by Billy Strange, "A Remote View" by Sambassadeur, "Magellan" and "Book of Swords" by Felt, "Your Last Goodbye" by Floyd Cramer, "Goodbye" by Goat, "Sad Baby" by Haley Bonar, and "Before Cologne" by Ben Folds.
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This episode features a clip from The Brady Bunch Movie, where one of my favorite actors, Gary Cole, as patriarch Mike Brady delivers some of his patented wisdom. Also, I threw in They Might Be Giants covering the theme song for The Monkees, as performed live on The Adventure Club with Josh from a long time ago. It felt appropriate to play a clip from Dallas’ radio station KDGE The Edge, as it would have just turned 30 years old if it were still around. The station was very formative for me in the early 90s.
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This episode features a clip from the recent episode of The Ezra Klein Show “Behind the panic in white, Christian America” where Ezra talks to Robert Jones. I typically find Ezra’s questions more compelling than the guest’s answers, and this episode isn’t really an exception, but Robert was plenty good too. I particularly liked this part where Ezra talked about how politics trails demography by 10 years while culture is 10 years ahead of demography, resulting in everyone in America feeling they’re perpetually losing.
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This episode features a clip from The Late Show with Stephen Colbert spoofing the announcement that Barack Obama is launching a podcast on Spotify. I also played the theme song to Reading Rainbow, and a brief snippet of "The Coffee Cola Song" by Francis Bebey.
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This episode features a clip from The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell where he reads a short passage from Michael Wolff's new book Siege: Trump Under Fire. I’ve been listening to, and greatly enjoying the audiobook, but didn’t take the time to pull favorite clips from that, so instead, I just relied on Lawrence to read a funny passage. It's about how much Trump distains Don Jr. and his children.
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This episode features a clip from one of Comedy Central's cult sketch comedy series Exit 57 which starred Stephen Colbert and Amy Sedaris (among others). In this clip a couple of women in the office try to make nice with Vicky, who's really got to get it together.
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Apropos of nothing, this episode features a clip from Mike Judge’s classic 1999 film, Office Space, where Drew talks about what happened to Tom Smykowski. I hadn’t watched the movie in many years, but I re-watched recently and am pleased to report it holds up very well. I LOL’d aplenty.
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This episode features a clip from an Ohio local NBC affiliate where they interview the teenage girl who first heard Toto’s "Africa" on Stranger Things and trolled Weezer online until the band acquiesced and recorded a cover of it, which, ironically, I don’t then play on the show. Figured you’d already heard it. Also, their covers album is pretty meh, I’d say. They don’t really do much with the songs.
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This episode features a hilarious parody podcast called 88% P(a(r(e(n(t(h(e(t(i(c(a(l(s))))))))))))) hosted by Sarah Koenig, of Serial and This American Life fame. If you’ve not heard the recent episode of Reply All for which this was created, I fully endorse that as well.
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This episode features a lightly edited clip from PBS Newshour where author David Sedaris offers his trademark anecdotes to advise people to not confuse simple mistakes for microaggressions. As you’d expect, it’s pretty funny. And while not edgy, it’s perhaps still the edgiest thing I’ve ever seen PBS Newshour.
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This episode features a heavily edited (and yet still very long) clip from Bob Garfield’s On the Media interview with Rutger Bregman, author of Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World, about why it is taking a generational shift to address global challenges like inequality and climate change. I recommend the whole segment.
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This episode features clips about last weeks congressional testimony by Trump’s longtime mob lawyer, Michael Cohen. First from WNYC’s On The Media, hosts Bob and Brook discuss the movie tropes that seemed to run through the hearings, and then Jimmy Kimmel talks about a couple of memorable moments.
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