Episode 121: Good For Whatever Ails You

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Too many ads today owe their stylistic inspiration to old time pitches for patent medicines, empty exhortations promising far more than the elixirs they bottled could deliver. All that—and so much more!—in this Episode 121: Good for Whatever Ails You.


Read all about Clark Stanley!

In this episode, I read from: Tim Wu's book The Attention Merchants: The Epic Struggle to Get Inside Our Heads; and a couple of Wikipedia articles, Patent Medicines and Medicine Shows.

I play: Podington Bear's "Whiplash String Swell"; The Freak Fandango Orchestra, doing "Requiem For a Fish"; and a bit of Visciera's "Watch the Room Burst". KMFDM backs Clark Gable in the opening; and I close today with Julie and Rolf doing "Over the Rainbow."

I'm releasing this and all my episodes under a Creative Commons 4.0 attribution, share-alike, and non-commercial license.

Bonus Episode: Propaganda, An Introduction

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Sometimes I find something that should be shared in its entirety. It helps when the author of that something is generous with the permission that makes sharing possible. Such is the case with this Bonus Episode: Propaganda, An Introduction.

I do hope Professor Miller's essay (found in this edition of Edward Bernays's 1928 book Propaganda) clears up the history of that problematic P-word for you as much as it did for me. Once again, thank you very much, Professor Mark Crispin Miller, for your permission to read it here.

Musically, I played just the intro to KMFDM's "Attack," as usual, and close the show with Mistle Thrush's "It's All Like Today." To introduce Professor Miller's essay, I played a bit of Podington Bear's "Elephants on Parade".

I'm releasing this and all my episodes under a Creative Commons 4.0 attribution, share-alike, and non-commercial license.