Sunday, March 31, 2024

Tuesday, March 26, 2024

Episode 240: There Are No Accidents

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For too long, the question of what is “safe”—and who should take the blame when it isn't—has been muddled in the name of profits. Maybe we should avoid the word “accident” itself. I'll explore that question in this Episode 240: There Are No Accidents.

In this Episode, I read from Jessie Singer's 2022 book, There Are No Accidents: The Deadly Rise of Injury and Disaster——Who Profits and Who Pays the Price. Seriously. I highly encourage anyone out there to check out this book. It's not perfect——no book is——but it does explore in detail how badly moneyed interests have misinformed us about who should take the blame.

Musically, I play: a lick from the classic banjo soundtrack to the movie Deliverance; and the nineteenth-century chorus from the worker-rights song "Eight Hours," as sung by Cincinnati's University Singers from the 1978 album The Hand That Holds The Bread: Progress and Protest in the Gilded Age; Songs from the Civil War to the Columbian Exposition. KMFDM's "Attack" backs Bruce Livesy in the intro; and I close with Mistle Thrush.

Thursday, March 14, 2024

Episode 239: What I Do With The Mad That I Feel

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My show is reactive: things happen, and I react to them. This happened recently when the number and tone of commercials in my podcast feed spiked. I cover this and speculate on why it happened in this Episode 239: What I Do With The Mad That I Feel.

In this episode, I read from J. C. McQuiston's letter concerning radio advertising from the August, 1922 issue of Radio News called "Advertising by Radio. Can It and Should It Be Done?"

I played: two episodes of On The Media, one from November 3rd and the other from November 10th. (Keep in mind that if you go to the links and listen for the same ads I excerpted, you probably won't find them, simply because ads are inserted dynamically, and mine date back to the original releases.) I also played Mr. Fred Rogers testifying before congress in 1969.

Musically, I played: some incidental music from the old radio drama Dragnet; and Podington Bear doing "In My Head". KMFDM's "Attack" backed Tim Bousquet in the opening, and I'm closing now with Mistle Thrush's close to "It's All Like Today".