Welcome to the Podcast Zeitgeist list: presented in apparently random order, at inconsistent intervals, its purpose obscure, its usefulness in doubt, its taste questionable, its methods and motives suspect. [See all lists.]
Be Seeing You, Patrick McGoohan
"I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered!My life is my own!" From "The Prisoner" (1967)
A few years ago, I bought a boxed DVD set of the old series "The Prisoner" starring Patrick McGoohan, who died at 80 on Tuesday in Los Angeles.
My wife has been obsessed with the show since childhood. We watched the whole thing over that winter. It was a bit dated, but most of it held up. Unlike many series, it actually had a conclusion with a final episode where everything was sort of resolved. It was not set in the future, but was vaguely futuristic, and quite prescient in pointing to some trends in information and control that outlasted the Cold War era.
The themes of identity, torture and mind control echo to this day, in the news and in cultural artifacts like Terry Gilliam's "Brazil" and the Fox series "24." "Where am I?' "In the village." "What do you want?" "Information." "Whose side are you on?" "That would be telling..." "We want information... Information... Information." "You won't get it." "By hook or by crook, we will." "Who are you?" "The new Number Two." "Who is Number One?" "You are Number Six." "I am not a number. I am a free man!" (Mocking laughter) --Weekly Opening to "The Prisoner"
McGoohan McGoohan had earned some fame as the secret agent John Drake in a BBC program called "Danger Man." He had total creative control of the "Prisoner" project.
He plays a secret agent who tries to resign. He famously types the letter in the opening credits, and we see a Rube Goldberg contraption drop it into a file cabinet. He is kidnapped -- perhaps by his own side, perhaps by the other side -- to a mysterious place called the Village, where he is addressed only as Number Six. We never learn his name. Perhaps he is Drake, perhaps not. The Village is run by a series of bureaucrats named Number Two, who are each given the job to break Number Six's spirit. This typically fails after one cockamamie scheme or another. In the next episode, there is usually a new Number Two.
Number Six never cracks. Along the way, he tries to help various others in the Village, who often end up betraying him.
"Danger Man" was later broadcast in the United States as "Secret Agent," with a new theme song by Johnny Rivers that reached No. 5 on the pop music charts.
You probably know the tune. It has been covered by Blues Traveler and others.
The original British version of "Danger Man" had some theme music that was vaguely jazzy and staccato, without vocals. McGoohan reportedly hated the new rock and roll theme, although the lyrics foreshadowed the premise of "The Prisoner."
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mo3Wqf86N4w&hl=en&fs=1]
There's a man who lives a life of danger To everyone he meets, he stays a stranger With every move he makes Another chance he takes Odds are he won't live to see tomorrow
Secret agent man, secret agent man They've given you a number And taken away your name
After we worked through "The Prisoner" boxed set, I tracked down A&E's DVD sets of "Secret Agent Man/Danger Man" and knew I had another surefire gift for my wife. I had already set up the TiVo to capture anything with McGoohan in it. There's not much worth watching after these two series. His most memorable roles were as King Edward Longshanks in the overrated "Braveheart" and as a British secret agent in the interminable "Ice Station Zebra" with Rock Hudson.
He also popped up in episodes of "Columbo" and "Murder, She Wrote."
"Danger Man" is pretty good spy stuff for the time. There was demand for a James Bond TV show, and Ian Fleming reportedly helped McGoohan with some ideas, but he had already sold the Bond name to someone else. It is rumored on fan sites that McGoohan had passed on a chance to play Bond on the big screen. Other TV offerings from that era included "The Man from U.N.C.L.E.," "The Saint," "Wild Wild West," and "The Avengers." I remember watching them all. I remember "The Prisoner" but not "Danger Man."
In the show, John Drake was called in to do the dirty jobs, first for an arm of NATO and later for what would seem to be British intelligence. The shows are low budget, and the same sets pop up with some frequency, but the episodes make the most of their suspenseful plots. The English countryside is cleverly transformed into exotic locales around the globe.
"The Prisoner" is something else again, a rejection of the whole spy game. A man who seems a lot like Drake turns in his resignation, then gets kidnapped to a village, where all manner of mental and physical torture is used to get him to explain why he resigned. It was filmed at Portmeiron, a peculiar resort in England, where Prisoner fans gather for annual conventions.
AMC put out a disappointing remake in 2009.
As for the original, there is disagreement about the order in which you should watch them, apart from the ones that are clearly the first and last. In my experience, it doesn't matter that much.
There are many Web sites devoted to the show. (I sometimes think my head is crammed full of useless stuff. And the useless stuff that I don't have room for, someone else has put on the Internet. We are part of a vast beehive of information, most of it useless. Information.)
After you watch The Prisoner, phrases and images will echo in your head. The creepy big-brother greeting of the Village: "Be seeing you." The penny-farthing bicycle that is its symbol. The old saying "six of one."
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29JewlGsYxs&hl=en&fs=1]
"Once he begins to doubt his own identity, he'll crack." --Number Two
The fears echo through the years. Do I worry every time I am asked for my Social Security number in a context that has nothing to do with the government retirement program? Yes. I know from my reporting days that some of those digits can tell you exactly when and where the person was born. The first, best step in complete identity theft is to get that number. In some sense, the number is more real than we are.
Some day I suppose, our DNA profiles will serve that purpose more precisely. It won't be as terrifying as that movie "Gattaca," but it will be disturbing nonetheless.
In the scary future, it's pretty clear that we will not speak on giant telephones and be chased on the beach by giant white blobs like the now-laughable rover in "The Prisoner," but life will be strange in other ways. (I also don't think that Kosho, the weird game McGoohan invented, will catch on, either. It involves masked combat on trampolines surrounded by water. Maybe we can get an app version.)
Technology that "The Prisoner" failed to foresee: cellphones, laptops, the Internet, Twitter, Facebook. But it had a pretty good handle on hidden cameras, wiretapping and torture.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqfpZvv7ozQ&hl=en&fs=1]
Swinging on the Riviera one day Lying in a Bombay alley next day Be careful what you say Or you'll give yourself away Odds are you won't live to see tomorrow
The recent post-9/11 era of heightened security and paranoia is a lot like the cold war era of my childhood, when James Bond and John Drake ruled our screens.
But Number Six was different, a rebel, and for that reason, appealing. I think I understand why "The Prisoner" resigns, why he chooses not to be a part of the empire anymore, crushing and controlling other nations. He just wants to be left alone but he won't give up his honor. He never gives up trying to get out of the Village. He never gives in. He never stops fighting. He is uncompromising, ego personified.
And he drives a cool car.
Number Two: "Are you going to run?" Number Six: "Like blazes. The first chance I get." Number Two: "Why did you resign?" Number Six: "For peace.."
I remember watching those other old spy shows in black and white reruns on my grandmother's old TV set when we were visiting. That past of the 50s and 60s looks so attractive, with its logical villains -- just your typical corrupt power brokers or madmen out for world domination.
Our villains these days are more like irrational monsters, bent on suicide and inflicting pain, on us, on themselves. A few years ago, a burglar came in through the bathroom window of a Manhattan apartment. Shot a man in his sleep. Drank his whiskey, watched his porn. Then he went downstairs and killed a couple in their 80s, stuffed blank checks in the man's mouth, sexually molested the woman. I'll take a super-villain with a plot to rule the world over that any day.
"A still tongue makes a happy life." --A saying in the Village, from "The Prisoner"
As art, "The Prisoner" is a mess, a cult item treasured for its oddity. As a study of conformity and social control, it is magnificent. With its mock elections, bogus newspapers, loudspeakers and totalitarian-style speechifying, it is a commentary, a sad one, on the modern world. McGoohan has been quoted as saying that "freedom is a myth," but I can't square that with what he said in "The Prisoner."
From a McGoohan interview in The Los Angeles Times:
"Nobody has a name, everyone wears a number," he said. "It's a reflection of the pressure on all of us today to be numbered, to give up our individualism. This is a contemporary subject, not science fiction. I hope these things will be recognized by the audience. It's not meant to be subtle. It's meant to say: This little village is our world."
I don't believe freedom is a myth, can't believe it. We decide what kind of society we live in, whether to throw garbage in the street or a bucket, whether to smile or scowl at a stranger, whether to allow wiretaps and torture, when to go to war. We can be honest, or we can cheat. We can gather facts or trade in gossip and rumors. We can be good and decent and kind, or not. We can go through this life as if we are prisoners, or we can choose something better. Deep down, we usually know the better choice, if we look hard enough.
Ah, well.
As they say in the village, be seeing you, Patrick McGoohan.
"I understand he survived the ultimate test. Then he must no longer be referred to as Number Six or a number of any kind."
[Original post, 2005; revised in 2009 and 2012]
Podcast Zeitgeist, Jan. 1
There has been a lot of chatter about the podcasting business model, and whether it has been a failure. That talk intensified when a major commercial podcaster, Podango, warned recently that its death seemed to be near. None of this is of concern to me: I leave business models to the money people. My interest is content.I had more free time than usual this week, so the list is longer than usual (in the order I listened). [See all lists.]
Podcast Zeitgeist, Dec. 26
The mix this week is more culture than tech. Most of the podcasts I sample were off for the holidays, or they had recorded episodes in advance, so I went a little farther afield. [See all lists.]
- The Dinner Party Download, Episode 12 "The show that helps you win your next dinner party." A breezy podcast from Brendan Newnam and Rico Gagliano of 89.33 KPC public radio in Los Angeles. It starts with an icebreaker joke: "A penguin walks into a bar..." On to small talk, based on news tips from American Public Media reporters: How big of a wallet would you need to carry all the cash from the Madoff scheme? This big. Then it's on to a history lesson and related cocktail. The lesson: Why General Grant was bad for the Jews. The drink: an ounce of bourbon, an ounce of apple brandy, sugar or honey topped with hot water, a mix of North and South. An interview with David Fincher, director of "Benjamin Button." A food segment about mozzarella, including mozzarella restaurants and bars like Obikà in New York. A 30-second music clip (Low's "Just Like Christmas,"). Time to party. Get the cheat sheet. Fun concept. Length: 13:51 minutes. Released: Dec. 19.
- "Books on the Nightstand #20: Sci-Fi for the Rest of Us" Do you read the book, or the e-book? Like the hosts, I do both. They're using Sony Readers, and I use a Kindle, but the advantage of e-books for travel is clear in either case. In fact, I plan to be reading my Kindle for a couple of hours today on a flight out west. (I don't care for extended reading on my iPhone, though there are several e-book apps.) I used to strain my back lugging books on trips so I wouldn't be caught without something. Another segment focused on science fiction picks for people who don't like SF, including "Stranger in a Strange Land," by Robert A. Heinlein. I grok the choice, though it's not for everyone and I don't think the pitch here -- "fish out of water story" -- does it justice. Other picks in the podcast included "The Sparrow" by Mary Doria Russell, "Life Class" by Pat Barker, and "Firmin" by Sam Savage. As podcasts, and book discussions, go, this did not strike me as particularly deep or compelling, but I may give it another chance later. Length: 18:18. Released: Dec. 17.
- Coffeegeek Podcast 64: Carl Sara Rocks This podcast is infrequently updated but my quest for the perfect espresso shot seemed to require more research, so I grabbed the most recent episode, from August. Intro/outro is Sinatra singing the jaunty "Coffee Song." The host, Mark Prince, founder of the excellent Coffeegeek.com, started by apologizing for a two-month delay pledged to get on a weekly schedule. Didn't happen. Oh, well. (The other day, I sent an e-mail asking what was up, but did not get a reply yet.) This episode is notable for Prince's grievance, discussed at length, about a "backlash to the pursuit of culinary coffee" that he sees in the mainstream media. He blames the bad economy. He says the U.S. coffee market breaks down this way: 80 percent of the people are "the untouchables... They are satisfied with Folgers and the junk around the office." He wants to reach the other 20 percent, including 1 to 2 percent who are culinary coffee experts, 6 to 8 percent who understand and love it but "they're not quite convinced the effort is worth it"; and 10 percent who may have had a cup or two and are open to it but they think it means Starbucks. "They don't know what culinary coffee is yet. They know it exists." He goes on a digression about iced espresso (the gist: to avoid a sour taste, brew the espresso into a cold cup, not directly into the ice). Back to the backlash. He blames a Burger King mentality in the U.S. "In a lot of cases the customer is always right," he explains. "But when it comes to the delivery of a culinary product, and you have a reputation you want to protect as a business for delivering a culinary product, I'm sorry, there are certain lines that a customer can't cross, and they can't ask you to do things in a certain way if you believe it is detrimental to the quality of the beverage. And I do blame Burger King for that for their 'have it your way' campaign." Of course, he says, "commodity or utility coffee" at Starbucks or McDonald's is O.K. in a pinch, but don't drink the stuff in the hotel room. At 38:15 minutes, a list of "awesome" coffee beans, followed by a recorded interview with Carl Sara, a New Zealand coffee champion, which takes up the rest of the podcast. Then Sinatra takes us out. Length: 1 hour, 27 minutes. Released: Aug. 9, 2008.
- Stuff You Should Know This is a great find from the How Stuff Works folks, with a place on the iTunes "Best Podcasts of 2008" list. The hosts Josh and Chuck take apart a topic scientifically in about 17 minutes per show. On this one, we learn that flirting is a form of language important to our survival as a species, with a discussion of the ambiguous protean gestures preferred by women in flirting. I also listened to the previous two episodes about the safest parts of your body to take a bullet (answer: hands or feet), and eco-friendly ways to get rid of a body. All were entertaining and informative. Length: 17:29 minutes. Released: Dec. 23.
- New York Review of Books Podcast Compared to some of the stuff I have reviewed, this is laid-back, ruminative stuff from the bastion of New York liberal intellectualism. First I listened to this 17-minute interview with the veteran Washington correspondent Elizabeth Drew about the Obama transition, cabinet picks and other issues, based on her N.Y.R.B. article "The Truth About the Election." My takeaway is that she thinks Obama was different from other Democratic candidates in that he had been working on his message, plan and staffing long before the election itself, making his transition rather smooth. We'll see. The more recent 50-minute podcast is a recording of the 2008 Robert B. Silvers lecture by the novelist Zadie Smith, delivered at the New York Public Library on Dec. 5. Silvers is the editor of the review and delivers introductory remarks. It was framed as a lecture about lecturing. The description: "Drawing on literary and historical examples from Elizabeth I to Eliza Doolittle to Barack Obama, Zadie Smith explores race, writing, and what it means when we speak in different ways to different people." There's a lot more Obama than this description suggests, and a bit more about mixed race and the duality of language. She has a take on Obama -- "the man from Dream City" -- that is far more poetic than Drew's nuts-and-bolts assessment. In that respect, the two podcast episodes complement one another neatly. Length: 17:27 minutes and 59:05 minutes. Released: Dec. 15 and 19.
- The Futile Podcast: M.A.D. Men The action movie podcast. This episode was billed as a discussion of "preachy movies that are remakes of movies that were preachy about avoiding nuclear annihilation, or what was known ... as M.A.D., or mutually assured destruction." But it's mostly about the recent remake of "The Day the Earth Stood Still," with Keanu Reeves and the guy from "Mad Men." Overall review: "This movie sucks, but it doesn't." Beware of spoilers, if that matters to you. In the case of htis movie, maybe not. A couple of days after I listened to this, another podcast dropped, about the original "Lethal Weapon," but I haven't listened to that yet. Length: 23:15 minutes. Released: Dec. 20.
- Uhh Yeah Dude, Episode 146 Great episode. Topics include 50 Cent's fight with Floyd Mayweather, cameras hidden in the baby Jesus, cellphones for the dead, the new Burger King fragrance, adult video awards, the Michael Phelps video game, and Z-mailing, similar to sleep-eating, in which people send inappropriate e-mail while asleep. Jonathan: "Can't we just get back to sleep-dreaming?" Seth: "I was listening to U.Y.D. and the two hosts of the show have trained themselves to sleep-dream, where they fall asleep, they create almost movies in their head, I guess is how they would describe it. Literally, they'll think about people in their lives, not in their lives, who have been in their lives, in situations where they'll be in a house, but it's not really their house, it's their childhood home. They call it sleep-dreaming." Hey, that's happened to me. I dreamed podcasters were watching me in my sleep. Length: 1 hour, 7 Minutes. Released: Dec. 22.
- This Week in Tech 174: 10-Ferret Night Leo Laporte dispenses with tech for another appearance (recorded earlier this month) by John Hodgman, who is still on his book tour. Leo interviewed Hodgman the week of Nov. 2. This time they are joined by his friend Jonathan Coulton, a Brooklyn singer-songwriter beloved by nerds and geeks. There's no point in summarizing the discussion, which is entertaining and well worth a listen if you are a fan of their work, as I am. A few topics: Hodgman's career as a literary agent, the throwing of shoes at the president, the availability of Crystal Head Vodka, quahogs, and two things Laporte learned from his father: "Rummies have no wind, so you can outrun them. And never catch the eye of a hobo." There's more, plus Coulton music. Length: 1 hour, 20 minutes. Released: Dec. 21.
The Great Nerd Book Remains Unwritten
Supposedly, nerds are now cool. People compete to show their nerd cred. They are joining Facebook, taking nerd tests on the Web, and discussing the definitions of geek and nerd on their blogs. They watch TV shows like "Battlestar Galactica," "Heroes" and "The Big Bang Theory." They read adult comics and mammoth science fiction novels. Even Barack Obama is said to be a nerd. It was not always this way, a topic that Benjamin Nugent explores in "American Nerd: The Story of My People," published earlier this year. I ordered the book after listening to Nugent give an interview on The Sound of Young America podcast about what he called his childhood experiences as a self-loathing nerd. It was poignant (and familiar) to hear him describe dumping his nerdy Dungeons & Dragons friends in high school so he could pass for normal. Unfortunately, the book did not quite live up to that interview, either intellectually or emotionally. (But it was a pleasant diversion from reading more of "Anathem," the giant Neal Stephenson SF novel on my to-do list.)
Let's start with the definition of a nerd. Nugent rejects a Wikipedia definition that focused on social awkwardness. Instead, he describes nerds as "intellectual in ways that strike people as machine-like and socially awkward in ways that strike people as machine-like... people who remind others, sometimes unpleasantly, of machines."
He says they tend to be passionate about technically sophisticated activities and enjoy playing with machines, speak in a language that hews close to standard written English, seek to avoid physical and emotional confrontation, favor logical and rational communication over other types. He also contends there is a second type of nerd, who does not necessarily fit these characteristics but who gets the label out of extreme social exclusion.
There is also a racial component, with nerds exhibiting what might be described as "hyperwhite" behavior. Nerds don't dance. Except when they do.
The Wikipedia definition has been revised since Nugent's book came out. (Unlike this reviewer, I consider Wikipedia to be authoritative on this topic, since it is written by nerds and geeks for nerds and geeks, hence its impeccable accuracy on topics like comics and computers and other obsessions).
At the moment, Wikipedia says:
Nerd is a term often bearing a derogatory connotation or stereotype, that refers to a person who passionately pursues intellectual activities, esoteric knowledge, or other obscure interests that are age inappropriate rather than engaging in more social or popular activities. Therefore, a nerd is often excluded from physical activity and considered a loner by peers, or will tend to associate with like-minded people.
(Wikipedia goes with Webster on geek: "a peculiar or otherwise odd person, especially one who is perceived to be overly obsessed with one or more things including those of intellectuality, electronics, gaming, etc".)
The best parts of Nugent's book are the historical-sociological sections. He has some fun with nerd-precursors like a character from "Pride and Prejudice." Victor Frankenstein, and poor Hugo Gernsback, who was born at least a century too early.
Nugent traces the modern nerd archetype from its early origins -- a silly creature in a 1950 Dr. Seuss book, Jerry Lewis's characters, mid-1960s issues of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s student humor magazine, as an epithet for squares on "Happy Days," up to the famous "Saturday Night Live" skits written by Rosie Shuster and Anne Beatts for Gilda Radner and Bill Murray. This was an era before widespread use of personal computers, before the Internet, before fake nerd chic, which Nugent rightly mocks, although he is himself open to the charge that he is not an authentic nerd.
He notes that the original awkward archetype bore some resemblance to stereotypes about Jews and Asians and and was also reminiscent of Asperger's syndrome (then unknown). But he barely touches on the homophobia that often made targets of nerds because they failed to conform to proper sex roles (whatever their actual orientation).
I was in high school when those SNL skits came out in the 1970s, and they had always struck me as a little cruel and off the mark. Words more likely to be in circulation in our part of the country for people like this were dweeb, spaz or dork. I was never cool in high school, but I did not think of myself as a nerd. I read a lot of books, used a lot of big words and spoke in standard English, had spent a lot of time in my early teens on D&D and board war games, was obsessed with Tolkien, dabbled in programming BASIC for the school's PDP 11 mainframe, played on the chess team and had been called a wimp and worse because I refused to fight. I did for a brief period in junior high wear a pocket protector and a calculator on my belt.
Thankfully, the high school cliques of the late 70s were never as strict as they are in movies or TV skits. The more socially agile could slip among different social groups. There were smart jocks and popular nerds. The smart kids with unusual interests learned to hide them when they were hanging around in the field, parking lot or basement drinking beer with the others.
If you had asked, we would have said we were the smart people, surrounded by a lot of not-as-smart people in a brutish anti-intellectual culture ruled by fists, insults, good looks, and rigorous social ostracism. Thirty years of experience only confirm that assessment.
From what I gather, Nugent is younger than I am, so perhaps he had the benefit of living through the revenge-of-the-nerds era of the 1980s and 1990s. Much later, the show "Freaks and Geeks" came along to retroactively soften the adolescent pain with a fresh coat of nostalgia. The Web and computers and other gadgets have also turned the social pecking order upside down, rewarding mental labor in ways that 70s nerds could only dream about. As this story line goes, for the nerds it's a happy ending after all. Aren't we all nerds now? Even the jocks! Is there anything nerdier than fantasy football?
But even if we can all joke about "being a little nerdy" or celebrate a geek love for some oddball topic, there's something a little too precious about nerd pride, even now. As much as I admire the desire to take back the label, maybe this blogger is right: "If being called a nerd doesn't hurt your feelings, then you aren't one... If you think you are a nerd, then you aren't one."
And concepts like "nerdcore" feel like marketing, the kind of inauthentic pablum that nerds used to deplore.
I enjoyed Nugent's book but wished there had been a more in-depth discussion of the social trends at work, a closer look at the differences between nerd and geek, cool and square. The trouble is, there's no real agreement on what these terms really mean, and the meanings shift with each graduating class. It's youth slang, intended to create out-groups and confuse adults. And so the nerd, dork, square and melvin of past generations give way to today's "herb" (defined as "an individual easy to disrespect, take advantage of, and/or violate, usually due to cowardice or the desire to avoid conflict." Sound familiar?)
The second half of Nugent's book turns to personal memoir. As Nugent admitted in that podcast interview, his adolescent crime was to abandon his junior-high D&D friends so he could fit in. It's a common if shallow story. He had lost all touch with the friends he labels nerds and had to find them again to write this book. I wanted to hear more of their voices here, more about their lives now, and what they thought of Nugent turning up to enshrine their nerd histories on ink and paper.
The book has its appeal. Some will carry it around proudly, while others will sneak it home to read in private. "Yeah, I'm kind of nerdy, in the cool way that people admire," some of them might think. "But I'm not one of those big honking pathetic nerds nobody can stand to be around, right? Right?"
If you have to ask...
'Correction,' N+1 No. 7, Ink and Paper, 200 Pages
N+1 feels right in print. Despite the promise of "Web only" content once or twice a week, I rarely visit its Web site, which is odd behavior for me, given that most of my news is filtered through blogs or social media like Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed and Delicious. (There is some good stuff there, like this article about being a student of David Foster Wallace). An infrequently published print journal of incoherent aims is an anachronism, to be sure, but an enjoyable one -- the news writ slow. I devour it in a way I do not devour The New Yorker, which tends to pile up into a tall stack that taunts me until at last, weeks behind, I skim wildly, looking for the articles people went out of their way to mention. "Did you see in The New Yorker..." Well, yes, I saw it.
This issue of N+1 was not a disappointment. It was perfect like hot coffee on a cold November morning. Here's how it went down:
Podcast Zeitgeist, Nov. 28
Here's my weekly roundup of podcasts from selected geeks, nerds, kooks, freaks, comedians, self-styled tech gurus and other denizens of the audio Web, in the order I listened this week:
- "Extra Life Radio, #202, #203, and #204" "Geek tested, nerd approved!" A likable group of geeks and nerds, Scott Johnson and his friends are Web comics artists who talk about films, TV, gaming and comics, among other topics of a certain type. The first episode ("Vacillating Two Oh Two") encapsulated what I value in a podcast -- a deep and serious discussion that makes me care about a niche interest, in this case, Web comics. The next episode (#203 "Spinimal!") was a wide-ranging discussion of movies. The Thanksgiving episode (#204, "Choot the Turkey") was the least compelling, more movie talk and a long, easily skipped conversation about soccer parents (they often take a good 15 to 20 minutes to warm up). This podcast was the winner in the general category of the mostly meaningless 2008 Podcast Awards, sponsored by the marketing company Podcast Connect Inc. The contest bases the awards on how many fans repeatedly click on an unscientific online survey, as Mr. Johnson, to his credit, notes. He and his co-hosts also won for a "World of Warcraft" gaming podcast, The Instance. Length: Ranging from 1 hour, 7 minutes to 1 hour, 32 minutes. Released: Nov. 12, Nov. 17 and Nov. 25.
- "The Bugle: Episode 54, The Las Vegas Special" John Oliver, best known for his appearances on "The Daily Show," and Andy Zaltzman are responsible for this weekly comedy podcast from TimesOnline.co.UK. It is relatively clean and amusing, although sometimes difficult to follow, because the comics have similar voices and insist on speaking British. It may be the only place you'll ever hear a joke that compares Joe the Plumber to Gore Vidal. I usually don't subject my wife to podcasts, but Jane, a wannabe Anglophile, listened to this one and thought this line was hilarious: "The ultimate Scottish dream, Germany beating England in a World Cup football final." I'll take her word for it. The audio quality is a little muddy. Length: 35:11. Released: Nov. 23.
- "Diggnation, Episode 177: Multiview Diggnation Remix" Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht skipped the beer this time, because Kevin had a bad cold. That does not excuse the much-noted exchange that came next, starting around 3:29, a riff on domestic violence that eventually prompted a public apology from Rose, the millionaire founder of Digg: "There is only one time you can strike [a woman] -- if she kicks you in the balls, you have the ability and the right, to punch her in the teat ---it's just like that -- it's kinda like tit for tat. ... It hurts them, it does too - or take a scissors to the teat." On the video, he made a cutting action with his hand. Har har, boys. Perhaps they should go back to taping this videocast drunk. Or stick to the script. My morbid curiosity satisfied, I skipped the rest. (Diggnation was nominated but did not win in the video category of the mostly meaningless Podcast Awards). Length: 48:07 minutes. Released: Nov. 21.
- "You Look Nice Today: Faux Tog" Once again, the show has guests. Once again, they are John Hodgman and the Brooklyn singer-songwriter Jonathan Coulton. Chess jokes. Discussion of a universal template of dreams from Merlin Mann: "You're naked, there's a test, there's ladies..." In New York, dreams are often about discovering extra secret rooms in your tiny apartment. A discussion of horrible jobs, including work at a Lego store at the Mall of America on Black Friday, a true story. This show was voted best comedy podcast by the largely meaningless Podcast Awards. Released: Nov 24. Length: Back to the usual 32:12 or so minutes.
- "Vomitus Prime 83: Make Chips!" I'm a longtime fan of sick humor. But it's possible to go over the edge, and this podcast crossed into misogyny with vulgar words for women this week and last. Their fans may argue that it's all an act, and that this kind of humor is guaranteed to misfire once in a while. Maybe I'm an old fogey for cringing at this stuff, but I just can't listen to it. I say that with some regret. These guys are likable and produce some promising satire -- chewable children's Vicodin? funny idea -- but they lost me with the trash-talking of women purely for shock value. Delete. Unsubscribe. Goodbye. Length: 1 hour, 13 minutes (didn't finish). Released: Nov. 23.
- "Uhh, Yeah Dude, Episode 142." This podcast shows how to be funny without being a jerk. Co-hosts Jonathan Larroquette and Seth Romatelli sometimes crack sexual and scatological jokes, but you never sense that they disrespect women, or anybody. Even when their humor is in poor taste, they are self-deprecating and never mean-spirited. Their stance is one of apology for male stupidity and mock-horror at tabloid America. (Here's an early profile of their show, now nearing the end of its third year). This week, they riff about Black Friday and again mock the horrifying "Brocabulary" (see related viral marketing). They goof on the immaturity of the NSFW Land O Lakes Indian Maiden trick; a terrible cameo by Jason Alexander (Seinfeld's George) as a serial killer on "Criminal Minds"; Florida write-in votes; pathetic cocaine addicts; the healthiest and least healthy cities, Burlington, Vt., and Huntington, West Va.; the newFinal Jeopardy music; a landlord who secretly taped 34 female tenants for 19 years; and toddler fights on YouTube, among other disturbing topics. Released: Nov. 25. Length: 1 hour, 27 seconds..
- "MacBreak Weekly 116: Compressed Bits of Cheese Leo Laporte starts: "We had a show lined up..." Uh-oh. A guest shortage. Leo is alone with Andy Ihnatko, the entertaining tech writer for The Chicago Sun-Times. It's an entertaining show, nonetheless. They discuss the absurd Typepad journalist bailout program publicity stunt and the troubles of print journalism. Snow Leopard operating system update: not a major release? The allure of iPhone games; Leo killed his virtual villagers. They are joined at 21:57 by Rich Siegel of Bare Bones Software, which makes Yojimbo and BBSEdit. Problems with iPhone pricing and app structure. Is Google Mobile app getting special treatment from Apple? The iPhone app approval and rejection process. Andy still has the long iPhone backup problem. Leo says uncheck "send diagnostics to Apple" (that worked for me, too -- here's the how-to.) Danger: Obscure bug. Don't run your MacBook without its battery. Twitter hires the developer behind I Want Sandy and Stikkit, free services that will now die. A mercifully brief Audible ad. The week's picks: Besides the new version of Andy's iPhone book (not out yet), Uli's Talking Moose (free, a weird bit of Apple history dating to 1986), and Screenium, Cyberclean (See the handy and awesome MBWPicks for details). Length: 1 hour, 32 minutes. Release date: Nov. 26.
- "This Week in Media 116: Dear Journalist" The host, Daisy Whitney, is joined by my colleague Brian Stelter of TV Decoder, Alex Lindsay of Pixelcorp, David Cohn, founder of spot.us, Patrick Thorton, of beatblogging.com. They go right to the heavy stuff: Will 2009 be the year of the great newspaper massacre? Are we no longer in a general interest media world? Will niche journalism dominate media in the future? Will citizen journalism supplant professional corporate journalism? What about hoaxes like the Steve Jobs heart attack rumor on CNN? The two types of online journalists, "thinkers and linkers." Some J-school-style debate about the "myth" of objectivity. Length: 55:33 minutes. Release date: Nov. 25.
- "TWIT 170: Mile High Wi-Fi" This Week in Tech won the technology/science category in the mostly meaningless 2008 Podcast Awards. The host, Leo Laporte, is joined in this episode by Tom Merritt, Ryan Block, and Alex Lindsay. The topics: smartphones, wireless access on Virgin America, SearchWiki from Google, and, of course, the death of print media, starting with the move of PC Magazine to an entirely digital product. Block: "People interested in technology are not buying print magazines." A discussion of what this means for other print products. They take a break for a 5-minute Audible.com ad and some more gadget talk, then return to the death of print, with references to many articles first printed by newspapers (whatever will they talk about if all the newspapers do die?) Obviously, this is Topic A in the tech expert echo chamber. Their endless fascination with this topic, combined with a boundless enthusiasm for the online future, has an undercurrent that's a tad ... bubbly. They seem to think that Web media businesses will be spared in a major crash. Not likely. Length: 1 hour, 16 minutes. Release date: Nov. 24.
When You're Dreaming and You Know It
I was walking barelegged across a desert-like blue and red plain with sparse vegetation and rocks. There was a sudden sharp pain in my leg. I turned around and saw something out of the corner of my eye. Then it happened again. What was that? Somebody standing off to the side, out of my line of vision, but a friend, called out, "watch out! there's more of them!" And it happened again.
And this time I saw it, a spider about the size of one of those little yap-yap dogs. I gave it a kick and it scuttled away under a rock. But then as I turned around there were three more of them. They were everywhere, for miles. They were fast. And where was my friend? Gone. Aieee! Help! So I realized I was in a dream, and I forced myself to wake up. Sometimes I am able to control what happens in my "lucid dreams," but in this case no immediate solution presented itself (a flood? a helicopter rescue?). I was distracted. Spiders were biting me!
It took me two hours to get back to sleep. (I listened to some more podcasts and updated this post.) This lucid dream reminded me that one of my favorite movies is Richard Linklater's "Waking Life" (2001), which touches on lucid dreaming, so I spent a few minutes this morning looking at The Lucidity Institute and this how-to wiki.
Some people don't remember their dreams (I usually do, for a while), and some can't influence them (I can, sometimes). To remember them, write them down as soon as you wake up. To influence them, try writing down some ideas before you go to sleep. To control them, the first step is to be aware you are dreaming. If you are in a weird situation and you think it might be a dream, try to read some writing or look at a clock. If you can't make out the symbols, you're probably dreaming and with practice you can learn to change the situation.
But let me reiterate: This is hard to do if a) you are in a desert without clocks or books around, and b) you are getting bitten by giant spiders.
Happy dreams.
Podcast Zeitgeist, Nov. 6
Podcasts I got around to listening to this week, and what was on them, in the order I listened:
Podcast Zeitgeist, Oct. 19
Lately my music library has languished as I have loaded up my iPhone with podcasts of a certain type: Men (mostly) talking about gadgets, technology, movies, stuff on the Web, games, women, and news of the weird, among other topics. The list:
- "Diggnation" Perhaps the most well-known podcast on the list. In various video and audio formats. Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht drink beer and sit on a couch, going down the list of the top stories at Digg.com. Frequency: Weekly. Duration: 45 minutes or so, video.
- "Smodcast" The director Kevin Smith and producer Scott Mosier shoot the breeze about making and watching movies, comics, growing up in New Jersey, porn and other topics. Weekly. An hour or more, audio only.
- "The Totally Rad Show" Alex Albrecht is joined by Dan Trachtenberg and Jeff Cannata, for reviews of movies, TV shows, comics and video games. Weekly. About an hour, video.
- "This Week in Tech" and "MacBreak Weekly" Two podcasts from Leo Laporte's Twit.tv empire that bill themselves as reviews of the week's technology and Apple news, with John C. Dvorak, Merlin Mann, Alex Lindsay, Scott Bourne and other regulars. But it's really a bunch of geeks and nerds shooting the breeze. Weekly. Each is about an hour and a half, or 50 minutes if you fast-forward through the improvised ads, which can get tedious. Another way to watch: Live on video, with a rolling peanut gallery chat room under the screen, and the talking goes into overtime.
- "Uhh, Yeah Dude" Description: "A weekly roundup of America by two American Americans," Seth Romatelli and Jonathan Larroquette. Energy drinks. The week in Florida. Readings from Craigslist. Prescription drug side effects. Hip hop vs. country. Men behaving badly. Why Robin Williams is not funny. Encounters with borderline celebrities in Los Angeles. Sobriety. Veganism. The Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders, and more. Frequency: Weekly. Run time: About an hour.
- "You Look Nice Today," which is billed as "A Journal of Emotional Hygiene." A dadaist conversation between lonelysandwich (Adam Lisager), hotdogsladies (a k a Merlin Mann of 43 Folders), and scottsimpson (Scott Simpson). With voice chapter headings by the guy who plays the PC in Mac ads. Frequency: Fortnightly or so. Length: 30 minutes.
What they have in common: Guys who genuinely like each other talking about topics they love, with echoes of long ago bull sessions and late nights in bars. The best of them -- "U.Y.D.," "Smodcast" and "You Look Nice Today" -- have been known to provoke chuckles and guffaws. Maybe even some chortling. Update: On Oct. 29, I started posting some impressions of the latest episodes of these and other podcasts that have interested me for a while.