The walls are juicy
Your body is still confounding scientists, podcast apps can podfade, the death of the slow dance, and more podcasts and links to make you think.
Welcome to Hurt Your Brain #194, the place to get podcasts and links that will make you think, and which USUALLY hits your inbox every other Sunday,
You may have heard the news that the podcasting app Castro was rumored to be shutting down and you may have thought….who cares?? WELL I CARE! I like to write about podcast apps (like here, here, here, here, and here) and I largely support any indie effort to create interesting niche podcast apps. Castro has long been my favorite and it really worked for my brain.
I was always the weird kid hyping a podcast app nobody had heard of when discussing these things with other podcast nerds.
Well, with Castro breaking in a big way the other week (as in suddenly not working at all for days and days) it made me realize how annoying it is to be forced to suddenly switch podcast apps. Podcast apps aren’t just a list of shows you subscribe to. You can spend hours over the years tweaking the settings on a per show basis. Now that I’ve abrubtly started using Pocketcasts again, the whole process reminds me of the low level agony of switching all your contacts to a new cell phone circa 20 years ago (you know what I mean). I have more thoughts on this, but in general, what a pain it is to have a podcast app suddenly stop working for a long time with no communication (particularly after just paying for the premium version).
Podcasts aren’t the only things that can podfade (and sadly, most of the apps I’ve written about seem to have “podfaded”).
Ok, on to happier things and some great recommendations.
PODCAST RECOMMENDATIONS
Super interesting story. I was only vaguely aware of this discovery of a “new organ” several years ago. I love Radiolab medical stories.
Although I heartily loved this episode, I wish it didn’t include a side story about acupuncture. I jive with this story from Slate as to why.
“The walls are juicy.” A great quote from Latif within the episode that I had to steal for the subject of this email and is the only reason I’m including it first here.
Decoder Ring: The Fast Decline of the Slow Dance
The Big Idea: Did you know that kids these days abhor the “slow dance” and for all intents and purposes it simply doesn’t exist anymore? Don’t these kids know what incredible awkwardness and anxiety they are missing? If you are a millennial like me, this episode will give you so much nostalgia it will hurt.
I had forgotten about this show and this was one of the recommendations of Tink Media’s Audio Delicacies list. It really is a great show and it’s going back into rotation in my feed.
Today Explained: Kissinger’s long goodbye
The Big Idea: I knew the very basics of the long career of Henry Kissinger, including the fact that he was very influential and very controversial. I wanted a short podcast that gave me the basics and didn’t gloss over the bad, and this episode hits the mark.
The Big Idea: Did you watch “Making A Murderer” on Netflix a few years ago and get angry about the interrogation techniques used to elicit a false confession? This episode explores this phenomena and gives you a sense of exactly how this can happen. You’ll hear an alarming example of a man admitting to a murder he clearly didn’t do after being worn down over hours and hours.
UCONN Popcast: ‘For All Mankind,’ An Alternate History About the Possibility of Utopia
The Big Idea: A great listen for any fan of “For All Mankind” on Apple TV+ (and why wouldn’t you be?!). Two academics discuss the politics, themes, and characters as well as what they think/hope season four is building towards.
99 Percent Invisible: Breaking Down The Power Broker (with Conan O’Brien)
The Big Idea: Roman Mars and Elliott Kalan (Flop House, The Daily Show) are doing a short run series over the next 12 months where they discuss about 100 pages of Robert Caro’s The Power Broker each episode. I didn’t know much about this book, but their first episode introducing the idea and featuring Conan O’Brien makes me seriously interested in joining along.
HURT YOUR BRAIN ARCHIVE RECOMMENDATION [from newsletter #73]
Articles of Interest: Blue Jeans (31 min). I'm sad this series is coming to a close. It's uniformly delightful and insightful. "On any given day, half the population of the world is wearing jeans." [Note to my previous self who wrote this in 2018: More Articles of Interest will be on the way!]
PODCAST LINKS
Audio Delicacies: A huge list of delicious audio treats from 2023. Some truly excellent and wide-ranging recommendations. I submitted one of my favorite narrative non-fiction episodes from the year down in section five.
Podcasts that died. Let's discuss the final episodes and how it went down. Reddit thread where you can get some interesting recommendations, but more important, some podcast gossip and drama.
Podcast Brunch Club December topic: Care. Some great podcast episode curation on a topic we could all use a little more of.
VISUALS
My Instagram has been very quiet lately because I lost my Apple Pencil and I’ve been very stubborn about not wanting to buy a new one. I assumed it would turn up. It never did but I finally caved in and bought another one (which means I’ll find it tomorrow I’m sure). More to come soon.
FOR FUN
Couldn’t have done it without them.
This is the type of thing YouTube will recommend to me at midnight and I will not admit if I did or did not suddenly get very invested when I should have been sleeping.
I don’t usually recommend comedy shows, but I’ll sneak it down here. I’ve been very happy with the out of nowhere appearance of Tosh Show, Daniel Tosh’s new podcast. He sold me with this quote in the first episode: “I want to interview interesting people. That means no comedians and no celebrities.” If you grew up on Tosh.0, you basically have to listen (or better, to watch).
Alright that’s all for today. Please like or comment (or reply) if you want to share any comments. See you next time.