Weird Al, Geoff Nunberg, and Andrew Noz

Episode notes

Hip hop blogger and Pitchfork columnist Andrew Noz joins us with a couple of his all-time favorite hip hop tracks. His first recommendation is Pacific Coast Remix by DJ Quik (featuring Ludacris), a track devoted to sunny Los Angeles’s dark side. He also suggests checking out the 1983 track Beat Bop by Rammellzee and K-Rob. It’s a song from an era where the uptown and downtown communities mingled in a way that the rap world would rarely see again.

Weird Al Yankovic is the undisputed king of parody music. Inspired by the novelty songs he heard on broadcasts of The Dr. Demento Show, Yankovic began writing his own comedy songs for the accordion — starting with a love song to his parents’ car, entitled Belvedere Cruisin’.

He sat down with us in 2011, before his album Alpocalypse was released. He talks about his food parodies (think “Eat It”), his special talent for rapping, and having an unusually long and successful career for a parodist (or musician of any kind).

Weird Al just kicked off a nationwide summer tour. He’s also just released a new children’s book, My New Teacher and Me. You can find more information .

Geoff Nunberg is a professor at UC Berkeley, the resident linguist of Fresh Air, and the author of Ascent of the A-Word: Assholism, the First Sixty Years. He talks to us about his studies into the word “asshole,” which began life as a bit of slang used by WWII servicemen and has come to envelop the concept of modern incivility.

We spoke in 2012. The book is now out in paperback.

(More of our conversation with Geoff Nunberg that didn’t make the radio edit! Click to listen and share.)

Jesse explains what makes David Letterman such an especially gifted late night host in a world of very good late night hosts.

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