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The AV Club Recommends: Desperate Ground by The Thermals and It's A Disaster

AV Club Head Writer Nathan Rabin and Managing Editor Kyle Ryan join us this week to give their pop culture picks. Kyle recommends checking out The Thermals' new album, Desperate Ground, a return to the band's loud, punk rock style. From the world of film, Nathan suggests checking out It's A Disaster, a black comedy on VOD and in select theaters about a group of friends dealing with a divorce and the approaching apocalypse.

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Veep Creator Armando Iannucci on Poking Fun at Politics

What does the career trajectory of a lifelong political junkie look like? There are the obvious choices, like a major in Political Science, law school...maybe even a career in politics. But Armando Iannucci took a different path – one that led him to Oxford, an incomplete PhD, and work writing and producing comedy, like his acclaimed political satire The Thick of It and the feature film In the Loop.

Iannucci created a new take on American politics in the HBO comedy Veep. Now in its second season, the show follows a fictional Vice President (played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus) with lofty ambitions but little actual power. Veep showcases the comedy inherent in the struggle for the political upperhand, the constant panic and exhaustion. Seemingly small gaffes quickly escalate into ridiculous catastrophes. The show's dialogue is marked by careful attention to absurd politi-speak and some especially creative cursing.

Iannucci joins us to talk about the difference between UK and US politics, why he sympathizes with our elected officials, and conducting swearing research in Washington, D.C.

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The Song That Changed My Life, with Billy Bragg: Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are A-Changin'"

Billy Bragg performs politically-minded folk music with a punk rock edge, songs with a tone and attitude somewhere between Woody Guthrie and the Sex Pistols. But what led to him developing his voice as an artist?

As Bragg explains, one of the most pivotal moments in his life happened during his lunch break at a record store. He put on a record that changed his life: Bob Dylan's folk anthem The Times They Are A-Changin'.

Billy Bragg is currently touring the US. You can find dates and tickets through his website.

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Julia Louis-Dreyfus on Tapping Into Frustation for Seinfeld and Veep

Most of us first knew Julia Louis-Dreyfus from her Emmy-winning role as Elaine on Seinfeld. Elaine flailed, fought, and danced her way into our hearts as the friend to "losers" Jerry, George and Kramer. But Louis-Dreyfus first arrived in entertainment fresh off her college comedy sketch group, as a repertory player in the Dick Ebersol-helmed cast of Saturday Night Live.

After Seinfeld, she went on to anchor several sitcoms, including The New Adventures of Old Christine, with delightful guest appearances on shows like Arrested Development and 30 Rock. Her career has now taken her to a different cast of skewed characters on HBO's Veep.

On Veep, Louis-Dreyfus plays Selina Meyer, Vice President of the United States. Though the vice-presidency is a prestigious position, Meyer's day-to-day work is less than impressive. Her staff members claw at each other for power and prestige. She suffers awkward encounters with the media and consistent snubs from the President (a running gag on the show is Selina's off-hand question, "Did the President call?" The answer is usually no).

Julia Louis-Dreyfus joins us to talk about the similarities she's discovered between show business and politics, the boys' club that was SNL in the 80s, and a certain terrible dance that still haunts her to this day.

Veep airs on HBO on Sundays at 10/9 PM central.

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The Outshot: Threat by Jay-Z

Rap isn't poetry – it's its own thing. But, like poets, many of the best rappers imbue their lyrics with layers and layers of meaning. Need proof? Jesse suggests a close listen to Jay-Z's "Threat".

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Jon Gabrus, Andy Livengood and Jean LeBec tell of surprising times with their parents.

Comedian Ivan Decker returns to talk 10 Commandments, cereal mascots, and Siskel and Ebert.

Download episode 266 here. (right-click)

Get in touch with us at spy [at] maximumfun [dot] org or (206) 339-8328.

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Comedian and host of Wham Bam Pow, Ricky Carmona joins Jordan and Jesse for a discussion of softball, baseball movies and Jordan's new comedic persona. Plus, The Master of Would You Rather Jim Real stops by for an epic round of Would You Rather.

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Vital stats:
Format: discussions of podcasts, podcasting technology, and podcasting issues
Episode duration: 25m-1h15m
Frequency: every 2-5 days

In one of Scott Adams’ Dilbert strips of long ago, the titular engineer reads a book of tips for a computer golf game. “So... you’re reading a book... about a computer simulation of an activity that’s almost a sport,” replies Dilbert’s girlfriend Liz. “That’s about as close as you can get to being a non-organic life form.” Our hero has, tonally speaking, a classic Adams half-response: “This chapter is about driving the little cart.” I do wonder what Liz, not one of the strip’s enduring characters, would say about writing an essay about a podcast about podcasting. Surely it doesn’t pay much credit to my organic status, but here I find myself, writing about Podcast Squared [RSS] [iTunes]. This episode is about apps.

The field of podcasts about podcasting doesn’t look very robust these days. Edgy Podcast Reviews, the last podcasting podcast I wrote up, came to a sudden halt nearly three years ago. Yet you can still download all 101 of its episodes on iTunes, as you can hundreds — thousands, probably — of other long-dead shows. This irks Podcast Squared host Andrew Johnstone, as does most every other aspect of iTunes, and most everything Apple has done regarding podcasting except allow for it in the iTunes Store. Though an enthusiastic podcast listener, he seems to dislike most of what now passes for the infrastructure of podcasting. If podcasting podcasts have gotten shambolic, then so, depending on how you look at them, have podcasts in general. This Johnstone aims to correct with his show, which offers an earnest mixture of podcast reviews, examinations of podcasting technology, and discussions of podcasting issues. For the issue of “women in podcasting,” for example, Johnstone invited a few female podcasters to co-host, interviewed the likes of AV Club podcast journalist Genevieve Koski and the Third Coast International Audio Festival’s Julie Shapiro, and recorded an all-lady panel discussion.

Clearly, when Johnstone takes on a subject, he doesn’t mess around, although “women in podcasting” strikes me as ranking somewhere on the scale of pressingness between “men in Pinterest” and “men in mothering (but not fathering).” (My own show recently received a review which justified its two-star rating by explaining that, though the reviewer had only just started downloading episodes, she didn’t see many female names on the guest list, thus ensuring that I’ll never take gender balance seriously.) On a later episode, Johnstone’s frequent co-host Dave Biscella makes a similar point, although this means I agree with a man who produces two podcasts called Movies on Up and Erik and Dave Talking with Erik and Dave. I’ve never heard those shows and thus wouldn’t dream of judging them, but their titles alone do sound like a reflection of the entire medium’s grand lack of ambition.

I may take occasional jabs at the dominant podcasting genre of Two Twenty/thirtysomething White Guys/girls Bullshitting About Culture, but Johnstone has even stronger objections. The entire Podcast Squared enterprise, in fact, sounds like it runs on pure dissatisfaction: his dissatisfaction with podcasting’s — and podcast technology’s, and podcast journalism’s, and the podcast audience’s — failure to reach what he imagines as its full potential. Despite having logged over five years as a podcaster and almost five as a writer about podcasting, I myself have no guesses as to the potential of the medium. Maybe it will realize its full reach, scope, and inclusivity decades from now ago; maybe it reached it years ago.

I once interviewed the producer of a suite of very successful podcasts — a fellow who’s also appeared on Podcast Squared, in fact — and after we stopped rolling, he expressed his surprise that we didn’t talk about podcasting’s big problem. He said that as if I would immediately understand what he meant, but I didn’t, so I asked what this big problem might be. “The technology,” of course. Both Johnstone and our mutual guest regard the necessity to download or stream podcasts through iTunes or some other app as an aggravatingly high barrier to listener entry, although some podcasters see a solution in their coming technological change of choice — internet-equipped cars, closer radio-web integration, the next iteration of the mobile phone — discussing it in the same tones others use to discuss the Singularity.

Yet listening to podcasts has long seemed to me one of life’s easier tasks, and I still manually sync my iPod up to my computer, which, so I gather from listening to Podcast Squared, now feels like the labor of Hercules compared to downloading and listening all on your phone. Innovation’s march will soon render even that minimal effort unnecessary, but I do wonder what such luxuriant ease has, in the final reckoning, contributed to mainstream radio, film, and television. We podcasters have to ask ourselves: do we want listeners without the wherewithal to learn how to download podcasts, or without the active curiosity to seek them out? But this makes for only one of the countless questions about podcasting yet unresolved.

Johnstone addresses many of these, but rarely do I hear much discussion of the medium’s essential nature. “You can’t believe everything you read on the internet,” older schoolteachers solemnly used to warn us. But they might as well have told us, an astute tech commentator would later point out, that we can’t believe everything we hear on the phone. Podcast enthusiasts, Johnstone included, tend to talk about podcasting as an internet-based version of, or even successor to, radio. But it seems to me that, like everything else online, podcasting as a communication tool owes more to Alexander Graham Bell than to Guglielmo Marconi. Still, if you seek an examination of the uses of this newfangled telephone from as many angles as possible, you’ll nowhere hear it more thoroughly done than on Podcast Squared.

[Podthinker Colin Marshall hosts and produces Notebook on Cities and Culture [iTunes] and writes essays on literature, film, cities, Asia, and aesthetics. He's working on a book about Los Angeles, A Los Angeles Primer. Contact him at colinjmarshall at gmail or follow him on Twitter @colinmarshall.]

Shhhhhhh. Yes, we did an episode this week. But, please, listen to it at a low volume. Some of us are trying to nap off an all-day drunk. Like, most of us. Two out of three of us.

Suggested talking points: Coors is Cool, Company Ink, Cyble, First Dance, Mellencamp, Cat Smooches, Chun-Li

Biz and Theresa share their fears as moms and talk to "The World's Worst Mom" Lenore Skenazy, host of FreeRangeKids.com and author of Free-Range Kids: How to Raise Safe, Self-Reliant Children Without Going Nuts with Worry. Lenore helps us realize what's actually causing us to be so fearful (hint: it isn't actual danger).

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Show Music
Opening theme: Summon the Rawk, Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Anthem , Awesome, Beehive Sessions (http://awesomeinquotes.com, also avail on iTunes)
Mom Song, Adira Amran, Hot Jams For Teens (www.adiraamram.com, available on iTunes)
Telephone, Awesome, Beehive Sessions (http://awesomeinquotes.com, also avail on iTunes)
Closing music: Mama Blues, Cornbread Ted and the Butterbeans (www.cornbreadted.com and available on iTunes)

This week, we caught Jurassic Park 3D in theaters, and reactions were MIXED; Ricky pitches us RoboCop with a barefooted twist; and Rhea brings in an article about supposedly successful recastings in the sci-fi and action realms.

Follow us on Twitter! Cameron is @cameronesposito, Rhea is @RheaButcher, and Ricky is @RickyCarmona.

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I will be doing my popular nightclub act along with Cleveland great Mike Polk and Ramon Rivas. Come and I will sign your butt. Get tickets here: http://grogshop.gs/2013/03/19/dave-hill/

Episode 69 is here and is easily twice as sexy as its number implies. Close those blinds as NYC's #1 cabaret performer and saucy chanteuse Bridget Everett and I sit down to chat about topics including but not limited to our massive Saudi Arabian fan bases, motorboating (both giving and receiving), whether or not flip-flops are bullshit, Alan Cumming, handjobs, rocking, cabaret and about 500 other things most people can't handle. As if all of that is not enough, I also read aloud from the Black Metal Dialogues, answer important listener questions, check in with my secretary Shaina Feinberg, and hand the baton to Ian Ball so he can deliver the Hot Jamz from London as usual. Deal with it. For more information on this podcast and other Dave-related topics, please visit my website at davehillonline and follow me on Twitter at @mrdavehill. Okay, that about covers it. Thanks. You are the best.

Still street,
Dave Hill