Does anyone else listen to Make me Smart, the Market Place Podcast? They take deep dives into all kinds of questions, but it’s a less ‘Fair and Balanced’ and more shot from the hip. Also, a bit more depressing, especially when they talked about how much the Founder of We Works is walking away with, after firing so much of the staff.
On a related note, Dan Carlin of Hardcore History will be a guest on Bill Maher’'s show tomorrow night (October 25).
And his latest (4.5 hour!) episode of Supernova in the East is out.
spreadsheety:
I’m repelled by that list not existing in a useful format.
Heh, I can’t get the page to load on my (Android) phone.
There’s a link to a spreadsheet in the comments.
Ah, nice, and it has filters! Thank you.
I cannot recommend highly enough that you listen to the podcast “Wind of Change”.
The premise sounds both insane…but also so oddly brilliantly effective that you wonder if it’s true (I don’t know yet whether it is; I’m only on the third episode, but it’s INCREDIBLY compelling.)
Anyway…if you’re an American, you may not remember the Scorpions single “Wind Of Change” from 1990. But if you’re European or Russian or even Asian…you absolutely do. Because it is one of the biggest worldwide hits in history. The song has 765 million views on Youtube. It sort of became a power ballad anthem for the breakup of the Soviet Union.
And…it might’ve been written by the CIA.
Yeah, I know.
But before you laugh too hard, realize this: when Boris Pasternak published his book, Dr. Zhivago, it was banned in the USSR for being anti-Revolution, anti-Bolshevik. But the CIA got a few ten thousand copies of the novel printed in Russian and smuggled into the USSR and distributed, which really pissed off Kruschev.
So yeah. It’s insane that the CIA wrote a hit single for a German metal band. But it’s also so hilariously plausible, too. And the podcast is brilliantly constructed stuff.
Thanks for the pointer to Winds of Change. Just finished…I didn’t love it unreservedly, but it definitely has enough interesting and shady characters to make it worth a listen, even if I was left with a little bit of a “yeah…so?” feeling by the end.
Moving on to the Woody Harrelson’s dad was a hitman podcast.
Same all around, including the hitman podcast. Those ads got me too.
In the end, on Wind Of Change, I think:
…that it’s entirely plausible that “Wind Of Change” was a Dr. Zhivago scenario, only with music. I don’t think the CIA wrote it, nor did they see it coming. But when that song came out, it does seem within the realm of possibility to me that they got that song smuggled into the USSR --and played across Eastern Europe – by every way they knew how to do such things.
I mean, maybe. Though by 1990, I doubt the song had to be smuggled into the USSR.
I dunno, that last episode had me mostly cringing in vicariously embarrassment for the host, when he “surfaces” and has to ask the lead singer guy straight-up if the CIA created his song. He got so ginned up by his idiot buddy, who is pretty clearly just being trolled by “Oliver”.
Fortunately, the stuff about the big concert in Russia and Doc McGhee and some of the other interviews are good enough to make it worthwhile.
Cautionary Tales is really good; I’m glad it’s entering a second season.
I often link to Mindscape because it’s also top notch, the one on viruses is especially on the nose.
If you haven’t listened to the You Must Remember This podcast at all – or haven’t jumped in on the current season, man. Fix that. ;)
The current season is on Polly Platt. Which, if that’s a name you recognize, you’re probably already listening. Or maybe you just saw her name in the credits of a Wes Anderson movie in the “Thanks to old friends” department. (She kinda discovered Wes and produced “Bottle Rocket”. She kinda discovered an awful lot of stars and directors, though.)
But man. What a great listen this season is. Platt was present during the first flourishing of arthouse and indie cinema in the 1960s when she was a kid. She worked in the explosion of anti-studio American cinema of the late '60s and early 1970s. She did massively successful movies in the later 70s and 80s. Then she returned to her roots with the new flowering of independent cinema in the 1990s. You want a throughline to connect Roger Corman movies and The Last Picture Show to Wes Anderson? That’s Polly Platt.
Oh, and that cartoon show with Homer and Marge and Bart and Lisa and Maggie? Yeah, she made that happen too.
She died in 2011 at age 72 from ALS. Her IMDB page is fairly thin, mostly made up of production design credits and costume design credits. You do see one recurring theme on that page though, and it’s this notation: (uncredited). And when the tributes poured in after she died, it was apparent why: she was never big on taking any credit for her work, but her understanding of how filmed entertainment worked – from set design to production to directing to writing to casting to marketing – seems unparalleled in recent film history.
It’s maybe the best season of YMRT since host Karina Longworth did the Manson murders, and that’s saying something. If you love the modern history of cinema, you’ve gotta give this a listen.
Compelling review. Just subscribed. Thank you for mentioning this!
YMRT is back?! I thought she quit!
Karina definitely went on hiatus with the podcast for a good while, for sure, but she jumped back in after the new year with a pretty entertaining and informative season on the troubled history of “Song Of The South” and Disney dealing with that. This season came right on the back of that one (thanks quarantine!), and is one of her best.
Space fans should check out the BBC’s “13 Minutes to the Moon.” Season 1 is a fascinating look at the final 13 minutes before the landing of Apollo 11 and the events that led up to it. Season 2 looks at the Apollo 13 rescue.
I’m a huge space fan and have read dozens of books on the Apollo program, but I still found the interviews with the controllers and astronauts fascinating, and learned a number of new things.
Plus really cool theme music by Hans Zimmer. :)
I’ll listen to the actual podcast, but I started with the special episode that just plays the full theme. That’s a magnificent piece of music.
She took a hiatus when she did her book on Howard Hughes.