"To my friends who supported Nader in 2000: have you discerned the subtle differences between Bush and Gore yet?"

From a post by (my son) Jac that's mainly about the band Polydream -- with some nice free downloads.

The drummer, Brit, along with Jac, wrote and performed the original theme for my old podcast, which you can still listen to here. I closed down the old "Audible Althouse" podcast and stopped paying for the website, but I see the RSS feed is still around, and you can still listen. I just discovered that. Strange...

Brit was also part of one of the bands that used to play in that space I photographed in "Mysteries of the Althouse house."

Also in that band was Jacob, whose band Jac blogged about last week (as part of his "musicians I know" series).

Althouse meets Skeptoid, on the new Bloggingheads.

I love the Skeptoid podcast, and it was a big thrill to talk to Brian Dunning.

Topics:

Lost cosmonauts and shortwave-radio spies (04:01)
Why do we believe conspiracy theories? (06:13)
Debunking subliminal sexual imagery in ads (09:02)
Quack remedies’ tenacious hold on the infirm (12:48)
The real-world consequences of our irrational beliefs (10:10)
What does “Free Tibet” really mean? (04:45)

I'll have some clips in a few minutes, including the context of the "smack in the face" clip I blogged here.

ADDED: Here's the part where we talk about why people believe in conspiracies, miracles, and extra-terrestrial and supernatural beings:



(Hey, it looks like I'm wearing an earpiece!)

AND: Here's the context for my "smack in the face" line, in which I also talk about the irrational things educated, intelligent people think. (Remember my asking you for some input?)

"Sasha undid the object and put it solemnly on the table."

"It was a not very tall candelabra of old bronze and artistic workmanship. It consisted of a group: on the pedestal stood two female figures in the costume of Eve and in attitudes for the description of which I have neither the courage nor the fitting temperament. The figures were smiling coquettishly and altogether looked as though, had it not been for the necessity of supporting the candlestick, they would have skipped off the pedestal and have indulged in an orgy such as is improper for the reader even to imagine."

I took a little walk today and listened to the short story "A Work of Art" -- which you can read here -- on Miette's bedtime story podcast. I was thoroughly amused by the old Chekhov story and replayed the last minute of it as I was passing by the empty gardens of University Heights.

I discovered Miette's podcast after rhhardin very aptly recommended Theodore Roethke's essay "Last Class" in a comment to the post on that NYT Magazine piece about whether it's good for a serious writer to be a creative writing professor. Rh linked to the first page of the essay (story?), and I thought it was phenomenal:

I'm tired of the I-love-me bitches always trying to keep somebody off balance; Park Avenue cuties who, denied dogs, keep wolfcubs named Errol Flynn, or bats and toads with names like Hoagy; all the cutesy, tricksy trivia and paraphernalia with which the stupid and sterile rich try to convince themselves they aren't really dead.

That's a teacher telling his students what he thinks of them!

Looking for the rest of the pages, I hit upon Miette's podcast of it. Sampling it and finding Miette's voice quite charming, I decided to take it out for a walk... over to Barrique's Wine Cave, where I didn't drink wine but had a latte and did the NY crossword in the back of the NYT Magazine.

Moxvox!

I'm moxvoxing tonight. Join us!

ADDED: Simulblogging being on the show. Currently, I'm on hold, but now I'm going on.

AND: I phased out during that long Ron Paul call.

AND: I got cut off. Trying to go back on!

NEXT DAY: Sorry for the dull simulblogging!

IN THE COMMENTS: Our regular commenter Beth objects to the line in the banner at Moxie's blog. ("An antidote to the mental illness known as 'liberalism.'") I defend Moxie on the ground that the line is meant to be humorous, and there's a lot of discussion about whether it's humorous, and Moxie comes by say that it is meant to be humorous and to coax Beth to a friendlier stance. (Is "stance" an unusable word this week?) Then Steve H. Graham drops in and says something impolite which is meant to piss off a feminist. Let's listen in to this after-midnight banter:

Steve H. Graham said...

Beth, honey, I think I know what you need. Some good hard lovin' from a meat-eating Republican he-man such as me. That is usually the problem when ladies act hysterical and/or hormonal.


Send a photo and I will decide if I can help you out.

12:08 AM

Beth said...

Meat-eating Steve,

I like my steak medium rare. But I bat for another team, so the rest of your generous offer must go unclaimed.

12:17 AM

Steve H. Graham said...

Beth, do not be so sure you are that type of girl. We thought my sister was that way, but it turned out she was merely outdoorsy.

My offer stands. And I do not mean anything crude by that.

12:41 AM

Beth said...

Steve, you may not know everything your sister gets up to outdoors.

1:21 AM

Palladian said...

Especially when sis goes camping in the Brokeback Valley, where the women go...

1:26 AM

Palladian said...

Oh, and Steve, I accept your offer of some of your raw, Republican meat. But I'm not as female as Beth, so... but who knows? You might just discover that you're more "that way" than "this way".

1:29 AM

Palladian said...

The preceding comments were meant to be humorous, by the way.

1:29 AM

Audible Althouse #85.

A new podcast... about an old tree, a fat and pompous politician, a girl who survived rabies, a record album from 40 years ago, a possibly evil artist, and succulent flowers and puffy clouds.

You don't need an iPod. You can stream it right through your computer here.

But all the rational people subscribe on iTunes:

Feeling theme-ish.

It feels like a theme day today. Life... death... Gore... Hillary... Something there. I feel the pull of a theme that wants to be discovered. I feel.... like podcasting!

Audible Althouse #84.

It's a podcast. Evil birds, where not to meet men, using nonfiction books to teach kids to read, Mad Magazine, finding the mummified body of the previous owner in the house you just bought... and screwing around with the theme song.

You don't need an iPod. You can stream it right through your computer here.

But all the rebels subscribe on iTunes:

Audible Althouse #83.

It's a podcast. I'm waiting for the Democratic candidates to start their debate. Also: migraines and a dream about a bird that hovers and dies.

You don't need an iPod. You can stream it right through your computer here.

But all the headachey dreamers subscribe on iTunes:

Audible Althouse #79.

It's a podcast about the odd last day on a blog called Althouse. What am I really trying to do here? What was that post today that meant so much to me... and why?

You can stream it right through your computer here.

But everyone with inner purity is rushing to subscribe on iTunes:

Audible Althouse #78.

Time to catch up once again with Audible Althouse: it's a podcast of the odd last few days on a blog called Althouse.

Things are not what they seem. How do you know what you're looking at? There were those "Aqua Teen Hunger Strike" non-bombs that freaked out Boston, those polar bears not really stranded on an ice floe not necessarily caused by global warming, and the 29-year-old guy who posed as a 12-year-old to attend school and do sleepovers with kids who thought they found a friend. Are you going to believe your own eyes?

You can stream it right through your computer here.

But all the cute animals have subscribed on iTunes:

This podcast is dedicated to the Althouse blog historian, Ruth Anne Adams.

IN THE COMMENTS: Daryl Herbert writes:

Aqua Teen Hunger FORCE, not "strike" The error is excusable when you consider that Master Shake was omnipresent at Cindy Sheehan's hunger strike... But frankly, I wouldn't watch a TV show based on anthropomorphicized fast food items singing praises of the Nazi death machine (what better way, Gandhi asked, could Jews prove their moral righteousness, than to limply submit to the Nazi extermination campaign?) I think it's a better political statement to eat a hamburger than set out on a hunger strike.

LOL. But I think Hunger Strike is better, because of the double meaning. Are they on strike or are they striking out? Frankly, if I was a food item, I'd favor hunger strikes. Why are cartoon food items always happy about getting eaten?

Audible Althouse #77.

Oh, you've waited so long, podcast fans... if I still have podcast fans. This is just a podcast about trying to revive the joy of podcasting. There's some substance too. But I'm just hoping you'll come along for the ride as I try to discover a way to live inside the podcast again. So stuff those earbuds into your earholes and take a chance.

You can stream it right through your computer here. But the hardcore fans subscribe on iTunes:

Memoirs, cartoons, rotting fish, peevish men...

It's Audible Althouse, #76.



On New Year's Eve, and I'm reviewing the year in the life of the blog and trying to explain what the Althousian blogging really is. It's not the political/law/academic blogging those bloggers who like to take shots at me do. Oh, no! It's something else. Do you get it? Dear reader, I think you do.

Stream it right through your computer here. But those of you who really understand subscribe on iTunes:

And Happy New Year, everyone. I'm waiting out the end of the year 6, looking for the year 7, in my red shoes:



Oh, I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.

It's better than bad, it's good.

It's Audible Althouse, #75.

Oh, the travails of a conservative blogress diva!

Stream it right through your computer here. But everyone but the hardcore ideologues subscribe on iTunes:

Audible Althouse #74.

It's time for another podcast.

Topics: Too busy to podcast but doing it anyway. I saw the movie "Borat." The trouble with political blogging. Banning trans fat, the sin of gluttony, and "empty stomach intelligence." My possibly thick skin. And finally: crotchgate!

Stream it right through your computer here. But go ahead and succumb to your gluttonous appetite for podcasty pleasure. Subscribe on iTunes:

Audible Althouse #73.

It's time for another podcast... about the odd last few days on the blog called Althouse... hints of life in the real world of the life of a blogger called Ann Althouse... wandering into a physical place where you get lost and can't find your way back, and the way that's like life itself, as you find yourself hopelessly separated from the past.

Stream it right through your computer here. But all the hardy, experienced outdoorsmen subscribe on iTunes:

Audible Althouse #69.

Audible Althouse... this time, it's personal.

Stream it right through your computer here. But all my close personal friends subscribe on iTunes:

Audible Althouse #68.

In the new podcast, I stumble into a marijuana festival, I submerge myself in a comparison of Foleygate to "The Vagina Monologues," I stare too deeply into a postcard photograph of my grandmother, and I end up wondering what song to have played at my funeral.

Stream it right through your computer here. But all the transgressive rebel artists are subscribing on iTunes:

Audible Althouse #67.

Hey, it's a new podcast! It's about: Political blogging, law blogging, and blogging as an art project. Artwork that's either an idea, a mass of decaying flesh, or a good fact pattern for a Civil Procedure exam. Rebel artists and how I squandered my undergraduate education.

Stream it right through your computer here. But all the transgressive rebel artists are subscribing on iTunes:

Audible Althouse #66.

This podcast has a morbid theme! Yet somehow I fall prey to hysterical laughter at one point. You've been warned.

Stream it right through your computer here. But the hysterical and morbid alike fall prey to a subscription on iTunes:

Audible Althouse #65.

Finally. It's the podcast.

Every week it's another dustup in the blogosphere. Sometimes I'm the one who's kicked up the dust. Sex and politics... people get so worked up about it. Me, I'm serene, just making a few observations, dropping a sarcastic comment, causing a big political freak out.

Stream it right through your computer here. But the sublimely serene listeners subscribe on iTunes:

CORRECTION; Listening to the podcast, I note that at one point, in describing the blog Feministing, I say that the images there show bras. That's wrong, and I apologize for saying that. The images on Feministing show women in tight T-shirts with closeups focusing on the breasts and, prominently displayed in the banner, silhouettes of (apparently) naked women with very large breasts, the mudflap image that has enraged women for decades. And I do realize the women are giving the finger, but this, of course, reinforces the point that the blogger enthusiastically employs sexual imagery for effect. I wonder if the Feminist Law Professors, who felt injured by the fact that David Lat uses sex playfully on his blog, also feel injured by the way Feministing exploits sexuality? Oddly, no. They condemn me for calling her on it.