Bumper sticker collection update 🧡

I just got The Power Broker because of 99% Invisible and I’m only mentioning it here to keep myself accountable for reading this enormous book

Podcasts I'm listening to right now

I saw someone else do this (theirs was specific to narrative fiction, but I'm listening to a lot more than that.)

This will be for recommendations, but also hopefully serve as a reminder to myself down the road.

Part One: The Ol' Reliables

Judge John Hodgman One of the first podcasts I even began listening to, and it's never NOT been on my subscription list. Even though it can be predictable (once you've heard 500 of these, you can guess where the rulings are headed) it's still delightful. Love John, Love Jesse. Love the whole deal. 8/10

My Brother, My Brother, and Me I came somewhat late to the party. So, after the most-problematic character traits of the boys were gone. 2 of the 3 of them always make me laugh. In my opinion, I only fail to enjoy about 10 of the episodes. 9/10

99% Invisible The GOAT. Funny, fascinating, and well-produced. It's been on my list for like 10 years? And it has introduced me to other phenomenal podcasts, books, and people. 10/10 no notes.

No Such Thing as a Fish 4 (usually) researcher for QI talk about weird facts they learned. It's great. 9/10

Sawbones Dr. Sydney McElroy and her clown husband discuss medical history. Although really, there are quite a few episodes of currently-relevant issues as well. Good stuff, though not without it's flat points. 8/10

Welcome to Night Vale Again, an all-timer. Though to be honest, it fell off my list for a while there. But when I went back and listened to the first 100 again to get caught back up, I refell in love. Great world, great writing, great narrator. Some of the deeper lore stuff doesn't always land with me (I still don't know how Huntokar like, matters). 8/10

Cautionary Tales The newest-comer to this slate. Fascinating stories told in a cunning way. Which is to say, sometime manipulative storytelling to pad out the 30 minutes or whatever. They hook you, then you find out that they lied up front sometimes. And sometimes they have ads for Crypto...which is so discordant on a podcast about watching out for scams. 6/10 (2 points off for their annoying and poorly-chosen ads, honestly. May be a ploy to herd people to their Patreon.)

The Adventure Zone The "hit-or-miss"est of this list. Some seasons are soaring and riveting. Some are not. Sometimes it's the GM, sometimes it's the setting, sometimes it's the system. There's a narrow needle to thread between RP and explaining what the hell is going on. When they nail it, I'm sold. 7/10 overall.

On today’s show, Elliott Kalan and Roman Mars will cover the Introduction, Part 1, and Part 2 of the book (the intro through the end of Chapter 5), discussing the major story beats and themes.

Diving into this ginormous tome. The current plan is one chapter a day until I catch up to the 99% Invisible read-along, and then to go at their pace. I expect to be reading this book for the rest of the year.

I'm pretty sure there was an entire episode of 99% Invisible about that song and they said the "dogs" are the men who won't stop harassing women, when they're just out trying to enjoy dancing in a club.

Former Sears distribution centers revitalized into mixed-use developments. Learn more here with at this link to a 99 Percent Invisible article that dives into it!

The Charm of the Spoken Word

I have always been drawn into spoken word, the speeches, the story telling and in the recent past this has been podcasts – The Internet’s Radio. And there is no better podcast than 99% Invisible.  Listening to 99% Invisible is a blessing and curse. Every single episode you learn something new and then there is not one conversation you can have without saying “Hey, there is fantastic 99pi episode…

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Yes, the hubris of Pizza Hut is the stuff of a Greek tragedy. But this is not a story about failure, it's a story about hope, about what can be reclaimed, about the possibilities of what could have emerged amongst what could have never been dreamed up from the outset. A mollusk dies, and a hermit crab moves into its shell.

I have unearthed a new depth of cursed thought. What unbearable concoctions could be distilled from the milk of the indestructable Anhk Morpork pigeon? What perilous potions might require such a thing?

I listened to the newest episode of No Bad Ideas and Avery Trufelman described her early work at 99% Invisible as  “asking smart people dumb questions” which is the tagline of Ologies with Alie Ward. 

One female podcaster who makes a broad-audience topic-of-the-week podcast acknowledging the work of another. We love to hear it

It’s 99% invisible ministories time and I just learned Carlo Scarpa didn’t have a license and got in trouble with the Venice order of architects about it???!!?!!? How fucking dare they???? He was prosecuted in a courtroom HE DESIGNED ffs (the judge agreed with me btw)

Btw: if you ever visit Venice, see as many Scarpa buildings and rooms and such as you can. His stuff is so so so so worth it. Scarpa is to Venice as Gaudi is to Barcelona imo. He is that vital to what’s great about Venice when you look further than the old stuff the normal tourists visit.

I think the reason Tumblr is accepting of users coming in from Reddit is that in my experience, the median Reddit user is a helpful nerd who wants to explain in great detail and with great precision about a thing you thought nobody had an opinion on, and your median Tumblr user is going "I love this energy and Iove that you have sources, now go with me on this: we make it anthropomorphic and it falls in love"

does anyone else listen to 99% invisible they just did an episode on trans voices particularly "Melanie speaks" which was like a vcr tape voice coach it was such a sweet episode 😭😭😭 also I love Swan Real and when she opened with intro for the episode I was like AUFHGGG WAHHH i love our transfems in audio engineering.

The Power Broker is a biography of Robert Moses, who built more structures and moved more earth than anyone in human history. And he did it without ever holding elected office. Outside of New York City, Robert Moses wasn’t exceptionally well known. Inside of New York, he was mostly accepted by the media as simply the man who built all those nice parks. But The Power Broker, which is subtitled Robert Moses and The Fall of New York, changed all that. It is a tour de force of journalism, history, and biography. Roman also argues it’s really fun to read and is strongly in contention for the best book ever written.

For this introductory episode, Roman and Elliot are joined by comedian, podcaster, late night television host, and absolute fanboy of author Robert Caro: Conan O’Brien. He jokes that “you should read the power broker because you will save so much money on your satellite or streaming service,” because, more seriously, “you will be enveloped by this incredible story … about how power works and what one person can do to completely change the face of an American city.” (To keep him company, be sure to listen to his show: Conan Needs a Friend.)

OKAY THE POST:

So I normally don’t talk about textile stuff here bc this is my Fanworks Corner but I cannot recommend highly enough that everyone stop what they’re doing and listen to Articles of Interest. The link is to their website but you can find them on whatever your favourite podcatcher is. It’s a podcast that started as part of 99% Invisible, so it feels a bit like school, but it’s so so good if you care about clothing or textiles or fashion or gender or social history it’s got ALL THE BEST SHIT I love it so much.

My favourite episodes from earlier seasons are Hawaiian Shirts, Punk Style, Knockoffs, and Perfume/Diamonds, but they’re all really really good. What I love about it is that it does the 99PI thing of taking an ordinary thing and doing a deep dive from a design perspective, which sounds so boring but is actually just like. This really transformative way of looking at an object that you’re used to, and realizing that all objects have history and stories and the world is so rich! So full of intention! So captivating!

BUT OKAY because relevant to the post about 1940s/postwar women’s wear that I reblogged earlier, the current season is FASCINATING because instead of single episodes on single topics it’s an entire-season arc on just one specific thing, and the first two episodes have been utterly riveting so far. I’s on like, the idea of this style that they’re calling “Ivy” which is sort of generic slacks-and-button-downs style that like. You don’t think of as a style but is actually a style, and the whole arc is this incredibly detailed look at what it means and where it comes from and why it’s relevant to us now. It touches on the history of ready-to-wear clothing and post-war politics in the US and Japan and just - so much. So much god stuff.

And also there’s a digression in ep 2 on the post-WW1 Bright Young Things movement, which tickled me because I’m currently fascinated by that in general + am looking for books to learn more. Because the more that I am an essential worker in the current pandemic (which is not over, omg get your boosters GET YOUR BOOSTERS) the more I am fascinated by: 1) World War 1, 2) Post WW1 societal recovery, and 3) Early 1920s social history which was very much a reaction to the first two things and uhhhh has some parallels with our current society what with the sudden extreme individual focus on capitalist hedonism contrasted with the broader more sinister tapdance towards fascism and this feels like it shouldn’t be relevant to clothing but also: it is!

BUT ANYWAY it’s the most brilliant piece of podcast work I’ve ever listened to and if you want to know why 1930-40ss menswear and button downs are having a ~cultural moment and why that’s intersecting with young people’s movements related to gender expression and self-expresson this is the thing for you.