Tag: Book Wisdom

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Episode 22: Adventures in Homeschooling, Small Talk, Expert Testimony: Parenting and Creativity, Everyday Heroes, Unchained Melodies, and I Hate To Leave This Beautiful Place

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This week Dave was out, so Steel had to hold down the fort without him. Fortunately, Rose and Emeline were available, and together the three of them had a delightful time, discussing Rose and Emeline’s homeschooling experiences, a newly discovered connection between the brain and the lymphatic system, the survival ability of the word ‘mother’, and the surging greatness that is emoji. The three of them also discussed some of the challenges of parenting and their struggles to balance familial commitments with the desire for a creative life, what it’s been like raising boys, the style era they’d feel most at home in, and three everyday heroes (all women) they wanted to praise. In this week’s edition of Unchained Melodies, the focus was on songs sung in languages other than English, and they shared great sounds from Fran Jeffries, Peter Pan Complex, Ana Tijoux, Natalia LaFourcade, Glen Check, and Super Furry Animals, before Rose shared some moving book wisdom from an Inuit folklorist recounted in Howard Norman’s memoir I Hate to Leave This Beautiful Place.

Links

Small Talk

Everyday Heroes

Unchained Melodies

Fran Jeffries — Meglio Stasera

Peter Pan Complex — 자꾸만 눈이 마주쳐 (Can’t Take My Eyes Off You)

Ana Tijoux — 1977

Natalia LaFourcade — Aventurera

GD & TOP – 집에 가지마 (Glen Check Remix)

Super Furry Animals — Ymaelodi Â’r Ymylon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdUx2SYOiEk

Book Wisdom

This week’s edition of book wisdom was read by Rose, and came from Howard Norman’s memoir I Hate to Leave This Beautiful Place.

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Episode 21: Pickup Basketball, Assigned Reading, Expert Testimony: Urban Planning, Unchained Melodies, and Those Winter Sundays

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This week Dave and Steel are joined by their friend Spencer. Together the trio discusses Steel and Spencer’s pickup basketball escapades, give reports on their recent reading (books by Thomas Pynchon, Dan Simmons, and Sabine Heinlein) and give each other new reading assignments (books by Frank Herbert, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Ignazio Silone, Brandon Sanderson, Daniel Kahneman, and Alexander Dolgun), Dave & Steel ask Spencer all their burning questions about urban planning and transportation issues, share great music by Dawn Landes, Saintseneca, Christopher Paul Stelling, Strand of Oaks, Adult Mom, and Konono No. 1, and drop a beautiful poetic tribute to fathers from the twentieth-century American poet Robert Hayden.

Links

Assigned Reading

For Dave:

  • Brandon Sanderson’s fantasy epic Warbreaker [from Steel]
  • Ignazio Silone’s classic Italian novel Bread and Wine [from Spencer]

For Spencer:

For Steel:

  • Frank Herbert’s sci-fi classic Dune.
  • Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s Antifragile

Expert Testimony

Portland’s spending on bike infrastructure relative to the cost of 1 mile of urban freeway, as checked by Polifact.

Unchained Melodies

Dawn Landes — Straight Lines

Saintseneca — Or or No

Christopher Paul Stelling — Every Last Extremist

Strand of Oaks — Kill Dragon

Adult Mom — Survival

Konono No. 1 — Lufuala Ndongo

Book Wisdom

This week’s passage of Book Wisdom was Robert Hayden’s moving tribute to his father, the poem “Those Winter Sundays.” Fathers everywhere, we thank you.

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Episode 20: The Tennant, OTC Time Travel, Ask OTC, Brother vs. Brother, Unchained Melodies, and Richard Feynman

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This week Dave and Steel are joined by Jon, the infamous younger brother of Alan, their guest last week. Together, the trio discusses Jon’s acting chops, amateur physicists and Jon’s impressively detailed theory of time travel (first developed when he was in the 6th grade!), answer listener questions about dating, The Hulk, space travel, and NASA’s dreamiest astronaut, hear Jon’s versions of the family stories Alan shared last week, talk about their favorite video games (old and new), share nerdly music from They Might Be Giants, Socalled, The Aquabats, Bombadil, The Uncluded, and the Thomas Was Alone video game soundtrack, and share some book wisdom from the illustrious physicist and science popularizer Richard Feynman.

Links

The Tennant [The Tenant]

The Tennant’s End

OTC Science

  • Dave loves the idea of amateur physicists. See here and here and here for more on why.
  • Peter Vranas’ faculty page (see the research page to read about his thoughts on the retrosuicide paradox).

Ask OTC

OTC Video Games

Favorite Game of All Time

Favorite Game Currently

Unchained Melodies

They Might Be Giants — Purple Toupee

Socalled — Work with What You Got

The Aquabats — Cat with Two Heads

Bombadil — Laundromat

The Uncluded — Delicate Cycle

Book Wisdom

This week’s book wisdom was taken primarily from Richard Feynman’s book The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist, which collected three of his best known lectures on science and human understanding.

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Episode 19: Hug Daddy Game, Top 5 Norwegian Words, Small Talk, Expert Testimony: Ask the Marketer, Brother vs. Brother, Unchained Melodies, and East of Eden

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This week Dave and Steel are joined by their old friend Alan. Dave introduces the two men to a game he plays with his daughters called the “Hug Daddy Game,” Alan shares his fave favorite Norwegian words, and they run through a segment of small talk, discussing the latest FIFA scandals, Alan’s love of a well-edited Hobbit remake, and Nate DiMeo’s fantastic podcast the Memory Palace. We then present a very special feature, “Ask The Marketer,” in which we present several difficult to market products to Alan, a professional marketer, and he explains how he’d market these increasingly repulsive brands/products, following which we share great music about fictional characters from The Flaming Lips, The Brunettes, Mumford and Sons, The Spin Doctors, Suicide, and Duck Tales, and Alan closes the episode with some book wisdom from John Steinbeck’s East of Eden.

Links

Small Talk

Unchained Melodies

The Flaming Lips — Waitin’ for Superman

The Brunettes — Hulk is Hulk

Mumford and Sons — Timshel

The Spin Doctors — Jimmy Olsen’s Blues

Suicide — Ghost Rider

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDKGohwlrZ4

Duck Tales — Theme Song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUxuvs9vhKg

Book Wisdom

This week’s passage came from chapter 13 of John Steinbeck’s masterful novel East of Eden.

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Episode 18: Name of the Year, OTC Vacations, To the Limits, Unchained Melodies: Fight Edition, and White Noise

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This week Dave and Steel offer their congratulations to the 2015 Name of the Year (won by Idaho’s finest citizen!), discuss the allure of road trips, their dream vacations and vacation dreams, and are joined by Dave’s wife Arianne for a special To the Limits segment, in which the trio discusses Born to Run, Arianne’s visit to the Tarahumara tribe in Northern Mexico, and Aron Ralston, the man whose experiences inspired the film 127 Hours. Dave and Steel also try to answer two very important questions in a lengthy segment of Unchained Melodies which features music by Spoon, Mötley Crüe, Dizzee Rascal, Ratatat, The Gipsy Kings, Rodrigo y Gabriela, Okkervil River, and Stylophonic, and Dave drops some book wisdom from the great Don DeLillo.

Links

Name of the Year

Our sincerest congratulations to Amanda Miranda Panda, the 2015 Name of the Year. You’ve made Caldwell, Idaho very proud, Ms. Miranda Panda. Very proud, indeed.

OTC Vacations

To the Limits

  • Christopher McDougall’s book Born to Run, which features the Tarahumara Indians of northern Mexico.
  • Some photos from Arianne’s trip to visit the Tarahumara people in 2006:
    IMG_0339
    A landscape in the Tarahumara’s native homeland.

    100_0152_412
    A Tarahumara male. Notice the colorful shirt and plain white skirt, well suited for running.
  • Aron Ralston’s story, as reported by the St. Petersburg Times.

Unchained Melodies

Spoon — I Turn My Camera On

Mötley Crüe — Kickstart My Heart

Dizzee Rascal — Fix Up, Look Sharp

Ratatat — Loud Pipes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iexoDhvwGbo

The Gipsy Kings — Bamboleo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mifnMC_Kn1Q

Rodrigo y Gabriela — Hanuman

Okkervil River — Last Long Song For Now

Stylophonic — If Everybody in the World Loved Everybody in the World

Book Wisdom

This week’s passage of Book Wisdom comes from the section in Don DeLillo’s White Noise about the ‘most photographed barn in America’.

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Episode 17: OTC Vistas, Small Talk, Walden, Unchained Melodies: Summer Songs, and Cat's Cradle

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This week Dave and Steel are joined by Dave’s friend Rosie. Together the trio describe the most beautiful places they’ve ever been and discuss the greatness of Lonesome Dove, the latest in shipping crate swimming pool construction, and the legend of Mingering Mike, an imaginary soul singer who made good in the latest edition of Small Talk. Rosie and Steel also try to explain the greatness of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden to a skeptical Dave, and they have a bit of fun with a fill-in-the-blanks game. They share great summer tunes from Son Volt, Loudon Wainwright III, The Bowerbirds, Fountains of Wayne, crash, and The Drums, and Rosie drops some book wisdom from Kurt Vonnegut’s classic novel Cat’s Cradle.

Links

OTC Vistas

  • Rosie: The Spiral Jetty [an earthwork by Robert Smithson] in the Great Salt Lake, Utah
  • Steel: Gandria/Lugano, Ticino, Switzerland
  • Dave: Marion Lake, Wyoming

    • Small Talk

    Walden

    I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.

    Read the book.

    Unchained Melodies

    Son Volt — Windfall

    Loudon Wainwright III — The Swimming Song

    The Bowerbirds — Overcome with Light

    Fountains of Wayne — Leave the Biker

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQalBzt8ECU

    crash — Mad at the Clouds

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnghXaEkE_Q

    The Drums — Let’s Go Surfing

    Book Wisdom

    This week’s passage (read by Rosie) came from Kurt Vonnegut’s 1963 novel Cat’s Cradle. Wishing you all a ton of boko-maru in the coming days.

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Episode 16: Disney World, Small Talk, Ask OTC, Expert Testimony: OTC Comics, Unchained Melodies, and The Phantom Tollbooth

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This week Dave and Steel are joined by their friend Oliver. Together they discuss Dave’s recent family vacation to Disney World (including a refreshing stop at Club Cool!), explore the benefits of Transcendental Meditation, learn more about the Rocky Mountain Land Library, speculate about the return of Full House (it’s going to be called Fuller House!), offer listeners moving advice and dance tips, discuss Dave and Oliver’s shared passion for cartooning and comic books, share their envy of the voices of Antony Heggarty, Prince Nelson, Van Morrison, Vic Chesnutt, Charlie Puth, and Bobby Hatfield & Bill Medley, and drop some wisdom from Norton Juster’s classic children’s adventure novel The Phantom Tollbooth.

Links

Disney World

Duffy the Disney Bear
Club Cool

Small Talk

Transcendental Meditation

The Rocky Mountain Land Library

TV Show Reunions

Expert Testimony: OTC Comics

Unchained Melodies

Antony and the Johnsons — Dust & Water

Prince — Kiss

Van Morrison — Ballerina

Vic Chesnutt — Flirted with You All My Life

Wiz Khalifa ft. Charlie Puth — See You Again

Righteous Brothers — Unchained Melody

Book Wisdom

For this week’s book wisdom, Oliver shared a lovely passage from Norton Juster’s The Phantom Tollbooth about how the watchdog Tock got his name.

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Episode 15: Over the Top: Top 5 Action Stars, Comic Book Battles, Unchained Melodies, and The Humane Imagination

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This week Steel was out, so Dave was joined by his old friend Jordan. Together the pair discuss the top 5 action heroes working today, speculate on what would happen if various fictional characters from comic books and movies were to face off in battle, share great music from CHON, The Tallest Man on Earth, Bill Evans, and Three Dog Night, and drop some wisdom on imagination and the good society from Charles L. Black’s book The Humane Imagination.

Links

Over the Top

Unchained Melodies

CHON’s live sxsw set

The Tallest Man on Earth — Sagres

Bill Evans — My Foolish Heart

Three Dog Night — Mama Told Me Not to Come

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKaQzQAlNn4

Book Wisdom

This week Jordan read a passage from Charles L. Black‘s The Humane Imagination

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Episode 14: Poetry, Expert Testimony, Small Talk, Ask OTC, Unchained Melodies, and Charles Reznikoff

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This week Dave and Steel are joined by their friend Katie (a female nurse!) to discuss a huge panoply of things, including Steel’s love for poetry, Katie’s college softball career, A League of Their Own, the return of the brontosaurus, Wonder Woman’s freaky creator William Moulton Marston, and the difference between anabolic and boring steroids. Katie also leads the guys through a set of rapid fire ‘lightning round’ questions, and they take listener questions about home buying, flu shots, and high school math classes, and then share some great music from Cayetana, Lucius, Blackstreet, Alice Boman, and Jason Isbell, and Steel shares two poems from the criminally underread Charles Reznikoff: “[During the Second World War …]” and “Te Deum”.

Links

Poetry

Three of the life-changing poets that Steel talked about:

  1. Charles Reznikoff
  2. Lorine Niedecker
  3. George Oppen

And here’s a bunch of articles about Emily Dickinson’s “Master” letters:

Expert Testimony

Katie’s Indiana University softball athlete page

A League of Their Own

Small Talk

The Brontosaurus is back! (an article by Elif Batuman in The New Yorker)
William Moulton Marston, the creator of Wonder Woman, was a weird dude. Exhibits 1, 2, and 3.
More on the difference between boring steroids and anabolic steroids.

Unchained Melodies

Cayetana — Hot Dad Calendar

Lucius — Wildewoman

Blackstreet — No Diggity

Alice Boman — Lead Me

Jason Isbell — Cover Me Up

Book Wisdom

This week Steel read two poems by Charles Reznikoff: the first an untitled vignette, and the second a short poem called “Te Deum” (a Latin phrase literally translatable as ‘Thee, O God’).

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Episode 13: Ringworld, Sci-Fi Stack Exchange, Assigned Reading, Would You Rather?, Unchained Melodies, and I, Robot.

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This week Dave and Steel are joined once again by their friend Spencer to discuss lots and lots of very nerdy things. The episode begins with a discussion of Larry Niven’s Ringworld, and just goes downhill from there, descending into an exploration of arcane Star Wars and Star Trek trivia (anti-Wookie prejudice, the battle at Wolf 359, and Han Solo’s murderous encounter with Greedo). The trio also give each other some reading assignments, play a few rounds of an old “Would You Rather?” game Steel designed in college, share music from Phox, King Creosote, Torres, Blur, Blue Sky Black Death, and Vajra, and Dave drops some ominous wisdom from I, Robot Isaac Asimov’s classic collection of short stories.

Links

Ringworld

Ringworld is a series of 5 books written by Larry Niven between 1970 and 2002, with four prequels, cowritten with Edward Lerner and published between 2007 and 2010. Read more about the Ringworld at its wiki.

Sci-Fi Stack Exchange

Question #1: About Chewbacca (from Star Wars 4-6)

Question #2: About the Battle of Wolf 359 (from Star Trek: The Next Generation)

Question #3: About Greedo and Han Solo (from Star Wars 4)

Assigned Reading

Dave assigned Dan Simmons’ sci-fi classicHyperion to Steel.

Steel assigned Sabine Heinlein’s nonfiction Among Murderers: Life After Prison to Dave.

Dave and Steel assigned Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 to Spencer.

Would You Rather?

Way back when Steel was a freshman in college he wrote out a big, strange “Would You Rather?” quiz and administered it to dozens of friends. It’s now been revised slightly and turned into a 50 question Qualtrics survey, which you can take here.

Unchained Melodies

Phox — 1936

King Creosote — My Favourite Girl

Torres — Strange Hellos

Blur — Lonesome Street

Blue Sky Black Death — Threats (Instrumental)

Vajra — Earthscape 2039

Book Wisdom

This week’s passage comes from “The Evitable Conflict,” a short-story in science-fiction pioneer Isaac Asimov’s collection I, Robot.