In Podmass, The A.V. Club sifts through the ever-expanding world of podcasts and recommends 10–15 of the previous week’s best episodes. Have your own favorite? Let us know in the comments or at [email protected].
The Flop House
A Talking Cat!?!
A Talking Cat!?! shouldn’t exist. Every single aspect of it is impossible to explain, and listening to The Flop House hosts attempt the impossible is a sheer delight. The Flopsters can tackle any sort of film, of course, but movies like A Talking Cat!?! are its raisons d’etre, and because it’s right in their wheelhouse, they knock it out of the park. Along the way comes one of Dan McCoy’s most inspired speaking flubs, which leads to an ace Tim Conway/Werner Herzog goof. Though a largely unremarkable listener mailbag segment culminates with a disappointing resolution to the long, wildly controversial Ding-donggate saga, when coupled with the end of a very successful (if somewhat confusing) first Smallvember/Smalltember theme month, it is enough to bring any Flop fan to tears. But, lo, on the horizon is that holiest of The Flop House high holidays—Shocktober—which promises a positive cornucopia of spooky laughs and hilarious chills. [CG]
How Did This Get Made?
Glitter
How Did This Get Made? has faced off against many movies commonly called The Worst Of All Time. This week, the podcast finally tackles Glitter, the 2001 train wreck that almost permanently demolished Mariah Carey’s career. The star vehicle (and its accompanying soundtrack) performed so badly that Carey was prematurely dropped from her recording contract. In a lot of ways, Glitter is the perfect movie for this show. Not only is it nigh on incomprehensible, but every element of its making is a head-scratcher, which leads to hilarious diversions from a self-proclaimed all-star cast of Paul Scheer, Adam Scott, Casey Wilson, and Dan Levy. (Jason Mantzoukas and June Diane Raphael were both unavailable for this episode, recorded live at Largo.) For listeners who haven’t seen Glitter, the offhanded references to the plot come across as sublimely bizarre (Semaphore in a nightclub? A trip to the orphanage? Someone getting murdered for weird reasons?), but the conversation is enjoyable from front to back. Scott in particular is an MVP for reading back his hilariously droll notes during the movie. (“Does she even want to be a singer?) Even without the big hitters in attendance, Scheer turned out another fantastic episode. [MK]
Judge John Hodgman
Do-I-Why?!
For this week’s case, Judge John Hodgman attempts to settle an argument between Chuck Bryant, host of the How Stuff Works podcast and co-host of Stuff You Should Know, and Chuck’s wife, Emilie Sennebogen. When Emilie went out of town to visit her family, Chuck took it upon himself to undertake a DIY project and widen the dining room doorway. Even by Chuck’s own endlessly entertaining self-defense, the job was planned poorly and executed even worse, a quixotic project that Emilie thinks requires the skills of a professional to fix. Hodgman’s questioning is more pointed and acerbic than usual, and does a wonderful job of bringing out the many problems with Chuck’s work and Emilie’s understandable annoyance toward the work. Disputes between spouses tend to play well on Judge John Hodgman, especially when a couple is as able to approach an exasperating situation with a healthy sense of humor like Chuck and Emilie do here. Both Hodgman and Jesse Thorn are friends with the couple—both are fans of How Stuff Works and Hodgman co-hosts trivia with Chuck at MaxFunCon—which causes the courtroom proceedings to be more playful and loose than usual, making this one of the better episodes of the year. [DF]
Monster Talk
Vampira
It’s a genuine tragedy that so little footage exists of Maila Nurmi performing as horror movie host Vampira for the cameras of her seminal ’50s-era television series. Because people are unable to view for themselves the subversive wit and social satire she managed to sneak onto Los Angeles-area living rooms, her most lasting image in public eye is as “Vampire Girl” in Ed Wood’s infamously awful Plan 9 From Outer Space. Relegated to the status of mock-worthy cultural footnote, she ends up receiving little credit for having invented a mainstay TV archetype and exerting an impressive influence on pop culture in her wake. During this hour-long conversation with Blake Smith, W. Scott Poole, author of the biography Vampira: Dark Goddess Of Horror, even goes so far as to give her credit as a strong inspiration for the goth aesthetic. Nurmi—the Finnish-born daughter of a traveling preacher who fraternized with beat poets, modeled for early bondage magazines, and was nearly made into “the next Lauren Bacall” by director Howard Hawks—lived a much more interesting life than most people realize. This fascinating, though atypically non-cryptozoological, episode of Monster Talk should help to right that injustice. [DD]
The New Yorker Out Loud
The Right To Be Forgotten
The Internet has long been a place where past misdeeds, disasters, or embarrassing moments can outlive their perpetrator or victim, but a recent European Court Of Justice decision may make those moments more difficult to find. The New Yorker’s Jeffrey Toobin and Columbia University professor Tim Wu discuss the complicated issue that pits a private citizen’s right to privacy against government regulation of free speech in this Out Loud installment. Toobin discusses his reflexive opposition to the law that allows individuals the right to have certain information about them removed from search engine inquires before hearing the details of the cases that brought his free speech absolutism into question, including publicly available photos of an 18-year-old California woman who was decapitated in an automobile accident. It’s the kind of thorny discussion that challenges easy opinion, knee-jerk partisan platitudes or the victimless solution. Wu, an unsuccessful candidate for New York Lieutenant Governor earlier this year, suggests his own support for a statewide law mirroring the European ruling, but acknowledges the troubling history of search engine regulation by totalitarian governments. The absorbing discussion doesn’t settle any debate, but it’s one that should provoke serious thought about an issue with weighty consequences. [TC]
There’s No Such Thing As A Fish
There’s No Such Thing As An Egg And Cress Portsmouth
The researchers of British TV show Q.I. welcome a special guest this week in Helen Zaltzman of the Answer Me This! podcast, making this the first episode in recent memory with as many female voices as men’s (researcher Anna Ptaszynski is often left with 3-4 male colleagues; this time only with Dan Schneider and Andrew Hunter Murray). The chemistry of the episode is instantly amiable and quick, its title coming from an interesting fact about how sandwiches were nearly named after Portsmouth, the place where the Earl Of Sandwich would have preferred to rule. This switching around of names leads to fun riffing on the original meanings of the acronym “LOL,” the acronyms doctors use to mock their unfortunate patients to their face, and the prostate-sounding name that Tolkien nearly gave Gandalf The Grey. But the back half of the episode segues into some fascinating science. Squirrels can tell which snakes can see in infrared, and when encountering them they emit radiation from their tails so they appear to double in size. Of course there are also breeds of squirrels with enormous genitals, and it is impossible for everyone to let that fact escape without examination. But before jokes get too easy, the topic rolls into a squirrel’s ability to mask their odor, trick hawks into crashing, and use ultrasound. [DT]
Radiolab
Juicervose
Autism is the subject of this week’s emotional Radiolab. In focus is the story of Owen Suskind, an autistic man in his early 20s who, incredibly, was pulled up out of a thundercloud of extreme autism. Growing up, he was entranced by Disney movies and only able to communicate in basic three word sentences. One day, out of nowhere, “Walter doesn’t want to grow up like Mowgli or Peter Pan” comes out of Owen’s mouth. What follows is incredible, a story the likes of which is usually reserved for Harpo Studios, but Radiolab isn’t so sensational. By interviewing a slew of prominent researchers, the second act provides an important counterpoint to Owen’s story, saying that this is just one anecdotal story. With this, Radiolab does away with the sensationalism, and focuses on how his family was affected, particularly his older brother. Because Owen can now communicate, we get an extremely personal insight into his life in the dark days, especially at high school. Surprisingly, the most emotional moment comes from Owen’s older brother, his self-styled protector, who transforms Owen’s love of a Disney classic into a poignant metaphor for their life together, and for the sheer unfairness of autism. [MK]
Science Friday
Artificial Sweeteners Might Sour Your Microbiome
Eran Elinav of the Weizmann Institute Of Science arrives as a special guest to Science Friday this week, sharing a study he conducted where laboratory mice were fed proportional amounts of artificial sweeteners, which completely altered the composition of the digestive bacteria that helped their metabolism and made them obese. There are trillions of bacteria in every human’s gut as well, each of them influencing overall health, and our society’s obsession with replacing sugar with mountains of aspartame and the like might be completely destroying humans’ ability to process other types of sugars. Elinav’s study also worked with young and healthy humans not previously ingesting artificial sweeteners, and it suggests this intake might even promote diabetes and other ailments because of their loss of ability to process glucose. As the science is explained it gives way to easier to understand terms like “gut microbes,” so listeners averse to topics that might go over their heads should still be able to listen without feeling lost. Elinav, combined with the work of his colleagues, makes a compelling argument against ingesting chemicals simply because they offer zero calories to the consumer, making the podcast a welcome wake-up call to those looking to inform their coffee guzzling (and other) habits. [DT]