WTF remembers comedic great Robin Williams with candor

Pitch
Moulty

Pitch—a biweekly documentary podcast from public radio producers Whitney Jones and Alex Kapelman—begins its second season with an investigative look into the eponymous subject of the Barbarians’ 1965 minor hit, “Moulty.” The organ-drenched pop-rock song is catchy enough, but it’s really the man it’s about that justifies spending five times the song’s running time talking about it. Victor “Moulty” Moulton was the one-handed drummer and leader of the garage band for its three-year run, who contended in the song’s final verse that he needed “a girl, a real girl, one that really loves” him to become a complete man. This declaration so sufficiently intrigued Kapelman, that he decided to track down the now-70-year-old musician and learn if he ever found that true love. If that seems like a somewhat slight premise on which to hang a full episode, bear in mind that the episode is only 12 minutes long. And it actually could have been quite engaging had Moulty not been so cagey about answering the most basic of profile questions. Even so, it’s an entertaining listen and it signals good things for episodes to come. [DD]

Radiolab
Happy Birthday Bobby K

Not many people are aware of Robert Krulwich’s long and bizarre career before becoming Radiolab’s senior, often playfully rankled producer. It was Krulwich’s birthday not too long ago, so Jad Abumrad had the brilliant idea to dedicate this week’s episode to his broadcasting partner. Any longtime listener can tell you that Krulwich is an endearingly strange character, but the tapes and archives that Abumrad presents in a surprise studio session reveal a true fringe genius. Simply too short at 30 minutes, the episode starts with Krulwich’s ambitious, overly nasal beginnings, where he reported on the advent of ATMs by way of opera. A rebroadcasted story about two identically named companies jockeying over white-pages positioning seems to be the episode’s highlight, but then Krulwich goes off the rails. Given free rein, he recounts his first ever broadcast news assignment, which starts with golf balls and ends, absurdly, with bellowing alligators and cheering Frenchmen in Florida. Abumrad mentioned that these unrelated anecdotes are a common occurrence, but are almost always cut out of full episodes. Fans of this episode will hopefully take this as a rallying cry and demand that Radiolab release an anthology of Krulwich’s ramblings and reminiscences. Simply put, we need more. [MK]

RuPaul: What’s The Tee?
Objectification

Where Logo TV’s Drag Race is the dominion of all things “Glamazon and Supermodel of the World” RuPaul, the What’s The Tee? podcast has become the premiere outlet for RuPaul Charles, the social icon behind the reality show. Every two weeks, the untucked and uncensored host gets to sound off on life in the entertainment industry, competition controversies, and the LGBT community, all while shooting the shit with longtime friend and co-host Michelle Visage. This week, two members of the Scruff Pit Crew (usually introduced on Drag Race by contestants fist pumping and dog woofing) drop by to chat about their thoughts on sexual objectification. Back during an excellent conversation with Marc Maron on WTF, RuPaul mentioned a regret from youth was “not being a bigger slut,” so it’s no surprise how sex positive and body embracing the conversation ends up being. It’s especially cute to hear everyone’s horror when Visage mentions the degree to which her kids judge themselves by their social media status. Per usual, it’s an episode in which it’s hard not to feel a little bit better about yourself after listening. [DJ]

Sawbones
Gout

This episode hosts Dr. Sydnee McElroy and her husband Justin McElroy deal with a disease that has plagued the human sole for centuries: gout. Gout swells joints to the point of a lack of mobility, and usually focuses on the big toe. But the early days of the disease were especially strange, or as co-host Dr. Sydnee McElroy describes “everything was about making you puke, or bloodletting.” Now relatively uncommon, the stories they discuss date back to the dark ages. Ancient Greeks even thought that dysentery was good at curing gout, because it made you expel fluids. There’s even some surprising chemistry details in how people have tried and failed to cure gout as the years of civilization marched by. But it should be noted that, although she is rather droll and carries the medical degree between her and her hilarious husband, Dr. McElroy is especially good at hitting the comedy notes, driving extended riffs in this episode about goat suet, Archie Comics, and her husband’s fake frappuccino. The relatively ancient nature of the disease also means the hosts can couch their facts and jokes in some relative distance, making this one of the easier episodes to listen to for people who are more squeamish and might otherwise avoid the show. [DT]

Stuff You Should Know
How The NSA Works

Though hosts Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant have covered current NSA news and government organizations before, this is the first time they’ve delved deep into the world of Edward Snowden and the organization he allegedly betrayed. The amount of power the organization wields seems overwhelming when presented all at once by Clark and Bryant, who both joke that they are now definitely on some kind of “list.” And it seems likely, as the bare facts about the NSA are as terrifying as one might guess. Though they’ve been around since 1952, they’ve only been publicly acknowledge since the 1970s. The NSA is generally just intelligence research (unlike the field operatives in the CIA) and they have been symbiotically growing with the prominence of the Internet. As of 2013 there were 30,000 military personnel in the NSA and 60,000 to 70,000 independent contractors. That’s a lot of people digging through everyone’s business, and as Edward Snowden pointed out, a surprising number of those people are undercover spies, even if the government is calling them low-level contractors. Clark and Bryant have done research on the government agencies for years, and not only do they come across as quite unbiased but they have a huge frame of reference for humor. They joke that we only know a small amount of what is going on, but with tools that watch people’s Facebook and Gmail in real time being public knowledge, it seems like this is an important episode to listen to. [DT]

WTF
Remembering Robin Williams

Less than a year into its run, Marc Maron’s then-new WTF podcast was just beginning to find its footing. Its 67th episode wasn’t a complete tonal shift for the podcast, but Maron’s one-on-one with Robin Williams showed that Maron was developing a knack for pulling out some of the candid personal moments from his comedic guests. When news of Robin Williams death hit Monday evening Maron was quick to re-post this archived interview, with new bumpers added to each side of the interview that show just how distraught Maron was in that moment. Maron’s introduction is harrowing, his voice rattling with despair, and his cracked inflection always suggesting he’s on the verge of tears. The interview between Williams and Maron proves even more powerful than it was in 2010, specifically when—after speaking about Williams open heart surgery—the pair frankly discusses mortality, a topic that, given the context in which this episode is being presented, is downright chilling. With less than five minutes left in the conversation, Maron directly asks Williams about any morbid fascinations, and Williams quickly open up about a time he was suicidal prior to the interview. Williams transfers that depressed energy—as he so often did—into a bit that saw him discuss mortality with his conscience. Though it was certainly humorous in the moment—as Maron’s chuckles prove—hearing Williams utter phrases such as “Fuck life,” while going back and forth on various ways with which to end his own, proves a harrowing end to their conversation. After the interview wraps, Maron’s anguish colors each word he says, illuminating his struggle to say goodbye to his departed friend. [DA]

You Are Not So Smart
Practice

While this Boing Boing-family podcast generally concerns itself with knocking humanity from its pedestal and shining a light on all the design flaws of the human brain, this time around it’s attempting something slightly different. In his interview with You Are Not So Smart host David McRaney, sports and science journalist David Epstein details an expert’s amazing ability to subconsciously calculate the world around him or her in a fraction of a second, based only upon nearly imperceptible visual cues and an immense history of practice, before responding with a speed that can only be described as prognostic. One of the more interesting aspects of the half-hour conversation is Epstein’s challenging of the 10,000 rule that has become a piece of conventional wisdom since it was made popular by Malcolm Gladwell in his 2008 book Outliers. Listeners will almost certainly walk away from this episode with a more nuanced understanding of what sets star athletes and respected artists apart from the rest of us, though it probably won’t make them feel any better about their place in the world. [DD]

We see what you said there

“That’s what Lynch does… He plays with American tropes. He has this American surface—a calm surface and a weirdness underneath.” —Devin Faraci, Fire Talk With Me

“I did focus group research and we’re watching as someone takes a computer mouse and points it at the computer like a remote control, wondering why nothing is happening. One person took it and put it on the floor and tried to use it like a sewing machine pedal.” —Former AOL chief marketing officer Jan Brandt on the early challenges of introducing an online service to an unfamiliar public, Internet History Podcast

“Those critics who dismissed my ideas were very similar to those who dismissed Galileo.” —Co-host Anna Ptaszynski quoting the man who wanted to blow up the moon, No Such Thing As A Fish

“The parallel bars and the uneven bars for the women’s gymnastics, when you put the microphones that close to the athlete you hear the flexing of the bar. You hear the breathing. You can even hear the rustling of the clothing.” —Dennis Baxter on the dramatic intimacy microphones can capture at the Olympics, 99% Invisible

“Two guys, guitars. I don’t know if they’re in tune or not. I could care less, so long as I’m showing off in front of the girls.” —Victor “Moulty” Moulton, Pitch

“If you like foxes, and you don’t wanna boil one… instead you can boil a live wolf. My point is, if you’re stricken with gout, how are you going to hunt and capture a live wolf?” —Dr. Sydnee McElroy on the ancient cures for gout, Sawbones