Questions Kyle and Jennie join me for an unusually strong mailbag. In this first part we talk the wild events of the last month in the presidential election, fielding several questions about what is and isn't different now that Harris-Walz has replaced Biden-Harris. Is "You're weird" a good strategy? Do they have their shit together at long last? Why does the campaign feel so different, and is that real or in our heads? This is the (free!) first half of a two-part episode; Part II is available h...
Aug 30, 2024•45 min•Season 7Ep. 51
Questions Kyle and Jennie join me for a close look at three of the wildest weeks in recent American political history - we talk the Trump assassination attempt, Biden's brain, JD Vance, and (checks notes) former Buffalo Bills kicker Scott Norwood. You are currently listening to the first half (free!) of a two-part episode; Part II is available to Patreon subscribers here , so go ahead and sign up for as little as 1 American Dollar. Please support Mass for Shut-ins, an independent and ad-free pod...
Jul 18, 2024•38 min•Season 7Ep. 50
Kassia St. Clair, author of the 2017 best-seller The Secret Lives of Color and the Sunday Times Book of the Year follow-up The Golden Thread: How Fabric Changed History (2019) joins me to talk about her new book, Race to the Future: The Adventure that Accelerated the 20th Century . It's the story of the utterly bonkers 1907 auto race from Peking to Paris, which didn't let things like the fact that roads and gas stations didn't exist stop some adventurous competitors from trying it. All 8000 mile...
May 14, 2024•56 min•Season 7Ep. 49
In 1972 a middling team from the Scottish Premier League played four exhibition matches in Nigeria and distinguished itself so profoundly with its pitiful play (and boorish attitude) that its name became a synonym for stupidity. Grousing about how much your host country sucks while losing 4-1 to a team of amateurs called "Stationery Stores FC" leaves a pretty profound impression, I guess. The comedian through whom I became aware of this fantastic story is Nabil Abdulrashid . These podcasts are a...
Apr 12, 2024•8 min
Question Kyle and Question Jennie join me as we discuss the 18th century fad of using the emerging understanding of the phenomenon of electricity to entertain. Men who considered themselves worldly natural philosophers and amateur scientists found it relatively easy to blow the minds of party guests by demonstrating some basic concepts that we're too jaded to appreciate today. Nowhere was this made clearer than with the Flying Boy stunt, aka the Hanging Boy. A child or small adult was suspended ...
Mar 23, 2024•34 min
Perhaps you've heard of Operation Gladio, the infamous post-World War II NATO program to train "stay-behind" agents to fight guerilla-style against a future hypothetical Soviet invasion of Western Europe. Believe it or not, the United States Air Force, briefly in partnership with the FBI, devised exactly such a program it carried out in Alaska between 1951 and 1958. This went beyond the planning stage - it was actually implemented. At least 89 civilians in Alaska were paid, trained, armed, and p...
Dec 21, 2023•9 min
Dr. Laine Nooney (NYU) joins me to discuss the early days of personal computing - particularly how people figured out what to do with home computers after they became convinced that they needed one - in their 2023 book The Apple II Age: How the Computer Became Personal . If you were alive in the pre-internet era, this book is both a great trip down memory lane and a new way to think about the usual hagiographic "Great Man" retellings of the early years of the industry. If you're a bit younger, y...
Nov 21, 2023•43 min•Season 6Ep. 48
Professor and author Nicholas Dagen Bloom joins me to discuss his new book The Great American Transit Disaster: Austerity, Autocentric Planning, and White Flight (University of Chicago Press). You know transit is a mess in the United States but take my word for it: after reading this book you will understand how and why in a brand new way. If you think you already know the story, you don't! Question Cathy is traveling the world, so Question Kyle and Question Jennie pinch-hit for her in a truly s...
Oct 30, 2023•56 min•Season 6Ep. 47
Continuing a topic we broached on a recent bonus episode on Patreon, Questions Kyle and Jennie join me as we sort through the wonderful if baffling world of school assemblies submitted by listeners and readers. You have to hear some of this stuff to believe it, but suffice it to say America's educational system is very concerned about abstinence and marijuana. Please support Mass for Shut-ins, an independent and ad-free podcast, via Patreon . Contact me via twitter ( @edburmila ), at least for n...
Sep 22, 2023•1 hr 5 min•Season 6Ep. 46
Question Cathy returns for a long overdue dip into the mailbag. We hit a range of topics including: how the recent Supreme Court ruling will affect college admissions, 90s cultural fads, the mind-bending heat affecting much of the planet this summer, what the DeSantis campaign's flop tells us about the war on "wokeness," and how some state-level Democratic parties have gotten so much done with razor-thin majorities. Plus I drop the least obscure hints yet about my forthcoming book and we reveal ...
Jul 28, 2023•47 min•Season 6Ep. 45
Artist and author Brian Brown joins me to discuss his new book The He-Man Effect: How American Toy Makers Sold You Your Childhood . We talk about our memories of toy advertising and cartoons from the Eighties and the political and regulatory changes that opened the floodgates to marketing at children. Inhumanoids, M.A.S.K., SilverHawks, and Sectaurs are just a few of the D-list intellectual properties of the era that we recall with accuracy I can only describe as alarming. Brian's earlier books ...
Jul 18, 2023•50 min•Season 6Ep. 44
Question Kyle and Question Jennie join me to discuss one of the most poorly thought-out, pretentious stunts in the history of pop culture, wherein an early UK techno-electronica duo churn out a novelty song, one hit single, and a book about how to write a novelty song before topping it all off by burning one million pounds, one £50 bill at a time. It's the kind of anti-capitalist, Art School edginess that blew your mind at 20 and I sincerely hope does not blow your mind as a functional adult. Af...
May 23, 2023•50 min•Season 6Ep. 43
David Roth ( @david_j_roth ) of Defector ( @DefectorMedia ) joins me to talk about one of the most memorable ad campaigns in the history of sports and pop culture, Reebok's $30,000,000 1992 "Dan vs. Dave" commercials that briefly turned two decathletes into household names and was supposed to culminate with one of them being crowned the world's greatest athlete at the Barcelona Olympics. Along the way we remember plenty of guys and dig deeper into the way pop culture references from early adoles...
Apr 26, 2023•1 hr 2 min•Season 6Ep. 42
Question Kyle joins me for musings on concept albums as I fondly recall the 1999 gimmick-compilation "Short Music for Short People" from the pop-punk mavens at Fat Wreck Chords. The idea: 101 bands, 101 songs, each one 30 seconds long. The royalty of the genre all contributed - Blink-182, NOFX, The Offspring, everyone you remember from the late Clinton years. An impressive, if not especially listenable, idea for an album. The podcast opens with a brief sample of "Ketchup Soup" by the Teen Idols,...
Mar 14, 2023•38 min
Motivated by the Chinese balloon story that recently if briefly dominated the news, Kelsey Atherton ( @AthertonKD ) joins me to talk about PROJECT GENETRIX (1956), a Pentagon scheme to float almost 600 balloons over remote parts of the USSR and China. Turns out balloons are not well-suited to espionage duty for reasons that should be obvious to anyone over the age of ten. We also talk plenty about the recent balloon incident, the link between GENETRIX and the phenomenon of UFO sightings, and abo...
Mar 10, 2023•45 min•Season 5Ep. 40
At the height of the Cold War, the looming existential dread of human extinction in a nuclear holocaust was punctuated by a three-way battle for the Grand Ballroom of New York City's famous Waldorf-Astoria Hotel fought by Nikita Khrushchev, the US State Department, and the American Dental Association. You'll never guess who won. These podcasts are ad-free and self-produced; I value your support on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/ginandtacos . The book referenced in this episode is available w...
Feb 13, 2023•11 min
Labor journalist and author Max Alvarez ( @maximillian_alv ) takes a break from hosting the essential podcast Working People (@WorkingPod) and reporting for Real News Network to talk about the recent labor issues on America's freight railroads. Also joining us is Matt Weaver, a maintenance of way crew member based in Toledo working for freight giant CSX. He’s active with BMWED-IBT 2624, a Teamsters-affiliated union for whom he has recently been chosen to serve as legislative director for his sta...
Dec 12, 2022•54 min•Season 5Ep. 37
Dr. Erin Thompson ( @ArtCrimeProf ), the Art Crime Professor , joins me to talk about her book Smashing Statues: The Rise and Fall of America's Public Monuments. We cover the illusory permanence of monuments, the politics of taking them up (and down), and the fate of removed monuments sitting in storage right now, waiting for a more reactionary political climate to re-erect them. Question Cathy joins me for the mailbag, where we discuss the Denver Broncos, Starbucks workers' organizing efforts, ...
Nov 02, 2022•1 hr 1 min•Season 5Ep. 36
In which I stoop to being my own guest on my own podcast to talk about my book, which is available from wherever you prefer to get books in Ebook , Hardcover , and Audiobook formats. If you listen to this podcast you're almost certainly aware by now that I have a book, and in fact you may be sick of hearing about it. Nonetheless, here's a little teaser if you're still on the fence about checking it out....
Oct 20, 2022•8 min
Two vagabonds with great luck and big balls perpetrate a hoax that made them extremely rich and hoodwinked some of the finest, most respectable citizens of early Gilded Age America. In our modern era of boring electronic fraud, the romance of walking into a bank with a bag of dirty diamonds you claim you pulled out of a hidden mine is hard to match. These podcasts are ad-free and self-produced; I value your support on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/ginandtacos.
Sep 02, 2022•17 min
Dr. Olufemi Taiwo ( @OlufemiOTaiwo ) joins us with his new book Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else) . We talk about the future of organizing and activism and what those of us without power should be doing to avoid falling into the traps more powerful actors set for us. I also do my best to embarrass him by recalling an incident from ~2005, when he and I first met in a classroom at Indiana University. Please support Mass for Shut-ins, an independent a...
May 27, 2022•50 min•Season 5Ep. 35
This is a quick teaser to let non-Patreon subscribers know that you missed the last Minicast, which I uploaded two weeks ago on Patreon . I won't be putting all Minicasts behind the paywall, but this one was a special treat for subscribers. If you want to listen and can spare $1, join at https://www.patreon.com/ginandtacos
May 24, 2022•1 min
The resplendent radio voice of Ryan Cooper joins me to talk about his new book, How Are You Going to Pay For That? Smart Answers to the Dumbest Question in Politics . You might be familiar with his writing from his tenure at The Week, or from his cohosting duties on the Left Anchor podcast . He currently is the managing editor of the American Prospect . We talk the social welfare state, unemployment, why workers being able to quit lousy jobs drives so many people crazy, and Spuds MacKenzie, Reag...
Apr 08, 2022•49 min•Season 5Ep. 34
In 1989 Kraft held a promotional sweepstakes (grand prize: a new minivan) with game pieces in packages of Kraft Singles and due to a series of errors, every single one was a winner. By the time they caught the mistake, over 10,000 people had already "won" $17,000+ minivans. Kraft is based in the Chicagoland area, so the heavy local coverage this fiasco received in Summer '89 led 10 year-old me to believe this was the biggest news story of the century. Of course in reality, nobody really noticed ...
Mar 24, 2022•8 min
The Glass-Steagall banking bill was one of the most important progressive reforms of the 20th Century. It's gone now, but as often happens with members of Congress, Glass and Steagall have been almost entirely forgotten. Glass's story offers some very interesting insights into how the ideological range of American politics has narrowed. Because Glass and Steagall, the Great Reformers, were actually interested in preventing reform. I value your support on Patreon....
Feb 28, 2022•8 min
Guest: Steve Mang, college professor and amateur ultra-long-distance runner, joins us to talk about CC Pyle's Bunion Derbies, the informal name of two LA-to-NYC footraces held in 1928 and 1929. Amateur runners, some lacking basic equipment or running experience, ran an average of 50 miles per day for at least 84 consecutive days. Steve gives non-runners like me some insight into the, let's call them "challenges" the human body experiences under those conditions. For the cocktail of the month we ...
Jan 07, 2022•1 hr 9 min•Season 5Ep. 33
Alexander Fleming's discovery of penicillin in 1928 had little immediate impact on the world because it took over 15 years to crack the secret of how to mass-produce the it. Until that happened, penicillin existed more as an idea than as a medical intervention. The code to producing it in big batches was finally cracked in, of all places, Peoria, Illinois thanks to the timely intervention of a cantaloupe. I value your support on Patreon....
Nov 15, 2021•12 min
Will the US mint a trillion-dollar coin? Probably not, but in 2001 the tiny island nation (I know, I know) of Vanuatu created $300 million overnight by quadrupling its sovereign debt using as its stated collateral a 182-pound ruby that may or may not actually have existed. I value your support on Patreon.
Sep 24, 2021•12 min
In 1975 a right-wing loon purchased 300 acres of swampland outside Cape Canaveral with the dream of building a theme park recreating the experience of a US Special Forces barracks in a rural Vietnamese hamlet at the height of the war. Visitors could take turns firing a machine gun at real Vietnamese refugees play-acting as Viet Cong, while replica thatched huts dispensed souvenirs and snacks. Oh, and there were punji stakes. Real punji stakes. And a lot of barbed wire. I value your support on Pa...
Aug 24, 2021•7 min
After a player died from being hit by a pitch in 1920, Major League Baseball banned the "spitball." But it allowed 17 players whose careers were determined to be dependent on it to continue throwing it. A century later, baseball is still dealing with what it now calls the "foreign substances" issue. The physics and history of baseball's dirtiest pitch, plus a guy named Urban Shocker. I value your support on Patreon.
Jun 25, 2021•11 min
