Podcast 21 Transcript

A transcript for Episode 21: Jesse Thorn Interview (2008-01-18).

Pronoiac passed the podcast to otter.ai.

Summary keywords

people, filter, thread, thought, metal, favorite, totally, porn, awesome, book, interview, sites, solid gold, wiki, started, post, peewee, photos, meta, big

Transcript

Unknown Speaker 0:07 Jessamyn Welcome to the metal filter podcast.

mathowie 0:12 Welcome to Episode 21 of the metal filter podcast today we have an interview with Jesse thorn from the sound of young America and recaps from metal filter AskMe Metafilter. In the last month since our last podcast with Jessamyn and me

like to welcome Jesse thorn to the Metafilter podcast today, Jesse. Thanks for Yes,

Jesse Thorn 0:47 that's me

mathowie 0:48 joining is almost getting radio like there.

Jesse Thorn 0:52 We're on our way.

mathowie 0:54 So I guess I've been a long failure show for about a year or so. Back when Merlin showed me you had Jonathan Coulton on long time ago. It was like a year and a half old show or something. I've sort of been a fan ever since. And I've been thinking of interviewing you. And then there's finally a post about sound young American metal filter.

Jesse Thorn 1:16 Yeah, so I can finally legitimately be summarized.

mathowie 1:20 Yeah. Yeah. So people asked me, Hey, you should interview him? And I said, Right. Sure. So here we are.

Jesse Thorn 1:27 That was my position. Exactly.

mathowie 1:31 I guess I should mention up front a slight disclaimer that I guess I'm underwriting your show now. And this isn't meant to be like a Flintstones meet the Jetsons or anything. But uh,

Jesse Thorn 1:41 it's more of a it's more of a Scooby Doo meets the Harlem Globe.

mathowie 1:47 Yeah, it makes a little more sense, but not too much

Jesse Thorn 1:50 of the metal like lemon of Public Radio.

mathowie 1:55 Well, I figured I could throw, you know, 100 bucks in the OPB. Well, or I can actually directly support you know, someone who produces a program I like, it just seems a lot more, you know, direct.

Jesse Thorn 2:07 Well, God bless OPB, especially if they ever pick up the sound of God bless you first and foremost, for paying my rent.

mathowie 2:16 You have to be so diplomatic about that stuff. So I guess I guess I have to ask you to describe what's the sound of young America how long it's been around? Yeah.

Jesse Thorn 2:28 Well, it's, it has existed in some form or other for coming up on like, gosh, seven years, something like that. It started out as my college radio show. I started when I was a sophomore at UC Santa Cruz, here in California. And there's a pretty significant college station there like this station with a real transmitter and a real audience. And me and a couple of my buddies, Gene O'Neill and Jordan Morris started this talk show and we didn't really know how hard it was to do a talk show. When we started it turns out it's just spectacularly hard.

mathowie 3:02 Was it daily or weekly II it was weekly, it

Jesse Thorn 3:05 was an hour a week and that was the smallest time slot we could catch. It's just I have so much like for somebody like say a Howard Stern or something who talks for five hours every day. I can't imagine how they possibly do it. i It's boggles my mind. But that's beside the point. The point is, so I did it with Jordan and Jean for him until they graduated from college. And then once they graduated from college, I continued to do it sort of first with CO hosts and then by myself and I was living in San Francisco long graduated from college driving, borrowing my mom's car to drive to Santa Cruz once a week to do the show on my college radio station. It was getting really sad. And then about a year and a half ago, maybe I moved from my college radio station to the large public radio station in Santa Cruz que USP. Apparently somebody on the board of K USP listened to college radio a lot and liked my show. And maybe three months ago, four or four months ago, July, I started being distributed nationally by Public Radio International. So that's sort of the history of the show that what the show is, is it's basically an arts and entertainment interview show like like a fresh air weekend or something like that. But with sort of a different cultural perspective. It's basically the Christ, the sole criterion for getting on the sound of young America is whether I think it is awesome. Whatever it is, so a lot of comedy and just a lot of things that are fun and cool indie rock and hip hop, also well represented in the in the guests, which of course is kind of unusual for the world of Public Radio.

mathowie 4:45 Didn't you move to LA in the last year? So

Jesse Thorn 4:48 yeah, about a year ago, I moved from San Francisco to LA my fiance's in law school down here at Loyola and you know, it's Los Angeles. I don't want to offend the people who posted that article on meta filter about how amazing Los Angeles is because you don't ever have any and no one ever has any expectations of you, because nobody cares about anyone else. But stay with Zillow save from Los Angeles has been a big cultural adjustment for me from San Francisco. But the big advantage is that, unlike San Francisco, lots and lots of people are here regularly, that I would want to have on my show. I mean, whether they whether or not they live here, they're at least going to come through and being nationally syndicated. One of the big differences is that public radio stations won't stand for phone interviews, which is what I did almost exclusively when I was in Santa Cruz, because no one was ever in person in Santa Cruz. Yeah, except for Bob Edwards once. So, you know, though, one of the big changes has been having to get people actually in person because I don't have a budget to rent studios, like other real radio shows do so. Back to get him in here into my apartment. So being in Los Angeles makes that a lot easier.

mathowie 6:03 I do have to confess that like, as I'm going through your archives, you know, you must have what like two three years of archives of shows on the website, maximum fun.org for anyone listening. You know, half of the old ones are like phones, and I'll like have it on my iPod ready to go as a you know, podcast on the road now. Oh, man, this is a phone one, because the sound quality is not as good.

Jesse Thorn 6:28 Yeah, well, I mean, it would now they're all great. Yeah, I mean, it was, you know, it's it's, it's sacrifices and whatever. I mean, a lot of people, a lot of public radio, people are always asking me, how did you get such great guests, when you were on college radio and besides sort of, sort of moderate level of kind of deception, obfuscation and sophistry about what what my show actually was. The other thing that I was able to do was just get people on the phone. I mean, you know, I had Chuck D on the show, he was driving from like, Atlanta to, you know, Tallahassee or something like that when I interviewed him,

mathowie 7:07 man. How long is Jordan Jesse go been around. That's our view. And Jordan from the original show, shooting the shit for an hour to each week, right?

Jesse Thorn 7:17 Yeah, that we just celebrated. Our first anniversary actually didn't even notice except a couple. A couple of listeners emailed me to congratulate me. I had no idea. But yeah, the the other big advantage of living in Los Angeles is, you know, Jordan is not only my former co host on the sound of young America, but he's also pretty much my best pal. And he's also the funniest person I've ever known in real life. So I get to hang out with him on the radio for an hour on the fake radio, the internet radio right now or so? And yeah, I mean, like, I'm that has that was something that we started because I just wanted to do it because he's my friend. And I just love doing it. And it still feels that way. Absolutely. Like sometimes the sound of young America is work because I have all these weird requirements I have to do. But on Jordan, Jesse, go, I can really do whatever the fuck I want. And it's, it's really great. Like saying fuck, for example. Yeah. But like, I had a request on the sound of young America recently, and he was telling me about how he listens to Jordan Jessika, which a blew my mind could not believe could not even imagine that actually happening in real life. But he likes sited specific things about Jordan, Jesse, go and demonstrate it to me. It freaks me out, to be honest. Okay, so that's number one. But number two ways. He was saying, oh, gosh, I wish I could do something like Jordan, Jesse go where? The there's no requirements, you can just play. Yeah, I was like, and I just told him, you know, hey, Ira, if you want to post it. Like I got, I got webspace for that kind of thing, Ira.

mathowie 8:55 Yeah, I remember hearing that I couldn't believe it either. Because like, I have been going through the back catalogue of sound Young America and George Jesse, go, man, you have to be a kind of a superfan at that point to you know, it's just so much time. And there's so many of those shows, too. And I, I couldn't I was astounded when I heard him say he listened to it, like is he have any time for?

Jesse Thorn 9:14 I mean, I don't know how he could ever have time for anything. I mean, that poor guy is making a radio show and a TV show at the same time. And I you know, one of the reasons that I have moved towards move towards the kind of show that I do now on the sound of young America, which is sort of long form interviews that aren't super heavily edited, is just a time issue. Like that's what I can manage, you know, like, I can't I you know, I could create if I was producing this American lifestyle pieces, you know, you can maybe produce one of those if one person can produce one of those in maybe a month. Yeah. And that's if you're really good at it, which of course I'm not. So I mean, the the involvement of the production of that show was like off the charts.

mathowie 9:59 Well, One thing I liked about your show is the the interviews. I think you're somewhere in the middle of like Charlie Rose I think of is like kid gloves, soft balls, nothing but soft balls. And Terry Gross rarely challenges her interviewees, but I thought the Ira Glass one was pretty good because the middle got a little slightly heated. I think he diffused it pretty quick. But I don't know, I just liked that there was a bit honest. And I mean, you kind of you weren't mocking him or calling him on stuff, but it was. I think you were, I seen you do so a lot of interviewees, basically, you know, ask them honestly about, you know, maybe weaknesses in their approach or their shows or what they do? Like, I mean, you asked them like, Are you always looking for drama and everything? Like, Aren't you overdoing it a bit? Like, does everything have to be a story?

Jesse Thorn 10:55 I mean, I just feel like it would be really easy for me interviewing Ira Glass, who, you know, I mean, I wouldn't work in public radio, if it weren't for Ira Glass being in the world. I mean, I've never aspired to make anything that was like This American Life. But it has been the most inspirational thing to me, in terms of just the idea that somebody could have a great idea that was not like the other things on Public Radio, and then put it on public radio and be successful, like that is exceptionally inspirational to me. And so I realized this sort of, I mean, you know, like, he's definitely top 10 Heroes of Jesse. So I thought it would be really easy for the interview to slip into, you know, Chris Farley show from Saturday night. Yeah. So, and I mean, with everybody, it's like, I wouldn't ask, you know, I'm not trying to get IRA. Yeah, I'm not trying to stick it to him. I'm not Mike Wallace on 60 minutes. But like, there, I think IRA is thought more than anyone else about what the format of his show is. And it's very tightly formatted. And it's a very specific thing. And, you know, he's, he's thought about what the positive and negative aspects of that are. And, you know, you don't really hear a lot of that. I mean, you hear these kinds of criticisms of This American Life from time to time, like this recent article that was in what, like the Atlantic, or Harper's or something like that, that was about the ascent of the quirky and twee in popular culture that was totally ridiculous, just totally inane. And that's usually the level of criticism that This American Life gets, but I don't think it's above criticism, you know, like, I think there's problems. So, but I knew that I would have answers to my questions, you know, and they would be interesting answers. And he, and it was true. I mean, he, he's a, he's a brilliant guy, and he does what he does advisedly. So. And he gave really sincere, careful answers to my questions, you know, yes, I had a friend who had his story sort of chronicled on This American Life. And I thought, I personally felt like it got a bit warped in that process. And so, given, given that fact, I sort of had the opportunity to use that as a wedge to get into what Iran's ideas are about what nonfiction should be, which is, you know, he was on the book to talk, but he was on the show to talk about his book, which is this really wonderful compilation of nonfiction pieces, and they're all sort of tied together with this manifesto that I wrote, that's the introduction of the thing that's very specific ideas about what nonfiction and reporting specifically can be. And I thought, Well, my my buddy's experience is my buddy, Charlie Todd, who's the boss of this comedy group, everywhere. My buddy's experience could be an interesting way to get into that. So which I thought it was, you know, I mean, we moved on from that relatively quickly, but it's, you know, you're always looking for a way to get into the important stuff.

mathowie 13:59 Yeah, I don't think I've ever heard anyone, you know, question Iris. You know, sometimes the shows a little formulaic you know, maybe too much and

Jesse Thorn 14:07 I think always the show is very formulaic.

mathowie 14:10 I think it's just trying to be nice there. But yeah,

Jesse Thorn 14:13 I thought you whether it's for good or ill, you know.

mathowie 14:15 Yeah, you're you're the first person I'd ever heard not just purely fun over him and but actually challenged him a little bit.

Jesse Thorn 14:22 Well, I've got I've gotten an autographed poster of him on my wall that I can look at and see right now, so no need to worry about whether I hold him in high regard.

mathowie 14:33 How do you get the guests do you get? I mean, it seems like a lot of them are kind of elec alt comedy people in the sort of six degrees of separation from there. But how about, yeah, how do you convince people to come over to your apartment now and record a show?

Jesse Thorn 14:50 It's weird. I just interviewed two of the guys from the band les Savi, five on Saturday night for a show that's going to air sometime in January and I went to pick them up at the El Rey theater here in LA where they were they just finished their soundcheck and I talked to Tim Tim, the lead singer of the band. And I was like, Hey, I'm Jesse, we, you know, whatever. I'm here to pick you up to go do a radio interview. And he says, Oh, are we gonna go over to your apartment or whatever? And I'm like, Yes, but you Why do you know that? And he's like, Oh, well, I I've heard the show, I was in a show all the time on WNYC and stuff. Oh, so like, being on real radio stations is kind of amazing. Like the fact that, you know, people who live in New York have often heard my show, and they know what it is like, they're familiar with it. That's completely new to me after seven years. But before I think you're right, like, comedians are a group that are relatively easy to book because they, you know, unlike actors who have to be on the set for like, in 14 hour shifts, comedians, for when they perform, you know, they're performing and that's like three hours of their day, but then the rest of the time, they're, you know, doing whatever they're doing, you know, writing or messing around or going on on audition or something. And so they're relatively easy to book because, you know, they have a lot of self interest in promoting themselves and some free time. And I think also, you know, once I've done a couple interviews with really credible people, you know, if you go to Demetri Martin and say, oh, you know, I've interviewed Patton, Oswald and Louie CK, like, you know, Demetri Martin's like, Oh, this is a guy who chose funny comedians to have on his show, instead of, you know, Mike and the lobster man, who, you know, play the Austin power sound effects on the morning show, you know, so that's one thing. And then, you know, I don't know I have my system. Here's the thing, like, I'm kind of a lazy guy. And I'm just hate making phone calls. It makes me really uncomfortable. And I'm just not tenacious. And I also don't get a rush of adrenaline from closing a deal. So those are all qualities that make me the worst radio producer ever, because those are basically the things that radio producers do. So my system usually involves just asking any, anytime I think of somebody I'd like to have on the show, I kind of figure out how I could ask them to come on the show. And then I asked, and if they don't get back to me, I usually just forget that I ever asked them, and then ask them again, like two years later, when I think of it again. And if they get back to me, then I try and schedule something. So I just try and make sure it's sort of like what you would do like if you wanted to get more mail at your house. You know, like you to get mail. If you want to get packages in the mail, you have to like send people letters, you know what I mean? So I just try and send out a lot of letters and hope that some people write back

mathowie 17:41 a tracking down people's what agent phone numbers or something.

Jesse Thorn 17:46 I had never dealt with agents. It's weird. Like there's all these different kinds of publicists.

mathowie 17:49 I mean, I wouldn't know how to get to Demetri Martin right now, I could probably think of a friend I could ask in New York that kind of knows him. But

Jesse Thorn 17:58 yeah, I mean, I hate ice once in a while. You know, some folks have helped me in the, hey, I've got a friend who would be perfect for your show area. You know, for example, you mentioned Jonathan Coulton earlier, you know, Jonathan Coulton came to me through John Hodgman, who came on my show, shortly after his first book came out before he was on The Daily Show and stuff like that, and just had a really good time and is now kind of like my buddy. Yeah. So like Hodgman is helped me, you know, he knows people. And he'll suggest someone, someone who a publicist wouldn't necessarily book like, say, I had Allison Silverman, who's the head writer of The Colbert Report on my show. And if I called Comedy Central and said, I want to have the head writer on, they would think I was crazy, they would just ignore me. I know, because I've tried that kind of thing before. Whereas, you know, if, if I just email her and say, Hey, Alison, John Hodgman, give me your email address or whatever, then she might say yes. But like, generally, it's just, you know, people, when people are in town to do something, they do a lot of publicity. Or like, when people have a book out, they do a lot of publicity. And they tend to go on publicity tours, and you know, like, you just kind of figure out how you can get to people. And, you know, I don't, I don't really give a hoot about timeliness. Or, like, if I think you're awesome, I think you're just as awesome, like, before or six months after your book came out as you are like in the initial media frenzy. So I think that also helps from time to time, you know, yes. I also booked the occasional like, you know, like maybe Henry Rollins, who's one of the coolest people I've ever had on my show, and was one of my favorite interviews I've ever done. You know, like he was on like, a Stand Up Tour or something. You know, I don't know, you know, Henry Rollins is an amazing guy. I'm not as nuts about a stand up. But you know, like, it's, you know, you just get them where you can get them. Yeah,

mathowie 19:54 yeah, I guess. What's the ultimate goal? Are you gunning for Terry Gross this job? I Oh, Just think of you as sort of the David Letterman to her Carson. Yeah, more mainstream, you know, not as funny.

Jesse Thorn 20:08 That would be, that would be amazing. I would, you know, I, I'm, I have a really great time doing the sound of young America like, it's, I just really liked doing it, you know, I mean, it's it was never my, it's I didn't grow up, you know, I'm sure Letterman grew up imagining himself being Carson every day, you know, and I didn't grow up imagining myself being Terry Gross. But I mean, that would be that would be even weirder than I was. But it's what a great thing to do. I mean, I just love doing it. And, you know, it's, I'm almost to the point where I consistently make lower middle class living. So, you know, like, my, my goals, I just have been taking it one step at a time. It's I had this conversation the other day with Nick Hornby when he was on my show. And he was talking about how he only really became a successful writer in his mid 30s. And, and he didn't really expect it. And he said, people always said he was so brave for sticking with writing. But actually, he kind of thought of himself as being as being kind of being kind of a coward, because he never like tried anything new or, like did anything different or anything, not because he was convinced that he was eventually going to become a success if he worked hard enough. But just because that was the only thing he had figured out. And he just thought he should stick to this thing that he kind of had figured out whether or not it was successful. And I totally empathize with that, like, I, you know, I've been doing I'm still doing my college radio show, basically. So like, all my goals are short term, short term goals, like my goals are like, get the program director of KQED in San Francisco to actually listen to the sound of young America and consider it for a time slot, like make friends with people at KCRW w here in LA. So maybe they'll carry the show, convince somebody in at this at the public radio station in Philo, California, that my show isn't to like big city for them, like stuff like that, like that's, you know, that's sort of that's sort of the kind of objections I have objectives. I have, like the only sort of big picture objectives I have, or maybe like, it would be really cool. If I if I sometime had Randy Newman on my show. Like, that's pretty much it. Like it's pretty much just I'd like to have Randy Newman on my show. That's like my, my only long term goal. At some point, I would like to have Randy Newman on my show, because I think Randy Newman is really cool. And funny, and really cool guy.

mathowie 22:40 I guess I'm doing the same thing. We have filters, like the first web app I ever wrote. So

Jesse Thorn 22:45 yeah, I mean, you just, I mean, do you think that you are still doing meta filter? Because you always had this amazing grand vision for what metal filter would be? Or because you've made this thing that you thought was kind of cool, and then you kind of stuck with it? And it's kind of working out? And you're like, hey, that's cool. It's, it's working now?

mathowie 23:01 Yes. Just sticking with it. Especially on the web, you know, it's been eight years anything on the web for eight years, it's like a dinosaur. So

Jesse Thorn 23:10 yeah, I mean, you do that you're then you know, you put up you're like, hey, what if we had a thing where people could like, ask a question to the other people? And people would answer it. And then all of a sudden, that's the most popular part of the website, you know, like, you just That's how I feel, you know, like, I'm just one step at a time and just begging for money twice a year on my podcast, so I can eat and then I kind of get along. Okay, got a dog recently that's working out? Well, you know, when they get engaged little things,

mathowie 23:38 when you get picked up by a show, does that mean they have to pay you?

Jesse Thorn 23:42 Yeah, well, what they what happens is they pay Public Radio International, and then I get a percentage of that money that they pay Public Radio International. So it's sort of every, it's like public television in the sense that every public radio station makes all their own programming decisions. So there's no like, I imagined a world where if I got picked up by one of the national distributors like NPR, or PRI, or American Public Media, that I would then automatically be making a living. But it turns out, that's not how it works. You had to like get a lot of stations to pick up your show before you even get enough money from stations for it to make be the living of one person.

mathowie 24:20 But aren't they supposed to represent you like an agent? And like sell you to hundreds of?

Jesse Thorn 24:25 Yeah, they kind of do. I mean, I have nothing bad to say about them, because they've really taken a they've taken a big risk and picking up my show, you know, like my show is really weird compared to other public they have no no idea whether it's going to be a success. Yeah. I mean, they have no reasonable no reason to expect that it will be. So you know, like, whatever effort they put in, I feel like it's kind of it's kind of craving. You know, like, I'm just happy to have their imprimatur on it so that I can when I call a station, it's not just like, hey, I'm this weird guy who still does this. college radio station in Santa Cruz. I'm also on in Hattiesburg, Mississippi Would you consider carrying the show which is about where I was at when I moved to K USP and and I had my first trial run on WNYC in New York

mathowie 25:14 Wow. Um, I guess just to wrap up Do you have any favorite moments or threads from meta filter you can think of or experiences with metal filter?

Jesse Thorn 25:25 Oh that's an interesting question you know there's this I'm something that is fresh at the top of my mind is this encyclopedic peewee post that is, as we record this up on meta filter right now that includes the entire the entire Pee Wee's Playhouse Christmas Special, which is just one of my favorite things ever. I mean, talk about top 10 Heroes way above eyeglasses, Paul Rubens is Peewee Herman there's a huge poster of him on my wall directly to my left and the the Christmas special where he is. Number one, he has almost naked men with construction belts building in addition to his house out of fruitcake number two, he has this amazing scene where him and magic screen go ice skating with Magic Johnson and he talks on the picture phone to Whoopi Goldberg. But the easily the best part is Charo tries to teach him Charles comes on sings Phillies Navidad. And then peewee goes like what is Phillies? Normally dad mean Jarrow? And then then Charlie goes like wait a peewee if anything me that means Merry Christmas in Spanish. Why don't you try Balete na vida peewee. And then peewee goes

oh, man, I gotta wait a few more days closer to Christmas. And then I'm gonna post that on my blog because Peewees man that what a great, great, great thing that is. You know, I just mentioned I got engaged. And when I was thinking about getting engaged, I posted on the AskMe metal filter about where I should buy an estate. Where was a good place to buy estate jewelry in Los Angeles. I got some recommendations for a place where I ended up buying my fiance's engagement rings. So it's from, from old favorites to new movers and shakers. metal filter is vitally important in the life of every public radio personality. And it didn't really make sense. But I figured if I kept the tone consistent until the end, maybe people would let it slide.

mathowie 27:43 That sounds like a perfect ad. Who does the voiceover for the metal filter plug anyway,

Jesse Thorn 27:50 the metal filter plug that you'd compared to some sort of system noise and Apple OSX as I recall, is our our intern, my intern Emma McDermott, she's from Northern Ireland. She lives in Dundee gall. And, or maybe she lives in Belfast now. But anyway, she's Northern, she's from Northern Ireland. And I thought, well, if every other public radio station in the country can have someone from Great Britain, doing all of their voiceovers than I can to. Actually, you know what it really was, I didn't want to do it myself because I thought it would be you know, more distinct if it came from a different voice than mine since Mine's the only one on the show. Yeah. So so it was either Emma the intern or my fiance or my dog. And I went with Emma because she's she's got some radio experience.

mathowie 28:45 Well, thanks for joining us today and that's about it.

Jesse Thorn 28:49 Oh, it's such it's such a pleasure man. Thank you thank you so much for having me and I just love I just love the metal filter did that Alright thanks.

Unknown Speaker 29:16 Another 737 rumbles overhead and they're always close enough shades or walls Die already know you haven't heard a word I've said over the den a freaking picture frames and China down the hall. Even though it's been like this

mathowie 29:39 All right, this is episode I don't know. Let me Ah, it's been a long time. It's been like a month.

Jessamyn 29:47 It's been way too long and we're gonna get like, it's been like six

mathowie 29:51 weeks, which is awesome.

Jessamyn 29:53 December 3. Well, and you know, part of the problem was it was holiday time you had a vacation. I was away for the holidays, nobody wants to do anything in the first two weeks of January. Yeah. So we're gonna try and be a little bit more on top of you talk to the guy from sounds of young America. Yeah. So let me fight.

mathowie 30:13 Yep. And I hope it's not out of date. We record that like before Christmas, and I was trying to get it out between the week and week between Christmas and New Year's then I had to guess, family stuff down south, and we never got that off. So yeah, that's okay. I don't think there's anything horribly out of date on it unless he says, come to my upcoming gig that happened, like on Monday night. Um, what else has happened in the last month? A whole bunch of, I guess? Well,

Jessamyn 30:43 tons of crazy stuff. I mean, first of all, we were just sort of winding down from the epic meta talk, threads talking about sexism and what to do. And then we wound up with the epic, sort of GiveWell event, which is the first event that's happened on meta filter that I've known that spawned this whole meta filter wiki. Let me tell you, what the heck is going on, you know, like crib sheet, which Oh, it's kind of interesting,

mathowie 31:13 you know, that actually helped, you know, 1000 comments. Yeah, it's just a nightmare for any normal person to wade through even for, you know, most meta filter rights. But, uh, it this happened with the Casey Nicole thing. Because everyone go read these three threads with 800 to 1000 comments in it, and you'll get the whole amazing story in the first

Jessamyn 31:32 thing. We're like I can has crib notes,

mathowie 31:36 please. Yeah, the first thing like a real reporter told me was like, Look, I've got all day to spend on this. But a lot of people move faster than that. So if you can get someone to make a fact out of the whole thing, that would be great. Like a one pager on the entire story with hyperlinks to the sources. And so like some member of netfilter did it so if you search for the KC Nicole, fac, you'll still get it to this day? I'm pretty sure. So it's good.

Jessamyn 32:00 Actually. No, it was on log boys site, and it's not there anymore. Oh, so we don't have one on the metal filter wiki. We're gonna have to dig that out. Oh, the Wayback Machine.

mathowie 32:10 Yeah, he had one detail wrong. And the whole thing I told him really early on to fix it. But otherwise, it was like an awesome rundown of basically 2000 comments. And I thought the GiveWell thing definitely deserved it. Especially because it's a really

Jessamyn 32:26 awesome job at like, summing it up and having the wiki be like a little bit more of a dispassionate, yeah, you know, exploitation of what actually happened. And

mathowie 32:36 I like how the wiki put on the same level that like, here's what the Holden guy did on meta filter. Here's what he did on six other sites because the story the simple version of the story was Guy astroturf on metal filter community revolts, and freaks out on him. Now he's fired. Like, that was the dumb 10 second version of the story, without all the nuance of it was actually slashing other charities, which is totally lame.

Jessamyn 33:02 And then he was as as not himself. Yeah.

mathowie 33:06 And then he was doing it on several sites and impersonating employees, emails,

Jessamyn 33:11 sites like life hacker and boingboing, which are like, you know, other big traffic sites, not just other like teeny tiny with no,

mathowie 33:17 no, no, sort of. What's the word? I'm looking for? loopholes? Yeah. No. There's no means to you know, Nobody judges comments. They're like they do on metal filter. There's no place to complain about hey, this is weird. This life hacker comment on life. Right?

Jessamyn 33:36 You centuries ahead and an email and hope asically I'm blank blank. You know, it's something weird

mathowie 33:40 at the very core of it. I was thinking about this the other day. What was Holden's first response when he first posted in meta takut. What he said was, I wasn't completely dishonest. I could have used an IP proxy server. Like, do you remember when I said that? That was the first thing you thought of was like, total anonymity hacking. That was like, wow, you're where you set the bar in the sand on ethical, not ethical is really far away from where I think it should be. Like, right now is his first response, like, Oh, I could have been totally anonymous and, like, used a friend's Pay Pal and used a proxy server, like so I'm being good.

Jessamyn 34:23 And you read I mean, it actually, you know, it's the gift that keeps on giving. There was basically a second article in The New York Times about what happened to the other person.

mathowie 34:34 Oh, the alley guy or l le guy who actually

Jessamyn 34:38 well, he only got busted for like one self reported fake comment using his girlfriend's name on another site, but this article in the Times is actually a little bit more colorful than the last one. But you know, he did also get dinged in the New York Times did write about it, you know, on its newspaper. So I mean, that's kind of

mathowie 35:00 Oh, yeah. Oh, this is like an actual article. I think the first one was just a blog post, like on New York time.

Jessamyn 35:05 No, I think the other one was was a real article too. Oh, wow. So

mathowie 35:09 the MN speak that's Astro zombie. Right? Pretty sure.

Jessamyn 35:13 I think so. I think so. We Yeah, he told me zombie who gets like Scooby Dum credits in the in the sort of GiveWell threads. Like it's the mods and Astro zombie.

mathowie 35:26 Like the day it launched, the day it happening. I moderate, you know, this Minneapolis site, and we got this weird comment, and I'm gonna watch it. And I think it might be one of them. But right, right, right, but Right, that's interesting.

Jessamyn 35:44 Well, the whole thing was really interesting and cortex and Miko both spent a lot of time like on other sites. I did too, like explaining what was going on. Miko says the Chronicle of Philanthropy is actually going to do a print article about the whole thing. We had a bunch of new members from other sites, which was sort of good news and bad news and DW. I don't know how he pronounces his name, who works at nonprofits also spent a lot of time ANACS. There was, like a lot of mefites, who don't participate, who participate like a normal amount really, like kind of stepped up and were like, look, I really want to explain to you how nonprofit philanthropy works. And yeah, they really, I think, made the community look even awesomer and sort of more well rounded. It was really cool. From my perspective,

mathowie 36:29 yeah, Miko is awesome, just from the very start, even for noticing it, but like just breaking it down. But I think you can get like an awesome article, especially for like a philanthropy centered, magazine or journal, just saying, look, it's you know, whatever, philanthropy 2.0 It's the web. It's everything's on the internet now. But here's how not to do it. Like, here's how not to fake your way through the internet. Like,

Jessamyn 36:54 the whole issue was, if they hadn't been totally committed to this radical transparency notion, this wouldn't have hit them on the ass. So far, so hard. But they were like, totally, like, we're an open book. And so now they have these, like, audio recordings of their board meetings that now everybody's picking over with a fine tooth comb, and it's like, how do you like it? How do you like it? You know, like, it's difficult, isn't it? Yeah. Whereas I think for a lot of people who've been living online for longer, that seems less crazy, but we also kind of know how to do it better. You know, yeah, I'm a lot smarter about what I put online, because I know it come back and bite me on the ass in five years. Like, I just have that consciousness about it.

mathowie 37:34 I mean, it's just also like, I don't know, I think we're from a different time or something. Where we just know, like, you know, just be a nice person online, like you are in real life. And you know, not bad things won't really happen. And I just think someone who maybe was 10 years younger than me, just grew up, you know, goofing

Jessamyn 37:55 around, doesn't have that same faith or same idea.

mathowie 37:58 I didn't have the internet till I was like, you know, whatever. 22 or something. So if I that was

Jessamyn 38:03 really, I just barely had it in college. Yeah, we've talked about this. Yeah.

mathowie 38:07 But if I was like, 12, and you know, all the porn, I wanted all the software I ever wanted to, you know, hack on music is basically free. Yeah. Like, I might not have the same sort of ethics and respect for karma and stuff like that.

Jessamyn 38:22 Right, right, right. And I was very excited because it made people look at the wiki a whole bunch more. And we've started, actually, this was the other thing I was gonna mention, we've started trying to actually group some things together on the wiki. So all those like best have asked me things that have been started on the wiki we now have like category, which I know is kind of like small and ridiculous. But you know, it's kind of neat, because it means that somebody who wants to go find best have asked me threads can now find them in one in one category called Ask Me collections, which I just wanted to mention, because I'm very proud of it. Even though it wasn't particularly complicated. Some

mathowie 38:58 of that stuff started with the awesome what was that? Was it the cooking thread? Or is it the book thread? I think it's a cooking. Well, there

Jessamyn 39:06 have been a couple.

mathowie 39:07 Yeah, so we did the monster, like every awesome cooking thread ever on asthma filter in one gigantic page. That was pretty

Jessamyn 39:15 Yeah. And so now there's like four or five of them. And they can be reached all together through this one category, in addition to each individual page standing on its own,

mathowie 39:24 which is mail fixing help in the books. That's awesome. Wow, this is a lot of work.

Jessamyn 39:29 It warms my librarian heart.

mathowie 39:34 This is just so much work and never end but it's so helpful to everybody to have these shortcuts for like well

Jessamyn 39:41 and the easier it is to find on the general internet, the easier it is. I mean, it's hard, right? Yeah. You don't want to attract like total spam bots, but you really want people to add and maybe nice and maybe we

mathowie 39:52 can do this at the top level categories or

Jessamyn 39:54 something like that would be nice when we design the header Yeah, or like

mathowie 39:59 this cooking We'd like to eat me list. Maybe that should go if you're like in the cooking category or something. I mean, people aren't on the category pages very often. But

Jessamyn 40:09 I think we need to Yeah, sink a little bit about sort of sidebar to bring it back out tweaking.

Unknown Speaker 40:30 Lightning flashes, in my mind. Sometimes it is hard to have fun. I don't know how it could be so blind.

Jessamyn 40:44 This was just recently happened, but everybody was talking about their desks. Yeah. And so everybody, I mean, I thought it was kind of interesting. I saw your desk PBCs core Texas desk by desk and like 100 other people's desks. And you know, all of those pictures are easily sort of linkable? Where me fights make their magic, I guess.

mathowie 41:04 Wow. Though. The metal filter tags all desks cool. on Flickr. P gern. That's an office.

Jessamyn 41:14 Oh, yeah. He comments on my Flickr photos a lot. It's cool.

mathowie 41:17 He's the guy that had the cool. Vietnam photos. I don't know if we mentioned in the last podcast,

Jessamyn 41:23 the Vietnam policy? I think we did. Okay. So moving on, what else have you thought was awesome. Do you want to start talking about Metafilter?

mathowie 41:31 Yeah, we probably should Metafilter I don't have a ton. Let me see. Oh, well, let's get the other metal filters out of the way.

Jessamyn 41:39 The other metal filters? What do you mean, the other metal filter jobs? Tell us about That's right.

mathowie 41:45 jobs. And when we do projects really quick?

Jessamyn 41:48 Well, the job that I saw that I thought looked really good was the temporary web designer for the Guggenheim. That's pretty cool. Where basically, they wanted somebody to do some like small time stuff for their publication department. But maybe, maybe that person could get hired in the long run. And it was kind of cool, because it's like, they wanted people with familiarity with new Internet technologies such as well, RSS. But, you know, they wanted somebody who was really kind of on top of things, and it might turn into a real job and the Guggenheim would be sort of awesome. Yeah.

mathowie 42:24 Yeah, I mean, I worked I got I busted my chops on working for UCLA on web sites for departments and professors and stuff and CMS is it's an awesome way to cut your teeth in the industry. And these things usually aren't all life consuming, like a startup. So you have a life after work and you get to get home go home. Yeah, and if it's if money's an issue, because you don't get paid a lot, no nonprofit world, but you know, you can consult all night if you want on building sites for rock bands, or whatever to make a little extra cash.

Jessamyn 42:58 And you get discounted the museum store. Yeah, and

mathowie 43:01 you get to get to work there. That's pretty damn cool is it?

Jessamyn 43:04 I would, I would like that I was, like, just an awesome place to like, get to just walk into that was my favorite thing about library school is it was in the library. So every day that you went to school, you got to walk into the library and then go through this little door. And the library school was like inside it. So yeah, it was cool has nothing to do with jobs or the Guggenheim.

mathowie 43:25 My favorite project I like to bike acts from slacker manager is actually a dude that lives slightly near me. This is sort of the site I always wanted to build. Just sort of a sharing tips on commuting with a bike or like they have how to make your own like bags for your bike out of like plastic and duct tape and how to like rig fenders up and stuff. It's pretty useful stuff.

Jessamyn 43:53 That sounds nice bike hackery culture is really is really sort of up and coming. And I think we mentioned albies Music podcast last time, but I just wanted to make sure everybody seen like he's still he's still working on it. It's been cool. So yeah, we can encourage him to talk more and not just play the songs. But if you're looking for an entry into music without listening to every song every day. Yeah, do it.

mathowie 44:18 Sometimes it feels like drinking from the firehose to just listen to everything from music.

Jessamyn 44:23 Although you guys fix the the Flash Player, right? You should mention Paul, or Paul did.

mathowie 44:30 So it's easier to let me see you can switch tabs now. And all browsers keep playing music or we did the pop out. So like on the front page of metal filter. If you want to hear everything on the front page of metal to the last 50 songs or whatever, you can just hit the go down the right side, the bottom or the custom list. There's a little player, but there's also a little pop out the pop outs awesome it just you can just keep that sort of Running on the side as a music player and browse about your day

Jessamyn 45:05 totally awesome so down in the corner little pop out link I

Unknown Speaker 45:10 don't know why perfect

Unknown Speaker 45:16 brown even hold this down big often see the best price and

mathowie 45:30 oh I guess we'll play I think I'm gonna play resolve music through say something really quick and cut into later or something like baby Balrogs banjo fiddle stuff awesome always.

Jessamyn 45:42 What's the name of his band?

mathowie 45:45 Catfish? No, wait, that was John, who hit John.

Jessamyn 45:51 Yes, they've got a MySpace page. That's totally fun. And I told them I thought they should play our next metal filter. Versary Yes, because yeah, totally, totally fun.

mathowie 46:00 I always tried to get cortex to get the Harvey girls to play. But we thought it arcade it would be less than ideal that everyone's chup chup chup chup chup chup. Okay, play some acoustic music. And then

Jessamyn 46:12 right you need to have like some big room and have the band play at one end and the bar at the other whatever. So maybe we'll you know, next party in Michigan.

mathowie 46:20 No Miss Pac Man machines in between. Doo doo, doo doo doo. So there's the also like this. Nothing to say I guess. You are else. And you can see everyone's using this. And it's got answers to everyone's using it kind of as a gig filter now so we really need to build one.

Jessamyn 46:40 Yes. Gig filter on on the to do list.

mathowie 46:43 Yeah. And political science song. I also like to Randy Newman cover. And we'll you'll hear it throughout this. Yeah, it's funny. Three of the four songs we both liked. Yeah. People are like, Hey, I also have MySpace. I have a gig tonight. Which is cool. And we really

Jessamyn 46:59 well, and especially those guys, I mean, they're in Boston. So I was like, you're almost close enough for me to come see you. Like tell me what your Manchester blog will be awesome. So for now, I just I'm friends with them on MySpace. But that's really suboptimal.

mathowie 47:15 MySpace in general suboptimal?

Jessamyn 47:17 Yeah. I hate having to go there. And lastly, the other only thing I wanted to talk about before Metafilter meta talk is or asked me to filter was Carson B's. Astounding. 210 favorites. Shadow you back alleys of metal filter. Metal talk post. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Which was a great thread about like, weird crap that showed up like once and then disappeared. Nobody ever permalinks and Carson was up late drinking coffee and look through like 1000 meta talk threads. And yeah, all the cool shit he found there, which is now also on the wiki.

mathowie 47:56 Yes, this is really great threads saying an awesome because we're always just sporadically doing one off things probably once a week, there's just something like, Hey, we just made this one off page. You know, here's everyone with that listed something in their jobs in their occupation field and stuff like that. Right? A lot of Yeah, I can't find this stuff myself a lot of times.

Jessamyn 48:21 No, you just have to remember like, oh, we actually did that once. So at any rate, that's also on the wiki, but it's the best metal talk thread of recent memory, especially because nobody's fighting, everybody's happy.

mathowie 48:33 Well, it's also like, I guess this is sort of an information architecture problem. And that when you come up with all these one off things, you know, I think this is where the wiki probably fills the void. It's not a good place to throw just grab bag of every wacky crappy thing that's popped out. We

Jessamyn 48:50 used to have like it, et cetera, paid Yes, for I don't even remember what that was. It was for

mathowie 48:55 like, here's what IRC is about. And here's that, like, donate money if you really wanted to.

Jessamyn 49:00 We had a scholarship. Here's a filter. So

mathowie 49:04 yeah. profile photos. Yeah, so we just make a lot of times when we add a feature, we add like a meta feature for us admins to see how people are using it. Like, here's a page of everyone's profile photos, when we added profile photos, just to see,

Jessamyn 49:22 here's the profile browser so that we can make sure Yeah, so uploading a photo of there, but

mathowie 49:29 I just wanted to see it and how are people using it?

Jessamyn 49:32 I wanted to make sure there was no goatse on the profile. Oh, yeah.

mathowie 49:35 So it's uh, yeah, it's cool to have a place for that stuff. Oh, I see travels on it. We're gonna try me and Paul. We're gonna try and finish travel by the end of this month. Okay, definitely this time, finally. Okay. Like that's all we're working on for the rest of the week starting tomorrow.

Jessamyn 49:52 Yes, let me know.

mathowie 49:56 Okay, let's go to the best of the metal filter.

Jessamyn 49:59 Best of metal filter, there's only one post that is on my best of metal filter Favorites List although I may have forgotten other awesome threads, but this one like hits me right in my like age group. And it's the which solid gold dancer Are you ah, thread, like it was 80s television it's not on display to who's the guy who did the gig in Boston and did one of the songs that we like to all of a sudden like showed up in my like universe out of nowhere with this awesome post and this awesome music. And it's like, it's about solid gold, the solid gold dancers who were like these kind of, like sluggy dancers that danced on this like top 10 TV show, but like it's not just that like the post is amazing. It's got all these links if you click through on the links, like some of them are YouTube videos, some of them are like solid gold answers, where are they now some of them are actually a lot of YouTube videos. But you know talks about like other people that blog about them the solid gold dancers website, the wiki page, you know, it's just it's just great and then everybody it felt like everybody came in and had to like say like, oh my god, I remember in 1980 Whatever, feeling this way about that and it was just sort of a you know, everyone comes together and looks at something together and it was a fun thread.

mathowie 51:19 The thing about solid gold I remember from childhood was that American Bandstand was just lily white Dum Dum music dumb dancing, all white kids and then Soul Train was like all black and like all r&b acts and all black kids mostly in the audience and the solid gold is kind of in the middle with half and half and it was like the most interesting of those are cheesy dance shows. And I just noticed when you look at all the dancers It's like a mix, which is like declerck is not an interesting guy personally in my life but yeah, like you know, there's black dancers white dancers is probably solid gold is more of a reflection of America

Jessamyn 52:02 especially with those costumes but ya know, I know what you mean there was a bunch of different kinds of people it was more like strong on on less like Bill Haley in the comments or whatever. But yeah, the thread was totally fun and everybody liked it. And yes, I enjoyed it. What else did you like about Metafilter?

mathowie 52:19 My favorite one was probably the photos Goofy, Goofy photos from Olin Mills photo studios and Sears and stuff just like awesome photos.

Jessamyn 52:31 Oh Astro zombie New Year's Eve or yeah the day before Yeah, I didn't I never even saw this

mathowie 52:38 is just awesome in that that they're like not I wrote some of them are ironic awesome photos of people in awful sweaters purposely go into like Sears to take photos of themselves being goofball but most of them are like people earnestly just wearing the craziest hair and the craziest sweaters and it's just sort of like fun found photography. Oh my god. It's very interesting.

Jessamyn 52:59 I'm looking through these right now. Wow. Wow. Yeah, it's like normal people looking normal sort of Southern Baptist Convention. Oh my god. Photos and album cover.

mathowie 53:15 Oh, man, that funny. Um,

Jessamyn 53:18 that's a great thread.

mathowie 53:19 In this sort of funny stuff. The lasagna cat thing from a couple days ago is hilarious because Garfield is so stupid and unfunny and someone to like act them out and try and make this the absurdity of it is just awesome. Just like it's good. Did you see these? They're pretty funny.

Jessamyn 53:36 No, I did not I saw that everybody loved them and I was like, you know I thought about Garfield in December because I was in Abu Dhabi and now I'm done thinking about

mathowie 53:45 this is funny because it pretty much just makes fun of Garfield how stupid and not funny it is. I guess in the old history I never knew about until I joined metal filter would be this this unfortunate subject matter of this like not prison camp revolt during you know, time of Nazis and this like this woman led revolt of just the most sadistic horrible things that happened but this is something I didn't even know existed. That's a great story.

Jessamyn 54:23 I pretty much skip any threads

mathowie 54:26 This is a great thing about Nazis and it's like

Jessamyn 54:28 and rape don't forget rape and Nazis

mathowie 54:31 right rape Nazis death everyone's killed is in this you know, whatever who's designated as being the helper in this whatever unit nice poster. It's a unit who kills the previous unit and then they had a revolt and some of them lived and yeah. But this is kind of the I think they're good. I think in general we should probably what do you think about you know, State of the Union of things on since we added more inside to metal filter, what, three four months ago. This is one of the cool like Wikipedia style posts that really get well fleshed out because of this feature.

Jessamyn 55:06 And right, because we can do the more inside. Yeah,

mathowie 55:09 I think that more insight has been largely a huge success in that it like fosters these kinds of awesome, incredible posts. And when people have like, like the solid gold one, like 50 supporting links, there's a way to do that in context. That makes sense.

Jessamyn 55:26 Right, right, right. And they're like, I want you to read about this topic, but there's not necessarily one thing I think, should read.

mathowie 55:32 Yeah, we kind of worried that people would just use it as a giant, my opinion essay, you know, here are three links. And now here's 1000 words of why Ron Paul rules or something like that. I think that was our worry. And it hasn't played out that way. It's just good. To ask meta filter,

Jessamyn 55:51 there was lots of great stuff and AskMe Metafilter, there was I had a whole bunch of AskMe Metafilter stuff that I have been waiting, waiting to talk about since last December, although a lot of them are actually from the last like week or so. But probably my favorite one, which was another one of those, like Metafilter people come together threads was last week, and it was like, I'm female, I want to go to shows by myself. I feel like a dork. What what do I do? Oh, cool. Um, you know, what do you do? If you go to a club alone? What do you do between bands? How do you not feel like a loser? And like, number one, there's lots of great advice in that thread. Number two, there's an incredible amount of like, mi fi metal filter, people who do go to shows alone, who are like, Oh, hey, it's no big deal. This is what I do. And like, just the sort of normalizing effect of having a bunch of people be like, oh, yeah, I do. There's tons of people that go to shows alone, you don't notice them, because nobody pays attention to you. And it's just it's a great thread full of good advice. There's like 70 comments. They're almost all awesome. Like, there's nobody like, You're a total idiot, like, and there's just lots of advice for like how to go to a show by yourself and why it's better to go by yourself to see a band you like, then, you know, stay at home because you can't find someone to go see like XYZ esoteric band. Oh,

mathowie 57:12 yeah. I've never gone to a show alone. I just always wanted to enjoy it with a friend. But yeah,

Jessamyn 57:18 yeah, I mean, I go to shows alone occasionally, like not that often because it's a frickin drive to but like, it's not that hard to go to a show by yourself. And so if there's a band you really want to go to and yet you can't find anyone to go with you. You know, suck it up and go alone. And there's all sorts of like people explaining like, it's actually really easy. Bring a book, talk to the bartender, develop a smoking habit do the smoking suggestion was like, I'm not seriously recommending you do this, but

mathowie 57:47 I don't smoke in between.

Jessamyn 57:50 Right. I am not your doctor, but smoke at shows. So it was just cool. Because it was a whole bunch of people who talked about like, oh, yeah, I totally do this all the time. And so it made it feel like a more normal thing to do the other one, which was really recent. These are like my two top favorites. But then there's a whole bunch of like, secondary favorites was the cheap, but bomb

mathowie 58:10 proof thread. Yes. That was one of mine. Yep.

Jessamyn 58:13 Yeah. Which once again, 119 favorites, which whatever. I didn't even notice that I got the best answer in that thread. Very exciting. But I'm talking about what kinds of shit Could you buy cheaply? That turns out to be so totally awesome. That, yeah, it's worth having.

mathowie 58:32 It's great. It's like 100 people saying, here's something that bought that actually lasted 1020 30 years. It's great, right?

Jessamyn 58:40 cast iron cookware and Craftsman tools. And you know what cell phones which other kind of luggage

mathowie 58:50 flops that lasted 20 years, you know,

Jessamyn 58:53 Cutco knives, bicycle hubs, and like some of the stuff, I mean, people sort of mixed it up a little. They're like, ah, that's not cheap. And one of the things that you noticed is that certain stuff used to have that reputation like Timex for instance, and like Doc Martens don't have that reputation anymore, because they're not as good anymore.

mathowie 59:12 Yeah, everything's getting kind of throwaway now.

Jessamyn 59:16 Well, yeah, everybody makes everything in China. I mean, I can remember when Doc Martens got bought. And we were like, Oh, and you know, sure enough, like Doc Martens, which everybody I knew wore in like late high school. Early College. Yeah, like totally got shitty. Yep. I always remember a favorite. Oh, sorry.

mathowie 59:35 I always remember Bruce Sterling. He talks about Doc Martens. He blew my mind when somebody said he's had his swan pair for like 20 years. He's resold them like four times. And he goes where did all that rubber go? Like it's all on the street somewhere and then it's in our you know, water it's in our air. I inhaled how many Doc Martin souls you know, when I eat how much am I eating of Doc weren't?

Jessamyn 1:00:01 Well there was that AskMe edit filter thread about the atoms of cremated people. Did you see that? That was kind of like it was borderline chatty. Let me see if I can.

mathowie 1:00:12 Where it was basically. That's interesting. Well, you hear that like in grade school, right like that. Oh, you know, Louis, the 16th P is in your glass of water. Because there's

Jessamyn 1:00:23 when you fart your goes into somebody else's nose. I remember

mathowie 1:00:28 water is a closed cycle on this planet, right? So all water molecules that ever existed are here. And there's no new ones. So they've been used before.

Jessamyn 1:00:38 Yeah, this one's called slightly. Oops, there's two right there. We morbid slightly morbid science question, which is the cremation one.

mathowie 1:00:46 Oh, that was me. But no, no, what? I did the information like where did Where's smell go?

Jessamyn 1:00:53 Oh, I remember that. I remember that. And, but I also put it up with my crunchy granola pizza. Favorite cooking, because there's got to be like a favorite cooking thread. There's always a favorite cooking thread. This was somebody who was like, learning to make pizza from scratch. And they wanted to know how from scratch. You could make a pizza like can you grind your own block? Can you grow your own tomatoes? Can you? But it's kind of a cooking Walker? Yeah, that one's that one's yours. And it was just people talking about like, how easy is it to grow your own hops or you know, people talk about that with beer sometimes. And this was just

mathowie 1:01:32 I know, a lot of bread maker. Friends that just do it, you know, make bread once a month or something that have like little yeast jars, and they, they travel with it, and they try to make better dose out of their own yeast.

Jessamyn 1:01:44 Right, right. Right that they get like stray yeast out of the air. And yeah, it's interesting.

mathowie 1:01:49 It's also reminds me of the children's book I have to read every night to my daughter about the God what is it? The I want a pancake. He tells his mom in the morning when he wakes up, she goes, go get go cut some flour. And then he has to go to the mill to get milled into flour he has to cut wheat is to do every single thing. It takes them all day to get his damn pancake.

Jessamyn 1:02:12 That sounds like a great story though. Yes, it's

mathowie 1:02:14 very funny because it's like first principles on the entire lifecycle of a pancake.

Jessamyn 1:02:20 Right? And because it's you and it's pancakes, it's extra. Don't tell me you didn't

mathowie 1:02:26 make that connection? No. I'm teaching my daughter about pancakes.

Jessamyn 1:02:32 Pancakes are good. Pancakes are good.

mathowie 1:02:35 What else did you have cheap lip balm. The

Jessamyn 1:02:37 only other one that I had that was just like super top was actually really recent, which was what the hell do I do when I'm sitting around and I've got like a deck of cards or like nothing? And like what are good games to sit around and play when you don't really have any tools. And so this is just a really good

mathowie 1:02:59 useful I would say I thinks when you have cards are no cards.

Jessamyn 1:03:05 Well, they're like deck of cards is okay, but like you don't have anything else. You know,

mathowie 1:03:10 please set but you need special cards. Dude,

Jessamyn 1:03:13 I love set if we talked about set before. People really love set and other people are totally like I've played with some people who are like, that hurts my brain. I don't want to play.

mathowie 1:03:24 I think it's only two piles, you can put the entire world into those who love it. And those who haven't played it yet. Like I don't know a single person that played at once and hates it.

Jessamyn 1:03:34 Are you kidding me used to like make? Yeah, like it used to make Greg's head hurt. Like he just he just couldn't

mathowie 1:03:41 that's a good feeling right to like force yourself to think of ERP I thought

Jessamyn 1:03:45 so like I felt like I could feel a little neural pathways. Going

mathowie 1:03:48 to puke. I haven't been used in a while you.

Jessamyn 1:03:52 Exactly, exactly. But you know, some people I don't know if they don't like that feeling or I don't know what the problem is.

mathowie 1:04:02 My favorite I whittled down all my favorite side like 10 to two and you already picked one of them.

Jessamyn 1:04:08 I appreciate that.

mathowie 1:04:09 I can't believe this is just from a couple days ago. Because there's so many great answers. This was a this was a hobby horse of mine. 10 years ago,

Jessamyn 1:04:21 porn for girls citizen cross people loved that thread like 10

mathowie 1:04:24 years ago. I remember telling a friend like it's clear to me like sex is all over the internet. And every wacky fetish in the world is out there. I think the internet will be good at finding porn for smart people that isn't degrading that isn't like fake isn't phony isn't like the last 30 years of porn. I remember talking to friends someone's gonna be like the Amazon of porn for smart people. But it's 10 years later and there isn't really any way to find porn that isn't like you know, belittling the people or humiliating or like just awful and fake and everyone's also was combed out. So this is someone that theoretically

Jessamyn 1:05:01 you should totally be able to do that much, much better. Everyone

mathowie 1:05:05 who works in the industry goes, well, we gotta go the lowest common denominator so we can sell the most DVDs or whatever, but like there should be a long tail of tail. I just noticed it as I started that sentence. There should be like smart people porn that like people are really having facts that actually are married or something like they are married. So when you read this, everyone's like, it is really hard. We're talking needles in haystacks here, but here's like a couple of pointers to like, female empowered porn. That's not

Jessamyn 1:05:39 horrible. That's not just like whatever lesbian porn for lesbians, which is different. Yeah.

mathowie 1:05:43 And violet blue has a good post is linked should be a best answer. But

Jessamyn 1:05:55 um, oh, yeah. I've heard that book is really good. Smart Girls Guide to porn.

mathowie 1:06:01 Yeah. And she has like, all these links to all these porn places, important videos and porn stuff that like I didn't know existed and it's hard to find and I guess, vibrations.

Jessamyn 1:06:12 I'm just been asked Metafilter of what what?

mathowie 1:06:15 Exactly, yeah, I was like reviewing porn last night feeling weird on my computer. Like, what am I 17 Come on.

Jessamyn 1:06:23 I live in a house with my wife.

mathowie 1:06:26 Yeah, but like yeah, this is a I still don't know why there isn't like a simple to find easy like porn for smart people that's like curated by someone with a brain. But yeah, it's hard. Hard to find porn.

Jessamyn 1:06:42 I know. I know what what else? What else did you like and ask? Metafilter Yeah, that

mathowie 1:06:46 was it. That was I whittled down 10 to just to save time and that was

Jessamyn 1:06:51 well because you've also got your your your check the sounds of young America.

mathowie 1:06:55 Yeah, chitchat with Jesse. I was just asking him about how he just sounds Young America. How's it get? My main question was How was the guy who's like 24 with an apartment in LA get like people, you know, characters from the wire to come to his apartment or major music stars to like a character from the wire came to his apartment. Well, abs and bonk this week on on the show. mazing. Really? Yeah. And it's good. Like, I just started listening the first 10 minutes and I was like, Oh my God, how did he get them in LA to show up to his apartment and talk for an hour?

Jessamyn 1:07:30 About the one watching season five. Right? Yeah. Season Five first couple episodes.

mathowie 1:07:35 Yeah. Last I'm trying to find his recent programs. Let me find this list. There it is. Permanently.

Jessamyn 1:07:49 I don't drive enough to listen to podcast. Yeah, it's

mathowie 1:07:52 the only time I ever listened to him as I'm driving. And I don't drive that much. But all right. Well, I take an hour long bike ride. Sometimes I'll listen to one.

Jessamyn 1:08:01 Yeah, I like the fact that that guy that plays bubbles on the wire is getting a lot more screen time. He's like, my favorite.

mathowie 1:08:07 Yeah. And he and there's a lot of discussion of race in the first 15 minutes. I listened to it of like them saying it was like his first sort of big acting role. And he was like, right. I don't know if I should, you know, be yet another drug addict on TV as a black man. That sucks. I mean, that's his first big role. He's like, where things gonna get better after that. But after he did like a reading and read the script, he was like, Holy shit, this is something completely different. This is gonna be big and good. And not just a normal cop show.

Jessamyn 1:08:39 And totally make a difference. Yeah. And if you see like pictures of him on IMDb, like he's an attractive man. So, you know, you just you suspect he's not going to be in this kind of ready pretend you're missing a tooth. sort of thing the whole time.

mathowie 1:08:56 Yep. And so yeah, yeah. And I've been, whatever, whatever. underwriting the show, because I like it so much.

Jessamyn 1:09:06 Which turned into a very funny meta filter. Like, we have advertising we advertise. You may want to make a little, no, I'm not freaking advertising.

mathowie 1:09:16 Yeah, I mean, it is an advertisement that sort of a side benefit. But I mean, I like I told the person who made that point that like, just in 2007, I did things like executive produced, I think two albums for like friends who are artists that bought art from friends. And like, this is sort of, I really liked this radio show. And this guy wants money to keep paying his rent, so you can keep doing the radio show instead of give me a job. And I was like, that's way more fun than a than a umbrella from my local PBS, you know?

Jessamyn 1:09:47 Well, and that's one of the great things about being like an adult with a real job is that you can actually like help your friends out who are you know, working at their sort of early stuff. Yeah, be able to really do some awesome stuff. It's cool.

mathowie 1:10:00 Yeah, yeah, so it's not too self Linky that I interviewed him, hopefully. But yeah, I think I explained that on the show. And I think I'll run the interview before this. Oh, I think this is about it for the podcast.

Jessamyn 1:10:12 That sounds great. Cool. I'll talk to you on another Wednesday.

mathowie 1:10:17 Yeah. This has been the metal filter podcast with your host Matt Halley, and Jessamyn west of metal filter.com. The music is by cortex otherwise known as Josh Mullard. And interstitial music is our handpick favorites from metal filter music at Music dot metal filter.com. And we thank you for listening. Older shows are available at podcast@metafilter.com Thanks