I read audio books!
Ash and I both have undergraduate history degrees. She did her thesis on Civil War nursing. I did mine on slavey in the northern colonies 1619-1800.
I would recommend Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine. https://www.maximumfun.org/shows/sawbones
It's a well done podcast about how people through history have tried, usually miserably, to cure various ailments. It's also pretty lighthearted which is a nice break from the mostly heavy podcasts I digest.
I keep hearing Sawbones mentioned on another Maximum Fun podcast I'm a huge fan of, "Oh No, Ross & Carrie", which mostly investigates weird organizations/beliefs (Scientology, Flat Earth, Anti-Vaxxers, etc). I'll have to check out Sawbones too.
(Another good one before I completely derail this into the podcast thread is Judge John Hodgman)
Not sure what all to discuss, except to say that I also obsessively listen to Dan Carlin, and I have every book Simon Winchester has written. This thread is a creepy coincidence.
Blueprint for Armageddon is, in my opinion, the best podcast ever made. And if it were a book, it'd be an excellent history book, even with the liberties Carlin sometimes takes to tell his story. Riveting.
I recommend A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson.
I keep going back and forth about the Hodgman one. I really need to sit down and give it a listen.
Sawbones works because the doctor/wife plays a perfect straight man. She reels in the everyman/husband perfectly. Very good pair, those two. There is another Maximum Fun podcast that does the same thing with legal issues called Court Appointed but the hosts are not great (it's the father of the doctor/wife from Sawbones and a....cousin?). Court Appointed pisses me off because it's a concept I was starting to whiteboard to do myself, then they started doing it and they do not do it well. Argh.
I'm still waiting for a proper theatrical portrayal of the life of Teddy Roosevelt, though it may have to be a trilogy because his story is incredible.
Meanwhile, I watched The Roosevelts on Netflix (or Amazon Prime ?) and it was quite well done about Teddy, Franklin and Eleanor (who was related to Franklin already, but sort of not direct cousins?)
I miss the days of strong, tough but fair leaders who are actually smart. Obama was smart, but not tough IMO
I think it was probably much easier to portray a particular image in the past... nowadays, with HD TV and hi res photos and social media... it’ll be much easier to make somebody smart to look dumb..., to be able to zooming and magnify somebody’s shortcoming and then virally viewed by all whether viewers want to see or not.
It’s hard being a public figure nowadays.
No question reality TV helped get Trump elected. On the flip side, it also made him look dumber than he really is. If he were really as dumb as we think he is, he wouldn’t have won the WH and still be able to stick around like this. We never saw any of W’s close associates take any falls for him. W seemed like a puppet, Trump doesn’t... well maybe he’s Putin’s puppet... regardless, I think Trump is way smarter than W. He just looks dumber thanks to liberal media. Likewise, Obama was probably made to look weak thanks to conservative congress/media.
Last edited by Crazed_Insanity; April 12th, 2019 at 02:43 PM.