Minicast B11: Lewis & Clark's Heavy Metal Diarrhea

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 prepared to do...something...if the USSR charged across the Bering Strait and occupied what at the time was a US Territory.

Here is the exhaustive five-part FBI tell-all on the now-declassified project. 

These podcasts are ad-free and self-produced; I value your support on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/ginandtacos.

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, you'll get great insight into just how not obvious it was what in the hell we would do with computers at home, even though it seemed like everyone wanted one.

Please support Mass for Shut-ins, an independent and ad-free podcast, via Patreon. Contact me via twitter (@edburmila), at least for now. I am on Bluesky at edburmila.bsky.social as well.

Thanks: Dr. Laine Nooney, the bands that contribute music (IfIHadAHiFi, The Sump Pumps, Oscar Bait), Zachary Sielaff, Question Cathy, and all Patreon supporters, subscribers, and listeners.

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 stellar Mailbag. Half of the Mailbag is included in this episode, and then the rest is available as bonus content on patreon, because capitalism.

Please support Mass for Shut-ins, an independent and ad-free podcast, via Patreon. Contact me via twitter (@edburmila), at least for now. I am on Bluesky at edburmila.bsky.social as well.

Thanks: Nicholas Dagen Bloom, QK & QJ, the bands that contribute music (IfIHadAHiFi, The Sump Pumps, Oscar Bait), Zachary Sielaff, Question Cathy, and all Patreon supporters, subscribers, and listeners.

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 now. I am on Bluesky at edburmila.bsky.social as well.

Thanks: the bands that contribute music (IfIHadAHiFi, The Sump Pumps, Oscar Bait), Zachary Sielaff, Question Cathy, and all Patreon supporters, subscribers, and listeners.

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 the most appealing presidential candidate for a post-Biden Democratic Party.

Cathy mispronounces "Patreon" creatively and I recognize mid-recording that Bath & Body Works and Bed, Bath, and Beyond are two different things.

Please support Mass for Shut-ins, an independent and ad-free podcast, via Patreon. Contact me via twitter (@edburmila), at least for now. I am on Bluesky at edburmila.bsky.social as well.

Thanks: the bands that contribute music (IfIHadAHiFi, The Sump Pumps, Oscar Bait), Zachary Sielaff, Question Cathy, and all Patreon supporters, subscribers, and listeners.

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 on Andre the Giant, Vladimir Putin, and the criminalization of marijuana are all worth your time too.

Please support Mass for Shut-ins, an independent and ad-free podcast, via Patreon. Contact me via twitter (@edburmila), at least for now. I am on Bluesky at edburmila.bsky.social as well.

Thanks: Brian Brown, the bands that contribute music (IfIHadAHiFi, The Sump Pumps, Oscar Bait), Zachary Sielaff, Question Cathy, and all Patreon supporters, subscribers, and listeners.

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.

After scoring a gimmick hit about Dr. Who called "Doctorin' the Tardis" in 1988 as The Timelords, the duo rebranded themselves as KLF to release the minor Nineties hit single "3am Eternal." Somehow that was enough for them to amass £1,000,000, which in 1994 they fed into a roaring fire in a video called "The K Foundation Burn a Million Quid." If you ever wondered what kind of face a person makes as they are actively ruining their own lives on camera, check it out. 

Please support Mass for Shut-ins, an independent and ad-free podcast, via Patreon. Contact me via twitter (@edburmila). 

Thanks: Kyle and Jennie, the bands that contribute music (IfIHadAHiFi, The Sump Pumps, Oscar Bait), Zachary Sielaff, Question Cathy, and all Patreon supporters, subscribers, and listeners.

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 adolescence tend to have great staying power and an inflated sense of importance.

Please support Mass for Shut-ins, an independent and ad-free podcast, via Patreon. Contact me via twitter (@edburmila). 

Thanks: David Roth, the bands that contribute music (IfIHadAHiFi, The Sump Pumps, Oscar Bait), Zachary Sielaff, Question Cathy, and all Patreon supporters, subscribers, and listeners.

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, their contribution to this album. To purchase the album, please visit the Fat Wreck website for a digital download or other format.

Bonus: 29 minutes in I start singing "Uptown Girl."

These podcasts are ad-free and self-produced; I value your support on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/ginandtacos.

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 about how a crashed GENETRIX balloon is indirectly responsible for mankind's first photos of the dark side of the moon.

Check out Kelsey's substack, Wars of Future Past, and his recent contribution to Slate on the China incident.

Please support Mass for Shut-ins, an independent and ad-free podcast, via Patreon. Contact me via twitter (@edburmila). 

Thanks: Kelsey, the bands that contribute music (IfIHadAHiFi, The Sump Pumps, Oscar Bait), Zachary Sielaff, Question Cathy, and all Patreon supporters, subscribers, and listeners.