Mass for Shut-ins: The Gin and Tacos Podcast

Aug 30 2024 93 ep. 30 mins 3k

Mass for Shut-ins: The Gin and Tacos Podcast artwork

An unholy amalgam of politics, historical anecdotes, cocktail recipes, performances by talented people, and interviews with people who are doing interesting things with their lives.

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051 - These People Are Not Your Friends (August Mailbag)

Aug 30 2024 45 mins

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 diffe

050 - Biden's Brain, Trump's Ear

Jul 18 2024 38 mins

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 ahe

049 - Race to the Future with Kassia St. Clair

May 13 2024 55 mins

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

Minicast G2: Dundee United

Apr 11 2024 8 mins

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

Minicast G1: The Flying Boy trick

Mar 23 2024 33 mins

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. Nowh

Minicast F3: Operation Washtub

Dec 20 2023 8 mins

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 beyon

048 - The Apple II Age (with Laine Nooney)

Nov 21 2023 43 mins

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 thin

047 - The Great American Transit Disaster

Oct 30 2023 56 mins

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,

046 - Assemble for Assemblies

Sep 22 2023 64 mins

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

045 - All-Mailbag Episode 2023

Jul 27 2023 46 mins

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 m