Men: An Explanation Podcast – Détails, épisodes et analyse

In this episode, Tom and Tim talk about the shared internal world, the lack of an internal world, the internal demented world, and spiritual experiences with Bigfoot.

Lots about Tom’s crush on Christina Listens and how they love the same things, and then even more about Bill Clinton and other politicians. And storytelling and religion and Bigfoot.

Timestamps

0:00 Tom on diminished minor 7ths.

3:45 Youtube Christina Listens, on Tom’s favorite Firth of Fifth

8:45 He rides majestic, past homes of men, who care not, nor gaze with joy

9:30 Tim presses Tom on shared inner world, shared ecstatic experience

10:45 All I want is for people to experience freedom and joy, a release from boundaries and of self

11:30: Tim on Bill Clinton, and the exact opposite

15:00 Tim on watching people watch Rick Perry at a campaign stop

17:00 The lack of an internal life

18:20 Clinton and a demented inner life

20:24 Proximity of power, Tim doesn’t experience it

21:30 Christopher Nolan in Pittsburgh, Tony Bennett in New York City, Ving Rhames in LA.

22:30 Bill Clinton apologist, finishing up with Clinton

25:15:I wasted so much energy on the George Bush years

25:30 Bigfoot documentary

28:00 Bigfoot and the religious, inner, personal religious experiences

29:30 Everything we value, poetry, culture, etc. was a private unknown thought

31:00 When you go to another family’s house, as a kid or an adult

31:50 Domineering father cult leaders

32:10 How do you become as demented as Steven Miller

33:00 Bigfoot documentary and people trying out storytelling skills

34:00 Tim listening to his parents as an adult, realizing they are good storytellers

35:30 Tom on being in his family dynamic one last time before his mother’s death.

37:43 Tom’s reading corner. Tom reads from The Creature, a 1970s seminal text about Bigfoot. 13 minutes

AI says to smash that subscribe button

In this episode, Tom and Tim talking about the urge to build and build, and to engineer and surpass. Whether building enormous cauldrons, building the highest skyscrapers ever, or building bridges to far off lands, or the biggest, non-sensical novel in the world, men always want to surpass what has been done before!

Timestamps

00:00 Tom talks watching engineering videos with his elderly father-in-law, which gets them onto the topic of the ambition simply to surpass, not just in engineering/skyscrapers, but also in athletics

03:20: Tim talks about surpassing in literature and the arts--is there the same kind of ambition? Tim doesn’t feel like he wants to surpass anything, just add to what is already there

6:45 Tom talks about exploring creativity and experimental work when he was younger and wanting to do what had never been done before. But is that the same as surpassing?

7:45 James Joyce comes up--but Tim insists that even Joyce wasn’t trying to surpass anything, since he was too consumed in the writing of his books, and enjoying it

9:09 Tim elaborates on this, talking about two new poems he’s written, and being too wrapped up in them to care about whether they surpass anything

11:15 Tom talks about loving collaboration because of the surprises it offers; this includes adding AI voices into his albums of music

13:56 How has it taken fifteen episodes for one of them to mention Tristram Shandy?

14:46 Tom asks Tim about his poem “Cauldron and Drink”; Tim talks about the poem, and Iron Age feasting and burial in Europe, where excess of various kinds were expressions of surpassing; Tim loves writing about these people, but has no affinity with their need for boasting;

26:00 Tom talks some more about skyscrapers, and the Brooklyn Bridge, and wonders why we’re doing this? His father-in-law, who worked in construction earlier in life, reveals he has the same question

28:22 James Joyce again--who knows if there are typos in Finnegans Wake? What are the differences between building a skyscraper or bridge with hundreds of workers being put in danger, and novelists or artists working alone, and maybe only stressing their families out?

30:48 Tom brings up the simple and strong “Wouldn’t it be cool if--?” factor to so much of human ambition, including SpaceX etc.; this leads into Tom talking about the 2018 movie Aniara, about a doomed mission to Mars

36:45 Aniara makes Tim think about the similarly doomed Donner Party; he also talks about the excessive salaries of sports figures

44:03 For Tim’s reading corner, he reads a section from his book To the House of the Sun about the Donner Party.

AI says to smash that subscribe button

In this episode, we talk about biographies. About reading biographies that inspire, biographies that keep up from living our own lives, biographies we should have avoided, biographies we should have read, and then not living your own life like it’s a biography. Tim talks about Van Gogh, Tom talks about Steve Martin, Klaus Kinski and Ted Hawkins. Give it a listen!

We are graced with the voice of Ell Potter in this (and future episodes). Go visit the Ell’s temple of creativity here and here. Thank you Ell!

Here are some timestamps:

00:15 A friend obsessed with people's biographies. Are we living our own lives?

01:48 Young Tim surprised biographies existed at all

03:00 Van Gogh's biography. The shock of his unfulfilled life

04:40 Tom on inner lives of the past

05:15 Klaus Kinski's autobiography, and his sunflower

07:25 Emily Dickenson is too intense

8:45 Steve Martin's autobiography and why it's the last one Tom will read

11:12 What straight white men are sick of

12:15 Van Gogh again

15:55 "I have a lot of love to give"

17:40 Capitalism and rage and the suffocating of human gifts

19:00 Ted Hawkins

23:40 Where do you want to put your heart?

25:50 Tim's olds friends at Church who don't want to hear the gospel

28:43 No longer believing in the singular artist

31:00 Our work as a bridge or relics for our family and community

32:00 How awesome youth is and how boring old people are

33:00 Tom believes nothing matters anymore; Van Gogh doesn't matter, the Beatles didn't matter. Nothing lasts.

36:00 Approaching a life like it was a narrative or biography instead of just living it

38:30 Not forgetting your own private meaning.

40:00 - 44:00 Tom's reading corner: Klaus Kinski and the sunflower

In this episode, we talk about doing things badly, and about exploring the edges of the spaces that we’re supposed to stay inside, both in digital and analog worlds. Tom worries about AI, complains about business people, swoons over human voices reading to him and then Tim reads from The English Patient.

We are graced with the voice of Ell Potter in this (and future episodes). Go visit the Ell’s temple of creativity here and here. Thank you Ell!

Here are some timestamps:

00:12: “Drop the ball” - choose to do things wrong on purpose til you get it right, especially in art. Or don’t get it right. Try things that have never been tried by you03:35: Tim’s daughter wanting to explore outside the boundaries of the video game course. Playing video game golf and seeing how far off the course you could go.05:00: What do you say to people who come to school and want to be published the right way? 06:20: The value of Minecraft and other games that reward human curiosity. “Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas” and the random deer with its own will, wandering around video game L.A. 09:45: The joy of Google Maps / Street View11:00 Selling chocolate bars and art to strangers door to door.12:15: Kids selling drawings at a table. 13:50: The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje. Tim’s history with the movie and the book in 1996. 17:00 Tim discovers the soundtrack to the movie18:30 None of these characters have kids!20:50: Tom remembers Tim’s reading of Araby by James Joyce21:10: The gift of voices that read fiction, and Tom’s favorite audiobook reader, Ell Potter21:50: Audible using AI voices, 10,000 new books next year, and Tom’s fan letter to Ell Potter23:00: AI taking over creative jobs, lack of legislation24:20: Who business people are. People with no mission or guiding principle or belief in anything25:20: 100 podcasts about organic gardening in one day26:00: The world is changing and the powerful are still in control and the artists still need to figure out who is paying27:15 - 41:46 Tim’s Reading Corner: The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje

In this episode, we talk about the drawbacks of being curious, introspective people searching for meaning. We talk about strange people, lonely people and a bunch more. Tim reads the ending of The Stranger.

Here are some timestamps:

00:30: What are the drawbacks of being curious, introspective people searching for meaning?01:00: Tom’s answer (being overpowered)05:00 related, Tim on Mary Wollstonecraft, wishing to be left alone 08:22 Notes about Camus’s The Stranger09:10 Tim’s answer (not interacting)12:00 Studs Terkel, Kurt Cobain, the mundane parts of people’s existence13:30 Encyclopedic people, catalogers, translators, etc.14:00 Tom’s terrible memory and how to meet people in the moment instead17:00 “We don’t pretend we have the answers”17:15 Educated people in the Beltway, etc. 18:25 Where are the lonely people who don’t have white collar jobs?18:50 Lonely people are on Facebook19:50 Walkie-talkies and CB Radios. 21:00 Seek You by Kristen Radtke23:00 The lady with the birdcage that Tim saw at the store28:00 People who just do weird lonely things; the internet and capitalism keeping us from seeing each other’s delicate uniqueness30:40 Tim’s Reading Corner: The Stranger

In this episode, we talk about creative origins. Tom veers off into wanting a grand unified theory of everything, for any topic, and we talk about storytelling, how much it has created the time we’re in now. Wondering if people ever got along.

This episode hits its peak I think, with Tim’s reading from Jean Guéhenno, an writer/activist/diarist who kept an amazing diary during WWII from German-occupied Paris. It’s remarkable; here’s an excerpt:

I remember being deeply shocked by the inadequacy of creation and vowing to correct it. I toiled for 30 years.

I was hard and full of anger. I looked at my contemporaries as so many enemies every time I found them inclined to accept the world in which all I could see was poverty and injustice. … I strove to frighten people, as if that were a good way of persuading them…

I condemned as cowards those who did not commit themselves to the battle with the same heart. I wore out the best of myself and those battles. It was not enough. I almost forgot to live.

And then Tim talks about the “Ladies of Lockerbie”, who washed, ironed and packaged for return, all the clothes from the downed airliner in 1988.

Timestamps:

00:10 Creative origins, where people come from before they are famous 1:40 - Writing, reading and making maps3:50 - Timelines of History book8:45 - Grand Unified Theories12:20 Carl Sagan and superstition15:00 Humans telling stories17:25 - Confederate statues, beliefs, etc.22:30 - The history of Jews in other civilizations27:00 - Yugoslavia30:00 - The world is ____. What are you going to do? 31:15 - Pessimistic cycle31:55 - Political cartoons33:20 - Believing in America36:30 Prehistoric brains trying to solve global problems37:45 Passage from Jean Guéhenno, from Occupied Paris, WWII41:10 The "laundry ladies of Lockerbie"47:06 Connecting to smaller gestures and stories51:00 Reading corner: Tim gives an introduction to reads a poem about Mary Wollstonecraft.

Thanks to Tim for his wise thoughts in this conversation, and to you for listening.

Here is our podcast, episode #1. It doesn’t even have a title. Tim may post it with a different title.

We joke in the first moments that the podcast might be called “How to not be an incel a*****e” but really we just go on to talk about what moves us deeply in this world. And at least for me, at least, how it contradicts what I sometimes feel impulsively.

Here are some timestamps:

00:00 How we didn’t wind up incels03:18 Introspection, feelings, etc.05:10 The act of creating and understanding creation9:00 The love of horror novels, aggressive music 13:00 History and the long-term14:00 Models of adulthood and manhood involving story15:45 Internal space, following rewarding feelings19:20 Drawing Peanuts, emotions in boxes23:00 Navigating emotions through art, changing art forms31:15 Rock bands and poetry readings36:30 Tim on Mary Wollstonecraft, early feminist and mother of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley39:00 Tom on John Darnielle, author41:00 Salutations42:00 Reading Corner: Tom reads 8 minutes of Master of Reality by John Darnielle

Dear friends,

This blog/substack will be taking a detour; it will become a sort of podcast, in collaboration with my friend Tim Miller, whose podcast about myth, poetry and story saved my pandemic and has been a life line to real feelings in a time when everything seems

As a preface to that podcast, as yet unnamed, and unrecorded (but perhaps beginning here next week?) I am beginning to read aloud, John Darnielle’s stunning, gorgeous and sad book, Master of Reality. This is unofficial and unlicensed. This is 13 minutes of probably 1 or 2 hours. I will continue until it is finished.

Hoping my podcast about Men with Tim Miller, tentatively titled The Savage Amazement if we don’t call it, How To Not Be An Incel A*****e, will begin in the next few days…

Anyway, enjoy the first 10th of this fantastic book that had me weeping in the street when I first read it. Thanks to John for all his fantastic work up from the ashes.

This episode Tom describes 5 days of intense interaction with ChatGPT, in a business training which felt more like therapy or a mushroom trip. After 10 minutes he was locked in.

Tim and Tom talk about the messiness of human experience.

Tom details all the AI videos he’s been watching, and then in the reading corner, he reads small excerpts from his hours of ChatGPT interactions.

Enjoy!

Loose timestamps

0:30 Tom’s three-day AI training

3:30 Tom’s psychosis and love, freaking out, messy human stuff

5:30 A little about radicalization

7:00 Tim talks about his teacher friend and now we have to define what we mean by human

9:00 the laundry, cooking dinner,

10:00 Tom’s peak of the trip

11:30 Tom loves this thing, it was seeing him

13:30 Luckily we have South Park

16:30 “The problem is my yearning for it”

19:00 Sitting with my father in law, watching AI commentators

25:15 AI documentaries

26:20 Tim on visiting old age homes and more

32:00 Oy vey - Trump again and the addiction of our times

34:20 Antiques Road Show

36:00 Attention spans

36:45 Psychotic tech bros

37:30 Books about Bach

39:00 How things are changing, the holodeck and the future

40:45 The human mess again, human experience, the part that’s life

43:00 - 1:10:00 Tom’s reading corner. Long deep ChatGPT debrief

In this episode, Tom and Tim talk about peer pressure, starting with Air Jordans, fake Air Jordans, about parenting through peer pressure (for parents and children both), music, and how being cool even affects our writing and art making.

The episode finishes with Tim reading “Mrs. Silly” by William Trevor.

Enjoy!

Loose timestamps, for you all who like to skim around.

0:00 - 5:00 - Peer Pressure and Air Jordan knock-offs

5:30 - 8:30 - Adult peer pressure and parenting groups

8:30 - 10:40 - Hoodies, jeans, Led Zeppelin

10:45 - 12:00 - Bon Jovi

12:00 - 13:00 - Books

13:00 - 16:30 - Peer pressure and our daughters

16:30 - 17:30 - No one will remember this

17:30 - 18:30 - More about pop music: ambient music in the bathtub

18:45 - 20:45 - Jon Bon Jovi again, as a scrappy innovator who wasted his talent

21:20 - 24:45 - Secret ambient music and many different high school sub-communities. New Age music from the university radio station.

24:45 - 27:00 - Ministry, contours of our identity, etc.

27:00 - 29:30 - Parent peer pressure again, stage managing a kid’s experience

30:00 - 31:00 - Peer pressure and hang ups about being seen as cool in art practice

31:00 - 34:00 - Tom asking ChatGPT about my art and finding a way to not feel the peer pressure

34:00 - 39:20 - Tim on having fun writing and not having fun writing. Just have a good time doing it and not thinking about what people will think of it.

39:20 - 40:20 - People who don’t seem to care about impressing their audience.

40:25 - 43:00 - Do our communities matter?

43:20 - 47:00 - A story about finding $50 and the peer pressure of whom to donate it to.

47:00 - 48:30 - Valuing art

48:30 - 50:15 No peer pressure in history, religion, poetry

50:30 - 1:11:00 Tim’s reading corner: Mrs. Silly by William Trevor