Entry 268: Podcasts

I started listening to podcasts about four years ago, and during that time, it's remarkable how reliant I've become on them.  Menial tasks are just so much more boring without them.  It's a wonder I didn't die of tedium pre-2010.  Every now and then I won't have a podcast chambered for my morning commute, and I'm forced to listen to the radio, and it's terrible.  The local NPR affiliate runs BBC News in the morning, so it's a lot of talk about the performance of the British pound or the government of David Camer-- zzz.  Or I can turn the dial to sports radio, which will probably be a commercial, and if it's not, I'll wish it was, because otherwise it's some yo-yo talking in soundbites and clichés, giving you his Subway Fresh Takes of the Week.  So I'm pretty reliant on podcasts.

But right now I'm having a difficult time with my new favorite medium.  I've made a very difficult and painful decision to unsubscribe to the Adam Carolla Show.  I'm a polyamorous podcast connoisseur, but ACS has been my main since the beginning.  But I feel it's time to move on.  Adam recently fired his newsgirl, Alison Rosen, which stirred up a bit of controversy (among the relatively few people who actually care, that is), and while I liked Alison that's not the reason I'm moving on.  The reason is because Adam's quick wit and ability to be off-the-cuff funny (he's still, hands down, the best in the business, in my opinion) can no longer overcome the negatives of the show -- the most pronounced of which is its repetitiveness.  It's the same stories, the same rants, and the same guest doing the same bits (Bung Lu Su is funny the first two or three times you hear it, not that first 50) over and over and over again.  I found myself listening out of habit, not necessarily because I was enjoying it.

[We had a good run guys.  Damn it!  We had a good run.]

Also there is Adam's politics, which I will admit played a factor.  He's a hardcore libertarian, and hardcore libertarians can get on my nerves very quickly.  For example, Adam holds a particular view that many libertarians share that drives me absolutely bonkers: that rich people are virtuous (or at least beneficial to society) simply for being rich.  That it's their taxes that pay for everything and that they're the ones keeping everybody employed.

I strenuously reject this notion, for one simple reason: If rich people weren't rich somebody else would be.  That's the part that is always missing from the libertarian/Randian view.  Any given rich person is a net zero to society because whatever services they provide: a) they're getting paid for handsomely, b) somebody else would do it if they didn't.  If you don't want to pay taxes, quit working.  I assure you society will replace you and get along just fine.  (On the flips side, if you want to find people who truly are beneficial to society, look to those who have the skills to be rich but are choosing instead to do jobs that aren't high-paying but important -- teacher, social worker, mentor, community organizer, etc.)

Now, if every rich person and every person will the skills to potentially be rich decided to quit working all at once, then that might be a problem.  But that's not going to happen anymore than every pizza company is going to quit making pizza.  It makes me laugh (in  a very cynical way) when people like Papa John "threaten" the country with less production (or higher prices) because of taxes or regulations.  Yes, that would temporarily hurt some of their employees.  But what would ultimately happen if Papa John's scaled back?  (Other than football fans might get a reprieve from those awful Peyton Manning commercials?)  Would their former employees never work again and pizza become a scarce commodity?  Or would Little Caesar's and your neighborhood joint get a bump in business?  I'm going to go with the latter.  It's called competition.  It's a tenet of capitalism.

That's another thing I don't understand.  Why is it that people like Adam Carolla (and presumably Papa John) extol the virtues of competition when it comes to tenured teachers or government workers or people like that, but they're blind to competition when it comes to the so-called job creators?  For thee, but not for me, apparently.  It's similar to something I've heard Ralph Nader say about outsourcing: If it's a necessary part of business, then let's take it all the way to the top; let's get a bunch of bilingual MBAs from China to work as CEOs for a fraction of the price.  Funny how this is never an option -- how it's never the executives that are the inefficiencies.  Why, it's almost as if it's a double standard.  It's no wonder Wall Street gets in a tizzy when Elizabeth Warren says to the average worker that the system is rigged against them: It means somebody smart is onto them.

Ah, yes, once again I've done that thing where I set out to write a paragraph on something and end up writing five on something completely different.  Oh well.

Anyway, the point is, now I need a new number one podcast.  I've got plenty of recommendations, and I've been casually dating a few, but it's hard to get back into something serious when you're so fresh off a breakup.  I put in so many years and got so comfortable with ACS, that it's going to take time to find a suitable replacement (and maybe I never will).  I mean, I love This American Life, but it's only a weekly show -- and not even weekly because they often play reruns.  I need something more steady.  (Although this week's episode on echolocation is unbelievable -- and I mean that almost literally.  I could barely believing it.)

The same goes for Bill Maher's show Real Time -- not steady enough.  Plus, I'm not completely on-board with Maher.  He's a "yeah, yeah, yeah, wait ... what?" guy for me.  That's what I do when I listen to his show: "Religion is stupid and dangerous!" yeah!;  "Inequality is a drag on our economy!" yeah!; "We need to stop climate change!" yeah!; "Flu shots will give you Alzheimer's disease!" wait ... what?

Maher, of course, is best-known these days for his outspoken views on Islam, religion in general, but Islam specifically.  He recently came under fire for agreeing with a guest who called Islam "the motherlode of bad ideas."  Even more recently he doubled-down on this by going on Jimmy Kimmel Live and saying in reference to the Paris attacks:

I know most Muslim people would not have carried out an attack like this.  But here’s the important point: Hundreds of millions of them support an attack like this. They applaud an attack like this. What they say is, ‘We don’t approve of violence, but you know what? When you make fun of the Prophet, all bets are off.'

On this, I can see both sides.  Reza Aslan takes Maher to task for his (Maher's) conflation of Islamic problems with cultural problems (such as female genital mutilation in Central Africa).  And I'm mostly with Aslan on this.  But when it comes to Maher's claim that many Muslims tacitly support (or at least don't expressly disapprove of) an attack like the one in Paris, I don't know.  And I mean that not as a figure of speech -- I literally don't know.  I don't even know how one would go about knowing, short of polling a bunch Muslims.  And even that might not work because when it comes to sensitive topics like this people might not say what they really think.

At the very least, however, I don't Maher's comments are ridiculous, and I don't think they should be dismissed out of hand.  I mean, break down what he's actually saying and think about it.  First, "hundreds of millions" sounds like a huge number, but considering there are 1.6 billion (with a b) Muslims in the world hundreds of millions could mean 10%.  Second, many Muslims -- many religious people in general -- openly believe in Hell.  They believe there is a place -- a literal place that exists in some reality somewhere -- where non-believers spend eternity suffering for their infidelities.  If you actually believe this -- if you actually believe in eternal punishment -- then believing that plain old mortal death is an appropriate punishment for heresy is quite reasonable by comparison.  The point is, a lot of religions preach a lot of fucked up things; pointing this out doesn't make you the contemptible one, and it doesn't constitute hate speech either.

Nor is it racism.  It's basically the opposite of racism.  It's judging people specifically not on the color of their skin, but on their beliefs and behaviors -- which is how you should judge people.  And if you think, in the case of Maher, he's selectively targeting Islam because it's a (mostly) non-white religion, then you should hear his thoughts on Christianity.

With all that said, if I were Bill Maher I would not have gone on Jimmy Kimmel's show and said what he said.  It's not fact-based enough.  What's he basing his claims on?  It seems like he's just speculating.  And if you are going to go before the public and make unfavorable proclamations about a group of people -- especially one with a history of discrimination -- you need to come with something stronger than speculation.  Otherwise you run the risk of looking like a fool.  Just ask Larry Summers.

Alright, that's all I got.  I have to go try to find a new daily podcast to love.

Until next time ...