This 2019 series of Gizmodo articles and videos by Kashmir Hill look into how difficult it actually is to stop using The Stacks: Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft. We place Hill’s research within our larger understanding of Big Tech and media literacy while listening to arguments for tech regulation or simply scaling back.

• I Cut The Big Five Tech Giants From My Life: It Was Hell

Additional Resources:

• https://muckrack.com/kashhill
• I Cut the Big Five Tech Giants From My Life. It Was Hell.
• I Tried to Block Amazon From My Life. It Was Impossible.
• I Cut Facebook Out of My Life. Surprisingly, I Missed It
• I Cut Google Out of My Life. It Screwed Up Everything.
• I Cut Microsoft Out of My Life –– Or So I Thought
• I Cut Apple Out of My Life. It Was Devastating.
• Unplugging From Big Tech is Harder Than You Think
• It’s almost impossible to function without the big five tech giants
• How to block Big Tech with Kashmir Hill: podcast and transcript
• https://www.nytimes.com/by/kashmir-hill

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This 1969 double-album has been described as both “unlistenable” and “one of the greatest albums of all time.” We discuss its volatile production while trying to understand its composition and how it influenced another fifty years of weird music.

Interested in the media we discussed this episode? Please support the show by purchasing it through our affiliate store:

• Trout Mask Replica

Additional Resources:

• Some notes came from secondary sources listing Mike Barnes’ ‘Captain Beefheart’ and Bill Harkleroad’s ‘Lunar Notes: Zoot Horn Rollo’s Captain Beefheart Experience’ 
• Burundo Drumbi! – John French’s Series of Q&As, 2000/1
• Captain Beefheart, a.k.a. Don Van Vliet, dies at 69
• AllMusic Review by Steve Huey
• The Case for Why Captain Beefheart’s Awful Sounding Album, Trout Mask Replica, Is a True Masterpiece
• Why this awful-sounding album is a masterpiece
• The Dust Blows Forward: ‘Trout Mask Replica’ at 50
• Why Captain Beefheart’s ‘Trout Mask Replica’ Still Sounds Like Tomorrow
• Frownland by Captain Beefheart & his Magic Band: Analysis

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This 1999 cannibal-horror-comedy film went through three directors in a troubled production. We discussed how it successfully critiques American consumption and Manifest Destiny despite its financial failure.

Interested in the media we discussed this episode? Please support the show by purchasing it through our affiliate store:

• Ravenous

Additional Resources:

• ”Creative differences” shake up Hollywood
• Film: They all but ate me alive!
• FANGO Flashback: “RAVENOUS”
• Robert Carlyle Interview
• ANTONIA BIRD’S RAVENOUS IS A DARK CANNIBAL TALE – BUT WITH JOKES!
• To Serve Man: Why ‘Ravenous’ Is the Greatest Cannibal Western Ever
• Women in Film: The Tonal Balancing Act of Antonia Bird’s RAVENOUS
• Why You Should Chew On ‘Ravenous’ (1999)
• Forgotten Flick Ravenous Is the Best-Ever Manifest Destiny Cannibal Comedy
• Ravenous – 20th Anniversary
• DiMarco, D. (2011). Going Wendigo: The Emergence of the Iconic Monster in Margaret Atwood’s “Oryx and Crake” and Antonia Bird’s “Ravenous.” College Literature, 38(4), 134–155.

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This is a repost of a 2016 episode.

In our 2016 holiday episode, we looked at the forgotten Christmas Eve tradition of telling ghost stories. M.R. James’ work from over a hundred years ago best represents this Victorian trend, so in his honor we brought horror to academia and safe spaces.

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• Ghost Stories of an Antiquary

Additional Resources:

• How Did Antiquarians Become Action Story Heroes?
• Ghost stories: why the Victorians were so spookily good at them
• Christmas Ghost Stories: The Ghost of Christmas Past Goes Further Back Than You Might Realize
• M. R. James’ Ghost Stories Work Eerily Well in This Graphic Fiction Form
• Telling ghost stories is a lost tradition on Christmas Eve

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This 2013 novel is a sequel to The Shining. With guest Emily Lewis, we consider how King continues his own redemption arc through these stories about alcoholism and parenting.

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• Doctor Sleep

Additional Resources:

• Stephen King in Person The author speaks, receives Mason Award at Fall for the Book.
• Stephen King, “The Shining” and the crapper
• Stephen King Q&A: The author explores the origins of The Shining and its sequel Doctor Sleep
• Kathryn Schulz on Doctor Sleep, Stephen King’s The Shining Sequel
• What Stephen King Isn’t
• Shine On

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