"Enjoy Your Burrito"

            I’m going through a phase in my life right now where I really like listening to podcasts. I’m not sure what about the medium of fake, internet talk-radio gets me going (probably the combination of free and funny), but I’m really into it. Of the many different podcasts that I’ve sifted through, there are three right now that I’ve settled on and listen to on a weekly basis. There’s “Nerd Poker,” in which a group of comedians playing dungeons and dragons together. You will either immediately love this show or think it’s the biggest waste of time. Then there’s “Judge Jon Hodgeman,” where actor/writer/fake internet judge Jon Hodgeman passes fake internet judgment on very real, if not somewhat silly, disputes between two living people. The cases are hilarious, if you can handle large doses of dry humor, and the judge’s final decisions at the end of each episode are more often than not rather thoughtful. The final podcast filling up my queue is called “The Nerdist.”

There is a theme here: I’m a nerd.

            Anyway, “The Nerdist” is set up like a traditional interview talk-show where host Chris Hardwick and two of his friends, Matt Mira and Jonah Ray, usually have a conversation with “someone more famous than all of (them).” The episodes are usually over an hour long and it’s that format, that lack of any real time restraint, that allows the interviews to go all over the place and occasionally end up somewhere fascinating. Tom Morello, guitarist for Rage Against the Machine, talked for a while about growing up as the only black kid in his whole town and how that influenced his music. Animation studio owner, Shadi Petowsky, opened up about going public with regards to her being transgender. Yvette Nicole Brown, who plays loveable Shirley on the tv show, “Community,” talked about faith. In that interview, episode 317, the host mentions that any reference to God immediately sends him back to his days in a Christian school, a time he clearly has few fond memories of. Ms. Brown responds in a way that reminded me of the “New Light vs. Old Light” debate in our textbook. In summary, she basically says that you should take away the rules and the church politics and essentially all of the man-made parts of religion and just get to know God. Ms. Brown’s advice of not letting a corrupt group of people represent God to you is very similar to George Whitfield’s warnings against the Catholic and Calvinist influences during the 18^th century. I think everyone has had some bad experience with religion in their lifetime, whether its discrimination or damnation, but I think Yvette Nicole Brown and George Whitfield have the right idea in this instance. Regardless of whether you’re religious or not, we shouldn’t let a few bad apples spoil the bunch.

A quick heads up, if you decide to go check out “The Nerdist” podcast (available on iTunes), it is explicit. They just really like the f-word.