A jest’s prosperity lies in the ear
– Love’s Labour’s Lost
Of him that hears it, never in the tongue
Of him that makes it.
I’ve talked about podcasts before, and I hope you don’t mind me recommending a few in the way of writing about what I’m listening to now. And I’d rather do that than play with the cat.
World News Group is releasing the third season of their podcast Effective Compassion, a set of features reporting on ministries to the homeless or other at-risk populations. This season, debuting in a few days, will focus on prison ministries. You can hear a preview today.
Dr. Anthony Bradley is posting a new set of episodes on a variety of topics, but his main focus has been manhood and the making of men. His first episode this season is a talk about the benefits of college fraternities with the president of Chi Psi fraternity at Clemson.
I recently learned of a podcast dedicated to reading books the two hosts will probably hate, called 372 Pages We’ll Never Get Back. The most recent show discusses at great length a marvelously atrocious fantasy that one could easily assume, they suggest, was written by an eight-year-old. There’s no way to overstate how bad this story is, even after hearing of the assault by sword-wielding octopuses and sharks with teeth and noses as sharp as swords. How could it be bad with all of that? I listened to about 90 minutes of it before giving up and trying another episode about a much older novel with very manly men who cried a lot. Yes, I laughed. I’ll probably listen more, but I can’t take too much mockery of really bad writing. It wears me out. (Maybe I’ve seen too much of bad writing; that’s not something I want to say out loud.)
Another new podcast focuses on the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King. The MLK Tapes questions the official narrative of who killed Dr. King and points to the many strange details that also occurred that day. It’s significant that the King family do not believe James Earl Ray murdered Dr. King, and since he was not put on trial at the time, a jury was not presented with evidence either.
Let me end this post by noting an upcoming book from the three men behind the enjoyable, long-running podcast The Happy Rant. Releasing this August will be a book that purportedly reads much like the podcast listens (wait, much like listening to the podcast … reads–nevermind). Ted Kluck, Ronnie Martin, and Barnabas Piper chat about Christian cultural topics and generally poke fun at themselves. It should be a fun read.
Photo: Mother Goose Market, Hazard, Kentucky 1979. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.