Ep 7: Behind The Curtain

Micah and Ryan bring back scholar-at-large Robert Franks to pull back the curtain of the world, do some name-dropping, unveil the secrets of Kanye West, and discover the conspiracy behind Hollywood's obsession with the Wizard of Oz. Welcome to Brickcaster Season 2!

Read our incredibly detailed shownotes here. Topics covered include:

• The Peace Corps
• Doesn’t this look good on a resume?
• A one-way suitcase to Germany
• A Michael Jordan moment ...or was it a Mario Lemieux moment?
• Something about Lance Armstrong
• "I refer you to the rest of culture" - John Hodgman
• Upstream Color
• Titular Appellations or was it Titchular Appalachians?
• Dirks and Pikes
• Synecdoche, the figure of speech, Synecdoche the film, Schenectady, the unfortunately named city
• Logical Fallacies
• Accusing someone of ad hominem is an ad hominem
• Ragnarok …
• The Dave Ramsey plan
• Or maybe you should just get a job with Dave Ramsey?
• Name-dropping Brad Montague
• Ryan and his mafia-esque nicknames for people
• …reminiscent of The Wire
• "The Origins of Ponyface" …. (soft dissolve)
• Anecdote or antidote?
• Love in Stereo
• The new album by Kanye Twitty, I mean Kanye West:
• Yeezus, featuring the lead single: “I am a God”
• Having a Come to Yeezus moment
• John Milton reinventing religion to suit himself
• Bono's mythic sense of self
• Mythicism
• The Alchemist, by Paul Coelho
• Cheezus
• Art is charlatanism
• Shamans and tricksters
• Bringing the metaphysical to earth
• Art is what you hide from the viewer
• Our motto or mantra: Keep it Publishable
• Name-dropping Venkat Rao (my interview with him)
• Venkat's expose of The Office: The Gervais Principle
• The completion of The Gervais Principle: Becoming a sociopath as a quest of questioning, a process of pulling back the curtain
• Gaping Void's inspirational take on business hierarchy
• The Psychopath Test
• Dale Carnegie books
• Some relevant societal thoughts: a, b, c
• Will to Power
• Nihilism
• Nietzsche
• Will to Power vs Natural Grace
• Nature vs Grace as portrayed in the movie "Tree of Life" ( quote, essay, imdb, video )
• John Lennon claims to be more popular than Jesus
• I am the Walrus
• Number 9, turn me on deadman
• Frisson or frission
• Hollywood is a manufacturer of western-like religious experiences
• Seeing behind the movie theatre curtain, or "Why Hollywood is infatuated with the Wizard of Oz"
• The Southpark episode with Tween Wave bands
• David Copperfield, not the magician, the novel
• Cerealized Dickens, I mean, Serialized Dickens
• Name-dropping Charlie Seaton
• Being metaphorically sober
• I Always Look up the word Egregious
• The etymology of the word feisty
• "No Shame" bumper sticker
• Sports talk
• Sports references and euphemisms
• Preface or Preface or Prefix or Prevaricate
• Prologue
• Words like Mendacity and Interlocutor and Eclectic
• (If you say you have eclectic taste in music, you don't)
• Words like Quotidian
• Words like torturous, tortuous, tortoise, circuitous
• Generational Chasm (or was it Generational Chiasm?)
• Thesis, antithesis, synthesis, Hegel!
• How humanity is just an extended version of mammalian childhood
• The expansion of the gestational phase of our species
• The origins of teenage-hood. Pushing back against adulthood, an emphasis on the ephemeral.
• Snapchat
• Rock and roll helps explore new possibilities for adulthood
• The Charles Dickens biography by Peter Acroyd, and how Dickens wrote as a reaction to being sent to work at an early age
• Saved by the Bell, the college years
• Emergent adulthood as discussed in The End of the Parade
• Kathmandu: The Bob Seger song, Micah's 40-day trip around the world
• The Egyptian revolution and Micah's experiences in Tahrir Square
• We’re recording the people’s history, but we're losing it as fast as we record it
• Third World Problems
• Ryan World Problems
• Walker Percy's life story
• New Mexico is really close to space, man
• Effigies and ivory
• Ben Affleck callback
• Roderick on the Line
• The (censored) Ouroboros
• Malaise
• Zaxby’s Fried Pickles
• Pickle Juice
• Art as artifice. Can you be an artist without being artificial? Can you be successful without being artificial?
• Jam Bands vs Tribute Bands
• Bruce Springsteen
• Weezer’s first two albums
• Name-dropping Peter Rollins
• "There’s Nothing Behind the Curtain"
• Suspension of disbelief is the basis of art
• Now You See Me
• A magician does not reveal his secrets. A songwriter does not reveal his lyrics.
• The more I know about the experts, the less meaning I see there.
• Venturing behind the curtain is a loss of meaning.
• Kid President pep talk
• Familiarity breeds contempt
• A prophet is not respected in his hometown — because that's where he tried out all his starter material.
• Name-dropping Jeffrey Novak
• That movie about Jay Reatard
• Bob Dylan was just mimicking Woody Guthrie, who was ill
• Bob Dylan things: Highway 61, Self-portrait, Nashville Skyline, The Boxer
• We're not mentioning Icarus
• Opting-out of the climb
• Crashing and burning
• The 27 club
• Rap is about bravado
• Kanye is like Bowie
• GIGO
• Abbreviation, Acrostic, Acronym?
• Jack Black
• High Fidelity
• Is it better to burn out or to...fade away?