Shows / ‘funny,’ not funny
‘funny,’ not funny
Conversations about books, music, films, history, tech, and culture. Jim is a songwriter and leader of the band Jim’s Big Ego. He is also an author of The Wakeful Wanderer’s Guide series. Lionel Cassin is an IT security specialist and a voracious reader of Science Fiction and History. They enjoy lively conversations and are now sharing those with you. We are an independant podcast and we rely on your support. Subscribe at patreon.com/jiminfantino for as little as $3 per month for live webcasts…
Episodes
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“Your Pretty Head” | a conversation with Hewitt Huntwork Part 1
Just a note: Hewitt was recording into his tablet and there are lots of digital glitches that Jim could not remove. We begin with Lionel’s favorite part…
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“It's not who you know, it's who knows you.” | a conversation with Dave Herlihy
Dave Herlihy is an Intellectual Property/Entertainment Lawyer, a Teaching Professor on the Music industry at Northeastern University, a songwriter, and the…
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“Books, unbanned.” | a conversation with Leigh Hurwitz
Leigh joins the pod with a conversation about their work at The Brooklyn Public Library and their pioneering program Books Unbanned. They are the Collections…
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“You need empty spaces.” | a conversation with Karaugh Brown
Karaugh Brown joins us to talk about her return to the creative life after years of pursuing a career in Museum patron management at The Isabella Stewart…
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“The one global religion is money.” | a conversation with Lionel and Jim
Jim starts by talking about a candy bar he’s eating. Lionel references The Simpsons. Jim talks about feeling under the weather and needing some sugar…
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“What's a futtock shroud?” | a conversation with Robert Blake Whitehill
This week, we talk with Robert Blake Whitehill, the author of the Ben Blackshaw thrillers. Deadrise, the first book, takes place in the Chesapeake Bay, on…
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“The fact that I felt uncomfortable made me interested.” | a conversation with James O'Brien
Podcaster, musician, songwriter, artist, writer, thought leader, and our somnolent listener, James O’Brien joins the pod to talk about his many projects…
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“but, um...” | a conversation with Jim & Lionel
Jim starts talking about his adventures in social media and James O’Brien’s wisdom on how not to get noticed there. We tell 2 jokes and Lionel…
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The dreaded Grawlix. | a conversation with Nick Bruel, author and illustrator of the Bad Kitty books.
In this episode, we welcome Nick Bruel. Nick is the New York Times best selling author and illustrator of Boing, Who Is Melvin Bubble, and the Bad Kitty books…
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“Accessibility benefits everyone.” | a conversation between Lionel & Jim
Jim starts things off by sharing his impressions of The Day of the Jackal, and Lionel and he talk about the historical background, touching briefly on Albert…
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“Eff your replicant mindset.” | a conversation between Lionel & Jim
Jim launches into a diatribe about the use of the word ‘mindset,’ matcha vs. coffee for increasing combativeness, the Clover Machine that used to…
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Happy Birthday, Lionel | a conversation with Lionel & Jim
It was Lionel’s big birthday when we recorded this one. We talk inexpertly about cigars and the crash of 2008, Jim being mistaken for Stanley Tucci, the…
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The Parasocial Book Club | a conversation with Ben Burnes and Sarah Elkins
Sarah and Ben met with us once before to discuss Jim's novels, and now they return to talk about what they've been reading. The books and movies are…
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“The empress who should have been, but wasn't.” | a conversation with Greg Olear
This episode is resplendent with expletives. You have been warned.Greg Olear joins the pod to discuss his novel “Empress: The Secret History of Anna…
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Encore Episode “Hakkar The Soul Flayer” | a conversation with Dr. William Hanage 11.18.22
While Lionel gets settled in to his new home in the northeast, enjoy this episode from 2022. We will be back with a new epsiode next week.Bill is a professor…
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“One door closes and the floodgates open elsewhere.” | a conversation with Ellis Paul
Ellis Paul joins the pod and we discuss his new album “55” as well as what it was like growing up in northern Maine, how his work changed during…
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“The phenomenon was always there.” | a conversation with Lionel & Jim
This episode is our Season 3 closer, released late, due to the total collapse of my (Jim's) Mac. We start by talking about the website Slaps.com and move…
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“Utopia Revisited” revisited | a conversation with Kurt Uenala
Kurt joins the pod again to review the work Jim and he did on the album Utopia Revisited, which is available now, streaming everywhere and on bandcamp. We talk…
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“Hey, Eng!” | a conversation with James Meyer
This week we talk with James Meyer, a photographer and artist who did 12 deployments in Afghanistan as a flight engineer on C130s, moving cargo during the war…
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“Low frequency treatments” | a conversation with Lionel & Jim
Lionel and Jim talk about the release of Utopia Revisited by Jim, which is the album he recorded in Iceland. Jim has created a video out of stock clips. We…
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“One of the weirdest movies I have ever seen” | a conversation with Jim & Lionel
Lionel and Jim talk about Jim’s experience at the Hollywood premiere of The Flash, the upsides and downsides of cloud storage, The Silo novels and TV…
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“It's like a giant trashcan where you dump your data and get it back out.” | a conversation with Keith Smith
This week Lionel and Jim talk with Keith Smith, longtime friend of Jim and Lead Engineer at MongoDB. We talk about Jim's misconceptions of noSQL databases…
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“Badvertising” | a conversation with Lionel and Jim
Lionel and Jim talk about Birkenstocks, Uggs, scorpions (not the band), the Men at Work lawsuit, Borges & The Lottery of Babylon, algorithms and black boxes…
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“He started with shoes.” | Lionel and Jim talk about Andy Warhol and SCOTUS
Jim and Lionel talk about the Andy Warhol case at the Supreme Court, discussing parody vs sampling, Two Live Crew, artists and inventors who began with a…
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“Leave your preconceived notions of what this is at home.” | a conversation with Matt Smith
Matt Smith, the managing director of Club Passim joins us to talk about his love for vinyl records, outdated recording formats, and his history of involvement…
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“I have a Passim tattoo.” | a conversation with Abby Altman
Abby Altman, Club Manager of Passim joins us to talk about her experience guiding the iconic music club, located in the heart of Harvard Square Cambridge, MA…
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“Just keep turning the knob.” | a conversation with Lionel & Jim
Jim, the producer’s note: I almost didn't put this one out - it didn’t feel like an episode until I listened to it. So here it is. We talk…
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“I grew up a lot, real quick.” | Ellen Roth joins our team
Lionel and Jim start with an abortive return to the horrors of AI and pivot to talk about a new book Lionel is enjoying about the Osage tribe in the 1920s when…
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“Midnight in the Threshing Room” Encore episode | Phil Broikos tells us about A Day In Music
This interview was mind blowing. Phil is creating 24 hours of music 5 minutes at a time and it's amazingly good. Lionel and I talk with him about his very…
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“The race to be first to the cliff” | The Slithery Dee, Part 3, Lionel & Jim
Jim starts by talking about his recent substack article about AI and the end of money. Lionel takes off with his ideas about the importance of work in society…
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“It's the beautiful that saves me.” | a conversation with David Wilcox
Jim was down in North Carolina last week and recorded this conversation with David Wilcox in his home studio. Lionel joined us from San Antonio. We talk about…
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“The interesting part is when it breaks down.” | The Slithery Dee, Part 2, Lionel & Jim
Lionel and Jim continue their discussion of AI, and move into the idea of human understanding through modeling, Isomorphism, stories, and the importance of…
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“The Slithery-Dee comes for thee” | a conversation about AI and planetary destruction with Lionel & Jim
In this episode, Jim and Lionel talk about what everyone is talking about, the advances made in AI this month. We tackle questions like “what are we…
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“Music has given me everything.” | a conversation with jazz pianist, John Chin
John Chin is a Jazz musician and composer based in New York City. He has 4+ albums available and is working on a new live album recorded during the pandemic…
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“We're returning you back to humanity.” | a conversation with Sarah Elkins and Ben Burnes
Jim invites Lionel, Sarah Elkins, and Ben Burnes to tear into his novels The Wakeful Wanderer’s Guide series, to his own horror and delight. Lionel…
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“What are we doing here?” | a conversation with Lionel & Jim
Jim and Lionel take a moment to dig into the things that keep coming up in our recent conversations. We talk about the nature of money, work, AI, worth, what…
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“We don't sell drill bits, we sell holes.” | a conversation with Chuck Robinson
Chuck Robinson of Peepers Puppets stops by to talk about the creative side of coding. We get into food choices in New England vs Texas and Georgia, the nature…
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“He played a friggin' parabolic antenna.” | a conversation with Kurt and Jim from Iceland
Recorded February 15 from TónLab studio (recorded on my ipad for convenience). Jim went to Iceland to record a collection of songs with producer Kurt…
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The Milkman | a conversation with Lionel & Jim
Lionel and Jim talk about Jim’s upcoming trip to Iceland to record a “phonogram” with Kurt Uenala, we talk about The Scottish Play, The All…
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“Not Everything Ends with the Iron Maiden.” | a conversation with Lionel & Jim
Lionel and Jim discuss email woes, Bitcoins and Blockchains by Antony Lewis, Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson, more Neal Stephenson, The Cloud, Jim’s…
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“It's stuck in the mud.” | A conversation with Damian Cassin
Brothers revisited! This week, Lionel’s brother Damian joins us to talk about big construction, data centers for crypto mining and AI, modern art in the…
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“Caller on line one” | Lionel, Jim, and 'Tim'
We have our first caller! How this happened is a mystery, I suppose. Perhaps it’s all fake. However it happened, we ended up with a lively conversation…
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“Meditation is a human thing.” | A conversation with Catherine Pilfrey, Matthew Bellows, and Jim Rosen.
Jim Rosen, Catherine Pilfrey, Matthew Bellows, and Jim Infantino have been teaching meditation online for almost 3 years as part of a twice weekly session that…
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“This whole Ptolemaic thing, it's not working.” | Another conversation with Professor Donald Smith
A new season for the new year!Professor Donald Smith returns to the pod, post haste to deal with Jim’s misconceptions about gravity, a discussion of…
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“Johnny Gottadoo” | A look back at 2022 with Lionel & Jim
Lionel and Jim look back at a little more than a year of making this podcast. We remember conversations with our guests, our growing reading lists, talk about…
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“It's hard to wrap your brain around it.” | A conversation with Professor Donald Smith
Donald Smith manages Guilford’s introductory and advanced physics laboratories, laser optics laboratory, and rooftop observatory. He joined us to talk…
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“When you believe in things that you don't understand...” | Lionel & Jim
We touch on two books Jim is reading, A Canticle for Leibowitz, and The City & The City, as well as The Hunger Games, which Jim is reading to his daughters…
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“The Bob Ross of music production” | a conversation with Ben Burnes
Ben is a musician and game developer who focuses his energy on creativity, positivity, and community. Ben does a weekly YouTube show called the Two Hour Music…
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“It's all upside down.” | a conversation with Lionel & Jim
Jim and Lionel return to the subject of the traditional Thanksgiving feast, discuss Riddley Walker, A Clockwork Orange, possible shortcomings of The Peripheral…
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“Down the hall, there's a black chapel.” | A conversation with Kurt Uenala
Kurt Uenala (aka null+void & Kap10Kurt) has produced, programmed, mixed, and remixed giants like Depeche Mode, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, The Kills, Dave…
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“Hakkar the Soulflayer” | a conversation with Dr. William Hanage
Bill is a professor of the evolution and epidemiology of infectious disease at Harvard and the co-director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics. Jim…
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“You know what, Goldfinger?” | a conversation with Vance Gilbert
We are joined by the amazing Vance Gilbert and talk about nostrils, voting in MA and TX, Vance’s Monday Acoustic Pajama Party, his incredible songs, the…
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“The Secret Aardvark” | a conversation with Lionel & Jim
Jim starts by telling us about his favorite hot sauce. Then he talks about the extensive references page on the website, which is still in process, thanks to…
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“One Emmy short of a coat rack” | A conversation with writer & director, John Infantino
John Infantino is a writer and director, known for Regular Show, Star vs. the Forces of Evil, and Despicable Me, as well as his work on The Marvelous…
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“Nobody's In Control” | a conversation with Lionel & Jim
Jim and Lionel discuss streaming shows and books including the Rings of Power, the upcoming show based on William Gibson’s The Peripheral, Chef’s…
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“Goats on Wings” | a conversation with Lionel & Jim
Jim starts by sharing his weight loss hack for getting on the scale in the morning, which leads into a discussion of The War of Jenkin’s Ear, which leads…
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“It's your favorite dish!” | a conversation with Dan Cantor
Dan Cantor, drummer, songwriter, producer of rock, folk, hip hop, and world music, visits the podcast to tell tales of recording overseas and in his studio…
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The Will of Landru | Lionel and Jim
Lionel and Jim discuss the end of summer, Mark Leyner, Kate Bush and the return of the 80s, New shows, old movies, Sherlock Holmes, Wars and our sense of…
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“Imperfect people being uncomfortable” | a conversation with Lionel and Jim
Lionel and Jim talk about what makes a great character in a story. What works? What appeals? Why do some fall flat? Why do some capture us? They also speak a…
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“It's only time travel” | a conversation with Sarah Elkins
Sarah Elkins has been in science fiction fandom since putting on a Doctor Who convention in the 80s. She joins the podcast this week to continue our…