Episode 37: Ben Gibbard on a Pony Who?

This week, Ed and John come clean about their impending live-on-stage recording of Lunch Box at Bumbershoot, Seattle's annual arts festival. They also discuss the USPS plot to divest themselves of unwanted obsolete packaging, the New Orleans real estate system, the poetry of Larry King, and the eating of goat. Follow links to the USPS rebranding, Larry King's Two Cents, the Downieville, CA Mountain Messenger, a lost Shakespeare play, the lost ficiton of Shirley Jackson, Chicago's Girl and the Goat, and some books by Ruth Salvaggio, Dave Gilbert, and Andy Greer.

Episode 36: Whisper Your Novel Into the Ear of This Chicken

John's feeling frisky and Ed is totally over his fire evacuation. So they liken John's career to a stationary train of cabooses, discuss humiliating themselves in order to sell books, recontextualize fleeting experience as a work of art, and read some poems out loud. Follow links to the horrors cats are put through for the creation of inspirational posters, Anakana Schofield's article on the media's view of writers, what a palimpsest actually is, Patricia Lockwood's "Rape Joke", and Richard Siken's "Boot Theory".

Episode 33: The Murderer Came to the Front Door

This week, John confesses that he has given up writing in favor of flower gardening, and explains why he is too lazy to get the lawnmower fixed, but not so lazy that he won't dig up 300 square feet of sod over four days. Ed explains the origins of Steely Dan's name and shares some favorite rock and roll movies, and the story of the drunken Christian intruder is told, as well as the tale of the zombie car. Follow links to Jackyl's "The Lumberjack", a documentary about the making of Aja, the trailer for Howdy, Montana, something about the movie Via Okinawa, and something about the movie Lovedolls Superstar, which has a good soundtrack, but is not an especially good movie.

Episode 32: What Would You Like to Do with My Hand?

In the wake of a podcast so grim that they didn't even bother to air it, Ed and John are back to discuss Amazon customer comments, dancing babies, the proper pronunciation of "GIF", why all songs should ask questions, why Syria is turning Ed into a vegetarian, and some new book recommendations. Follow links to Amazon's new triboob HQ, the terrible arrogance of Steve Wilhite, Ask a Midlist Author, Elisa Gabbert on Twitter, and Adam Hines's Duncan the Wonder Dog.

Episode 31: Microphone Council Got You Too

Ed and John settle in for a nice long chat about John's tendency to enter into interpersonal conflicts and the quirks of his teenage children. Ed explains why you get mad when you bump your head, and then shares a little country wisdom. He also performs a dramatic reading of the Hibbards' Corner Community Center summer music schedule. Follow links to Ernst Jünger's The Glass Bees,Hibbards' Corner Newsletter, and Frank Clark, the Country Parson.

Episode 30: Hater Studies

Alice Bolin returns to the show to talk with Ed and John about nail art and other handicrafts, the dangers of flirting with nerdy boys, when not to help a girl who has fallen on the sidewalk, having librarians for parents, pressure cooking, and how to properly dislike things. Follow links to John's detractor at the Chicago Tribune, the nail polish of Pretty Little Liars, James Wood's review of the Rachel Kushner book, Good Eats with Alton Brown, and the new novel from Urban Waite. We apologize for the crackling on John's track, no idea how that happened. It didn't sound that way at the time.

Episode 28: Hermits and Sheriffs

Ed and John are back after a travel hiatus and get back into the swing of things with a conversation about dinner parties good and bad, cheeselike shreds, pipe smoking, the Phelps family of Topeka, KS, literary sanctimony, and more. Follow links to the Dickens Character Name Generator, magnetic putty, the rainbow house, the Korean monster movie The Host, Daiya Cheddar Shredzzzz, and books by Rachel Kushner, Alice Notley, and Karl Knausgaard.

Episode 27: Last Supper of Puppies

This week Ed takes John on a tour of the latchhook art in his house; then they discuss John's recent essay on Salon.com suggesting that contemporary literature is boring, and that young writers should read less of it, and watch more TV instead. Also, John talks about feeling sentimental after a rock show, and Ed describes his dream wherein a statue is erected in honor of his failure and he is called an "untalented blimp." Follow links to John's essay, Walter de Maria's "Meaningless Work", The Comedy, Bennett Sims'sA Questionable Shape, and NoViolet Bulawayo's We Need New Names.

Episode 26: A Good Segue from Pig Trotters

This week Ed and John are joined by Jeremy Holt, guru of knife care, pressure cooking, and seventies soft rock. Follow links, lots of them, to La Caja China, Topeka's Top of the Tower, Punk Rawk Labs, Delonghi toaster ovens, Ambrosi Brothers Cutlery, menudo, Fagor pressure cookers, Donny and Joe Emerson's "Baby", Blondie Chaplin's 1977 solo album, Barbara Keith's "Detroit or Buffalo", and KISS on the Jerry Lewis telethon.

Episode 23: Executed by James Wood

Behold! It's Episode 23, wherein Ed and John debate the merits of eating stew in a restaurant, the chill you get from wolves, pajamas, hunting, AWP, and Bret Easton Ellis's soft, soft hands. Follow links to, yes, the history of pajamas, the Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel, the mountain lion hunter on whom the tables were turned, the films of Zach Godshall, and the poetry of Catherine Barnett. And, by the way, the killer was Duncan McKensie, he listened to Marty Robbins, and he ate steak, french fries, salad, milk and orange sherbert.

Episode 22: I Hate the Monorail and I Hate You

Ed and John welcome guest Christine Scharrrrrr, I mean Scharrer, Seattle architect and salonista, for this Very Special Episode featuring the war that destroyed the book group, pirates in the café, wincing at buildings, quitting the senate, and absolutely nothing about vegetarian cuisine. Follow links to the pirate controversy on Craigslist, Christie's place of employment, Schtickers, Kona Kitchen, Café Racer, the Modern Seinfeld twitter feed, and Linda's Tavern, where Christie is no more eating "brunch" than she is advocating trickle-down economics.

Episode 21: Floobert Dood It

John kind of maybe talks too much on this more-associative-than-usual episode featuring raccoon meat, coconuts with breasts, friendships with coyotes, eating at rest stops, and female hydrophobia. Follow links to the Vulture.com interview with Stephen Soderbergh, a recipe for African groundnut stew, the novels of Edward St. Aubyn, an unexpected Seattle construction delay, Paul Lisicky's Twitter feed, Charles Burns's Black Hole,Joseph Beuys's "I Like America and America Likes Me", and Susan Wheeler's Record Palace.

Episode 20: Another Glass of Lasagna

John and Ed return after a week off due to travel and illness with a new episode addressing the problem of the restaurant pancake, what the deal is with sports, bumping into Dave in New York, the comma splice and its oily pleasures, and what no child's birthday party in Phillipsburg, New Jersey could go without. Also, Ed reads a short story, and John tells a long, depressing anecdote. Follow Links to Concord, NH's The Sandwich Depot, the bewilderingly large Sandwich-a-Day jpeg, Betsy's Pancake House, Gordon Biersch, and books by Terrance Hayes, Richard Prince, Ted Berrigan and Ron Padgett.

Episode 19: Oversize Religious Kids

This week, Ed and John welcome fiction writer Sharma Shields, and the three talk about hot salad, library masturbators, fast food franchise partnerships, growing up on a lamb ranch, and horse poetry. Follow links to Michael Earl Craig's "Autobiography", Shawn Bruce and the Horsebite Tears, Auntie's Books, the union of Schlotzky's and Cinnabon, Das Racist's "Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell", 2nd Look Books, Elias Khoury's White Masks,Zakaria Tamer's Breaking Knees, Alissa Nutting's Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls, and Paul Maliszewski's essay on the nonficiton of Wells Tower. Also, John apologizes for the crackles, Skype didn't like him today.

Episode 18: A Mixed Grill of Cobra, Killdeer and Coatimundi

Ed's got a cough, John is all bent out of shape about colonialism, and everyone agrees that stoners don't like Ashbery. This week we celebrate the life of Evan S. Connell, issue warnings about small and independent grocers, hold forth on the bushmeat crisis, puncture Doctor Joe's pill piñata, and take a flight of fancy on a plastic plane. Follow links to the Boeing 787, Spicy Pony Head, Mitterand's last last meal, Dominique Fabre's The Waitress Was New, Counterpoint Press, Marfa Book Company, and, yes, bushmeat.