Episode 54: People Have Been Setting Fires Out Here

Ed's in Wichita and John is sitting in a ray of sunshine, and they talk about the Golden Ratio, indie rock shows, the eccentricities of the very wealthy, saying that writers are "good," and the zoo. Special guest Brad Allen drops by to talk about the pressures of being executive director of the Lawrence, Kansas public library. Follow links to Zumpano, poems by Zubair Ahmed, Evan S. Connell's The Aztec Treasure House, The Donut Whole, LaMar's Donuts, Kirby's Beer Store, and Birds 'n' Brass.

Episode 51: Where the Drummer Puts His Beer

This week Ed is podcasting from the kitchen, just after his final visit to the only lions in Seattle. John is recovering from his horrific visit to a local restaurant, and cowering at home from Ithaca's annual Chili Fest. Together, they discuss frozen chili, the enchiladas of Everett, the invisble man who controls the economy, elephants and orangutans who are strangers to Ed, and changing a stranger child's diaper. Follow links to the New Mexicans Restaurant, Peter Mountford's The Dismal Science, guys selling meat door to door, and the Prison Talk forums.

Episode 50: I'm Dan Aykroyd, Keep Your Money

In their arbitrarily landmarkish fiftieth episode, Ed and John discuss the sentimental conditional (also known as the habitual mood), sentence pajamas, the 2014 AWP Lunch Box Podcast Dining Guide, Ed's secret anxieties, and the world's greatest imaginary poet. Follow links, lots of them, to Philip Seymour Hoffman's Esquire interview, The Complete John Lillison, Chiang's Gourmet, Restaurant Roux, The Seattle Seven, Bluefin Sushi & Seafood, the lyrics to "Ghostbusters", Will Wiles's Care of Wooden Floors, the books of Magnus Mills, and Steve Orlen's This Particular Eternity.

Episode 49: They Spray Lizard Cloud

After their longest hiatus to date, Ed and John come back strong with a conversation about unemployment, Scottish bands, lists that John is on, pens, Spider-Man, Moses Lake, WA, and methods of drafting literary works. Ed disses a famous poet and John reads from a poem of Ed's that he forgot about. Follow links to The Hazey Janes, the notable people of Phillipsburg, NJ, Karas Kustoms pens and other metal things, and The Sand Bar.

Episode 48: Slim Shadings

Ed and John usher in the third calendar year of the podcast by discussing firearm cuisine, the demise of Ithaca's indoor pork food truck and the rise of its Szechuan restaurant, madness, barfing, football, and what is gonna be big in 2014. Follow links to the death of Mikhail Kalashnikov, Belly, Spicy Asian, John's cover of Alice's song, and Larkin's "Church Going" (accompanied by a tiny dancing man).

Episode 46: Submarine Doctor Books

Thanksgiving is over and Ed's mic broke, so he and John talk about holiday cookin', beds and breakfasts, Ed's penchant for a nice spritz and a ritual heating, and whether or not John should own a van or take in lodgers. Also John reads a Natalie Shapero poem. Follow links to Natalie's "A Moving Poem", Michael Robbins's 2013 poetry not-picks-exactly, Bob Garfield's Times piece on negative book reviewing, some nice pictures of the Oregon High Desert, ground cherries, Red Fang's "Prehistoric Dog", Mapcrunch, and GeoGuessr.

Episode 45: Mendin' Pipe

It's November, time for homemade twinkies and Canadian pornography! Ed and John discuss haircuts, eyeglasses, antique ventriloquist's dummies, Ovid on Florence Henderson, and hiding your vices from others. Follow links to "In Too Deep", by Lisan Jutras, The Room trailer, The Disaster Artist, horn-rimmed glasses, Alasdair Gray, David Abrams's "Like a Salmon Swimming Downstream", and the Authentic Twinkie Maker.

Episode 44: How Can I Contribute to the Avant-Garde Today?

It's been a while since Ed and John have recorded a conventional episode of the podcast, and it's good to be back. Not that you'd know it from this overly serious discussion of experimental writing, earbud loss, cannibalism, and failing to get Barry Hannah's signature. Follow links to Seoul Taco, the Siege of Leningrad, Outlier slim dungarees, The Dorothy Project, Sparklehorse's "Little Fat Baby", and Hugo's letter to Simic.

Episode 43: We Stared at the Dog Biscuit

In this, the second episode recorded before a live audience in Missoula, Montana, Ed and John chat with Seattle writer, teacher, and baker Kate Lebo, author of A Commonplace Book of Pie, and fiction writer and essayist Robert Stubblefield. Ed wonders what it would be like to have money, John recalls writing entire novels during other people's smoke breaks, and Robert finally did bring us the pears the following day.

Episode 41: Circular Breathing

This week, Ed and John express amused dismay at Canadian novelist David Gilmour's awful interview on the Random House blog. They also discuss the effect a single ten-minute saxophone note has on a poetry reading, the brutal murder of the Chipwich, the soysage deception, and their respective weekend trips to Seattle and New York. Follow links to the Gilmour piece, circular breathing, the It's-It, the Chipwich, Wegmans Don't Be Piggy Meatless Sausage Style Crumbles, and the lady who plays a goat.

Episode 40: Spectral Boogeyman Time Traveler Who Hates Poets

Ed and John are back from Seattle with a plan to spread the good news about YouTube's viral non-hit "What Kind of Eggs You Like?" They also talk about the relationship, if any, among pop Oceans, whether "Christian" and "Out-and-Proud" are moods, angry Quakers, and the perils of defending poetry. Follow links to the world's greatest YouTube video, Kevin Young's essay "Deadism", Donald Barthleme's "The first thing the baby did wrong…", Marc Maron's WTF podcast, and the new Starry Mountain Sweetheart Band album.

Episode 39: It Could Have Been a Meat Boot

This week, Ed and John do it live in front of a double-digit crowd at Seattle's Bumbershoot music festival. Guests include pedal steel guitarist Abilene Slim, poet Matthew Dickman, and poet and food writer Sarah Galvin. Featuring many dirty jokes, reviews of festival food, funny and disturbing poems, English lords, and musical excursions. We apologize for the massively overloaded recording here—the talking sounds good but the music, sadly, is distorted. We'll try to get it right in Missoula next month.

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".