Episode 56: Reformatting

On this episode, we talk about reformatting this podcast or possibly starting a new one to supplement this show. Either way, the emphasis would be on the three things we talk most about in our day-to-day life: Music, food, and politics. And we plan to let the expletives fly.

Kidding aside, all three topics are connected in many ways and all three provide more than enough to fill a lifetime of shows.

And on that note, this episode also delves into the relationship between politics and music, including several interesting music documentaries that either have been released or will be coming soon. In keeping with our usual focus on LGBTQIA+ issues, we also talk about Will and Harper, the documentary about Will Farrell’s longtime friend Harper who came out as trans. We’ll have much more to say about that in coming episodes.

Finally, related to the topic of food and “wellness,” as they say in corporate-speak, we talk about the fairly successful healthy eating and exercise routine we adopted — and more importantly, stuck to — over the past year.

We hope you enjoy the show, and please feel free to follow us on Instagram (@jenn_and_dave). Until next time! 

Episode 54: Revenge of the Normals

Well, the weirdos finally did it. They made us talk about politics for real, and we’re not too happy about it. 

We start our conversation with Donald Trump’s train-wreck interview at the National Association of Black Journalists conference in Chicago last week, and … let’s just say he certainly hasn’t modified his behavior since the incident in Butler, PA, in July. 

As Shakespeare would say, he’s full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Except, of course, racism, misogyny, xenophobia, and toxic paranoia.

We also talk about the other major story in politics: Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential race and the ascension of Kamala Harris (note: we recorded this before the Vice President chose Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz to be her running mate). Though the President probably did the right thing — and it probably won’t have the disastrous results many of us worried about — that doesn’t get journalists, pundits, movie stars, and other assorted scoundrels off the hook for the ageism and ableism they displayed over the past month or so. 

Finally, we touch on the Democrats weaponizing the Trump/Vance team’s weirdness against them and why it’s such an effective strategy. After all, every campaign needs a little Dennis Rodman from time to time. You’ll just have to listen in to find out how the Worm fits into all this.  

We hope you enjoy the show, and please feel free to follow us on Instagram (@jenn_and_dave). You can also follow us on the site formerly known as Twitter, where our joint account is @JennandDave1 and the podcast account is @itsotetPodcast. Until next time! 

Episode 52: Major Milestones; America Needs an Anger Translator; and Not Everything Is Political

This week, it dawned on us that we crossed a major milestone. Since our youngest graduated from college, we are officially done with back-to-school. No more beginning of the school year cookouts. No more back-to-school shopping. No more curriculum nights and teacher conferences. And no more moving kids into and out of dorms and college apartments. Which is sad, in a way, but also a pretty major accomplishment.

On the upside, we still have booze left over from our daughter’s college graduation party, but we’re not exactly mixologists over here. Which leads us to a digression about Jon Taffer and “Bar Rescue” and how great it would be if we had someone talk to our politicians the way he talks to failing bar owners. Kind of like the Key & Peele bit about Barack Obama’s anger translator, only in reverse: America needs an anger translator to confront … certain political actors who shall remain nameless.

And that leads to an discussion that should probably have taken place on our imaginary political podcast: We talk about how to spend election night without watching television or following election returns, how political polls work in modern times when very few people have landlines, and how polls fail to measure the truly irrational reasons why people make political choices. It’s not always about the economy and foreign policy. Sometimes it’s about who’s taller, how a candidate looks, or who the candidate hates.

If that’s not enough stress for you, we then turn to climate change and how it’s affecting the weather this summer, with record high temperatures in some parts of the country and crazy, end-times-y storms here in the Chicago area. Which, in turn, leads to a discussion about how we’ve politicized things that are fundamentally not political. Like, you know, science. Climate change, global pandemics and other assorted public health crises exist regardless of your or our politics, and they require nonpolitical, nonpartisan solutions. Especially because things like climate change are not going to stop without taking action and things like COVID may fade away for now, but we know another major pandemic will come along eventually. But if we politicize everything, we’ll never come up with real solutions. 

Case in point: After the 1918 flu, we had a hundred years to come up with nonpartisan ways to protect ourselves from airborne viruses, but we were still essentially blind-sided by COVID. And then COVID became completely politicized (mostly by people who didn’t want the government to tell them to wear masks and cut back on going out). So, it’s unlikely that we will ever have an adult conversation about what we got right and what we got wrong. Which means we’ll never develop workable, nonpartisan plans to deal with the next one. So that’s cool.

Anyway, we hope you enjoy the show, and please feel free to follow us on Instagram (@jenn_and_dave). You can also follow us on the site formerly known as Twitter, where our joint account is @JennandDave1 and the podcast account is @itsotetPodcast. Until next time!