Otis Brown's Podcast

This week, I reflect on maritime art and the depiction of work, what Melville calls "less erroneous pictures of whales," and byegone professions.  I also wonder if the depiction is the art or if the work is the art; is a Remington painting of a Comanche buffalo hunter the art or is the painting just how we captured it? It's not all abstract, I tell some regular old stories too. 

Hope you enjoy. Thanks, as always, for supporting the podcast!   

This week, I share some thoughts on the Adirondack guide-boat I have been rebuilding and the process by which I originally built it 25 years ago. I guess I'm continuing to try and work out the extent to which we make objects and the extent to which they make us. I hope you enjoy! Thanks again for all of the support. 

This week, I reflect on the most American of art forms--Jazz!

Some thoughts on Ralph Waldo Emerson, statues and other public monuments with an appeal to rename the Edmund Pettus Bridge after the late John Lewis. 

In this week's episode, I explore wood screws, successes in heavier than air flight, motorcycle speed records and our failed response to this pandemic. 

Some reflections on my love of music and the basic human impulse to generate pleasing sounds, along with some thoughts on the risk v. reward analysis we conduct if we want to be people who do stuff. 

Reflecting on the nature of work, the differences between visible and invisible and physical and intellectual labor and the authentic working-class literary tradition of the American song. 

Some thoughts on Rosie the Riveter, Dolores Huerta, Judith Baca and my experiences with the WWII generation. 

This week's podcast is named after a honky tonk song by the great Nashville guitar slinger Kenny Vaughan. I hope you enjoy it, whether you love country music or not. 

A little teaser for my next podcast. The photo is of a banjo I made; it figures in the next podcast where I (don't quite) tell a story about a picture where Bela Fleck plays my banjo.