Otis Brown's Podcast

Interesting Stuff: reflections on the American place with side trips into literature, art, music, culture and language. Otis Brown's Podcast is a weekly 20 minute monologue podcast often addressing current issues through the lens of personal anecdotes and American Art and Culture--think of it as a radio show you can listen to whenever you want. With free-ranging stories built around cultural figures from John Lewis to Dolores Huerta, musicians from Little Richard to Dolly Parton and painters from the cave painters of Chauvet to living artists like Wayne Thiebaud, Otis Brown's Podcast attempts to construct literary narratives that try and make sense of the beautiful American mess we walk with in the world.

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In this week's episode of Otis Brown Podcast, I discuss my chief pedagogical goal, my life as a teacher and my method that I call, "Let's pretend we're talking about a poem." It's not all me, though. I also discuss the great HBO show Treme, the new Pixar film Soul and a Billy Collins poem. I hope these reflections on what a teacher is and does are interesting to anyone who has ever tried to learn or teach anything--not just those of us who have lost our classrooms to the pandemic.
Thanks!

Keywords:
Billy Collins
David Simons
Jon Batiste
Stephen Colbert
Wendell Pierce
Pixar's Soul 
HBO's Treme 
Papa Celestin Marie Laveau"
The image is Eudora Welty's "Sideshow"
I love that a professor is one of the sideshow "freaks." 

Hobo mythology permeates 20th century American culture. While not quite as pervasive or expansive as American western mythology, the myth of the American hobo enjoys a unique position in American culture in that it continues to live and evolve. In this episode of Otis Brown Podcast, I explore some hobo writing, briefly discuss the films The Wild One with Marlon Brando, Hobo, the 1992 John T. Davis documentary, and Who is Bozo Texino? the wonderful 2005 film by Bill Daniel. I offer some thoughts on hobo art and writing and consider the place of the hobo in the American mythos. 

Hope you enjoy. 

Trailer for 1/20 episode on hobo language and secrete signs. 

I turn now to the hallowed subject, Dogs Playing Poker. Who doesn't know the painting? It it possibly the most recognizable of all American Paintings? The "painting" is actually a group of sixteen paintings, bracketed on the ends by two additional paintings, all of which were completed as advertisements for the Brown and Bigelow cigar company by a former sign painter named Cassius Marcellus Coolidge--aka "Kash Koolidge."  The paintings are generally quite famous--though two, "Poker Game" (1894) and "A Friend in Need" (1903) are by far the best known. And, they are going for real money on the auction block. 

Hope you enjoy the podcast. 
Dr. Otis Brown 

Keywords:
Cash Coolidge (Cassius Marcellus Coolidge, Kash Koolidge)
Edourd Manet
Claude Monet 
Titian
Diego Velazquez
Ovid 
Dogs Playing Poker
"A Friend in Need"
"Poker Game" 
"The Rape of Europa" 
"Las Hilanderas" (The Spinners, The Fable of Arachne)

This week, I'm finally feeling emotionally ready to deal with the death of a great American poet: John Prine. As most of you probably know, we lost this enormously influential American songwriter to Covid last April, early in this ordeal. Having survived cancer at least twice, and soldiered on through all manner of adversity, John rode that old body to the scene of the crash and gave us some truly remarkable songs. In this episode of Otis Brown Podcast, I share some remembrances and attempt to break down a few aspects of Prine's poetry that I hope will make him more interesting to listeners.

Fair warning, I also play and sing several of the songs directly into the microphone without edits.

Thanks, be well. 

Keywords:
John Prine
Bob Dylan
Bonnie Raitt
Sturgill Simpson
Jim James
Nathaniel Rateliff
Keb Mo
Shemekia Copeland 
John Garfield 
Sabu Dastagir
Nobel Prize for Literature
"Linda Goes to Mars"
"One Red Rose" 
"Bruised Orange: Chain of Sorrow"
"Sabu Visits the Twin Cities Alone" 
"That's the Way the World goes Round"
"Angel From Montgomery"
"Speed of the Sound of Lonliness"  
"The Late John Garfield Blues"
"Lake Marie" 
"Sweet Revenge" 

John Prine
Christmas in Prison
Otis Brown Podcast

All right boys--you done seen the rest, now I'm gonna show you the best. In this episode of Otis Brown Podcast, I comment on the new Netflix film Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, staring Viola Davis and Chadwick Boseman and situate it, August Wilson's play of the same name and the HBO film Bessie in a conversation about female classic blues singers of the period between 1925 and 1930. 

Keywords:
Bessie Smith
Ma Rainey
Louis Armstrong
Thomas "Fatz" Waller
"Honeysuckle Rose"
August Wilson
Viola Davis
Chadwick Bosman
Queen Latifah 
Mo'nique 
LaWanda Page
Shemika Copeland
Brittany Howard 

Trailer for 12/30/2020 Podcast on Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey and The Classic Blues

American women, stand up and be counted! Somewhere around 1 in 100 American women have a Doctorate of some kind. Using the title lights the way for others so get off Dr. Jill Biden's back. 
In this episode of Otis Brown Podcast, I tackle the "Dr. Jill Biden controversy" and offer some thoughts on my experience with my own titles and honoraria.
Thanks friends! Share the podcast with friends if you would.