Storytime With Bastards

I am currently coping with...everything by keeping in mind that it's only going to get worse, so I've got it pretty great right now and I'd better appreciate it before we go from Strange Days dystopia right over to Soylent Green. Sometimes, bad turns to worse, and the turning becomes a spiral of tragedy and carnage. What fun! Today brings us three stories of things only getting worse. You'll hear about a boat ride that nearly kills several children, the horrors of the French Revolution, and the true tragedy that was the fate of the Donner Party. While the last chapter of the people of earth is written, we hope you can add to it, by sharing more of your tragedies/comedies/buddy cop musicals. We are all the better for it.

There is nothing so powerful or moving as something made by a person that cares. We have seen our fandoms and our very world torn apart by gormless money-pushers with no mind for craft and no heart for the material, but the noble madmen (and hey, madwomen) who spend years of their life creating Star Trek fan productions continue to create works of heart and genius. With the last gleaming speck of hope left in my calcifying heart, I urge you to give at least one of these a try. Not all of them will be your thing, but one of them will be, and you will be better for making the plunge. Link referenced in today's episodeStar Trek Continues, without question the most professional and high quality of these productions Fanfilmfactor.com and its dubiously complete list of fan productions Star Trek Hidden Frontier and associated productions. (I didn't mention that they have multiple audio dramas, and Federation One is the West Wing in Star Trek, for those who want something more political.) Star Trek: The Holy Core a fan production that takes the challenge of 15 minutes or less and runs away with it, to exceptional success Space Command Kickstarter by Marc Zicree. You can also check out the Youtube channel which has hours of free content for the series. The Time Warp Trilogy I know none of you will watch this, but all of you should. One's soul is not sufficiently formed until making it all the way through this. We also want to reiterate that this podcast is meant to serve as a repository for all those beautiful things that would otherwise be forgotten. So many things took heart and effort and time but would be lost if they weren't given memory. Please, tell us something beautiful you have seen or made that you don't want lost. We think the world is better for it.

Just because something is effective doesn't mean it's necessarily the right thing to do. It's all the worst when doing things the wrong way doesn't even work out. Today we are going to be talking about taking the low road, and the many strange places that can lead. Learn about the Creep Bomb, Operation Fast and Furious, and a curious implementation of goat testicles. Brief apologies to our listeners for a lapse in content, but we will be back on track for the foreseeable future. If you want to make sure that we have more episodes, the best person to talk to is, well, you. That's how all this works. So get on the line and let us hear about your own questionable decisions.

People think that history is a settled thing, just because the past is behind us. That isn't true. History is manipulated. It changes all the time to suit a narrative. It is deliberately suppressed, and today's episode is the smallest of rages against that machine in the hope that we can correct a misconception. Women have contributed to society since the dawn of time, but their stories have not been told, leading to the lie that only recently have they been able to make meaningful stands. Today we are going to talk about some women who put their lives on the line and stood up for what they believed in.We want to stress that while the two we chose to highlight were responsible for military victories, that is not the only lens through which you should view accomplished women or societal impact. There are thousands of ways that a person can make their world a better one, as this week's listener attests to, putting her life on the line without ever picking up a weapon.This episode is entertainment, but in its small way it is also a call not to heed the narrative that has been fed to you. Seek out the stories you haven't been told, and be inspired to be more than you are. Or, in absence of such decency, come spill the fruits of your degeneracy on our podcast, so that we can laugh in amazement and horror.

It's in the nature of wealth and poverty that those living with often have no understanding of the lives of those who live without. The less one has to struggle through life, the less capable they are of grappling with struggles or understanding the experiences of those who have lived more challenging existences. There is a genuine bubble of safety that can't be pierced by facts, and leads those with power to live in a different physical and mental reality from everyone else. Today we talk about military culture, the history of mathematics, and South African racial politics as we take a dive into the distorted worldviews that power grants you. Of course, no one is insulated from this. All of us view things through a lens of personal experience that is, by its nature, incomplete. That's why today's episode comes with a recommendation: to check out Allsides.com, a resource to aggregate and compare reporting across the ideological spectrum. You see, whatever source you get your news from never has to lie to you to get you to believe the world works according to its biased viewpoint. It only needs to selectively present (or ignore) information. The more you see things from other perspectives, the more you make your own nuanced and informed.But all of that is secondary to the point of this podcast: talking to people directly. We would like to do more of that, so please get in touch with us to share your side of...whatever strange nonsense it is that drives you.

So we admit that this topic comes at very troubled times. To put it bluntly, the police murdered a man in broad daylight, on camera, and by the current system are likely to get away with it. There are problems with our nation's policing, and its response to situations.That is what today's episode (recorded a few weeks ago) is about. It's about three instances of the police clearly shirking their duties in the face of clear public necessity. It's not meant to be a joke, except in gazing into the true dark absurdity of humanity.The nature of what policing should be or consists of is beyond the scope of this episode, and maybe my ability to speak. So I encourage you to educate yourselves on what is happening, why it is happening, and how different outlets are reporting on it.

By its very nature, the workplace is already complicated and stressful enough. If you add just the smallest bit of worry on top of that, you'll find the thin veneer of decency you've managed to construct around yourself shattering like the arctic sheets under clouds of carbon. Sometimes slowly, but always drastic and dangerous. This episode brings us some tales of things going wrong in the workplace, with little recompense in tow. Listen as a caller makes strange requests, Carrie Fisher employs a creative solution to being objectified, and royalty go overboard to ensure they can make good on their investments.America is at a time when people are fighting, tooth and nail and lung, to get back to work, defining themselves by the menial and often demeaning labor that barely gives them enough to subsist on. There is a life outside of the office, and if we're lucky the next generation will get a taste of what that means. For the rest of us, we need ways to distract ourselves, and podcasts may be the best option. So listen in, share your woe, and give us a taste of what it means to see things through your eyes.

Misadventure abounds in the tangled history of travel. Something we take for granted in this age is how easy it has become to travel great distances in a short timespan. The movement of people from place to place, even in terms of a simple drive on the highway, is the result of millions of man hours and uncountable resources, and even then things can go horribly wrong. Before those resources were spent, it was a challenge of logistics and resources that...often did not go well.A friend brings a tale of such woe, and we do our best to outdo it, with a tale of mysteriously missing academics and an ill-fated invasion. (Not the one you're thinking of, or the other one. This happens a lot.)  If there is any take away from this, it's the importance of staying home. It's the only place that's safe. Apart from our podcast, where you can connect to the bizarre, dark tendencies that we all share.

This episode is one in a series of side-content, off the beat of our usual format. The principle is that we have too many stories that would go longer than the usual format to be properly described, so every now and again we are going to do an hour or so long episode focused around something specific. The zeitgeist being what it is, we thought this was the perfect time to get into one of those topics: plagues of history. We're all separated together, so now is the time to explore something a little longer, and not wait until it's actually funny to do so.So to those of you who have given us material that isn't up, it's coming soon. To those of you who haven't give it a try. We are always happy for more material.

The wonderful variety of life provides for infinite opportunities for things to go wrong in fascinating ways. Sometimes though, we manage to walk off the precipice just before tumbling off of it. With this episode, we will bring you some tales of situations that almost went horribly wrong, but due more to chance than anything else didn't go as terribly as they could. Pessimists, occasionally stymied, find these situations humorous, if frustrating. Some school threats, wayward nukes, and Mongolian invasions mark this week's tales of significant problems that didn't quite spiral out of control.For those of you disasters who did happen, please share your tales with us. You, members of the infinite variety of life (in dubious splendor) have much to share with us, and we look forward to listening to anything you would be willing to share.