In 1997 Mark Ames founded the now infamous Moscow independent weekly The Exile. Mark and co editor Matt Taibbi quickly became Moscow media celebrities. The paper was known as much for the content, which was a combination of rigorous investigative reporting and scurrilous satire of the Kremlin elite, as it was for the equally outrageous stunts performed by the staff. In 2001 Mark and Taibbi presented then New York Times Moscow bureau chief Michael Wines the Exile's Worst Journalist in Russia award, by arriving unannounced at the Times offices and slamming a strawberry pie infused with five ounces of horse semen in the poor bastard's face.

By 2008 Mark had annoyed many in Vladimir Putin's orbit and was warned by friends that he was risking jail time if he stayed in Russia. He returned to the US. Mark currently lives in Rochester New York with his wife and children. He is the of author of Going Postal: Rage, Murder and Rebellion: From Reagan’s Workplaces to Clinton’s Columbine  and co-author of The eXile: Sex, Drugs & Libel in the New Russia. 

Comedian Margaret Cho once described comedians as "the working class of show business".  Margaret's body of work is difficult to pigeon hole with a single adjective. She is an artist, activist, comedian, actor, and a musician. Margaret has developed a loyal following from her brilliant, non-conformist and often controversial comedy.

Margaret has also done a lot of acting in film and television. The complete list of acting accomplishments is too long to list here. Recent roles include appearances in HBO's High Maintenance, Law and Order Special Victm's Unit, and Sharknado 5: Global Warming. 

Like Lydia, she also has her own podcast  The Margaret Cho.

The work of artist Penny Slinger includes photography, collage, film and sculpture. Slinger emerged out of the tumult of the 1960s. Like many of her generation, she went on a  quest for personal freedom and sexual liberation. Penny, channeled these journeys and desires into her collages and sculptures. All of these works are rooted in a visual language that Penny describes as 'feminist surrealism'. This language is used to explore and investigate notions of the feminine subconscious and psyche. Penny is her own muse and in many works she uses her own body to examine the relationship between sexuality, mysticism and femininity. 

In 2017 Director Richard Kovitch released the documentary Penny Slinger: Out of the Shadows. The documentary is an enthralling examination of Penny's amazing life and work. 

Alex Zaitchik is a journalist whose beat covers politics, media, and the environment, essentially the kindling that is girding American culture at the moment. He has written for The Nation, The New Republic, the Intercept, Rolling Stone, the Guardian, Foreign Policy, the Baffler, the International Herald Tribune, Wired, the San Francisco Chronicle, and The Believer. He was a staff writer and editor at the New York Press, the eXile in Moscow, and was the founding editor at the online magazine Freezerbox and the Prague Pill, an alternative newspaper in the Czech Republic.

Alex has written three books that make for great election season reading. His first book, was Common Nonsense: Glenn Beck and the Triumph of Ignorance. His second book, The Gilded Rage: A Wild Ride Through Donald Trump's America was published in August 2016. Out of the Ooze: The Story of Dr. Tom Price was published in June 2017.

Thurston Moore's new album By the Fire drops today. Almost 40 years earlier in 1980 Thurston started Sonic Youth, which was a major force in bringing experimental rock n roll and noise to the MTV masses.

Since then, Thurston has gone on to work with Yoko Ono, John Zorn, Cecil Taylor, Glenn Branca and many others. Presently he performs and records solo, with various ensembles, and in his own band, The Thurston Moore Group. Lydia and Thurston share a friendship that goes back to the early eighties. In today's podcast,  this friendship and many other topics are covered including poetry, song writing, record collecting, art, and music. Thurston also reads from his book of poetry titled Musical College.

Cathi Unsworth’s Bad Penny Blues is republished this autumn in a new edition from Strange Attractor Press. This fictionalized investigation into the Jack the Stripper murders – 1960s London’s biggest unsolved case – comes with a new Introduction from Greil Marcus and an afterword in which the author details just how haunting the process of recreating the book’s milieu became. 

The landscape of 1959 London, was a fertile mix of writers, musicians, politicos and pop artists who were joined by slumming aristocrats trawling for thrills in the jazz clubs of Westbourne Grove. All of human life – including a vicious and  misogynist serial killer, who managed to outwit the largest manhunt in Metropolitan police history.

The fiend left his prey naked, with injuries that baffled investigating officers. Dubbed ‘Jack the Stripper’ by a press eager to inflate the lurid connotations of his victims’ occupations. Cathi says it was the rage she felt for the victims' lives – already nasty and brutish enough that were cut short and buried under mounds of prurient dirt that compelled her to write their stories. Her aim was to give them back the voices they were denied and let the readers see what the life of a so-called "Good Time Girl" in post-War, pre-Swinging London was like.

Originally written in 2009, the book was described by David Peace as “the English Black Dahlia” and was selected as a favorite lockdown read by listeners of BBC Radio London’s Robert Elms Show this summer. 

For more, see www.cathiunsworth.co.uk and www.strangeattractor.co.uk where you can hear more of Cathi and Fred discussing this story.

John Dwyer is a founding member of the band Thee Oh Sees, with whom he has recorded 22 studio albums. John is also a former member of Coachwhips, Pink and Brown and The Hospitals. In 2003, John co-founded Castle Face Records.

Earlier this summer, Castle Face Records announced the release of an album from his new group, Bent Arcana. Joining John are: keyboardist Kyp Malone, percussionist, and vocalist Ryan Sawyer, bassist Peter Kerlin, saxophonist Brad Caulkins, keyboardist Tom Dolas, guitarist Marcos Rodriguez, violinist Laena Myers-Ionita, tenor saxophonist Joce Soubiran, and percussionist Andres Renteria.

In the late 90s, John set out from his home town of Providence, Rhode Island to find another city to live in. He settled in San Francisco after encountering and liking the fact a rude barista who while talking on her cell phone referred to him as "some asshole". Listen to this episode to hear him tell this story and more. Other subjects discussed include: John's many accomplishments, bands, improvisational music, what brings out his Rhode Island accent, getting Carson Daly to drum for 9 minutes, how John became friends with Weasel Walter, and his fist fight with Episode 44 guest Nandor Nevai.    

Kier-La Janisse discovered her passion for horror movies at a young age. Her interest morphed into a multifaceted career. In 2010, She founded The Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies, which is a horror school. Kier-La has also written several books including,  A Violent Professional: The Films of Luciano Rossi (2007) and the acclaimed House of Psychotic Women: An Autobiographical Topography of Female Neurosis in Horror and Exploitation Films(2012).

While she was in college majoring in Medieval Studies, Kier-La used some of her student loans and her income from working at a video store to launch the CineMuerte International Horror Film Festival. Due to her efforts with the festival she was able to bring greater awareness to lesser known films and directors that have as a result gone on to gain acclaim. Kier-La also programmed for the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin Texas, and was the subject of the documentary Celluloid Horror.  Her debut effort as a  director/producer, Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror is due out from Severin Films in this year.

Bibbe Hansen grew up in New York around two of the biggest art movements of the 20th century Fluxus and Pop Art. Bibbe’s father, was Fluxus artist Al Hansen, whose first performance piece was pushing a piano out of a bombed-out building in Germany while he was serving as a soldier. This performance would later be covered by Bibbe’s two sons, Beck and Channing Hansen.

Bibbe was an active participant in her father’s work and tagged along with him to film screenings and art openings that were attended by Andy Warhol, who she would later collaborate with on films. The collaboration started when as a teenager, Bibbe wound up getting into trouble and going to jail for several months. On her first day of freedom, Bibbe and her father went out to eat with her dad’s artist friends, which included Andy Warhol. Warhol was taken by her jail tales and cast her as a co-star in the film Prison along with Edie Sedgwick. Thus began Bibbe's immersion into Warhol's factory scene.

By the late-1960s, Bibbe moved to Los Angeles where she married her first husband, musician David Campbell. In 1984, after the marriage ended Bibbe married artist Sean Carrillo. Together they opened the now legendary Los Angeles gallery and performance venue the Troy Café. During this time Bibbe played in the band Black Fag with “terrorist drag” performer Vaginal Davis.

Currently, like the rest of us, Bibbe and Sean are in quarantine. She spends her days in upstate New York either working in her art studio, organizing the Al Hansen archive with Sean, or working on her memoir. In this episode, Bibbe shares many great stories and several poems, including one about her friend Edie Sedgwick.

Composer Cliff Martinez started his career as a drummer. He played in 1313 with Lydia. He also drummed for The Dickies and The Weirdos. After reading in a newspaper that Captain Beefheart was auditioning drummers he flew out to Los Angeles and got the job. Cliff's drumming can be heard on the 1982 Beefheart album Ice Cream for Crow.

In 1983 Cliff, joined the Red Hot Chili Peppers for the recording of their first album  What Is This?  Cliff also played on the Chili Pepper's second album Freaky Styley.  In 2012 Cliff was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

A tape of "weirdo rude vocal/body noises" recorded on a MIDI percussion controller with his friends John and Dix Denney was his entrée into film and television. The tape led to a job scoring an episode of Pee-Wee’s Playhouse. The tape was also, heard by Steven Soderbergh, who hired Cliff to do the soundtrack for Sex, Lies and Videotape. Cliff has since composed scores for, over forty films including Contagion, The Lincoln Lawyer, Drive, Spring Breakers, and The Neon Demon.