The Relentless Picnic

“One writer says that Brown's peculiar monomania made him to be ‘dreaded by the Missourians as a supernatural being.’ Sure enough, a hero in the midst of us cowards is always so dreaded. He is just that thing. He shows himself superior to nature. He has a spark of divinity in him. They talk as if it were impossible that a man could be ‘divinely appointed’ in these days to do any work whatever; as if vows and religion were out of date as connected with any man's daily work; as if the agent to abolish slavery could only be somebody appointed by the President, or by some political party. They talk as if a man's death were a failure, and his continued life, be it of whatever character, were a success.”

—H.D. Thoreau, “A Plea For Captain John Brown,” 1859.

Cabin is the new season from The Relentless Picnic. It's one story told over multiple episodes. It's a story about solitude and isolation, community and loss, Henry David Thoreau and Ted Kaczynski—and it's told through audio recorded throughout 2019 and 2020.

Support us at patreon.com/relentlesspicnic for access to a ton of bonus content.

Our web site is relentlesspicnic.com

SOURCES (Ep. 4):

- “A Plea for Captain John Brown,” by H.D. Thoreau (1859): bit.ly/2CPiMHT ;

- Walden; or, Life in the Woods, by H.D. Thoreau (1854): bit.ly/3jS0Woq ;

- Videos and resources on John Brown, the raid on Harpers Ferry, and its aftermath: youtu.be/EG4ukrMtdNs , youtu.be/bB_kbFAui-U , youtu.be/LPyqE2zpQCg , youtu.be/Ax7KjLUOt8w , youtu.be/roNmeOOJCDY , youtu.be/q-E-ffXl2Uk , youtu.be/MILN_17KH6M , youtu.be/dmyswQs6_Bw .

- Henry David Thoreau: A Life, by Laura Dassow Walls (2018): amzn.to/2B22qdw ;

- “Civil Disobedience,” by H.D. Thoreau (1849): bit.ly/2OYTQjz ;

- Westward, I Go Free: Tracing Thoreau’s Last Journey, by Corinne Smith: amzn.to/2OUyYKi ; corinnehsmith.com ; thoreausociety.org ;

- Thoreau’s letter to Parker Pillsbury, April 10 1861: bit.ly/2WVVdEg [“Blessed are they who never read a newspaper, for they shall see Nature, and through her, God. But alas I have heard of Sumpter, & Pickens, & even of Buchanan, (though I did not read his message)”] ;

- Thoreau’s journals, 1860-61: bit.ly/2WXHUmI ;

- “The Wreckage,” The Relentless Picnic, ep. 27: bit.ly/2By6Md7 ;

- Joanna Newsom, “Does Not Suffice” (youtu.be/FkjkT-ohCpQ) & “Good Intentions Paving Company” (youtu.be/KCCl3nzL5PI) ;

- Don DeLillo, Mao II (1991): amzn.to/30VqmJc ;

- The Unabomber In His Own Words (2018), documentary on Netflix: bit.ly/2DbHkuh ;

- season photo: "Untitled #2214" by Todd Hido, 1998.

“Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them. . . . Some, not wise, go to the other side of the globe, to barbarous and unhealthy regions, devote themselves to trade for ten or twenty years, in order that they may live—that is, keep comfortably warm—and die in New England at last.” —H.D. Thoreau, Walden, “Economy,” 1854.

Cabin is the new season from The Relentless Picnic. It's one story told over multiple episodes. It's a story about solitude and isolation, community and loss, Henry David Thoreau and Ted Kaczynski—and it's told through audio recorded throughout 2019 and 2020.

Support us at patreon.com/relentlesspicnic for access to a ton of bonus content.

Our web site is relentlesspicnic.com

SOURCES (Ep. 3):

- Walden; or, Life in the Woods, by H.D. Thoreau (1854) ;

- The journals of Henry David Thoreau (1837-1861): bit.ly/36Lxavm ;

- “Ktaadn,” by H.D. Thoreau (1848): bit.ly/2CSXvga ;

- The Maine Woods, by H.D. Thoreau (posthumously, 1862): bit.ly/3icJ5HO ;

- “Early Retirement Extreme” by J.L. Fisker (2010): amzn.to/2ZpEZn2 ;

- Ben Gaddes: appalachianben.tumblr.com, bengaddes.com, & bit.ly/2ZA4CBZ ;

- Henry David Thoreau: A Life, by Laura Dassow Walls (2018): amzn.to/2B22qdw ;

FURTHER READING:

- An excerpt from "On Trails" by Robert Moor (2016), on Thoreau and Katahdin: bit.ly/3gbBibC ;

- “What Happened to the Thoreau Spring Plaque [on Katahdin]?” by Howard R. Whitcomb (2015): bit.ly/31u79jq .

“I perceive that we partially die ourselves through sympathy at the death of each of our friends or near relatives. Each such experience is an assault on our vital force. It becomes a source of wonder that they who have lost many friends still live. After long watching around the sickbed of a friend, we, too, partially give up the ghost with him, and are the less to be identified with this state of things.” —H.D. Thoreau, Journal, 1859.

Cabin is the new season from The Relentless Picnic. It's one story told over multiple episodes. It's a story about solitude and isolation, community and loss, Henry David Thoreau and Ted Kaczynski—and it's told through audio recorded throughout 2019 and 2020.

Support us at patreon.com/relentlesspicnic for access to a ton of bonus content.

Our web site is relentlesspicnic.com

SOURCES (Ep. 2):

- Walden; or, Life in the Woods, by H.D. Thoreau (1854) ;

- The journals of Henry David Thoreau (1837-1861): bit.ly/36Lxavm ;

- Henry David Thoreau: A Life, by Laura Dassow Walls (2018): amzn.to/2B22qdw ;

- Letter from N. Hawthorne to H.W. Longfellow (Nov. 21, 1848): bit.ly/3fjSqeP ;

- With Walt Whitman in Camden, vol. 1, by Horace Traubel (1906): bit.ly/2YpXhEq ;

- “Pierre Menard, Author of the ‘Quixote’” by Jorge Luis Borges (tr. 1962): bit.ly/2UACA7H ;

- season photo: "Untitled #2214" by Todd Hido, 1998.

Cabin is the new season from The Relentless Picnic. It's one story told over multiple episodes. It's a story about solitude and isolation, community and loss, Henry David Thoreau and Ted Kaczynski—and it's told through audio recorded throughout 2019 and 2020.

Support us at patreon.com/relentlesspicnic for access to a ton of bonus content.

Our web site is relentlesspicnic.com

SOURCES (Ep. 1):

- The journals of Henry David Thoreau (1837-1861): bit.ly/36Lxavm ;

- Walden; or, Life in the Woods, by H.D. Thoreau (1854) ;

- Into the Wild (dir. Sean Penn, 2007; based on the 1996 book by Jon Krakauer about Christopher McCandless) ;

- Grizzly Man (dir. Werner Herzog, 2005) ;

- season photo: "Untitled #2214" by Todd Hido, 1998.

A preview of CABIN: the upcoming season from The Relentless Picnic.

Are we further apart? Are we being fooled? This is an episode about our phantom selves, how we're doing right now, and the feeling that something important has gone wrong.

SOURCES:

- "Ep. 27: The Wreckage," The Relentless Picnic (Feb. '18): bit.ly/2GhA6CW ;

- "How Do We Write Now?" by Patricia Lockwood, Tin House (Apr. '18): bit.ly/2Gfyj1p ;

- "In the Age of A.I., Is Seeing Still Believing?" by Joshua Rothman, The New Yorker (Nov. '18): bit.ly/2zwnggK ;

- "Brain-Eating Amoeba Lurk in U.S. Lakes. But Should You Worry?" PBS NewsHour (Aug. '11): to.pbs.org/2IviXbF ;

- If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem, by Wm. Faulker (1939) ;

- music from the episode: bit.ly/2UFK6QM (ft. "All Fires" by Moonface, from Spencer Krug: patreon.com/spencerkrug ).

- Image: Hundertacht House, Bonn-Kessenich, North Rhine-Westphalia, 2007, Uwe Schröder Architekten. Photo: Stefan Müller

The world is a snakepit of competing takes and diverging minds. How is anybody supposed to live? In this episode, we play a game called Passage Potluck to straighten it all out. We assembled a packet of short excerpted texts, and forced ourselves to connect dots between, through, and around them, at random.

The passages we wound up discussing are assembled for listeners here: bit.ly/peoplespacket ; but the full packet we had in front of us is for our Patreon supporters here: bit.ly/patreonpacket .

Music from the episode: https://bit.ly/2B7rUnc ;

Image credit: Thomas Prior.

The confidence we’ve always had as a people isn’t simply some romantic dream, or a proverb in a dusty book we read just on the Fourth of July. In this episode we’re talking democracy and consumerism through those American specters John Dewey, the thirty-ninth President James Earl Carter, and the citizen-reviewers of Amazon dot com.

SOURCES:

- Jimmy Carter, Address to the Nation on Energy (Nov. 8, 1977): bit.ly/2R3bFNo ;

- John Dewey, The Public and Its Problems (1927): a.co/d/aRa9JvB ;

- John Dewey, The Quest for Certainty (1929) ;

- WaPo "Presidential" podcast, "Jimmy Carter: Keeping the Faith." transcript: wapo.st/2POYTlk ;

- Peanuts to the Presidency: the Jimmy Carter Campaign (1978): youtu.be/kHgMS2xVyJY ;

- American Experience: Jimmy Carter, PBS Films (2002):

youtu.be/FXyeIklDDEI ;

- footage from "The Made-for-TV Election 1980" film, dir. William Brandon Shanley, starring Martin Sheen (1986): youtu.be/LeJxuOVXEm8 ;

- Jimmy Carter, "Crisis of Confidence" speech (July 14, 1979), transcript: bit.ly/2Jc6AQf , video: youtu.be/kakFDUeoJKM ;

- "A Former President, A Person of Faith," interview with Jimmy Carter on 1A (March 2018): bit.ly/2CWH40Y ;

- "John Dewey's Radical Critique of the New Deal," by Daniel O'Connor (2010): bit.ly/2Any2rB ;

- John Dewey, "The Teacher and the Public" (1935) ;

- James Fallows, "The Passionless Presidency: The trouble with Jimmy Carter's Administration, " The Atlantic (May 1979): bit.ly/2yssLNJ ;

- cover image: Stefan Czapsky, 1990 ;

- music from the episode: https://bit.ly/2AouMw9 .

Let's talk about movies. How would you talk about a movie if it wants you to shut up? Climb aboard for a one-way trip down the river of striking images, dream-like sequences, and too many meaningful looks. From the ridiculous to the sacred, we examine the examinations of the unspeakable silence at the heart of life.

SOURCES:

- 2001: A Space Odyssey, dir. Stanley Kubrick (1968) ;

- Plato, Republic (514a & ff.) ;

- Song to Song, dir. Terence Malick (2017) ;

- Paul Schraeder's review of Song to Song: bit.ly/2vqghom ;

- Paul Schraeder, Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer, with new introduction, "Rethinking Transcendental Style" (2018): a.co/eiNRfRh ;

- Stalker, dir. Andrei Tarkovsky (1979) ;

- Late Spring, dir. Yasujirô Ozu (1949) ;

- Five Dedicated to Ozu, dir. Abbas Kiarostami (2003) ;

- cover image: Lucas Samaras, 1975

- music from the episode: bit.ly/2AN40zL .

This week it’s fourteen conversations about one thing. We do a little research on the symptoms of fascism and begin to feel like an expendable character in the first act of a horror film. Plus: TED talks are blindfolds at the museum, why you must laminate the best parts of your body, and the moral arc of the universe bends toward destruction, but also hope? Q.E.D., friends.

SOURCES:

- Umberto Eco, "Ur-Fascism" (NYRB, June 1995): https://bit.ly/1mXBPS6 ;

- Plato's Meno, 72a ;

- "How we can build AI to help humans, not hurt us," a TED talk by Margaret Mitchell (03/12/2018): https://youtu.be/twWkGt33X_k ;

- "How to win at evolution and survive a mass extinction," a TED talk by Lauren Sallan (11/21/2017): https://youtu.be/rtcrqLWZr_0 ;

- "Capitalism isn't an ideology -- it's an operating system," a TED talk by Bhu Srinivasan (03/06/2018): https://youtu.be/Y0UB6g8Rsyw ;

- clip from George Carlin, "Doin' it Again" (1990): https://youtu.be/hNd_x3w-yNo ;

- Masha Gessen, "Autocracy: Rules for Survival" (NYRB, Nov. 2016): https://bit.ly/2fGj4PY ;

- Reggie Watts at TEDx Berlin (12/05/2013): https://youtu.be/Y7IxzpB-UMM ;

- episode cover image: "Ministers Meeting, Rome, Italy, 1940" by Carl Mydans ;

- music from the episode: https://bit.ly/2KCdI8R .