Most Useful Information Podcast

We recorded this ages ago and I only just got around to editing it. Sorry, life takes time and so does editing and sometimes it’s hard to do both. Before the edits there was a lot more Dillinger Four talk. You’re welcome. Ray is a joy. So is Elena Ferrante. I hope you like this one. These podcasts have slowed down. I really apologize to you, my fans. Someday when life takes less time I hope they p...

This was supposed to go out on Tuesday. I had Covid. My dog is dying. I forgot. Sorry. When Most Useful Information is celebrating 50 years of spamming inboxes and millions of fans vote on their favorite episodes of the podcast this episode will unanimously be voted number one. Taylor is very funny. Also smart. She came prepared. Enjoy. Recorded in July. Edited it in July. Unlistened since. Whatev...

Before Bella suggested it, I’d never heard of Cousins . It sounded cool. It started cool. By the end I wasn’t so sure. Expectations can be a bummer. It was nice to talk about it though. Sometimes I kind of use this podcast just to chat with people I haven’t seen/spoken to in a long time. I hadn’t seen/spoken to Bella in a long time. Since we last chatted we had both quit are very professional jobs...

Again no written Most Useful Information. My apologies. Life at the MUI HQ is still bonkers. Soft goal of writing something in June to send out in July. No promises. Again instead of a written Most Useful Info, a podcast. Adin and I are fans of Katie Kitamura. Her book A Separation is a book both Adin and I read on vacation each in our own covid fugue. It’s about grief I think. Intimacies isn’t ab...

Normally on the first Thursday of each month you get a newsletter. Two weeks later on a Tuesday you get a podcast. I had planned a newsletter as normal for May but with a small announcement that over the next three months the Most Useful Information both newsletter and podcast would be less frequent and less scheduled. Instead they’d be so random! The print newsletter would pause all together. In...

Valis is one of the weirdest, most difficult books I’ve read. Keith is one of my oldest friends. A few months back he texted me that he found Valis in a thrift store and was gonna read it. I said I’d read it too and we’d record a podcast. I first started reading Valis in 2003 but quit after forty pages cuz I didn’t understand anything. As our conversation reveals, twenty years later I still don’t...

This is the point Another month. Another Tuesday. Another podcast. Clay and I grew up in the deep eastside of Moscow, Idaho. Before I met Clay someone told me about him. My memory tells me the same someone borrowed Forty Stories by Donald Barthelme from me to loan to Clay. I was promised he carried the book around in a plastic zip lock bag for protection. It worked. I still have that copy of Forty...

This is the point: February 2022 I launched my first hit newsletter. Now, one year later, I am launching my first hit podcast. Call me the charlatan of all media. The premise is easy. A friend suggests a book. We both read the book. We record a conversation about the book. The conversations are casual as if two friends were simply chatting. Hopefully there’s either something funny or insightful in...