Mass for Shut-ins: The Gin and Tacos Podcast

Guest: Steve Mang, college professor and amateur ultra-long-distance runner, joins us to talk about CC Pyle's Bunion Derbies, the informal name of two LA-to-NYC footraces held in 1928 and 1929. Amateur runners, some lacking basic equipment or running experience, ran an average of 50 miles per day for at least 84 consecutive days. Steve gives non-runners like me some insight into the, let's call th...

Alexander Fleming's discovery of penicillin in 1928 had little immediate impact on the world because it took over 15 years to crack the secret of how to mass-produce the it. Until that happened, penicillin existed more as an idea than as a medical intervention. The code to producing it in big batches was finally cracked in, of all places, Peoria, Illinois thanks to the timely intervention of a can...

Will the US mint a trillion-dollar coin? Probably not, but in 2001 the tiny island nation (I know, I know) of Vanuatu created $300 million overnight by quadrupling its sovereign debt using as its stated collateral a 182-pound ruby that may or may not actually have existed. I value your support on Patreon.

In 1975 a right-wing loon purchased 300 acres of swampland outside Cape Canaveral with the dream of building a theme park recreating the experience of a US Special Forces barracks in a rural Vietnamese hamlet at the height of the war. Visitors could take turns firing a machine gun at real Vietnamese refugees play-acting as Viet Cong, while replica thatched huts dispensed souvenirs and snacks. Oh,...

After a player died from being hit by a pitch in 1920, Major League Baseball banned the "spitball." But it allowed 17 players whose careers were determined to be dependent on it to continue throwing it. A century later, baseball is still dealing with what it now calls the "foreign substances" issue.  The physics and history of baseball's dirtiest pitch, plus a guy named Urban Shocker. I value your...

In the late Sixties through the Seventies, John Brisker was widely known as the meanest, toughest man in professional basketball. After winning ABA titles in Pittsburgh and punching his way through a few tumultuous seasons with the Supersonics of the NBA, John Brisker visited Africa, came back to the US, told his friends he was off to Africa again, and disappeared without a trace. Theories of what...

Guest: Jen Howard ( @JenHoward ) author of Clutter: an Untidy History on Belt Publishing . Her book looks at the social, economic, and political causes of our addiction to Stuff, and our talk ranges from Marie Kondo to the Container Store to the Montgomery Ward Outlet. Why do we have all this crap and what is the right thing to do about it? It's not as simple as "throw everything out." The cocktai...

What if I told you that right now you can get a new car very nearly for free? Sounds like a scam, right? Well thanks to Hydrogen Fuel Cells, the Technology of the Future of 2002, you can. With some caveats. Crazy, right? Now what if I also told you this isn't the first time Americans have had the opportunity to get a brand new car for free? That part of the story takes to a place called ... Kraguj...

Agatha Christie's two most popular characters - Poirot and Marple - can only exist and make sense in a universe in which the police simply cannot solve crimes. If they could, why would they need a weird Belgian private detective or a random old lady to do it for them? To understand why this was so plausible to Christie and to her contemporary readers, the story of Christie's own "disappearance" in...

Guest: David Parsons ( @davidlparsons) from the excellent history podcast Nostalgia Trap joins me to discuss Gerald Ford's disastrous rollout of a nationwide vaccination program in 1976 to combat a swine flu pandemic that didn't materialize. Vaccine recipients developed Guillain-Barre Syndrome, which is sometimes fatal, at a rate 8.8 times higher than the unvaccinated, making this event the founda...

In 1996 a loutish young Briton got drunk and, on a lark, asked a tiny island nation if he could be their poet laureate. Mind you, the nation has no poet laureate and doesn't really do European-style poetry at all. That's ok, he doesn't know how to write poetry anyway. So the government of Kiribati said yes, and then, his bluff called, the young man said yes, and then hilarity ensued. Inspired by A...

Guest: Mike Konczal ( @rortybomb ) returns with his new book, Freedom from the Market . We take a look at all the great things government used to (or could) do a pretty good job of providing for Americans but no longer does because we've turned them over to The Free Market, which isn't well-suited to provide them at all. It's a great blueprint for a better world, and we talk about where the politi...

"A Visit from St. Nicholas" standardized many parts of the Santa Claus story, but one key element of the story bridged a gap between Protestants and Catholics - as well as opening the door for the cultural, secular embrace of Christmas in the U.S. I value your support on Patreon.

I never promised you a Rose Garden, but I can give you a short primer on the how, what, and why of pardons before delving into the murky waters of what Trump does and does not have the power to do for himself and his felonious hangers-on. Can he pardon himself? Can he pardon people for crimes they haven't even been charged with yet? Why does the pardon power exist at all? 10 minutes of your time w...

Question Cathy joins me for the post-election tradition of an all-mailbag episode devoted to listener-submitted questions. A partial list of topics covered here: Electoral College reform, rogue state legislatures, the census / redistricting, Trumpian antics, and more. We also dress the dog, and accidentally do a Ritz Crackers product placement. Please support Mass for Shut-ins, an independent and...

Question Cathy joins me for the post-election tradition of an all-mailbag episode devoted to listener-submitted questions. A partial list of topics covered here: Electoral College reform, rogue state legislatures, the census / redistricting, Trumpian antics, and more. We also dress the dog, and accidentally do a Ritz Crackers product placement. Please support Mass for Shut-ins, an independent and...

At the peak of the Great Depression, one nation sent its athletes to the 1932 Olympics on a coffee freighter with instructions to barter and beg their way to Los Angeles. Even though coffee was a worthless commodity in 1932. Fuel? Canal tolls? Immigration fees? Money for food and lodging? No, they didn't have any of that. What they did have was coffee - AND THE HUMAN SPIRIT. This is their story. ...

In 1973 a low-ranking US Air Force officer training to work in a Minuteman missile silo asks, "How do I know that the launch order I receive comes from a president who is sane?" Good question, Harold Hering! The Air Force had no good answer, and Hering's career came to a screeching halt. I take a deep dive into what exactly presidents can and can't do with nuclear weapons and why I, in a rare mome...

As the GOP is set to lock in a conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court, court-packing is re-entering the political conversation. This is the story of the original "court packing scheme" attempted by FDR in 1937 after several key components of the New Deal had been struck down by the highest court. Believe it or not, it all began not with a landmark decision but with a mundane piece of legi...

Guest: Thomas Gokey of The Debt Collective ( @StrikeDebt ) joins me to talk about their new book Can't Pay Won't Pay , coming out in September from Haymarket Books . We talk about the ways that people can take on debt collectively to give themselves power - and choices - they don't have as individuals. And Thomas pulps a bunch of money and tries to sell it. The story is a coda to the Greek Debt Cr...

Albania emerged from one-party rule under Enver Hoxha as the poorest and most backward Eastern European state. Hoxha bequeathed Albanians 700,000 concrete pillbox forts and a complete lack of familiarity with even the basics of a cash economy. Inexperienced in the ways of capitalism, Albanians didn't realize 100% monthly interest on a bank deposit is a red flag. So in 1996 the entire country fell...

Guest: Tom Sexton ( @TomSexton ) of The Trillbilly Workers Party ( @thetrillbillies ) joins me to talk about the Amy McGrath - Charles Booker primary race in Kentucky, the uncharismatic void that is Chuck Schumer, and the video Ted Turner made for the end of the world. The "cocktail" of the month returns with the gin radler, which is not really a cocktail but needs to be a part of any good hot wea...

In 1918 Emmanuel Haldeman-Julius and his wife Marcet, editors of a moribund socialist newspaper, pursued their populist vision to bring education to the working classes in the form of cheap, widely available, high quality reading material. The result was the Little Blue Books that took the US by storm in the 1920s, a series of almost 2000 titles on a grab-bag of topics, everything from classic lit...

Guest: Financial policy guru Mike Konczal (@rortybomb) explains what should be happening in response to the economic crisis, what is happening, and why those two are different. We cover unemployment, policy coming out of Congress, what decision-makers just aren't getting about this crisis, and how we both had childhood vacations in Florida that turned out to be nightmares. Question Cathy returns w...

Between 1850 and 1900 it was all the rage for rich, roguish Americans to form private armies to invade and conquer countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. These men were called "Filibusteros" and the most prolific was William Walker, who led invasions of three different countries in an effort to add new slave-holding territories to the U.S. and alter the balance of power toward the South. Th...