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A Piece of Paper (S2: E4)

Release Date: 07/06/2015

Anxious Machine

I’ve always had a problematic relationship to the news, and I’ve struggled to navigate that even more since this pandemic began. I talk to my father about the night I yelled at him over his insufficient fear of the virus, and I look back on a 1954 essay by E.B. White about the disparity between his experience of a hurricane and the coverage he hears of that hurricane on the radio.

Contagion

Anxious Machine

Like most people, I imagine, I've been having a lot of anxious thoughts lately. And I’ve been wishing I could get those thoughts out of my head. And then I remembered that I used to have a podcast called Anxious Machine. So here’s my first episode in three years: some thoughts about looking back on how this virus entered my consciousness, and how it felt to watch the movie Contagion with my daughter, and what it means to try to stay awake to what's happening.

New Show Announcement

Anxious Machine

I'm announcing a whole new podcast, and giving you a listen to the first episode. The podcast is called Before It Had a Theme, and on it, Britta Greene an I discuss and deconstruct old episodes of This American Life. On this episode, we discuss the very first episode of that show, as well as why the show is worth discussing, how we and others became fans of the show, and why we love Ira Glass’s mother. Clips from following were used in this episode:

If You Could Do Anything?

Anxious Machine

Sometimes in your life, you reach a crossroads, go on a men’s weekend, spend too much time alone in the forest, have a mid-life crisis, and start thinking you can change the world with your podcast. This episode is about that happening to me. Part one of a three-part series. Anxious Machine on Patreon in iTunes Links: Music: by johnny_ripper by Chris Zabriskie by johnny_ripper by Chris Zabriskie by johnny_ripper by Chris Zabriskie by johnny_ripper by Podington Bear by Podington Bear

Pay Attention All the Time

Anxious Machine

Parents of young children have an especially fraught relationship with their smartphones. On the one hand, these devices are indispensable tools for getting things done and staying connected to the adult world while in the midst of childcare. On the other hand, the culture is constantly telling parents, and particularly mothers, that they’re too distracted by these devices, that smartphones are stealing precious attention away from our kids. But the idea that parents should be focusing so much attention on their kids is itself a modern invention. In fact, our current understanding of...

Do You Feel More Like Gods?

Anxious Machine

This past week, my kids went back to school. Summer vacation has come and gone. And that’s gotten me thinking about the very idea of summer vacation because every summer, for the past several years, my wife, her sisters and our families have had this tradition of going to a cabin for a few days to get out of the city. We don’t own a cabin. We have to rent one. And this year, the process of finding it, looking at pictures of all the possible cabins on all the possible lakes, made me wonder about this particular, middle-class American ritual of going into the wilderness for vacation, where...

Bringing Wes Home

Anxious Machine

Since the wide-spread adoption of embalming in the United States, most Americans have turned the process of handling the deceased over to experts in the undertaking business. On this episode, the story of one family who decided that they wanted to be the ones to wash and prepare the body of the son and brother they’d lost. This episode was previously aired on the podcast , one of the podcasts in . Anxious Machine on Patreon Music: by Chris Zabrinskie by Podington Bear

A Horrible Experience

Anxious Machine

My older brother Scott lives almost completely outside the network of modern life: he has no internet, no email address, no cable TV or satellite, not even an antenna for his television. Until recently, he didn’t even have a bank account or a telephone. In this episode, I try to get to the bottom of why he hates computers, and especially the internet, even though the internet helped him solve a question he’s had since the day he was born. Anxious Machine on Patreon Music: by Podington Bear by Chris Zabriskie by Chris Zabriskie by Chris Zabriskie by Podington Bear by Podington...

Teleportation Device

Anxious Machine

Humans have been reading for thousands of years, but ever since the invention of television, people have been worried that reading is in decline. The latest worry is that, even if the Internet has caused an uptick in the quantity of our reading, we're reading on screens instead of paper, and this seems to degrade the quality of our reading. On this episode, technology writer Clive Thompson talks about the history of reading as a technology, why we’re worried about its future, and what happened when he tried to read War and Peace on his iPhone. Anxious Machine on Patreon Links: Clive...

These Things Is Miracles

Anxious Machine

When she was growing up, Adrienne didn’t want to believe she was losing her hearing, and she didn’t want to wear hearing aids. This is the story of how she decided to embrace the technology that restored her hearing, and what happened when she did. Patrons: Music: by Chris Zabriskie by Chris Zabriskie by Chris Zabriskie by Chris Zabriskie by Chris Zabriskie by Podington Bear by Chris Zabriskie by Chris Zabriskie by Chris Zabriskie by Podington Bear by Chris Zabriskie

More Episodes

When I heard the news of the recent Supreme Court ruling on marriage between same sex couples, I wanted to go back to an interview I did in 2009 with two women who decided to get married before it was legal in their state. It’s easy to forget what couples like them had to go through back then — traveling outside of their state to get a document that would have no legal standing at all where they lived. I wanted to know why that piece of paper mattered to them. This is their story.

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