1. KRS-One: “The Beginning”
2. People Under The Stairs: “Hit The Top”
3. DJ Format: “Statement of Intent”
4. Simple Minds: “Speed Your Love to Me”
5. Devo: “Don’t Shoot (I’m a Man)”
6. Franz Ferdinand: “The Doctor”
7. Pale Blue Eyes: “Hang Out”
8. Wire: “In Manchester”
9. Wet Leg: “catch these fists”
10. The Hives: “Paint A Picture”
11. Don’t Sleep: “Promise Made”
12. Meat Wave: “For Sale”
13. illuminati hotties: “777”
14. Prince Buster: “Nothing Takes the Place of You”
15. Foster Sylvers: “Misdemeanor”
16. Beneficence & Jazz Spastiks: “The Boom (feat. Skyzoo)”
17. Breakestra: “Family Rap”
18. Deltron 3030: “Positive Contact”
19. Camp Lo: “B-Side to Hollywood (feat. Trugoy the Dove of De La Soul)”
20. G. Love & Special Sauce: “Rhyme for the Summertime”
21. Beck: “Tropicalia”
22. Vince Guaraldi Quintet: “Peppermint Patty”

Listen on Apple Music

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This year Jill was inspired to do a version of Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas … not really an album cover, per se, but it is a musical. (The band’s name is the Frogtown Hollow Jubilee Jug Band, for the record.) This was a childhood favorite of Jill’s and she did a great job with the costumes (as usual) and at turning us into various woodland creatures.

And if you’re not familiar with this Jim Henson Christmas special, I believe Amazon Prime has it for free or you can just watch it on YouTube!

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What better way to count down the days until Christmas than with a Rad-themed advent calendar?

Get on over to the Radvent Calendar every day this month and start opening each box for a Rad treat!

Radvent Calendar >

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For the most part I tend to avoid political podcasts — there’s too much misery in the news to increase my intake of this insane administration and MAGA followers. So I tend to lean towards humor, music, and general interesting topics.

The App

Although Apple’s Podcast app is fine, I like more control over how I listen to my podcasts. After trying a bunch of different ones, I’ve settled on Overcast. Overcast is free, but I would happily pay for it: it lets me set up and organize playlists, auto-populate them, automatically skip the intros/ads of podcasts, and more. Plus there’s a Mac desktop version of the app (and a website version) in addition the iOS version, so I can listen on my MacBook and things sync up with my iPhone. However, I don’t love the recent redesign which did clutter up the UI, in my opinion.

The Podcasts

Here are my personal favorites right now:

Smartless

I love the interaction between hosts Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes and Will Arnett — it feels like you’re just sitting in among friends who like to goof on each other. And the guests are usually pretty good, and even if it’s someone I’m not interested in the discussion is typically entertaining. There have been some really boring guests — I won’t name names here, but they were mostly straight-ahead interviews (vs. a friendly conversation) with actors — but most are really good, and a few were way more entertaining than I expected (like Kathryn Hahn and Sandra Bullock).

The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers Podcast

If you’re a fan of The Lonely Island (Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer, and Jorma Taccone) and/or Saturday Night Live, give this a listen. They discuss the SNL Digital Shorts as well as various SNL skits, and I find it very entertaining … especially Andy, despite the fact he doesn’t like podcasts. Though I do hate how they refer to each episodes as a “pod” (I’m a stickler for proper nomenclature).

99% Invisible

“99% Invisible is a weekly exploration of the process and power of design and architecture” — sounds kinda nerdy (and it is) but it’s right in my wheelhouse: topics about design all around us. Some of my favorites were the episodes on flag design (Vexillonaire and Vexillology Revisited: Fixing the Worst Civic Flag Designs in America) — you’ll never look at flags the same again!

What It’s Like to Be

An interesting look into people’s jobs. Find out what it’s like to be a deli owner, Christmas tree farmer, hospice nurse, barman, and all kinds of jobs. Fun podcast that’s more interesting than it should be.

Heavyweight

Host Jonathan Goldstein helps (mostly) strangers to resolve some part of their history or life (it’s more fun and funny that I’m making it sound). Example: in episode 2 “Gregor” a man wants to get back a box of CDs he lent to a then-unknown musician named Moby back in the ’90s.

Big Time

This is a new true-crime podcast by Apple and hosted by Steve Buscemi (and by “hosted” he does the intro and outro). True crime isn’t usually my type of subject, but these stories are interesting and not your typical stories: a rigged homecoming contest, competitive fishing cheaters, stolen bees. Short and well-done.

SNAFU with Ed Helms

This one’s been around since 2022 but I only discovered it this week. SNAFU is a podcast about history’s greatest screw-ups, and the first season (which I just binged in a day of gardening) is all about how a nuclear war between the US and USSR almost happened in 1984. Scary stuff, but since it was 40 years ago we can laugh about it now, right? Ed Helms does a good job keeping the story light(ish) and engaging, though sometimes I thought it got a little too silly for some of the events (especially Korean Air Lines Flight 007). I did, however enjoy Ed’s impression of Ronald Reagan.

Miniseries Podcasts

I do enjoy the occasional “miniseries podcasts” which are limited-length podcasts about a specific event. Here are a few of my favorites:

Broomgate
A podcast about a curling broom scandal? Who’d want to listen to that? Well, curlers will — if you curl and haven’t heard this yet, add it to your list. And if you’re not into curling, you just might find this six-episode podcast compelling. Or weird. Or both. My son was in the car with me one time when I was listening to an episode and he started the drive by (lovingly) making fun of my listening to a curling scandal podcast, but by the end of the drive he was sucked into the story.

The Big Dig
My family likes to tease me because of my interest in infrastructure. And as a Massachusetts resident I enjoyed this fascinating nine-episode podcast about the building of the Big Dig project in Boston, which covered everything from the politics to the communities affected to the actual project and how it was done.

Scratch & Win
A podcast about how the Massachusetts lottery came into being? This is another one of those podcasts that can get me listening to a subject I didn’t think I’d find interesting.

One-offs

There are a bunch of podcasts I listen to less frequently — it depends on the subject of the episode — but they’re worth checking out, too:

• One Song
• Armchair Expert (mainly the Armchair Anonymous episodes)
• Hit Parade
• Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend
• Blocks w/ Neal Brennan

If you have any podcasts you think I should check out, let me know!

Updated February 11, 2026

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1. Speedometer: “Gumbo Ya Ya”
2. Nouvelle Vague: “The American (feat. Silja)”
3. Elliott Smith: “Son Of Sam”
4. Flake Music: “The Shins”
5. David Bowie: “Hang on to Yourself”
6. Electronic: “Like No Other”
7. DAIISTAR: “Star Starter”
8. Simple Minds: “The Kick Inside of Me”
9. U2: “California (There Is No End to Love)”
10. Pearl Jam: “Hail, Hail”
11. Smashing Pumpkins: “Jellybelly”
12. Rush: “Distant Early Warning”
13. Run The Jewels: “Yankee y el Valiente (TROOKO’s Versión)”
14. People Under The Stairs: “Tuxedo Rap”
15. LCD Soundsystem: “North American Scum”
16. Röyksopp: “Happy Up Here”
17. Jazz Spastiks: “Rap Combat”
18. Shobaleader One: “Squarepusher Theme”

Listen on Apple Music

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With both kids going away in different directions for college this year (Amherst, MA and Los Angeles) we needed to choose an album where we could take our photos separately, and this one worked out.

On the back:

Realize Ebenezer was a miser
Three traveling kings were the wiser
Young kids gonna be an early riser
How come Santa Claus wanna be a sleigh driver?

Giving’s the way,
giving’s the way,
giving’s the way, now!

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Jeremy was in the front row (!) second from their right playing trombone. I downloaded a bunch of videos that band parents had posted to the Facebook group and combined them into a mini “sizzle reel” of Jeremy walking by:

Here’s a longer (~7 minute) compilation showing the size of the band (400+!) and how great they sounded, as well as their live performance on TV:

The day before was much better weather-wise, and the UMass Marching Band (along with the University of South Carolina band) performed at Pier 16 at the seaport in Brooklyn.

Finally, a few photos from our time in New York:

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1. Run The Jewels: “Opening Theme (From “Aqua Teen Forever: Plantasm”)”
2. The New Pornographers: “The Laws Have Changed”
3. Queen Sarah Saturday: “Robert De Niro”
4. The Cure: “The End of the World”
5. Franz Ferdinand: “The Fallen”
6. The Beths: “Watching the Credits”
7. New Order: “Confusion (UK 7″ Promo)”
8. Newcleus: “Jam On It”
9. MF DOOM: “Rapp Snitch Knishes (feat. Mr. Fantastik)”
10. Rakim: “Real Shit”
11. The Shins: “Half a Million”
12. Blur: “The Narcissist”
13. Santigold: “L.E.S. Artistes”
14. Quicksand: “Fazer”
15. The Hives: “Countdown to Shutdown”
16. U2: “The Miracle (Of Joey Ramone)”
17. Esoteric: “Real Rap Design (feat. Moe Pope)”
18. De La Soul: “Pass The Plugs”
19. Thes One: “Mike at Chris’ Bachelor Party in Rosarito”
20. Johnny Cash: “In My Life”

* some of the best live bands I’ve ever seen!

Listen on Apple Music

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Towels and shaving cream made for an easier job for Jill in the costume department this year. (On the back: “Our gifts are sealed.”)

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