Len Damico

Because I’m lazy and get tired of writing bespoke answers to “What podcasts do you listen to?” I’ve captured my answers here.

Favorites

I won’t miss a new episode of these shows.

• Maintenance Phase: As it says on the tin, “Wellness and weight loss, debunked and decoded.” (Start here: The Body Mass Index)
• Roderick on the Line: It’s an acquired taste. (Start here: Ep. 25: “Supertrain”)
• Citations Needed: Media criticism is my jam, and these two do it better (and lefter, and snarkier) than anyone. (Start here: Episode 95: The Hollow Vanity of Libertarian “Choice” Rhetoric)
• Highlands Bunker : Your only source for anti-Delaware Way news and spicy leftist insider info. (Start here: E127 - Where Are The Workers? (w/Jess Scarane))
• You Look Nice Today: Another acquired taste. (Start here: Episode 48: Schrodinger’s Conference Bag)

Also Great

Sometimes I get behind on these and let them pile up, but I’ll always catch up.

• You’re Wrong About: Sarah and Michael bring a real curiosity and ability to empathize with their subjects to the “turns out” genre. (Start here: Kitty Genovese and “Bystander Apathy”)
• Back to Work: Merlin Mann has been one of the sanest voices in the ““productivity”” space for nearly two decades. (Start here, maybe: 249: A John Nash Moment)

Pick and choose

I subscribe to these, but only listen to episodes where the guest or topic is interesting.

• Object Of Sound: The best cultural critic of our time talks to some of his favorite artists about what makes them tick. (Start here: Redemption Songs (feat. Julien Baker))
• Song Exploder: Listening to musicians dismantle their songs and put them back together is fascinating to me, as a guy who has done some recording and is a process geek. Start here: The Long Winters - The Commander Thinks Aloud)
• My Favorite Elliott Smith Song: Musicians (like Phoebe Bridgers, Mary Lou Lord, and others) talking about what it says in the title. (Start here: S4EP1 Mike Doughty)

Long Tails

These are all series of podcasts that are not necessarily timely and hold up well to repeated listening and binging. You probably want to start at the beginning for most of these.

• Cocaine & Rhinestones: Country music fans are lucky to have someone like Tyler Mahan Coe, who cares so deeply about their history and their stories.
• Philosophize This!: A podcast that recounts the history of philosophy, trying to use modern examples as much as possible. Can be a bit white male-centric, but that’s says more about the recorded history of philosophy than the show.
• Web History: More like an audio book than a podcast, this is Jeremy Keith reading Jay Hoffman’s Web History series, as published on CSS-Tricks.
• Dolly Parton’s America: Dolly’s story is a fascinating one. Especially recommended if you enjoy Radiolab’s production style (Jad Abumrad is the host, so this makes sense).
• I Only Listen to the Mountain Goats: John Darnielle is a gifted songwriter and storyteller. The first season is John providing additional context for the writing and recording of his 2002 lo-fi masterpiece, “All Hail West Texas,” complete with guests covering the songs.
• Remaking Murdertown: My friend Zach created this podcast series in partnership with the Delaware Center for Justice. It’s one kid’s story of interactions with the “tough on crime” criminal justice system. Zach tells the story with compassion and grace, expertly knowing when to zoom in to the individual details and zoom out to the systemicatic failures that have led us here.

(NB: I listen to all my podcasts with Overcast, which is significantly better than any other podcast listening experience, in my opinion. I have been a paid subscriber since day one, largely because of one killer feature: Smart Speed. Smart Speed intelligently ducks silences in speech without altering pitch, which has saved me 217 hours of listening time as of this writing.)

Last updated: October 2, 2022

I’ve been taking part in community listening sessions for Delaware’s Senate Bill 149, which would amend the state’s Law Enforcement Officer’s Bill of Rights (LEOBOR).

There’s another one today at 3 PM, but I can’t make it. You can (sign up here).

This is my public comment from the last session, published here for posterity:

Thank you for the opportunity to speak this evening.

My name is Len Damico. I live in Claymont, I am a father, and I am also a reliable voter.

I’m here tonight because I believe it is imperative for Delaware to pass SB 149 as-is, without amendment. This is unambiguously what Delawareans want and deserve and the only way we will truly achieve justice in Delaware.

I’ve been part of a number of these stakeholder sessions, and a theme I’ve heard from the law enforcement officer side of things is a desire to rebuild a positive relationship, founded on trust, with the communities they serve. In my opinion, everything we are asking for in SB 149 is in the service of improving that relationship.

To build trust, we ask for visibility and access to police disciplinary records. Including substantiated and unsubstantiated claims. Transparency. That’s how you build trust!

To build trust, we need civilian review boards that have true power. Power to investigate claims and truly discipline any “bad apples” they may find. Power to investigate unsubstantiated claims, to determine potential patterns of misconduct. And power to conduct their business without current or former member of law enforcement as part of the board, in order to truly serve the purpose of maintaining justice in our community.

We believe that civilian review boards are worthless unless those three conditions are met.

In conclusion, it is imperative for Delaware to pass SB 149 as-is, without amendment. To repeat, for clarity’s sake: As-is. Without amendment. This is the only way we will truly achieve justice in Delaware.

I am desperately trying to avoid weighing in on on the weirdo whose unhinged LiveJournal about Disney wokeness was published in the Orlando Sentinel this morning. For reasons that should be fairly obvious to anyone who follows me. However, it feels very important to me to address one specific point he makes in the piece, because it’s a point made over and over by conservatives and it’s really problematic so I want you to be on the lookout for it. It’s a hallmark of a bad-faith argument.

Read this sentence and tell me what it means: “The more Disney moves away from the values and vision of Walt Disney, the less Disney World means to me.” Because I have takes.

Here’s where my mind immediately goes:

The founders never intended for Washington DC to become a state.

— Rep. Mike Loychik (@MikeLoychik) April 22, 2021

As probably millions have quickly and correctly pointed out to Rep. Loychik, “the founders” did not intend for Black folks and women to vote either, yet those things are widely accepted as obviously good and appropriate.

“The founders” also did not necessarily expect the nation to grow beyond the initial 13 colonies, and yet here we are, standing with 50 states, on the precipice of adding another. Maybe.

So, back to our Disney friend. He holds up Disney’s attempts to modernize and update their theme parks as an example of “moving away from the values and vision of Walt Disney.” Hmmmm.

PUTTING ASIDE the, uhm, deeply problematic nature of many of Walt’s “values and vision,” why do we care about them? Why do we expect a company in 2021 to live by the values of a man who died over 50 years ago?

And PUTTING ASIDE the, uhm, deeply problematic nature of many of our Founding Fathers, including the fact that most of them enthusiastically owned slaves, why do we care about their notional intents for the nation they founded?

They’ve been dead for hundreds of years. The world we live in now is *unfathomably complex* compared to the one they inhabited. It’s implausible to think they could have had an answer to every issue we face today. Implausible.

Ultimately, it feels like an abdication, an excuse not to think for yourself. Or, more cynically, an excuse to continue to hold shitty, retrograde, anti-progress viewpoints just because Walt Disney or the Founding Fathers held them, too.

It’s garbage thinking, garbage rhetoric, and I hope this post made the case so we can all be more quick to call it out and publicly shame it.