Hosts Dan Proft and Amy Jacobson talk about the recent Wall Street Journal op-ed on "good grouching."

Talked on NYC's Fox5 News WNYW about the most recent New York Daily News op-ed.

Manspreading? Enough. Very few of us, no matter our gender, have a thought for anyone else in the age of Me Me Me. "People are a great deal bothered when the people they wish to castigate behave, in truth, as they themselves often behave."

Fleming discussing his recent brace of op-eds, the absence of truth in America, mansplaining, manspreading, misandry, Oscar the Grouch, how people are awful in equal measures regardless of gender, that respect isn't a performance trophy, and an open invitation to come at him.

Oscar and the lost art of being a good grouch. "A good grouch has a high capacity for respect. For dishing it out, for reserving it for the people who earn it. The difference being, it’s not automatically given to everyone. Respect isn’t some performance trophy."

Dzanc Books will be publishing If You [ ]: Fantasy, Fabula, Fuckery, Hope, in early 2021.

On age, time, and the mutability of both.

Mansplaining is not the issue--it's a little something called humansplaining. "We no longer have an intellectual system of checks and balances. We have people craving constant attention. People who are not otherwise fulfilled. That’s not a gender thing. It’s a human thing. This need to expatiate, unchecked, comes from there being fewer people in possession of stores of knowledge."

What an episode of the radio program Suspense from seventy years ago tells us about our terror times and how not to descend deeper into fear. "In our age where recency bias is so rampant that it seems that all we care about is that which comes next, there can be great, soul-saving value in reinstating dimensionality to time."

Scary jazz cuts, from Nina Simone to Andrew Hill to Bessie Smith to Jackie McLean to Billie Holiday. "Horns have a knack for suggesting funerals, of course, but since many of us have probably never been to a funeral with horns doing their thing, the association doesn’t hit as close to the bone of our personal experiences. Still, have you ever noticed how the right bluesy, wailing horn section sounds perfectly spook-engineered to aid a ghost in cutting a rug? My vision of a desired future includes a house by the sea, guests arriving for a Halloween party, nothing but jazz on the stereo, and friends inquiring, 'Why, who is that? What a wonderfully sinister song!'"

Whiz-bang tour of overlooked very good-great horror films, from a 1930s work of stop motion animation to a spin on M.R. James to bad scarecrow vibes and 1980s made-for-TV fare.

Talking about Orson Welles's legacy of thrills and scares--it being that time of the year--beyond 1938's infamous--and somewhat fake news-ish--The War of the Worlds Broadcast, i.e. Return to Glennascaul, The Hitch-Hiker, The Shadow, Macbeth, Necromancy. Could have also included The Most Dangerous Game, The Open Window, The Dark Tower, Black Magic, but there was not time. Still, you get a good seventeen minutes!

Triscuits, the phrase "baby girl," scary classical music; how terror is generated, via Grieg, Mozart, Bartok, Schubert, Marschner, and why Fleming was unsuccessful in his first attempt to graduate nursery school.

The horror film era from 1959-1973, Monument climbs, the most recent Wall Street Journal op-ed.

The last ever photograph of Lou Gehrig in uniform and what makes baseball the wisest of all sports.

Discussing the early days of the NFL, Washington Irving's "Rip Van Winkle," where the 2019 Red Sox went way wrong.

Segment on great works for fall. A Hammer film, a Charlie Parker recording, a sci-fi/mystery/horror novel, a Van Gogh painting, a John Clare poem.

You may prefer not to, but it's probably best that you should.

Talking about the concluding three stories, "More Wood," "Mr. Chompers," "Clam Sliders."

Exegesis of a Library of America volume containing Alice Adams, The Magnificent Ambersons, and rarely seen political writings.

Friends--the sitcom, that is--Antonioni's Blow-Up, late period Yardbirds.

Wrapping up last week's conversation on A Hard Day's Night, diving into three things that Fleming witnesses many times each day that terrify him, and Billie Holiday at the Starbucks and what on earth is going on with that.

Herman Melville's poetry. “'Storms are formed behind the storm we feel.' That line has always felt to me like it has transitioned the power of the sea to the sky overhead and, from there, to our own breasts, where the weather systems of our emotions are always more complex than rain today, sunshine tomorrow.”

Fleming talks about Andrew Luck and how no one should have been remotely surprised by his retirement, the concept of "manhood," gender, ballet, and A Hard Day's Night (the film).

The 1984 Red Sox, one of the strangest statistical teams in modern baseball history; Scream Factory's outstanding Univeral Horrors Collection and the eye-popping madness of 1934's The Black Cat; Miles Davis and his "blue clusters."