Mass for Shut-ins: The Gin and Tacos Podcast

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...

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...

Guest: David Parsons (@davidlparsons) from the excellent history podcast 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...

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...

Guest: Mike Konczal () returns with his new book, . 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...

"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...

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...

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...

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?...

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...