And I don’t think you do either. Which is why it’s fun.

Look, I shouldn’t have to re-hash that Folkstep is what you get when you combine ethnic musical traditions with electronic, wobbly, bass-heavy dubstep. But it is. If that sounds good to you, it sounded better to me. So I searched on Soundcloud through 28 pages of results for ‘folkstep’ to find some that was, you know, good. We featured it in the first part of our show today. That part proved to be, by far, the most popular portion. Ahem. Hey… give the people what they want: a mixtape!

You can listen to most tracks individually or just download the whole thing. Yes!
Click for tracklist and full song samples

Some people seem to think that we make stuff up. That the stories we read on the air aren’t actually real news, that we get ideas from the old Enquirers rotting away in bathroom magazine racks. Well, we don’t. We use reputable news sources. We research. We corroborate. We check Snopes. And you know what? You don’t care, because they’re just funny news stories to you. But they’re true. Maybe even funny because they’re true, huh?

Here are the ones we read this week with our very special accidental guest, Tracy Feldstein (and husband Don, who didn’t actually have a microphone, but backed Orin up when he said that most guys do wanna pee on Mt. Everest).

• Saddam ‘double’ escapes Alexandria porn kidnap gang, again
• Thai medical officials send condoms to flood-ravaged province
• Burglars Charged after Pooping at Crime Scene
• Environmentalists Want Port-a-Potties on Top of Mount Everest
• Churchgoer Rips Out Own Eyeballs During Sermon
• Daughter to receive womb transplant from mum
• The Stasi Had a Smell Register of Citizens
• Russian governor promises $17,000 for furless chipmunk

 You can download the show here.

Our show was a different time this week, but next week we’ll be back in our regular timeslot: Wednesdays 4-6 pm.

So you missed our show today. You’re not alone. Things went badly for a time, then they went well for about 20 minutes. But that’s ok! Thanks to the miracle of podcasts you can listen to the sparklingly-pristine lovingly-produced full episode forever. But what if you want to atone for your misdeeds somehow? Or (perhaps) what if you’re not so much a listening-to-other-people-talk kind of person? Instead maybe you enjoy…

Music.

Well, that’s where a mixtape comes in. Sure… mixtapes used to be made by a painstaking process of dubbing vinyl records onto cassette at precisely timed intervals. They were a labor of love. Well, this is digital, but it’s probably no less a labor of love. I mean, do you know how difficult modifying ID3 tags and archiving things to a .zip file is? Well?

Yet now,  it is a fine collection of archived MP3s with ID3 tags. Here’s a track listing (roughly in the same order as our show today):

1. Oleg Kostrow – Tanets El’miry I Tartyufa
2. Tanya Tagaq – Growl
3. Abayudaya Jews of Uganda – Jerusalem
4. Baligh Hamdi & Magid Khan – Magnouna
5. Marusic Is Trio – Taranjkanje
6. R.D. Burman – Masterji Ki Aa Gayi Chitti (Padmini & Shibangi)
7. Mulatu Astatke – Chifara
8. Sainkho Namchylak & Ned Rothenberg – 2nd Dance
9. AU vs Masanka Sankayi – Two Labors
10. Hiran’ny Tanoran’ny Ntao Lo – Oay Lahy É [O! Dear Friend]
11. Aksak Maboul – A Modern Lesson
12. OOIOO – UMO
13. Huun-Huur-Tu & Malerija – Orai-la boldu-la
14. Dengue Fever – Pow Pow
15. Tafo Brothers – Bijli Bhari Hai
16. Tautu Archer – Ama Ama
17. Ugarte Anaiak & Tanya Tagaq – One Frail Seed
18. DJ Huron – Bagpipes/Celtic Hip Hop Instrumental
19. Hatsune Miku English – [title in Japanese]
20. Bugotak – Kaar Mege (Nirvana’s Rape Me)
21. Fanfare Ciocarlia – Born To Be Wild
22. Leningrad Cowboys & The Red Army Ensemble – Delilah
23. Oleg Kostrow – Tanets Detey Prokofeva
24. Secret Chiefs 3 – Jabalqa/Jabarsa (BLÆRG remix)
25. Tanya Tagaq – Force

That’s the music you get if you download the mixtape. It has some truly great Music of Incomprehension. Which, for those who appreciate a little more description, includes:

• modern Russian electronic exotica
• Eskimo throatsinging
• African Jews — yes really!
• Egyptian/Indian crossover psych jam sessions
• Jazz-io-pia
• experimental throatsinging
• Cambodian classical rock revival
• Pakistani Bollywood (Lollywood)
• What is this? New Caledonia? I don’t even know.
• Inuit throatsinging
• Celtic Bagpipes Hip-Hop
• Covers: Rape Me, Born To Be Wild, Delilah
• (at least one of those covers is throatsinging)
• Middle East Drum ‘n’ Bass… and actually good
• Oh, look at that, some Eskimo throatsinging

I won’t tell you which is which, exactly. That would spoil the fun for you when you download the music and add it to your song library. Of course, if you’d prefer, you can play match-em-up with all these beautiful covers that I included in the ID3 tags. It’s like an actual real music collection!

After you save the mixtape to your computer you can let me know what you thought about it here in the comments. Or, hey! Tune into our show next week; assuming they let people like us on again next week.

Enjoy!

Here is a link that you can click to get the music I’ve been talking about.

Here is another link, that, if you want to, you can select with your keyboard by repeatedly hitting [tab] and then pressing [enter] and, in such a way, also enable you to get the music.

Here is another link in case all the others didn’t work.

I can’t imagine a better example of this idiom. You know what “leaving it all out there” means? It means you’re a human being, so you’ve got some shit to work through in your life. But you’re also a performer. So in order to give 100% you work through your most powerful shit on stage, because that stuff is the most high-power fuel we got. And when you’re done, it’s spent. If you did it right you left it there.

This talented woman, this Inuit from the northern Canadian province on Nunavut, Tanya Tagaq, leaves it out there.

I love that she’s barefoot. I love that she howls like a wolf then wails like a grieving mother. Parts remind me of Diamanda Galás, if Galás were lucky enough to grow up in the Arctic instead of San Diego. When she gets down on the floor and messes up her hair, then starts growling, then starts devouring something, you can’t help but believe she’s gone somewhere deep and dark and hungry.

I’ve heard there’s a documentary called “A String Quartet In Her Throat” (great name) but haven’t been able to find it. It’s her collaboration with Kronos Quartet — which in itself is pretty exciting. Alas, that album cannot be found either.

Here she is explaining some of her technique, which is a kind of single-person Inuit throat-singing:

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about this game. We play a fun game most every week that’s pretty self-explanatory, called “Guess The Country“. There was the one about a man who snuck out a gigantic whale tooth from a museum that was pretty easy (Norway). And the one about the pet kangaroo that went on an underwear-stealing spree that was hard (Czech Republic). No matter what, winning requires a grasp of what’s unique in the world, what’s embarrassing and idiosyncratic and weird. That’s the joy of bizarre international news stories (in case you hadn’t noticed).

So it’s an microcosm of our entire show, is what I’m saying. I encourage you to play along by calling in, texting, or chatting your answer. There are prizes after all. And stereotyping huge swaths of humanity is good clean fun.

Anyway, I’m sure you’ve noticed by now that there are funny pictures below. They have a simple format:

See that? This is an easy one. You’ve heard of Ireland. Ireland has redheads. Lots of redheads, it seems. At the risk of explaining the joke: where else besides top-o-the-mornin’ begorra Ireland would you find so many bloody redheads just standing around?

Let’s try another:

Ok. That one’s good in a bad way. Or bad in a good way; I’m not sure. Either way, I hope you get this one, because it’s pretty funny.

How about this one:

Wait… what? Oh, you didn’t know that about Liechtenstein? Yeah. Right next to notorious chocolate-hustler Switzerland — their most important trading partner. They’re crazy for that stuff (so I’m told).

Would you have gotten this if it were a Guess The Country question? Even with that big fake “Fürstentum Liechtenstein” sign? My guess is maybe not, because Liechtenstein doesn’t matter much to people outside Liechtenstein. Seriously. As a result, I think it’s probably not as funny — less ha! and more huh?

Now, if you’re American and want a bit of self-reflective and cringe-inducing humor, google “Meanwhile in America” sometime. You won’t learn anything new, really — but you will be reminded what the rest of the world thinks about you. I’m sure you’re familiar with the material…

Here’s an interesting generalization: the more you know about a culture, the more you can enjoy the jokes… and the more jokes out there, the more relevant a culture is. The fewer jokes… well, that place isn’t as important, is it? Doesn’t mean it’s not worthwhile, or even interesting, just… less important. Kinda sad, actually.

There’s an awesome project called Mapping Stereotypes that is exactly what you’d expect it is. A great example of funny-because-it’s-true humor. Compare and contrast with a collection of “Meanwhile In” macros for every country in Europe. Hell, there’s thousands of versions out there, some of which are even good. Maybe I’ve even made some of them. Maybe. The thing is: I can’t come up with a better method for understanding places you hadn’t even heard of yesterday than by looking at funny pictures on the Internet today.

And hey, doing so might give you a little more preparation for when some jerk quizzes you on funny news stories. I think I’ve made my point.

Ok ready for a whirlwind worldwide tour? Let’s make with the funny…

(This next one? Precious.)

…oops how did that get in here?

Here’s a new one:

Of course, I couldn’t help but include this one:

What’s that you say? “I don’t get it”, you say? Stop whining and tune in to our dumb show! You may just learn something. Apologies in advance if that happens.