BONUS EPISODE: "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" (w/Lady Emily!)
Added 2026-01-31 18:17:06 +0000 UTCOn nights, like this, when the world's a bit amiss, we bring you a story about a trans (metaphorically? literally? neither?) East German punk rocker. Is Todd over his head on this one? What is the origin of love? Does this hold up at all or do we leave it in the '00s?
Comments
Y'all brought up the discourse around whether John Cameron Mitchell should be the one telling this story. I have ambivalent feelings about that question in general. Like, do I want to read a cis person write the story about being queer? A Canadian writing about what it means to be Japanese? An able-bodied person writing about life with disabilities? Not particularly, no. At the same time, people should be able to tell stories about people different than themselves. I guess the important thing is to be respectful, and do some research instead of making shit up. Bringing this back around to Hedwig, I think this story is so specific that it bypasses these questions. Hedwig as a character is so fully-formed that I can't read her as a comment on what it means to be trans. I don't know anything about Mitchell, but I think Hedwig must've been incredibly personal to him, and I have a hard time imagining someone else telling this story.
Nigel G
2026-01-31 20:55:48 +0000 UTCWow time for some weird self disclosure that says more about me than I probably should... Todd calling Hedwig the 2001 starchild beyond man or woman... a few years ago I fell in love with a trans woman. And while I did love her for her; I did also... I won't say "fetishize" because it wasn't a sexual feeling or anything like that... but I did way too much overexalt(?) her as someone with the balls (so to say) to turn away from everything she was expected to be. I certainly hope I'm a little more enlightened now than I was then, but I gotta say, I kinda thought she was the starchild. And a few more years ago than that (more than I wanna admit) I dated a German woman who taught me that "gummi" meant condom. Thank you, Todd, Lina, and Emily for making this very uncomfortable for me.
Vince Whitacre
2026-01-31 20:02:09 +0000 UTCAny time Emily is a guest I expect her to express a complaint about feminists in the episode. It literally has nothing to do with her or her content, just the two episodes I’ve ever listened to featuring her happened to have been ones where she did this specific thing.
aliceinparties
2026-01-31 19:25:13 +0000 UTCFun fact: they shot the mall scenes at my local mall in the 'burbs of Toronto. Less fun fact: said mall was also featured in the opening of the Noam Chomsky doc Manufacturing Consent. Yes we used to have the monster video screen. It's long gone now though.
Angela
2026-01-31 18:25:47 +0000 UTC
