It's not like any bozo off the street can show up and be a high-quality podcast guest. Now if you're talking about podcast hosting, then sure, any bozo could do it, and I myself owe my role on this very podcast to that preposterously low barrier to entry. I show up late every week, just absolutely covered in sandwich fixings, and struggle not to talk the whole time about how my turtles have "been getting rowdy." But an elite podcast guest must inherently be a specialist.
Such a guest would have to be a master of a field of endeavor, and be able to translate that mastery into entertaining and illuminating conversation. Tim Marchman, our guest on this week's episode and the man who co-hosted Deadcast with great distinction before I wandered in with shredded lettuce and pickles in my hair and took over, is such a guest, because he is a specialist. He is one of the world's most widely renowned experts on two major topics, in fact—being optimistic about the Chicago White Sox and believing/saying absolutely mind-destroying things about food.
It is worth noting that Tim is also a fine journalist, and has helped coordinate Vice's industry-leading coverage of the infuriating fuckery that the Trump administration has brought to bear on the U.S. Postal Service. But while we talked about that, too, it was only a matter of time until Drew pulled the emergency brake and we pulled a shrieking hairpin turn into the topics that would show Tim at his best: the question of what one should or should not put on a burger, and what's the deal with the White Sox this year. To paraphrase Tim's answers as "I don't know, kimchi?" and "They actually are pretty good" does his mastery a disservice. He was in his bag.
This in turn led us into our bag—I know, I don't like it either, but I'm not going to go back and delete the words "our bag"—and some other further-flung topics of interest. Drew sang, which is just a thing he does on the podcast now. We remembered walrusian former White Sox backup Ron Karkovice, and while astute reader Andy K. pointed out that Tim actually was actually remembering Ron Kittle when he gave Karkovice credit for baseball-themed woodworking, it's also true that Karkovice has a very woodworky vibe. We discussed the most and least satisfying vegetables to chop, which was kind of a romp in retrospect but still pleasant in every way.
We also wrestled with alternate cinematic uses of Jameis Winston's infamous and harrowing "eat this W" speech, but I shan't be embedding that video. We worked so hard to build this website and I'll be damned if I'm going to ruin it in its second week.
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