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Today’s National Day is California Day so let’s go surfin’ for some good podcasts.
Thanks(?) to my friend Ian Elsner, host of the Museum Archipelago podcast, for challenging me to find a podcast episode related to this day.
- Rec 1: The Cine-Files – The Princess Bride
- Rec 2: Museum Archipelago – Apollo 11 Historic Site (By Ian Elsner)
- Rec 3: Those Happy Places – Disney’s California Adventure and the Simulacra
Use #NationalCaliforniaDay for all things related to this day.
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The Podcast Gumbo podcast playlist, made from love, will include almost all the episodes mentioned in this podcast going forward to make it easier for you to enjoy all these recommendations.
You can find me on Twitter at @paulkondo.
Thanks for listening,
Paul
Transcript
Hey. This is Paul Kondo. This is the Podcast Gumbo podcast and I’ve got a rhetorical question for ya.
Are you like me and find those things we call National Days, like Cheeseball Day or worse, Moldy Cheese Day, amusing? Yeah, me too. So each week, I’ll have one of my podcast friends challenge me to find an episode related to one of those days and I’ll be releasing it on the actual day it occurs.
So, let’s get to it. What is today’s National Day?
Hey Paul, it’s Ian. So most U.S. states have a thing. But California has everything. Its got the hottest spot on earth while the coldest winter I ever experienced was a summer in San Francisco which makes celebrating National California Day a bit challenging. I mean, what do you wear? I’m sure you’ll figure something out.
What to wear? That’s not the first thing I thought about, Ian.
Today is February 22nd and it’s National California Day. Maybe like you, the first thing I thought about were the beaches. That led me to The Beach Boys. Then Hollywood. The Golden Gate Bridge. There’s also wineries, traffic, and The L.A. Rams with the best throwback uniforms ever.
On this day, one is supposed to take a tour of California. I’m guessing for many of you, that’s not possible. At least not physically. But with the magic of tv, oops, I mean podcasts, we can learn things about California wearing whatever we feel like.
So listen to these recommended episodes and tweet about it using the National California Day hashtag.
Given how many different topics I could choose from, as opposed to a day like Popcorn Day, I’m going with the Cine Files podcast. There are sooo many movie podcasts out there but I like the hosts and their knowledge and style. But what movie do I choose? I flipped a coin and went with The Princess Bride over Reservoir Dogs. 1 and 1A in my list of favorite films ever.
I’ve probably seen The Princess Bride over 25 times but there are things even I didn’t know. The beginning was especially amusing as they talk about the writer, William Goldman. Ultimately, it’s a lengthy love-letter with some inconceivable facts thrown in.
Today’s guest is my friend Ian Elsner. Ian is the host of the Museum Archipelago podcast – a tiny show that guides you through the rocky landscape of museums. Museum Archipelago believes that no museum is an island and that museums are not neutral.
If I was any good at this, I would dig up one of Ian’s shows where he discusses a museum in California. Instead, I recommend a place that is a little further away from all of us – approximately 238 million miles away. That’s right, the Apollo 11 Historic Site, where, you guessed it, Apollo 11 landed.
What’s there? How many visitors do they get a year? What kind of food does the food court have? Ian doesn’t answer two of those questions but he does enlighten us about this tranquil site.
For the last recommendation of the week, Ian recommends Disney’s California Adventure and the Simulacra from Those Happy Places podcast. This episode talks about the opening of Disney’s California Adventure and that it wasn’t exactly a hit. I had no idea that this place existed and I certainly didn’t even know the word Simulacra. Thanks to the magic of editing, you don’t know how many times I had to say simulacra as well as archipelago to get them right.
Now that the recommendations are over, here’s a follow up to my Lost Penny episode. If you didn’t listen, that day is for finding all that lost change and doing something good with it. After I collected my change and added to it, I made a donation to charity:water.
Well, that’s it for this episode. The next episode is coming on March 3rd and is guaranteed to make you happy.
As always, take a look at the show notes for links to all the podcasts mentioned in this episode as well as other life-altering information. To make it easy for you, there’s also a link to a podcast playlist that will contain all the episodes ever mentioned in this show.
See you next week sometime for another round of recommendations.
Are you still listening? Do you still want more podcast goodness? If so, get on over to podcastgumbo.com and subscribe to my newsletter today.