I'm a pseudo-historian. I'm used to reading very dry books that are full of facts. I think there's a way to present the information in an interesting way (especially history because it's essentially a story), and a podcast called Hardcore History does this wonderfully. Dan Carlin, the guy behind Hardcore History, essentially has a 1.5- to 5-hour monologue about any topic. It's just his voice from start to finish as he takes you into the world of the Punic Wars, the spread of the Mongols, or the Red Scare of the 1940s and 50s in a really immersive and gripping way.

His format is completely different from 99% Invisible, a podcast about design, and shorter versions of each episode is played on NPR. I find most of the episodes to be really fascinating, like the mechanics behind a slot machine to keep you betting, or the early wars between pedestrians and cars in the 1910s and 20s. But I guess because it's on NPR and it's about art, there are these moments when I sit back and think, "What the fuck is going on?" For example, sometimes there'd be whale sounds playing and someone whispering repeatedly "postage stamps are integral." Usually in the episode it'd be explained what the whales and stamps have to do with each other, but not always.

As part of my major requirement I had to take a course on medieval fine arts, and I chose manuscripts. I got a good grade, but it was very difficult for me. I just couldn't produce bullshit. I just couldn't. We'd have slides of different manuscript pages and art history students in the class would gush about how the colors would usher forth a calm sense of feeling to help the monks with their quotidian meditations, and when it was my turn I'd mutter something along the lines of, "I think it looks very pretty." I vaguely recall I quoted a paragraph on my xanga from an art history book I was reading at the ridiculousness of the language, how the folds of the clothing were in "capricious abandon." My mind just cannot create such phrases, and that's why the class was terrible for me. For our paper we had to write four pages describing a particular folio. I was done in a seven-line paragraph. I stated the facts about the event depicted and threw in a few more lines about the techniques employed to create the drawing. I can't generate bullshit about how the aureola around Christ creates a definite border between his holiness and majesty and the mundane world surrounding him in the picture. It sounds fucking retarded to me and that I'm making things up.

That's the sense I get in 99% Invisible. Whenever these weird moments come up, I know they're trying to create an effect and atmosphere, but I just can't see it as anything but foolishness. I'd rather just cut through all this nonsense and get to the point. But I guess that's what makes me a historian and not an artist. And I suppose it's good that not everyone is like me because then we'd live in a utilitarian world without any creativity. Still... whales and stamps?