Hugs rule! The proverbial magic bullet. Not sure what that means, but there it is.

From the album Beat the Champ, out April 7, 2015 (North America) / April 13 (Europe) on Merge Records.
http://www.mergerecords.com/beat-the-champ

Beat the Champ

Order from Merge

The Mountain Goats "The Legend of Chavo Guerrero"

I'm a big fan of <a href="https://soundcloud.com/kcrwstrangers">KCRW's Strangers podcast</a>, and I think it would be a tragedy if the project didn't continue, so I played <a href="http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/185167780/strangers-season-2">the Strangers Kickstarter video</a> for Tom and Peter, and I gathered a little fundraising advice.

Huge thanks to <a href="http://adagio.calarts.edu/~kmsound/index.html">Katie McMurran</a> and <a href="http://www.pleasehappy.com/">Lauren Whaley</a> for essential production help!

Don't Be a Stranger

A fictional story pretending to be a work of journalism within another fictional story that’s also sort of pretending to be a work of journalism? We’ve been wanting to get this project started since summertime. <a href="http://tropmag.com/tag/jr-nutt/">J.R. Nutt</a> was our original muse, but he went to see about a girl. Luckily, though, we met the Thompsons: <a href="http://www.carolineslaughter.com/">Caroline Slaughter</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/nicstanich">Nic Stanich</a>, and <a href="https://twitter.com/shawndempy">Shawn Dempewolff</a>.

This story originally appeared <a href="http://tropmag.com/">on Trop</a>.

Overheard: A Thompson Family Meeting

As you may know, Trop is having a <a href="http://tropmag.com/2013/announcement/" target="_blank">commencement address writing contest</a>. And as you may be able to infer, we'd like you to enter it. But we here at Trop would be the first to acknowledge that writing a commencement address worthy of winning our contest is extremely difficult given the <a href="http://tropmag.com/2012/team-writing-the-happy-couple-lost-the-snake/" target="_blank">extremely high standards</a> under which we operate. We acknowledge that you, possible entrant, might feel daunted. But we want to say: Don't feel daunted. Respect our extremely high standards, but don't feel daunted. Because feeling daunted is counterproductive, and we here at Trop don't like that. We want you to succeed. We want you to take our money ($500 grand prize). We want you to grace our online pages. We want you to win the affection of Celebrity Judge <a href="http://ameliagray.com" target="_blank">Amelia Gray.</a> So, we're going to give you a guide.

<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0638338/" target="_blank">JR Nutt</a> is an actor known for his work with <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdqNnQ0hhvQ" target="_blank">DiGiorno</a> and <a href="http://adland.tv/commercials/arbys-french-dip-2005-030-usa" target="_blank">Arby's</a>, and he was kind enough to agree to show us how it's done. (Also: Thanks to <a href="http://tropmag.com/author/jake-degrazia/" target="_blank">Jake de Grazia</a> for the pep talk, the microphone, and the overall audio know-how.)

Commencement Demonstration

On recent Sundays, I've been spending some time photographing doggies at the new outdoor South Los Angeles animal shelter. I'm hoping <a href="http://on.fb.me/YgHdw3" target="_blank">the portraits</a> will help them find their "forever homes." They're cute. Many of them are scared. And, as a group, they are loud. Here's a postcard I wrote to Jake.

Postcards: Visiting Hours

When Trop first decided to have podcasts, one of our ideas was to record readings of Trop writers' short fiction. This was a pretty natural thought. We are, after all, a collective of fiction writers.

We had some other ideas too, though, and we've been focused on turning them into the best damn Tropcasts in the world.

But, last week, that old short fiction idea bubbled up again. Peter Nichols happened to be in town. He and I spent some time in a parked car together. And, next thing we knew, we were ready to launch that short fiction series. 

We’re calling it Four-Minute Fiction for two reasons. One, it's safer to call facts fiction than fiction facts. And, two, public radio stations think all stories should be exactly four minutes long. Now, I’m totally open to breaking these rules. If a story is true, nobody needs to know that. And if we find a great piece of writing that reads out to six minutes, six minus two is four, so we're covered.

Anyway, enough text. It's time for Security, which, to this pair of ears, is a story about fear, intimidation, improvisation, and Clint Eastwood’s America.

Four-Minute Fiction: Security

When he begins showing strange symptoms on a jog though the mountains, science writer Andrew Revkin discovers just how close to death he is.

Andrew Revkin: My lucky stroke

Stories about birds that keep you up at night, dogs with unique smells, proto-hipsters seeking validation, and songwriters that that aren’t very good with words. Some of them true. Some of them almost true.

Life Advice Radio appears monthly <a href="http://tropmag.com/tag/life-advice-radio">on Trop</a>.

Don't Be a Stranger

Life Advice Radio

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