TLDS December Culture Klatsch
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Talia Lavin: How ya doin’ whatcha readin’?
David Swanson: I’m hanging in there, and reading heaps of Italian renaissance esoterica—this morning it was a 1934 biography of Francesco Di Giorgio Martini. I’m also brushing up on my Dylan ahead of the Timmy Chalamet movie. I know that you’ve been reading up on poison for the novel you’ve been working on. Any favorite recipes?
TL: Well, you're the one reading about the Italian Renaissance—you tell me! Lotta poison in that era.
DS: It’s true. Although at the moment I’m focused on the 1470s, and the real golden age of poisoning arrived with the Borgia papacy, wish we discussed in our last culture chat. The Borgias were a truly toxic family.
TL: Ever since the press has called every single female poisoner, like, "The Lucrezia Borgia of Manchester" or “insert region here”. Yet, curiously, they tend not to come from papal families and/or plutocrats!
DS: The renaissance papacy really offers some striking parallels to the incoming administration. Nepotism, simony, and cronyism, to be specific.
TL: At least the oligarchy then funded art, instead of trying to destroy human art entirely.
DS: It’s true. Same with the Gilded Age robber barons. Though the art wasn’t as good, at least we got libraries.
TL: Right! Now they give nothing back at all. Ugly cars, hallucinating robots, all for a price. You know, you don't hear about simony a lot these days.
DS: Appointing someone to your administration because they donated to your campaign is basically simony. Every time I read about the latest volley of corruption I think of what Leo X said when he was elected pope: “Since God has given us the papacy, let us enjoy it.” In other words, make hay when the sun shines.
TL: Hay would be fine! I wish they were interested in hay! It's the "reintroduce polio and ban gay people while the sun shines" agenda that has me scurrying to my library for comfort reads.
DS: Books about the renaissance papacy are my comfort reads! The poison part is just gravy.
TL: I think if no-fault divorce gets banned, arsenic—my favorite poison—may make a comeback. It’s my favorite because there are sooo many juicy and well-documented cases of Victorian arsenic poisoners, as well as some truly bonkers 20th century ones. The former are laid out in Sandra Hempel's excellent The Inheritor's Powder, and my personal 20th-century favorite, the story of Audrey Marie Hilley, is laid out in the workmanlike but thorough book Poisoned Blood. That case is really bananas—at one point she pretended to be dead, and came back as her own twin. She escaped prison and died of exposure only two years before I was born!
DS: She sounds like a less-than-sympathetic outlaw.
TL: Yeah, poisoning her own daughter almost to death very slowly before going on the lam isn't exactly sympathetic. She was no Luigi Mangione. My only thought about that is that there are some truly baller Italian outlaw anthems from the Bourbon-Bonaparte war period, when brigandage surged. Like "Siamo Briganti" (We Are Brigands").
And the excellent 20th-century banger devoted to the same briganti, "Briganti se more" (If you love a brigand... forget his name!)
DS: Dylan wrote some classic outlaw ballads. As a mafia nerd, I’m partial to “Joey”, about another Italian-America outlaw folk-hero, who probably shouldn’t have been lionized given all the murders. Anyway, as I think you know, Robin Hood is maybe my favorite fictional (or is he?) character, so my affection for lovable outlaws runs deep.
TL: Interestingly the origins of the mafia may be in anti-brigandage private armies and thief-hunting gangs rather than the briganti themselves.
DS: I’m sure there’s a Robin Hood of Sicily the same way there’s a Lucrezia Borgia of Manchester. To shift gears, another recent distraction has been “Black Doves” on Netflix, which is extremely entertaining
TL: Haven't seen it! Tell me about it.
DS: Ben Whishaw and Keira Knightly play a spy and an assassin in London during the holidays, and mayhem and bloodshed ensue. It’s like Love Actually mixed with “Slow Horses”, so if you like British cloak-and-dagger fun or Keira Knightly at Christmas, it’s worth a watch. It may even have inspired my to take a chance on the new “Day of the Jackal” adaptation, despite an intense aversion to Eddie Redmayne—the poor man’s Whishaw.
TL: I'm haunted by Redmayne's take on the emcee in "Cabaret," at the last Tonys. Seriously creepy.
DS: See, Ben Whishaw would kill it in that role. Are there any actors who you can’t abide?
TL: I can’t think of any that I instantly revile off the top of my head, although I'd like Mel Gibson to fall in a volcano for non-thespian reasons.
DS: Yeah, Mel Gibson is a very particular breed of odious actor. Ryan Reynolds may not be a bigot, but he’s the other actor whose appeal completely escapes me.
TL: Oh god. Yes. I mean, he's handsome, but that Joss Whedony snark is really annoying. I've also been enraged by the endless Mint Mobile ads on my podcasts, which is just very threadbare snark. He could never bring the beautiful sincerity Ryan Gosling brought to the Barbie movie. He is not Kenough.
DS: Gosling is an infinitely superior Canadian Ryan.
TL: Are we just being mean now though?
DS: Are you seriously worried about being mean to Ryan Reynolds?
TL: Well, he won't see it unless he’s subscribed to the newsletter, and if he’s not he deserves it.
DS: I’ve been trying to figure out some of my best-of-2024 picks, and so much of what I consume didn’t come out this century, let alone this year. The three top artists on my Spotify Wrapped were Beethoven, Bach, and Brahms!
TL: Nerd alert! I feel like every time we culture chat I call you a nerd and then happily discourse on whatever obscure topic I'm obsessed by at the moment. It’s pure hypocrisy. At the moment I'm happily rewatching “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine”, which is classic, delicious nerd fare.
DS: I’ve been doing the annual holiday-season Lord of the Rings rewatch.
TL: My partner and I are watching one of the extended editions for each year of his medical residency So far, so Two Towers...
DS: I was watching that last night. There’s a new anime Lord of the Rings series which may be too nerdy even for me.
TL: I'm mostly just averse to anime. Not because anime's bad, I just sort of bounced off it. Hayao Miyazaki is about as close as I get.
DS: You know what I watched this week in a fit of nostalgic desperation? The 1970s version of The Hobbit with John Huston as Gandalf, which I hadn’t seen in over forty years. Killer soundtrack. The Greatest Adventure” by Glenn Yarbrough is a jam.
TL: That’s Rankin-Bass, right? I think Miyazaki started out working for one of their Japanese partner studios! For sheer concentrated nerd value, nothing will ever top Leonard Nimoy's ode to Bilbo Baggins.
Although my personal comfort video (sort of a "pull in case of emergency" for when I'm really blue) is Stephen Colbert's 20th-anniversary LotR jam. It has Method Man in it!
DS: Does he speak Elvish?
TL: No, but Hugo Weaving raps in Elvish:
DS: MC Elrond on the mic.
TL: I guess we just have to embrace that we're nerds, David.
DS: And on that note…
TL: Until next time?
DS: Until next time. Happy Holidays!
Thumbs up for the ryan Reynolds dislike. Didn't think I could like you 2 any more. Also the orcs song in the Hobbit, where there's a whip, there's a way. Is a straight heater. Love those cartoons. Happy holidays