On today's show, it's the Baltimore-based pianist, composer, and bandleader Lafayette Gilchrist. Lafayette is an extravagantly-gifted instrumentalist and composer, the type of pianist often described as a “two-handed player” for the strong rhythms of his left hand and his nimble melodicism of his right. His deep understanding of the music's history…

Here's the part where I give a brief introduction to this episode's guest, something particularly difficult with a guest as extravagantly talented as Steven Erdman. He might be best described as a one-man production company, having skills as a graphic artists with hand-illustrating skills, a songwriter and producer, an animator and filmmaker, and s…

On today's show saxophonist, flautist, composer, poet, Elliott Levin. Levin is a Philadelphia-born talent, who has traveled far and wide in his career, establishing himself as an iron man of music, ubiquitous across the city of Philadelphia since the 1970s, playing countless gigs across numerous styles. Soon after picking up the saxophone, Elliott …

On today's show, it's the second appearance of writer Mike DeCapite (previously on F2N Ep. 20), whose latest novel, JACKET WEATHER was published in late 2021 by Soft Skull Press, home to works from everyone from Dennis Cooper to Noam Chomsky. DeCapite is originally from Cleveland and the son of novelist Raymond DeCapite, a novelist whose well-revie…

It is the interview I conducted with director Sean Baker that planted the seed for today's episode, which is the long-delayed fiftieth episode of Fun 2 Know. It was three years ago that Rob Burson was in pre-production for his debut film HELL OF A HEARTACHE when he stumbled across the Fun 2 Know interview with Sean Baker, whose films PRINCE OF BROA…

President Biden has been president for only a week and has already introduced upwards of 35 executive orders, at least ten of which are reversals of Trump-era policy. Additionally, Jack and Nick dive into Liz Cheney and her future as a Republican party leader, as well as the challenges she faces from senators like Josh Hawley. Finally, the DOJ has …

Episode 12: A discussion of the President-Elect's "Biden Plan" for COVID relief in the US, as well as Donald Trump's second impeachment, a first for any sitting president. Later, Jack and Nick discuss the prevalance of fascism in our society and its ties to Trump. Join us for another episode of The Twenty Sixth. [RECORDED ON 1/16/2021] LINKS: [1] T…

The Capitol Building was raided by a mob of Republicand, incited by President Trump. On this episode, Jack and Nick discuss the recent events in Washington and the reaction it created. Join us for a lesson on recent history. [RECORDED 1/9/2021]

On this tenth episode of The Twenty Sixth, Nick and Jack review recent stimulus updates (our favorite), and discuss policing politics on the internet. Also on this episode, an explanation of the upcoming Georgia runoff elections and their reprocussions, as well as a discussion on criminal justice reform and defunding the police. Join us on this fir…

Jack and Nick discuss vaccine arrivals in New York and Los Angeles, as well as the recent resignation of Attorney General William Barr, and dive into the Electoral College's final vote to confirm Joe Biden as the 46th President of the United States. For this episode's larger topic, we dive into the Electoral College and its relevancy to American po…

Today, Nick and Jack discuss stalling stimulus talks and what that means for the holidays, as well as news that Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine has been approved by an FDA advisory panel of experts and is now ready to be given the go ahead for mass distribution by the FDA itself. Also on this episode, Biden's clash with congressional Democrats over stude…

On this episode, Nick and Jack dive into the revised stimulus, a possible bribe in the White House for a pardon, and updates on the Coronavirus vaccine.

Jack and Nick discuss the recent federal funding alloted to the Biden transition team from the GSA, which allows the President-Elect to begin the gradual transfer of presidential power and signifies the end of the Trump era. They also dive deep into Biden's recent cabinet appointments as well as AstraZeneca Covid vaccine efficacy reports, and share…

Joe Biden has won the elction of 2020 but Trump refuses to quit. What can the republican party do with a fractured base and an embarassment of this scale? Jack and Nick dive in on this episode into the next steps for the GOP and our nation as a whole. Join us on this very special episode as the nation rewrites history and undergoes a metamorphosis.…

In this episode, Jack and Nick do a state-by-state rundown of their election predictions, discuss Hunter Biden and how he might impact a possible President Joe Biden, take a look at the rising COVID cases, and discuss the candidates' final election pushes.

In this episode, Jack and Nick dive into the president's coronavirus diagnosis and their takaways from the Presidential debate.

On this second (or first?) episode of The Twenty Sixth (formerly The Politics Club), Jack, Aaron, and Nick discuss their first presidential debate predictions, the upcoming confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, and the growth of income inequality since the start of the pandemic.

On today's show: Austin, Texas musician and thereminist, Aileen Adler. I first met Aileen back in the late '80s during the halcyon days of Tower Records, when we both worked at store #173 on South Street in Philadelphia. I moved to Alaska and then San Francisco in the early '90s, around the same time when Aileen moved to another artist's hub, Austi…

Our guest today, guitarist Nick Millevoi. To quote his bio, “Nick Millevoi is a guitarist and composer whose music searches for the sonic cracks between jazz, rock and roll, noise, and modern composition.” Nick has performed with Mostly Other People Do the Killing, Nels Cline, Marc Ribot, and Jamaaladeen Tacuma, the duo Archer Spade with trombonist…

Today, bassist extraordinaire, Jamaaladeen Tacuma. Jamaaladeen was our guest back in Episode 11 of the podcast, where we talked about growing up in Philly, his discovering the bass in his teen years, his joining Ornette Coleman's electric Prime Time band while still a young man, as well as his world travels and his love of fashion. A few months bac…

On today's show: music historian Elijah Wald. I was just hanging out in my South Philly neighborhood when I happened to get introduced to Elijah, a music historian who has written over a dozen books, mainly on the subject of roots music but also on subjects as diverse as hitchhiking, the cultural phenomenon known as “the Dozens” and the genetics in…

Early on in the show's history I had Monnette on the short list of Philly-area musicians with which I wanted to interview. I'd long been a fan of the records she recorded in the mid-1970s for the prestigious Steeplechase label, a Danish label who continues today to make important records for artists who have gone slept-upon back here in the states,…

F2K Episode 44: The enduring musician, Kenn KwederIt's the show's proud third appearance from our most popular guest, musician Kenn Kweder. Kweder (who appeared previously in Ep. Six, Ep. Seven, and Ep. 30 of the FUN 2 KNOW podcast) has been a beloved fixture of the Philadelphia music scene since rising up from the Philly streets in the mid-seventi…

Kenn Kweder talks about his 1975 gig with Patti Smith and Lenny Kaye at Glassboro State College in New Jersey. From the soon forthcoming episode 44 of The Fun 2 Know podcast...By Fun 2 Know Podcast

On today's show, with trumpeter and composer Jaimie Branch. I'd seen Jaimie's name in the credits of releases by bassist Jason Ajemian, in the large band of Keefe Jackson, with cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm and saxophonist Jarrett Gilmore but she didn't really capture my attention until her stunning debut with her band Fly or Die arrived on the Interna…

On today's show, Matt Prigge. Matt has written about film since the late 1990s, originally at The Philadelphia Weekly, then for four years as the film editor at The Metro, the free commuter paper that has editions in New York City, Boston and Philadelphia. Matt is a particularly engaging writer with an unusually firm grasp on a wide range of cinema…

On today's show, Heather Henderson and Emery Emery, who together host both the award-winning Ardent Atheist podcast as well as the podcast, Skeptically Yours. I've known Heather since back in the early 2000s, when she was part of the Philly-based burlesque troupe The Peek-a-Boo Revue, who specialized comedy and satire along with classic strip routi…

On today's show, our guests are Michelle MF Ausman and Kimberly Vice of the musical duo Hestina. Named after a genus of butterflies, the duo's 2016 nine-song release, BLOSSOM TALK is a tour-de-force of harmony vocals, literate lyrics and rhythmically-propelled melodies that haunt long after they hit their climax. With the easy accessibility of mode…

On today's show: Film director Sean Baker and film critic Piers Marchant. First, a very recent conversation I had with filmmaker Sean Baker. I was so taken with Sean Baker's 2015 film TANGERINE, famously and beautifully shot from an Apple iPhone, that I started tracking down his earlier work, four fascinating films, including two brilliantly-execut…

On today's show: a conversation with poet and author Maryan Nagy Captan Maryan is a poet, writer and performer currently centered in Philadelphia. Born in Cairo, Egypt, Mayan's parents immigrated to the U.S. in the 1990s where they earned a somewhat hard-scrabble living and raised two girls. With English as a second language, Maryan approached lang…

In the 90s I began seeing Travis Crawford's byline pop up in assorted magazines, and over the years he has written for publications including Film Comment, Filmmaker, Fangoria and increasingly in the liner notes of archival DVDs. Currently he writes regularly for the U.K. Publication, the Calvert Journal. Crawford's always intelligent and passionat…

On today's show, a conversation with author and comedian Ritch Shydner. Ritch Shydner rode in on the wave of the 1980s stand up boom, playing stages coast-to-coast, working with the best comedians of the era along the way appearing on HBO, David Letterman, both Jay Leno and Johnny Carson's TONIGHT SHOW as well as working and writing on shows incl. …

On today's show, vocalist, bandleader and songwriter, Brandy Butler I first met Brandy Butler when she worked with my wife at a Philadelphia charter school, when Brandy was fresh out of college and teaching music to elementary school kids. I was aware that Brandy and her band Saigon Slim were performing around town in the same era when the Philly b…

Today's show: entertainer John Davidson. The family traveled up to Saratoga Springs last month as my wife appeared in the pilot of a TV program called "The Caregiver Connection," following the stories of people involved in health care in America. The pilot was hosted by a guitar-strumming John Davidson, who has been an ubiquitous TV presence since …

On today's show, composer, alto saxophonist and the new Director of Jazz at Princeton University, Rudresh Mahanthappa. Rudresh Mahanthappa came out of Boulder Colorado, was educated by Berklee College of Music and DePaul, and received national attention not long after moving to New York in 1998 where he soon beginning collaborating with the then up…

Mary Lattimore has been lending her harp to a number of avant rock recordings for over a decade, as well as releasing her own haunting improvisational work for labels including Thrill Jockey and Ghostly International. Our conversation was recorded just days before Mary left Philadelphia (where she lived for a decade) to relocate in Los Angeles. We …

On today's show, violinist Diana Monroe. I spent most pf the 90s living in San Francisco and when I returned to my old home of Philadelphia around 2000, I was struck by how rich a pool of musical talent existed in Philadelphia, particularly across the world of Philadelphia jazz. A great place for talent spotting is in Bobby Zankel's incredible jazz…

https://strictlyvisualentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/nerdbender-ep-13-blue-spirit-ed-away.mp3By strictlyvisualentertainment

https://strictlyvisualentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/nerdbender-ep-12-the-old-man-and-the-flashbacks.mp3By strictlyvisualentertainment

https://strictlyvisualentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/nerdbender-ep-11-the-great-lie-vide.mp3By strictlyvisualentertainment

https://strictlyvisualentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/nerdbender-ep-10-ugh.mp3By strictlyvisualentertainment

https://strictlyvisualentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/nerdbender-ep-9-the-morality-scroll.mp3By strictlyvisualentertainment

https://strictlyvisualentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/nerdbender-ep-8-avatar-rambling.mp3By strictlyvisualentertainment

https://strictlyvisualentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/nerdbender-ep-7-panda-tales.mp3By strictlyvisualentertainment

https://strictlyvisualentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/nerdbender-ep-6-a-buffalo-or-a-bison.mp3By strictlyvisualentertainment

https://strictlyvisualentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/nerdbender-ep-5-the-worlds-best-super-slide.mp3By strictlyvisualentertainment

It's the return F2K's most popular guest, musician and songwriter Kenn Kweder. Our two-part episodes 6 & 7 squeezed in a lot of Kweder's story, growing up in Philly and playing hundreds of gigs a year for decades on stages between New York and Baltimore but mainly in and around Philly, where Kweder is nearly a household name. In the year and a half…

https://strictlyvisualentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/nerdbender-ep-4-character-development-sokka-addition.mp3By strictlyvisualentertainment

Today it's conversation with writer, music journalist, WFMU DJ and record producer Kurt Gottschalk. Originally out of Illinois, Kurt's earned a masters at the Columbia School of Journalism in 1997. He has written about arts and politics for All About Jazz, Signal to Noise, Time Out-New York, The Village Voice, The Wire and publications in Canada, F…

Today show, an epic conversation with artist and painter Skirmantas Pipas. Skirmantas Pipas is a Lithuanian-American artist in the process of painting fantastic otherworldly landscapes that serve as History Paintings of a world yet uncharted. I first met Skirmantas (aka "Skip") when he briefly worked at a Philadelphia cafe in my neighborhood, a lov…