The reason he's on episode 165 is because he took it chronologically starting from the founding in 752 BCE to where he is now.  I would *not* start with the most recent episodes, because the decline of Rome involves a whole bunch of names that are in control for a brief period and then assassinated.  That makes it a…

During college, women found "She Loves My Cock" by Jackyl exceptionally obnoxious for some reason.  I found its exceptional, sincere stupidity somewhat admirable.  I'm not sure that i ever inflicted that song on others, myself, but man it was effective.

Having recommended The Sound of Young America to many potential listeners over the year, i'm looking forward to not having to qualify it with "it's not just for young people."

I started a comment asking AV Club to finally interview Jesse for the site.  I then see that you did, but only for the Chicago site, which i may have missed originally.

I'm a history dork.  I especially enjoy the history of whitey from about 1453 to 1865.  That said, my favorite history podcasts are The History of Rome and 12 Byzantine Rulers.

I listen to The History of Rome more than any other podcast, since i use it to fall asleep to quite frequently, instead of a book.  I used to try On the Media for that, but it had a tendency to angry up my blood too much to sleep.

I haven't listened to The Football Ramble, but Grantland's Men in Blazers podcast is a joy and does outreach towards potential new American fans.  I only marginally care about soccer, but they've got me hooked on their show.

I think a lot of it may be that voters want to reward podcasts that do "something different" rather than a two-white-males-and-a-guest gabfest.

Limiting to five is tough:

I love Myq Kaplan.  He's among my top ten standing up comedians.  He's also one of the nicest guys in comedy, which has plenty of exceptionally nice people.

The reality show pitches, for those who didn't listen to the podcast:

That's the way Jeselnik is but you could see actual appreciation in that he remembered Garlin's old joke about fun size candy bars.  It's a fine line that Jeselnik treads between funny and dickishness, he's not always on the right side of it, but i thought he was fine here.

Vegan Mind Meld was released 4/27/10.

I very much enjoyed Alison Brie's happy little Hawthorne Wipes dance at the end of the cold open.

I'm one of those people, but i don't see how that's relevant.  Annie Duke being the second most prominent name with UltimateBet, which had its own cheating scandal is only slightly more relevant.

Most of the Loney Dear i've listened to hasn't invoked much of a response from me, but i do enjoy "I Am John" quite a bit.  It's gorgeous.  It's in that small class of songs that aren't among my favorites, but every once in a while i listen to it multiple times in a row and be glad i did:

@GillianJacobs just tweeted:

But how can they do a Berlusconi clip show with nothing at all from the best
Silvio story of them all, Ep #99: "Berlusconi takes a cathedral to the
face"?

"Bridge of Birds" is really damn good.  Probably among my top ten novels of all-time, even though i don't generally like fantasy and don't have a great interest in China.

I wish the games weren't mandatory, but i understand why they are and don't complain about them.  They *are* very useful when less talkative guests are on, because it gets them to participate and can spawn tangential discussions.  There's also the aspect that the games in-and-of-themselves are fairly fun to play along…