Exactly — they're tourist-friendly because some tourists basically don't care what they eat. They just want something reliable and familiar. Cheesecake Factory, Hard Rock, Rainforest Cafe, etc. all deliver this. It's the same food you can get at home— nothing weird or scary or too fancy.

I realize I'm in the minority (although maybe not quite as small a minority as I'd thought?) but I've skipped the past couple Wompler episodes entirely. I know that one thing a lot of people seem to love about her episodes is the extraordinarily convoluted backstory and the self-referential nature and the endless…

"In fact, it seems possible that the testosterone angle does the show a disservice by discouraging half its potential audience…"

I don't have anything insightful to add, but just want to note that I love the addition of this feature to the site and hope you keep it going.

Having lived in the northern US my whole life, including in a very racist city, I'll just say I don't agree with your basic premise. Lots of people up here are really racist. Lots of people talk about it. Far fewer (if any?) people pretend the north is some Equality Wonderland free of racism.

This seems like a really strange line of argument: the south hates the north not because of lingering tensions from the civil war or any variety of ideological differences, but because people in the north are (anecdotally) racist in the wrong way?

I think the problem is that no matter what happens in the movie, it has nothing to do with what makes Legos fun. The whole essence of the toy itself is not something you can replicate in a movie.

At the risk of seeming spammy, I feel like I should note to anyone new to the show that we've made a couple major audio upgrades over the course of two years, so if you're struggling with the lower (but, I think, still tolerable) quality of the early episodes, that problem is cleared up by episode 25

I think Partially Examined Life may have, at one time, been part of the rotation here? I at least think this is where I first heard of it, but maybe I'm wrong about that.

I feel so full of… what's the opposite of shame?

Thanks for covering Book Fight! We've obviously hoped you would someday link to the show, but didn't ever expect that it would actually happen, especially not with such a thoughtful, detailed review.

NPR just posted an interview with her about the album, the cancer, upcoming tour, etc.

I guess I'd argue that the act of showing the friend the article, pre-publication, AND ostensibly giving that friend veto power, constitutes the act of asking a friend.

It's both unrealistic and unreasonable to expect that just because the internet exists, people should be actively aware of and well-informed on all the constantly changing nuances and debates re: gender identity and appropriate nomenclature.

Still mystified by the ongoing narrative of Anna Faris, unrecognized genius. On her 40th consecutive terrible project, the problem isn't that her niche is acting in horrible comedies, but that she has too much integrity and is TOO GOOD.

Thanks for your responses to my comments, Kyle. Glad to hear you're thinking of ways to diversify the roster a bit. As far as I know, Podmass is the only place regularly reviewing a relatively large group of podcasts, so I'm also glad to see it's not just disappearing (When it didn't show show up Monday, I was…

true— and, as noted by some other people, a similarly huge percentage of podcasters themselves seem to fit into that demographic.

I was really looking forward to this week's Podmass so I could talk about how Bill Callahan was the least energetic guest in the history of all recorded media. Not that I had much to say beyond that. But here I am anyway.

But also, I give a shit because it's 2013 and I like when media outlets at least try not to focus exclusively on the interests of 35 year-old middle-class white males.

Gender politics aside, having a pool of judges with very similar backgrounds and seemingly identical tastes leads to a homogeneous list of results, which turns the column from Best Podcasts of 2013 to something more accurately titled Best Comedy Podcasts (Within A Specific Subset of Comedy Podcasts [Primarily…