Plumbing the Depths of The Great Books (Season 2)
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If you’ve spent any time at all listening to an episode of our podcast, you know we love research. And yes, while Wikipedia is the single greatest achievement of the modern age (take that, Hoover Dam!), sometimes we need to visit our library and blow the dust off one of the classics to taste some of that good old-fashioned book learnin’.
One good thing about pop culture is the whole “pop” thing: it’s popular. That means most of the time someone, somewhere has written a book or two about it.
So without further ado, here is our reading list from our second season…
In our episode about Magnificent Flops, we discuss OK Soda and Google Glass. The brain behind OK Soda, Sergio Zyman, was the same one behind New Coke. While we couldn’t find a book on OK Soda (please point us to one if it’s out there), we did hunt down The Real Coke, The Real Story by Thomas Oliver.
In our Mad Props episode, we talk about two movies with designed objects as the center of them. One director with hyper-designed movies is Wes Anderson and his props are always top shelf. The book Fake Love Letters, Forged Telegrams, and Prison Escape Maps: Designing Graphic Props for Filmmaking was written by Annie Atkins, a designer who has made props for directors including Anderson, Todd Haynes and some guy named Steven Spielberg.
The Olympics are around the corner once again. Always an international platform for branding, we discuss a couple of interesting stories from both the summer and winter games in our Design for Champions episode. The two-volume Olympic Games: The Design by Markus Osterwalder covers all of the games since 1896 in Athens. The stuff we mention should be in there.
Speaking of entertainment, it’s hard to beat classic animation. Our episode on Saturday morning cartoons covers a retelling of “The Three Little Pigs” and a series inspired by the opening credits of a Peter Sellers film. That pastel-colored troublemaker is celebrated in the book Think Pink by Mark Arnold that not only talks about The Pink Panther, but also the story of DePatie-Freleng Enterprises.
The Pink Panther is certainly a colorful character. You know what else is colorful? Flags. Our episode about flag design highlights a couple of our favorites and the histories behind them. There are ample books on flags, but this one by Alfred Znamierowski looks pretty good to us: The World Encyclopedia of Flags: An Illustrated Guide to International Flags, Banners, Standards and Ensigns.
But we’re still not done when it comes to colorful characters. When you think of the sort of delight that stems from school spirit or regional pride, it’s hard to beat sports mascots. We talk oranges. We talk sausages. And we talk about some of the adventures of the people inside and around the suits. Yes, It's Hot in Here: Adventures in the Weird, Woolly World of Sports Mascots by AJ Mass is the book that shares even more stories.
Speaking of books, sooner or later we were bound to mention some of our favorite books and book design. Two on our list are Batman Collected by the designer Chip Kidd and Our Dumb Century by the geniuses at The Onion. Listen to our Well Designed Books episode to discover all the reasons we chose each of these.
Chances are when we mention iconic images, two that pop into your head are the famous bigfoot film (more lowbrow) and the raising of the flag on Iwo Jima (more highbrow). Going the more highbrow route, the book Two Flags over Iwo Jima: Solving the Mystery of the U.S. Marine Corps' Proudest Moment by Eric Hammel covers both the events and the people behind the memorable (and award-winning) image.
Speaking of icons, how about band logos? But not just any bands—punk bands. We discuss the origin stories of logos for both The Ramones and The Dead Kennedys. If you like these bands as much as we do, add the books My Ramones: Photographs by Danny Fields and Dead Kennedys: Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables, the Early Years by Aleg Ogg to your library.
As the season rolled along, it just kept getting better and better. In fact, sometimes great minds truly do think alike. For our Halloween episode we talk B movie horror posters and the master of the genre, the illustrator Reynold Brown. Whether your preference is for giant women or giant spiders, grab a copy of Reynold Brown: A Life in Pictures by Daniel Zimmer and David J. Hornung.
Continuing with the theme of great minds, we once again agree that HBO has some of the best openers for their TV shows. The two we zero-in on are for Six Feet Under and Carnivale. If you feel Six Feet Under put the “fun” in “funeral,” you need to pick-up the companion book Six Feet Under: Better Living Through Death by series creator Alan Ball and editor Alan Poul. And while there’s no similar book for Carnivale, we did find Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Sideshow and Other Carnival Curiosities that shines a spotlight on acts past and present.
And last but not least, we share a few secrets in the final episode of our second season. We talk the look and feel of symbols found on the almighty dollar and the alphabet hobos used when chasing those greenbacks down. Speaking of the color of money, you’ll dig The Art of Money: The History and Design of Paper Currency from Around the World by David Standish. If you lean more toward the hobo lifestyle, the book Mulligan Stew: Stories and Traditions of American Hobos by Barbara Hacha may be more your speed.
We’re going to go back and dig up some books for our listeners relating to topics from our first season, so keep your eyes peeled for that. And if there’s a book you feel we should add to this list, be sure to let us know.
Should you need us between now and our next episode, we’ll be the ones tailgating in our local library parking lot. Stop by and say hello. We’ll have a cold one waiting for you.