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the Semi-Retired podcast
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Each Tuesday, hosts Richard and Dave offer insightful and humourous takes on topics including media, technology, music, culture, and photography. Join in for a tasty brew that’s guaranteed to hit the spot.
53 Episodes
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According to industry statistics, only 11% of podcasts make it to fifty episodes, and 90% never publish more than three episodes before drowning in a raging torrent of abject shame, humiliation, and self-abuse. (We may have made up the part about the torrent.) Founded in August of 2022, the same month the FBI raided Donald Trump's Palm Beach bolthole looking for classified documents he ripped off from the White House on his way out the door, we are now proud members of the elite 11%. In this...
Not a day goes by without news about AI making the headlines. From last summer's actor's strike, to AI-assisted documentary film-making, to a recent AI beauty pageant, even AI podcast co-hosts (take note, Richard), there's no telling where this rapidly metastasizing technology will turn up next. In their latest guaranteed100% Grade B+ human-generated episode, the guys take a look at some of the latest AI escapades and wonder aloud: where's it all going? Music and image credits: Tsunam...
On the eighth day of April 2024, Montreal found itself in an extremely unusual and fortunate position. For the first time in ninety-two years, and the last time for another eighty-two, its citizens were directly underneath the tiny shadow cast on the Earth by the Moon as it passed in front of the Sun AKA the Path of Totality. And if you're hearing the 5th Dimension's shimmering pop hit from 1969, "Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In" playing inside your head, you're not alone. Although that's astrol...
Is it even possible to imagine a cultural vocabulary that doesn't include phasers, photon torpedoes, communicators, the bridge, the transporter room, sickbay, beaming down, beaming up, the Enterprise, shuttlecraft, warp engines, dilithium crystals, The Federation, Star Fleet Command, Vulcans, Klingons, Romulans, the neutral zone, Talosians, Andorians, Gorns, Metrons, tribbles, subspace radio and open hailing frequencies? And what about Harcourt Fenton (Harry) Mudd and his mummified wife Stell...
Sir Winston Churchill (not the guy who ran the Crescent Street pub) described the United States and his own country as being two nations "divided by the same language." The same could be said of the generations, each of which develops its own set of expressions in order to assert its sense of linguistic individuality by infusing their day-to-day conversations with terms, phrases, and metaphors that reflect their life and times. In their latest bad ass pod, hep cats Richard and Dave groove de...
Ah, the wretched excesses of late-70s English rock bands with roots in the kaleidoscopic, Swinging London days of the UFO Club, Carnaby Street, Twiggy, Vidal Sassoon, and Sgt. Pepperland. Rob Reiner's first-of-a-kind 1984 'mockumentary' follows fictional hard rock has-beens, Spinal Tap, as they try to get it together for just one more US tour to promote their pungently titled new album, 'Smell the Glove.' Richard and Dave take their love of rock music to 11 this week with a characteristicall...
After being stuck in heavy traffic on the outbound T-Can for close to six months, Richard and Dave regrouped to complete production on this fond look at a milestone album in the first installment of a new series titled Albums That Left a Mark. Along with The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and The Kinks, The Who rank as one of the key bands that led the British Invasion of the mid 1960s. Originally known as a singles band with hits like I Can't Explain, My Generation--check out their expl...
While trying not to jump any metaphorical sharks themselves (see below), the guys return for the second part of their investigation into this irritating cultural phenomenon. Along the way they identify the one popular movie franchise that jumped the shark, didn't like what it found lurking on the far side, and had the balls to turn around and jump back a full four decades later. Better late than never, we say, sort of like this episode. A few bonus movie reviews are tacked on at the end becau...
After a long and largely unplanned summer vacation, the guys are back with an apex predator of a two-parter. On September 20, 1977, something momentous happened. On that last day of the third summer of disco and the second summer of the Son of Sam, Happy Days actor and former water skiing instructor Henry Winkler, AKA "Fonzie" and/or "The Fonz," made history when his character (ostensibly a motorcycle hoodlum from Milwaukee) jumped over a shark while on water skis in Los Angeles. The Fonz di...
With the recent release of Apple’s technologically astounding and eye-wateringly expensive Vision Pro virtual reality headset and the threatened release of its far cheaper competitor, Facebook’s Oculus Quest 3, VR may have finally reached early adulthood. Distant progeny of the mid-20th century red plastic View-Master personal stereo viewer, through which children could stare at tiny 3-D images of the Great Pyramid or scenes from The Beverly Hillbillies, today’s VR headsets take advantage of...
Q: How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? A: That depends on which measurement system he/she prefers. Measurements, i.e. specified quantities of a wide variety of 'somethings', are so ingrained in the way we think about the world, that we barely notice their existence. If you've ever rushed out of your underpaid 9-5 job at 5:30PM, got a $75 fine for breaking the 100KMH speed limit on the way home, thereby making you 45 minutes late to pick up the kids from aft...
Our parents said our eyes would turn square. We feared the mundanity of household chores would interrupt the magic of the moment. By Richard's own admission, his eyesight was weak and blurred as he crept upstairs and into the light like a stunned mole after each Saturday morning of sustained cartoon absorption. We were in such danger all the time. And loving it. Although we occasionally hyperlink forward to more contemporary animated classics like Watership Down, the Simpsons, Johnny Bravo, ...
Richard (now re-christened a Templar-esque 'Ranchard de Valois') and Dave (still just Dave) reveal what kept them from publishing an episode last week before seguing into this week's topic: musical genres they love and musical genres they love less. Under the dual-microscope are the mother ship--rock and roll itself, progressive rock, psychedelic rock, new wave, jazz, so-called protest music, and rap. Brief mentions of 80s hair bands, glam, reggae, and bebop round out the program, punctuated...
It was Canada's 100th birthday year. In January, Timothy Leary told the world's youth that it was time to "tune in, turn on, and drop out." Across the Atlantic in Swinging London, the Beatles released Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. In San Francisco, people from all across the nation came to the Haight Ashbury district to wear some flowers in their hair and celebrate the Summer of Love. Many would head down the coast to attend the Monterey International Pop Festival where artists lik...
Dear Semi-Retired listeners, My humblest apologies for not being here for you last week. Dave was so emotionally fragile over the nightmare surrounding his Crave TV account scrub, that he couldn't hold himself together long enough to record a new episode. Things are better now. Yours, Richard This week, the guys look back at all the cameras they've loved before. From Richard's 2 1/4-inch honeymoon dream, to Dave's high school sweetheart rangefinder, from TLR to SLR, from roll film to CMOS se...
In our humble opinion, popular culture often gives actual culture a bad name. Certain oeuvres and oeuvrists ooze onto the cultural landscape and proceed to suck up an ungodly amount amount of praise and attention that we feel is richly undeserved. There's a veritable mountain range of material to choose from, so we took a nice, thick first cut and proudly serve it up here, expertly seasoned, for your listening pleasure. As added value, Dave rants at length about a horrifying (as yet unresolv...
Codes, passwords, PINs, logins, credentials, two-factor authentication, encryption and decryption, keychains and resets, are among the more irritating features of modern life. Who would have thought that it all started with the concealment of sensitive information by shaving a servant's head? Or that it might end with quantum computing. (That last part's uncertain, but so is quantum mechanics. Or so they say.) This week, Richard and Dave bisect, trisect, and dissect the realm of information h...
Back behind the microphones after the week-that-became-a-month off, the guys get their podcasting groove on by talking about what they did on vacation, complete with hyperlinking to topics that have varying degrees of relationship to each other, and what's actually being discussed. We missed you. It's good to be back. Music and image credits: Piggybackers by Jade Masri on Unsplash Semi-Retired “flipz” theme by tubebackr from SoundCloud Music promoted by free-stock-music.com Perforated s...
In the concluding episode of our first three-parter, we delve into issues like good and evil, the existence (or lack thereof) of Satan, the relationship (or lack thereof) between science and faith, and what it would take to convince each of us to change teams. We thank Sam once again for taking the time to sit down and wrangle with us. We all had a lot of fun. Music and image credits: Neist Point Lighthouse by Frank Winkler from Pixabay Semi-Retired “flipz” theme by tubebackr from SoundClou...
The existential voyage continues as Richard, Dave, and their guest Sam Piazza, wrestle with some of life's most enduring and controversial questions. Valiant attempts to breach various walls of belief and conviction are made, but no breakthroughs are achieved. This one was so big we made it our first three-parter, with the concluding episode on-deck for next week. Music and image credits: A compass and the road ahead by Ahmed Zayan on Unsplash Semi-Retired “flipz” theme by tubebackr from S...
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