My brother-in-law Brian Parra has come out with several more episodes of his new podcast There’s No Time to Explain, and they are all awesome. He is getting some great guests and ranging over some really diverse topics. So I just had to talk about it!

I was his first interviewee, in episode 1, which I wrote about recently. We ranged over many cool topics. A lot of it is the kind of stuff people don’t usually ask me about. And those are always the most fun. You can follow that link to read a summary of what we covered in that episode. But here I’ll brief his next three eps, so you can get a feel for whether you might want to go give them a listen too!

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Larry Mendoza of the Road to Reason TV Show and The Beltway Atheists occupies episode 2. He starts talking about what he doesn’t like about liberal discourse these days, from rising occasions of the misuse of social justice principles to act more like the right wing, and excesses of multicultural relativism. He thinks the gaffes of Dawkins and Harris are getting too much focus, for example. But that lasts only a few minutes, and doesn’t get to any conclusion.

Because then they start to discuss Mendoza’s 23 snakes for the next 45 minutes! And damn, that’s really surprisingly interesting! It’s worth listening to the show just for that.

They eventually get around to telling Stephen Hawking to do his job, and talk about heavy metal, and the movie Revenant, and you get to hear Brian’s poem about love (which he delivered as an officiant at a friend’s wedding), and a song by Brian Parra’s old The American Cheese Band that mentions the hero in it, Hugh Glass.

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Julia San Bartolome, three-time winner of Food Network’s Cupcake Wars, Brian’s cousin, occupies episode 3. I can personally vouch for the fact that she’s awesome! Brian’s description says it all:

We talk about winning and losing Cupcake Wars, her love life and why food is such a personal experience. She talks about who is eye candy in the local band The Army of Freshmen and why the Poseidon Brewing Company is the best in Ventura. We chat about dating in the age of Tinder and our family’s idiosyncratic food culture and the supremacy of enchiladas entomatadas. She helps me conceive of a new segment I’ll call, “Isn’t that the one where…” where she guesses at the plots of movies she hasn’t seen. She even coins the word, “catapulyst,” Sarah-Palin style (catapult+catalyst, obviously). I rant about the blowback over the hilarious Bernie vs. Hillary meme and get everybody to calm the fuck down.

If some of all that doesn’t intrigue you, I can’t imagine what could!

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Lisa Bean, aka Boh Nellis, host of The Spliff Potcast, which covers efforts toward pot legalization, occupies episode 4. They talk about her advocacy for safe, legal access to medical marijuana, the unusual state and local politics of it, and why anyone is still against it. They also get around to the medical and philosophical value of marijuana use, marathon running, enjoying food, even improv acting (and how marathon running is more dangerous than smoking pot!). They also talk about a little about her being raised by an emotionally abusive adoptive family, and more about what it’s then like to reconnect with your biological family, and also Lisa’s developing career as a voice-over actor (both the profession and the art of it, as well as what got her into it and how she did it—and she does indeed have a beautiful voice). Brian also opens with an intriguing essay on Donald Trump and closes with a rant about Chloë Grace Moretz!

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I’m very curious to see who and what Parra’s next episodes will feature!

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