Marybeth and Paul are a couple of busy animal loving attorneys who already own a dog and a cat. Marybeth would like to add another dog to their family to help their current toy schnauzer, Olive, relax. Paul argues that with their busy schedule, and the already antsy Olive, another dog would only exacerbate the situation.

Will the Judge mandate they double down on their puppy love, or will he send this idea to the dog pound? Find out on this week’s Judge John Hodgman.

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Culture Picks: The AV Club

Keith Phipps and Nathan Rabin of The AV Club bring us their recommendations - John Mulaney’s stand up special New In Town, and the movie reboot of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, directed by and starring Ralph Fiennes. (Embed or Share the AV Club's Picks)

Director Michael Rapaport

The hugely innovative and influential hip hop group A Tribe Called Quest began as many groups do -- as a band of friends, passing out demo tapes, dreaming of hearing their songs on the radio. But after releasing five gold and platinum selling albums in the late 1980s and early 90s, the group combusted and left fans like Michael Rapaport in the lurch.

Rapaport was an actor known for his roles in several Woody Allen films, Boston Public, Friends and Prison Break. He set out on his directorial debut to capture the past, present and future of A Tribe Called Quest, hoping to better understand what made them tick. The resulting documentary, Beats, Rhymes & Life creates a compelling oral history of the group from interviews with members Q-Tip, Phife Dawg, Ali Shaheed Mohammed and Jarobi White, along with hip-hop producers, radio personalities and other rappers. We spoke to Rapaport last year, and the film is now out on DVD. (Embed or Share Michael Rapaport on Bullseye)

The News with Kasper Hauser

The latest scientific findings, human interest stories, and much more, all brought to you by the top fake news anchors -- San Francisco based sketch comedy group Kasper Hauser. (Embed or Share Kasper Hauser on Bullseye)

Director Werner Herzog

Werner Herzog is an acclaimed (and prolific) film writer and director, known for narrative films like Aguirre, the Wrath of God as well as documentaries like Grizzly Man. His filmmaking distinctively pushes boundaries and explores humanity's extremes. His documentary Cave of Forgotten Dreams is a 3D look into the Chauvet Cave, home of the earliest known cave paintings in the world. With a tiny crew and jury-rigged 3D cameras, Herzog looked at some of the first images ever created. Herzog takes the opportunity not just to present to us the beauty of the caves, but to consider what it means to create and how we define our own humanity. We spoke to him about the film last year. It’s now available on DVD, Blu-Ray and Netflix Instant. (Embed or Share Werner Herzog on Bullseye)

The Outshot: "If You Want Me To Stay"

Jesse suggests that one of the best ways to experience Sly Stone is through his beautiful, heartbreaking hit "If You Want Me to Stay." (Embed or Share The Outshot)

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Comedian Katie Crown joins us to talk about abandoned food, oregano oil, and Kideo.

Download episode 203 here. (right-click)

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Eliza Skinner joins Jesse and Jordan to change your life forever. Jesse takes on people who take on hypocrisy, and introduces a new theme for 2012: MORE POWERFUL THAN EVER: GOING APE.

Action item for February: share your art on this theme, in any form, on our forum and Facebook page.

It's time for us genuine sportspeople to gather around and talk about the big game that we're legally prohibited from talking about! How did we skirt around these restrictive broadcasting regulations, you ask? Well, we spent most of our time talking about imaginary babies.

Suggested talking points: Potatoes McGee, Pleasure Buddies, Potter v. Rodgers, Skilled Labor, Cracker Barrel, Baby Island, Moist, The Creek, Mini-Mini Imaginary Baby Golf

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Vital stats:
Format: one-on-one comedy/sex/God conversations
Episode duration: 50m-1h45m
Frequency: 3-7 per month

You’ve surely heard the name Pete Holmes resonating through the halls of alternative and/or podcast-y comedy lately. The words themselves could, by their broad pan-American nature, gain only the loosest purchase on anyone’s memory — far less than the evangelical fervor with which some speak them. Even if that piques your curiosity, casual investigation reveals only one more head in the endless perp walk of white, early-thirties, college improv-bred, sitcom-writing Los Angeles standup comics by way of New York. Yet everyone, as another noted comedy podcaster I recently interviewed put it, seems to be boarding the Pete Holmes bus.

Since this podcaster said that in response to my own salvo of Pete Holmes-related evangelization, perhaps I can offer some explanation. To truly “get” Pete Holmes, I submit that you must see Pete Holmes, like I did at a live Risk! taping. In the aftermath of his punchlines, watch the man twist his open, wholesome features — his name made flesh — into those of a lower-tier Midwestern politician on the brink of a flop sweat, the pressure from a desperate tap just inches too far down into his well of theatrical affability forcing open the stress fractures that will hasten his undoing. A subtle element of Holmes’ performance, yet a harrowing one; it would surprise me if even he fully understands how or why he pulls it off.

Then again, as his podcast You Made it Weird [RSS] [iTunes] reveals, I may vastly underestimate his capacity for (or compulsion toward) self-scrutiny. The show’s simple format drops Holmes into one-on-one conversations with friends, colleagues, and friend-colleagues, like a WTF without the confrontation. The resemblance between the two podcasts actually runs deep enough so as to get tough to explain; suffice it to say that, when Holmes brings Marc Maron on [MP3], the resulting episode could have fit just as well into one show’s feed as the other’s.

I want to say that You Made it Weird has more of a defined premise than does WTF, and I feel like I’ve even heard Holmes lay out that premise a few times, but far be it from me to remember it. Holmes’ interviews, which usually happen on the back of such a pre-existing rapport that they turn immediately into full-blown, two-way conversations (as interviews should), supposedly have a mandate to make the guests talk about subjects including but not limited to comedy, sex, and God — the subjects that, when broached in everyday chat, “make it weird.” This would indeed make weird an interview program with, say, airline executives, but I feel like a lot of these comedian guests, a lot of these Sarah Silvermans [MP3] and Doug Bensons [MP3] and Moshe Kashers [MP3], would’ve gone there anyway.

Hence the show’s greater interestingness — hence most comedic productions’ greater interestingness — during the times it moves away from direct joke-making to discuss the logic, psychology, and pathology of joke-making from oblique angles. I’ve especially relished the times when Holmes and his guests don’t really talk about joke-making at all. The Pete Holmes neophyte finds out sooner or later that, in addition to using his standup to make people laugh, Holmes has drawn New Yorker cartoons to make people laugh — or whatever people do when they express appreciation for New Yorker cartoons. Allow me to express my own great appreciation here for his recording of a three-way commiseration [MP3] about the brutal mechanics of submitting New Yorker cartoons with fellow cartoonists Matt Diffee and Alex Gregory.

And then we have the fact that Pete Holmes asking about God means something different than a “normal” alt-comic asking about God. While not a Christian in the sense we coastals understand the concept from the Huffington Post reblogs we forward, he seems to have grown up immersed and deeply shaped by that distinctively American subculture of guitar-strumming, promise bracelet-exchanging, youth group-going Bible-readers who, given the chance, will totally invite you to the beach barbecue. Large fragments of the “Sparky” demeanor you’d expect from such an upbringing still glint in his comedic persona, but he’s left that world behind. He hasn’t gone totally apostate, but nor has he not gone apostate. He doesn’t bemoan the vestigial prudishness that has left his bedpost with so few notches, but nor does he not bemoan it.

You wouldn’t necessarily expect this struggle within the soul of a modern comedian, least of all on a podcast. But then, would you expect the strongest jokes to come straight out of the very topics these conversations reach when steering away from comedy? As Holmes quotes himself as saying, “Expectation is the enemy of comedy,” a line that swiftly crystallizes every reason I’ve ever folded my arms and harrumphed at the mere idea standup, sitcoms, or one-liners. It also explains why my very being gives way to unstoppable chuckling at discussions of, as you’ll hear on You Made it Weird, theology, brain hemorrhages, sexual guilt, and Full House. As the hale green shoot sprouts from the stale muck, so the funny rises from the comedically intert.

[Podthinker Colin Marshall, formerly of the public radio program The Marketplace of Ideas, now hosts and produces Notebook on Cities and Culture [iTunes]. Contact him at colinjmarshall at gmail.]

This week!
Rap Recommendations: Andrew Noz schools us on some rap you may have missed, with vampire imitator and Bay Area rapper Cousin Fik’s track I Am a Vampire” and tangential Odd Future member Pyramid Vritra’s Blu Diamonds. (Embed or share this segment)

Comedy Duo Tim & Eric: Masters of the surreal, uncomfortable and gross Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim, talk to us about moving past the curated internet weirdness, working with both hugely unique but unknown performers -- like puppeteer David Liebe Hart -- and established actors like John C. Reilly. They also give us behind the scenes insight on the promotion of their newest project, Tim & Eric's Billion Dollar Movie and their unofficial support of another great cinema classic, Shrek 3. Tim & Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie is available now On Demand, and will be released in theaters on March 2nd.

Click through to listen to the NSFPR (Not Safe for Public Radio) extended cut of the interview. (Embed or share this segment)

God’s Effusions (on His Favorite Things): Did you ever stop to consider God’s favorite things? Wonder no more. Emmy award winning comedy writer David Javerbaum is the unlikely co-writer of The Last Testament: A Memoir by God. Comedian Seth Morris acts as God’s loudspeaker to bring us this excerpt. (Embed or share this segment)

Cartoonist Roz Chast: If you’ve ever read the New Yorker, you’ve likely come across one of Roz Chast’s uniquely anxious cartoons. Now, she shares with us some of her anxieties and how she puts them down with a bullet-point in her book What I Hate: From A to Z. If you’ve ever felt imperiled by sitting on the ground or a balloon’s frustratingly imminent pop -- Roz can commiserate. (Embed or share this segment)

The Outshot: Jesse helps us see the genuine emotion and delicacy Randy Newman exhibits in his songwriting beyond the film soundtracks he’s known for, in the album Sail Away. (Embed or share this segment)

You can subscribe to our podcast in iTunes or the RSS feed -- stay tuned for next week's Bullseye!

Authoress and improviser Kaitlin Fontana returns to talk about New York, Polish singles, lasers, and absinthe. Also, Drunk Dials and Drunk E-mails!

Download episode 202 here. (right-click)

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We're centering our chakras and aligning our voodoo power centers to bring you our most spiritual episode to date. Come, join us as we look not only into the problems of our dear listeners, but also, the maladies of the soul.

Suggested talking points: Prisoner of Worship, Fridge, Third Wheel, Arch Duke Zach Morris, Dupree'd, Merksmanship, Bakulover

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Vital stats:
Format: interviews with bigtime skeptics
Episode duration: 30m-1h
Frequency: weekly

“In-KWAI-ree.” That’s how the hosts of Point of Inquiry [RSS] [iTunes] pronounce, sometimes with great deliberateness, the final word of their program’s title. Does this sound strange? Not terribly. Is it even not the standard pronunciation? Admittedly, I don’t know. But at certain moments, the word as uttered on this podcast sounds saturated with the sterile moisture of pedantry. Most of the time, I feel comforted to hear the speaker taking such pains. But other times — few times, but telling ones — I feel a flood of desire to shake him down for his lunch money.

The show belongs to the genre of podcasts on skepticism, one which took off with surprising force early in the medium’s emergence. Its name, despite my complicated feelings about how announcers say it, strikes me as a paragon of dignity compared with those its swarm of brethren have taken up: Skepticality, Skeptiko, Skeptoid, Skepchick. Truth to tell, had Point of Inquiry’s sponsoring organization the Center for Inquiry called it, say, Skeptacular or Stupid SkepTricks, you probably wouldn’t be reading a Podthought about it. But by today, skepticism shows have multiplied to the extent that no pun, no matter how goofy, can set a show apart.

Point of Inquiry’s form also exhibits an uncommon poise. Many skepticism podcasts divide themselves into a distracting array of segments, compulsively gin up uncomfortable confrontations with suspiciously dopey adversaries, or loose slightly-too-large casts of panelists into a frenzy over the delusion of the week like bored jungle cats upon a limping wildebeest. This one has evolved into straightforward interviews with luminaries who have carved out careers staring down particular skeptical bugaboos: Brendan Nyhan on political spin in the media [MP3], Michael Shermer on evidence-free beliefs [MP3], Steven Pinker on traditional notions of human nature [MP3], Jonathan Kay on 9/11 “Truthers” [MP3], the late Christopher Hitchens on God [MP3]. Somebody behind these scenes wields wide-ranging connections, slick booking skills, or both; no skeptical podcast I know gets consistently heavier hitters on the phone.

Few passive pursuits feel as satisfying to me as absorbing the authoritative tones of these famously rigorous thinkers on the page or through the earbud. I fall into the habit of considering it a sort of cognitive sanitation, of mental housecleaning that might blow a cobweb or two of nonsense out of my consciousness. I soon grow convinced that nobody could ever reasonably object to my engagement in this. These skeptics have all devoted their lives to perceiving the truth, thinking about the truth, and snatching the truth from the clutches of liars. And truth equals good, doesn’t? If we don’t operate from the axiom that truth equals good, what do we have in this world?

And yet, for all the sensations of pleasure and ever-swelling moral rightness I draw from the skeptical conversation, sooner or later I get overwhelmed by a kind of defeat. This all starts to feel like masturbation, especially in its ultimate effects on my actual world. I suppose the mental stimulation from listening to somebody smart argue against psychics or religion or conspiracy theories is nothing to scoff at, but I wasn’t particularly concerned with psychics or religion or conspiracy theories before, and I’m not going to do anything different today because I’ve heard what I’ve heard. Truth for truth’s sake seems like a noble enough thing to seek, but take it too far and, paradoxically, you start to look nuts; one day you just want to hear spoon-bending debunked, and the next you’re going to library-basement meetings in your sweatpants.

But if you can bear these dangers in mind, you’ll find few classier sources of skeptical listening material than Point of Inquiry. Its hosts get right to the heart of these issues with public intellectuals you’d be embarrassed not to know about, and its archives go back years and years. Just make sure you have another hobby, too. Dance the tango or butcher your own beef or join a roller derby league. Don’t turn into a weenie.

[Podthinker Colin Marshall hosts and produces Notebook on Cities and Culture [iTunes], which is now Kickstarting its first season.]