There's gold in them thar podcasts, I tell ya, GOLD! Talking this time about Part Five of New York 2140, "Escalation of Commitment." We get what could be an ending--finding gold, rescuing Mutt & Jeff, confronting Henry Vinson--but isn't! Our characters are getting together and scheming how they might save the building by ignoring the law, even if t…

In this episode (recorded a few days after the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, hence the opening discussion), we talk about Part Four of New York 2140, "Expensive or Priceless?" Our (long) wide-ranging conversation takes a rather critical view of the novel, or at least this part of it. We're trying to suss out what the rest of the world ou…

In this episode we discuss "Liquidity Trap," Part Three of Kim Stanley Robinson's New York 2140. We talk about the citizen chapters and think about where to locate an authorial consciousness in this book, meditate on the difficulty of locating ourselves in a possibly ungraspable present between the "past" and "future," speculate on the explanatory …

Hello! This week we continue our conversation of New York 2140, talking about Part Two, "Expert Overconfidence," in which our various experts get in over their heads (some more literally than others--actually, all of them do it literally, since this is literature...anyway, we don't have time to sort this out right now). We talk about the nature of …

In this episode we declare there's not much to say, this is just a table-setting section of the novel, we won't discuss each and every subchapter, but then we talk for nearly two hours, starting with Matt and Hilary's Garden Round-Up. Then it's a shallow dive into Part One of NY2140, "The Tyranny of Sunk Costs." Hope you enjoy and we'll be back soo…

We're back from a long work- and life-related absence to fart around for a couple minutes trying to log in to our old accounts, and then we're off and running with the kind of meandering, half-baked musings you've all been missing lo these many months. That's right, New York 2140 is the topic of our next season (series?) and we spend this episode r…

The gang contemplates the world of Norse mythology and Ragnarök as NOT part of the MCU but as a part of Ian Anderson’s heritage. Plus, Symone asks for equal billing. The Writer: Lindsay Harris-Friel The Classical Musician: Ruth Dubb The Rock Guitarist: Vincent Friel The Pun Addict: Ian Williams And special guest star Symone the Wonderpup. Concept c…

Is Michael Franti the natural, inevitable joining or merging of Marvin Gaye and Gil Scott-Heron? The gang discusses this modern-day musical troubadour as he mines social justice causes for our listening pleasure. The Writer: Lindsay Harris-Friel The Classical Musician: Ruth Dubb The Rock Guitarist: Vincent Friel The Pun Addict: Ian Williams And spe…

Zen Arcade is the second studio album by American punk rock band Hüsker Dü, released in July 1984 on SST Records. The gang discusses how Hüsker Dü gained notice in the American music scene of the early 1980s as a fast, aggressive, hardcore punk band. And remember, there is no Husker Try. The Writer: Lindsay Harris-Friel The Classical Musician: Ruth…

The English post-punk band re-imagined (not copied or covered) a slew of Hank Williams songs with their own modus operandi. The Writer: Lindsay Harris-Friel The Classical Musician: Ruth Dubb The Rock Guitarist: Vincent Friel The Pun Addict: Ian Williams And special guest star Symone the Wonderpup. Concept created by Vincent Friel and Brendan Carr. …

“Have you ever contemplated if ELO was essentially Jeff Lynne’s backup band, or are they the sum of their parts? The gang put their heads together to knock around that very idea.” The Writer: Lindsay Harris-Friel The Classical Musician: Ruth Dubb The Rock Guitarist: Vincent Friel The Pun Addict: Ian Williams And special guest star Symone the Wonder…

The gang scrutinizes the 90s and whether or not NIN is a parody band (spoiler alert: they’re not). The Writer: Lindsay Harris-Friel The Classical Musician: Ruth Dubb The Rock Guitarist: Vincent Friel The Pun Addict: Ian Williams And special guest star Symone the Wonderpup. Concept created by Vincent Friel and Brendan Carr. Sound design, title music…

“Symone The Wonder Pup starts to assert herself more as the gang talks about the deconstruction of a couple’s relationship while the unhappy duo are going through a messy relationship and their inevitable demise.” The Writer: Lindsay Harris-Friel The Classical Musician: Ruth Dubb The Rock Guitarist: Vincent Friel The Pun Addict: Ian Williams And sp…

“The gang returns to the island after a break to discuss the banality of man, as long as it’s a reasonable commute from a major city, and if Thomas Wolfe is a pretentious wanker or not.” The Writer: Lindsay Harris-Friel The Classical Musician: Ruth Dubb The Rock Guitarist: Vincent Friel The Pun Addict: Ian Williams And special guest star Symone the…

Our review of Ridley Scott's Napoleon. Email us at maroonedonmarspodcast@gmail.com Follow us on Twitter @podcastonmars Leave us a voicemail on the Anchor.fm app Rate and review us on iTunes or wherever you listen to your podcasts! Music by Spirit of Space

We're still here! Grumpier than ever, complaining about things we probably shouldn't be, reading books, talking. And you're still listening! Thank you. We've been away for a long time for...reasons. But we are momentarily back, and maybe we'll be back again soon to talk about Napoleon and Ridley Scott. But this time we chat about the impossibilitie…

A very special episode of Marooned on Mars, a backdoor pilot, as they say in the biz, of Obstructed Viewing with friends of the pod returning-guest champion Bill and Dauphin Josh debuting their new movie podcast (has anyone ever done a podcast about movies before?). The theme of the show today is sabotage and movies that feature it: The Train (John…

Have you ever wondered about the magic behind Tom Waits' 1975 album Night Hawks at the Diner and the unique culture of late-night diners? Settle in with a cup of coffee as we take you on a captivating journey through Waits' iconic album, inspired by Edward Hopper's painting, and the fascinating world of those who inhabit diners after dark. We'll di…

Discover the untold stories behind legendary songwriter Randy Newman's incredible career and powerful songs. We take you on a journey through his early work with Metric Publishing Company, where renowned artists like Dusty Springfield, Gene Pitney, and Harper's Bazaar recorded his songs in the 60s. And, of course, we can't forget to explore his fou…

Imagine combining a book and an album in the 1970s to create a multimedia experiment. How would it turn out? This week, we reunited the gang to discuss Michael Nesmith's ambitious project that aimed to do just that! As the father of MTV and former member of the Monkees, Nesmith's groundbreaking idea sought to merge reading with music listening, but…

In our final reckoning with GALILEO'S DREAM, we talk about our horrible voices and their dumb verbal tics, the trickiness of time travel narratives, anticlimactic moments, conspiratorial webs, the decentering of Event, crabbing sideways toward the good, rocking, the universal unity of grief, and Milton doing TikTok dances. Thanks for listening! We'…

This episode we discuss the Jovian society, the way the novel posits the relationship between science and religion, the entwined logics of extraction and redemption, the astrological epistemology, ecstasy, the our own Thirty+ Years War, and whales. Thanks for listening! Email us at maroonedonmarspodcast@gmail.com Follow us on Twitter @podcastonmars…

In probably our greatest episode ever, Matt and Ms. Partial Sentence talk about all the stuff we normally talk about, like Shark Tank, redemption, helmets, jazz, the Divine Comedy, and Constructivism. Plus Matt does drugs. Stay tuned to the very end to hear our next-level casting idea for who should play Galileo in the movie adaptation. The answer …

Buongiorno! We're back with another thrilling series of discussions, and back to our author of choice, Kim Stanley Robinson. This time around we're discussing his weird and wonderful 2009 novel Galileo's Dream! Lots to talk about here, like history and who it's for, narrational voice, genre, science's relationship to religion, politics, money, powe…

This week, we apologize for discussing STEALTH, an extended Incubus music video/ American military propaganda directed by Rob Cohen. Join us as we discuss the exploits of Ben "Big" Gannon (Talon 1, Josh "George" Lucas), Kara "Caraway" Wade (Talon 2, Jessica Biel), and Oscar-winner Jamie Foxx (Talon 3, "Henry"), as they face the threat of global ter…

This week we are reading a very special, wonderful book, Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052-2072, by M.E. O'Brien and Eman Abdelhadi from Common Notions. Told as a series of interviews by two ageing ex-academics (because academia has been, thankfully, finally, abolished), Everything for Everyone depicts a future …

It’s the 2000’s, and Brian Wilson is having a bit of a renaissance. With so much attention to Pet Sounds and the lives shows surrounding them, he decided to revisit the nadir of his career. In 1966 “Smile” was to be to The Beach Boys what “Sgt. Pepper “was to the Beatles, an artistic statement and triumph, but it never happened. Due to drug use, me…

WARNING: This podcast is a paid advertisement, for a book. The payment for the advertisement that this podcast is was the book that this podcast is advertising. So, it’s not really “paid,” in the sense that the IRS should not worry about this. In this very special episode of Marooned on Mars, we discuss the recently released anthology Tomorrow's Pa…

We return to the late 60s to check out the bubblegum scene and those who participated and those who spoofed it. For a very special daylight savings time episode, we look at 2 albums. The first is the Kasenetz-Katz Singing Orchestral Circus and its parody The Turtles Present The Battle of The Bands. Both are from 1968. The Writer: Lindsay Harris-Fri…

We take another trip into the 1980s and discuss Donald Fagen's first solo album, "The Nightfly." We discuss this ode to the post-war baby boomer dream and the influences that inspired the music. You could always read Fagen's book "Eminent Hipsters." published by Viking Press, for more, and it is available at all your favorite booksellers. The Write…

In the thrilling conclusion to our conversation about ALIEN: COVENANT, the final (so far) installment of the ALIEN franchise, Matt, Hilary, and Bill talk about Walter, David, and robots that (mis)quote poetry and Ridley Scott's placement of himself in a line of artists stretching from Milton to Shelley to David Lean. More on empire and settler colo…

Part 1 of 2! In our final episode of our miniseries exploring the Alien franchise, Matt and Hilary, joined by the inimitable Bill, discuss Alien: Covenant, Ridley Scott's second non-prequel, released in 2017. We like this installment quite a bit, and have a lot of fun picking it apart. We talk wheat (the grain!), xenomorph kitty kats (to protect th…

We go back to 1986 to look at this classic (and possibly best) album by XTC. Recording under duress with Todd Rundgren producing, the band records an album full of clever pop hooks, string and horn arrangements, and great lyrics. The group discussed and realized that the '80s weren't all Madonna and a Flock of Seagulls. The Writer: Lindsay Harris-F…

The fifth and penultimate episode in our ALIEN Franchise series. Joined once again by Bill, we discuss Ridley Scott's return with Prometheus (2012), starring Noomi Rapace (pronounce as you will), Charlize Theron, Idris Elba, and that guy from UPGRADE (a really good sci-fi action movie). We spend a lot of this episode making fun of this movie instea…

We travel back to 1967, and The Who pays tribute to the then-defunct pirate radio stations who brought excitement and rock and roll to a pre-BBC Radio One audience. This is also the closest the band got to psychedelia in the musical sense, but it was the first step to "Tommy" and the success which eluded them for most of the ’60s The Writer: Lindsa…

In this episode, we look at this artifact from late 50’s England. Producer Joe Meek creates his own world on the moon and possibly started the ambient music genre decades before anyone else. For further reading check out the book."Joe Meek's Bold Techniques" by Barry Cleveland from Eleven Eleven Publishing The Writer: Lindsay Harris-Friel The Class…

We're back, with our discussion of a serious piece of shit, Alien: Resurrection, the Joss Whedon-scripted, Jean-Pierre Jeunet-directed, 1997 mess that concludes the Ripley arc of the Alien franchise. We hate this movie, and unfortunately for you, we talk about it for an hour and a half! If you've never seen it, you might have to suffer through it j…

There has been some changes since you were gone. One person vanishes and another appears. Of course that doesn't change anything, so its back to listening and discussing more albums. This one is a collaboration between Edgar (Frankenstein) Winter and L. Ron Hubbard. It was the 80’s and cheesy sci-fi requires cheesy music. The bad news, it does exis…

We’re watching the Assembly Cut (an extra 30 minutes!) of Alien3 for our latest foray into the Alien franchise. This one takes place on a forced-labor penal colony inhabited by a strange religious sect of hyper-violent, hyper-male murderers, rapists, and scoundrels. But Ripley’s not worried because Charles Dance, who’s not at all creepy, is there. …

We're back with Bill, tracing the adventures of new mom Ellen Ripley through the vast reaches of space as she returns to LV-426, now a colony (in every sense of the word) being terraformed by the Weyland-Yutani company. Jones has been left behind to... guard the grain. OK. James Cameron's 1986 entry in the Alien franchise takes the form of a war fi…

Hop a ride on your nearest commercial towing vehicle and set a course for the stars! We're back with a special series on the ALIEN movie franchise. Joined by our friend and one-and-only guest Bill (who joins us from a fishbowl), we will be discussing all 6 films in the series in order of their release: Alien (1979), Aliens (1986), Alien3 (1992), Al…

In this FINAL episode of our discussion of Green Earth, Matt and Hilary talk about the themes of unintelligibility throughout the novel(s) and think about the ways the novel(s) insert climate change into both the political and the everyday lived realities of people who are used to living relatively comfortable lives. We work through some issues on …

In this, our PENULTIMATE episode in our examination of Green Earth, Matt and Hilary start off by sharing what they're going to miss after the global civilizational collapse (heat in the winter, showers, i.e., relief from the pressure to be clean), and talk about how we're not talking about the very real threat of civilizational collapse. Then we ta…

Starting Sixty Days and Counting, Chapters 21-24 Again we ask the big questions: Why are we doing this? When does Frankie say, "relax"? What if the 14 multinational corporations standing on each other's shoulders wearing an American flag overcoat that claim to be the USA suddenly took off the overcoat? We have some pre-Uvalde, post-Obama thoughts a…

First, the name of the Buddhist climate activist who self-immolated in front of the Supreme Court was Wynn Bruce. Matt forgets his name when he mentions him, but everyone should know him. In this episode, we finish volume 2 of Green Earth, discussing "The Cold Snap," "Always Generous," "Leap Before You Look," and "Primavera Porteño"-- in a very fre…

NOTE: This episode was recorded in early April. In this episode we focus on “Is There a Technical Solution?,” “Autumn in New York,” and “Optimodal.” But first we spend some time (as usual) lamenting the state of the world, especially the plight of the unhoused from Maine to Chicago. We decide private property should be abolished, which is also one …

In this episode we talk about the first three chapters of Fifty Degrees Below, "Primate in Forest," "Abrupt Climate Change," and "Return to Khembalung." We discuss the way this novel works within the mode of realism and look for areas where it pushes against that mode to find possibly utopian, possibly fantastical, alternatives. Our focus here is o…

In this episode we talk about the second half of the first volume of Green Earth, Forty Signs of Rain from "Athena on the Pacific" to "Broader Impacts."

We're back! This season we're tackling Green Earth, KSR's revised, single-volume edition of the Science in the Capital trilogy. The trilogy was originally published from 2004 to 2007. Green Earth was put out in 2015. In this first episode we discuss the (un)likability of the novel's main characters, and the way the book seems to set the table for K…

Our fearless trio (Ian is still unwell) tackle an album that was basically a divorce settlement set to music. Marvin Gaye's "Here My Dear" . This is also the last episode for the season but we will be back.Par 6630 Productions