Listening to: Missing Richard Simmons

 Somehow I stumbled upon the podcast series Missing Richard Simmons and ended up listening to all the episodes at once instead of getting out of bed. It's a investigative documentary type of thing. A television producer, Dan Taberski, who used to attend Richard Simmons' exercise class in Beverly Hills, and socialized with him for a while, is as baffled as everyone else when Simmons stops coming to his class and stops communicating with (almost) everyone, refusing to respond to inquiries of any kind as to whether or not he is OK. On the one hand, people should have the right to make their own decisions about how they engage with the world. On the other hand, Simmons had been an inspiring and deeply engaged mentor to lots of people for years, and when he suddenly cut off all contact and stopped appearing in public in any way, after years of boisterous presence on TV and in a wide range of arenas, it was normal for folks to be concerned for his welfare. His silence was so diametrically opposed to the way he lived his life for decades. Over the course of the podcast's episodes, we hear how Simmons helped people who faced great challenges in their relationship to their weight; not only through his videos, classes, and advocacy, often he would call people every week, counseling them for free and aiding them in making the changes they wanted to make. It's likely that he just reached a level of burnout, and applied the same ferocious determination to his abrupt retirement as he did to everything else he did: losing his own weight after a childhood of being bullied; becoming successful and wealthy with his studios, his products, his weight-loss cruises; making dozens of performance videos that he posted on social media. At the end of the podcast, Simmons continued to refuse to respond to almost every inquiry, but a few people with whom he remained in contact did share that he is OK. 

The podcast doesn't spend much time on speculation about Simmons' sexuality or the lawsuit he filed against tabloids that claimed he disappeared because he was transitioning. Maybe he is just tired of all the noise.

Land of the Giants

 Land of the Giants is a podcast about the big tech/media companies that have changed so much in the last 20 years: Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google (FAANG). The series on Amazon confirmed what I already knew and my decision never to shop on Amazon if I could help it. Now I'm halfway through the Netflix series. Their corporate culture is really hateful, but the way they've changed so many aspects our media landscape is fascinating. I remember when I got my DVDs from Intercontinental video and other independent video stores. I also went to the Blockbuster on Hennepin because it was on my way home and had a big parking lot. I didn't always stay on top of the late fees. Apparently, they were the biggest source of profit for the Blockbuster, and one of the reasons that Netflix became so attractive; you could keep the DVDs as long as you needed. I churned through series and watched the commentary tracks as well, another bonus. There were a lot of good indie movies in their library in those days, but I still used the independent video stores for their eclectic catalogues. For a time I had the DVD and streaming option, and eventually I slid into the all streaming tier because it was cheaper and easier. Now I have streaming subscriptions to Netflix, Hulu (bundled with Spotify), MUBI, Criterion, HBO Max and PBS. I can't keep up with all the stuff that's in my queue, but since I'm not able to go out and spend money anywhere else, it's affordable. I refuse to get Amazon Prime which means there are some good shows that I miss out on, but that's OK; FOMO is not strong enough for me to change my mind.