Preview Mode Links will not work in preview mode

The Department of Tangents Podcast

Years ago, playing a sort of improv game with friends in which we all picked super powers based on our personalities, I dubbed myself “Tangent Lad.” I was not a very strong superhero, and I could not defeat a super villain on my own, but I could distract them with Monty Python quotes and football trivia. I have many times since apologized to an interview subject in my capacity as a journalist by saying, “I am either very good or very bad at tangents, depending on how you feel about tangents.”

I had a rough time coming up with the concept and naming this blog/podcast. I knew I wanted to create a place where I could address things I’m passionate about – comedy, music, and horror. Finding a name that communicated all three of those things proved a bit impossible. I bugged my friends, and they all tried to help. To no avail. Then I thought, maybe I’m approaching this from the wrong angle. Maybe my lack of focus should be the focus.

As a journalist, I have written for The Boston Globe since 2000, starting out writing CD reviews and then writing a regular column on comedy for seven and a half years. I still contribute there, and to Kirkus Reviews, and other publications. I’m also a musician, and released my debut full-length album, Blue Skies and Broken Arrows, in March of 2015. And I’ve been publishing short horror fiction for a couple of years.

I like to climb into things I love and see how they operate. That’s what the Department of Tangents is for. The main thing here is love. To talk about the things that make I’ve loved forever, and some new things that might stand the test and be around, at least for me, for decades to come. I’ve had to be critical in my writing at times, and it might not all be nonstop roses here, but in the end, what I really want to talk about is the good stuff. That’s why I will regularly write about things I think are “Perfect,” even if someone can demonstrate empirically that they are flawed. Still perfect to me.

Also, fish.

I hope you, dear anonymous surfer person, will come to expect only the highest-quality, free-range, grass-fed tangents. And I hope some of you love the same things I do and find it useful. Or at least a welcome distraction until the others get here.

Mar 31, 2018

This week’s guest is stand-up comedian and host of the TV Guidance Counselor podcast Ken Reid, someone I have known for years in the Boston scene and whom I’ve covered occasionally for the Boston Globe. Reid is a good friend to have if you enjoy horror or comedy in film or television. On TV Guidance Counselor, he...


Mar 23, 2018

This week’s episode is a conversation with podcast host/artist/musician Rich Wentworth. He is co-creator of the Hadron Gospel Hour podcast, a serialized sci-fi/comedy show about the adventures of a scientist who accidentally blows up the multiverse working on a way to weaponize the Hadron Collider. He and his partner...


DoT EP55: Hadron Gospel Hour's Rich Wentworth plus New Music from Courtney Marie Andrews

Mar 23, 2018

This week’s episode is a conversation with podcast host/artist/musician Rich Wentworth. He is co-creator of the Hadron Gospel Hour podcast, a serialized sci-fi/comedy show about the adventures of a scientist who accidentally blows up the multiverse working on a way to weaponize the Hadron Collider. He and his partner...


Mar 8, 2018

I was very happy how this interview came together. Some of you may know I have covered the comedy beat for the Boston Globe for the past seventeen years or so, and one of the best parts about that job is coming across someone who is really funny and maybe just coming into their full voice, and you’ve never heard...


Mar 1, 2018

Jenny Zigrino is still very much a comic on the rise. In the past two years, she has played notable roles in films like Bad Santa 2 and Fifty Shades of Black. Last year, she released her debut album, JZ’s New Album, had her own Comedy Central Half Hour, and co-hosted an IFC digital series called The Filling Is Mutual...