NICE, France—The leaders of the Nice chapter of the Disciples of Secularis say that the burkini, swimwear designed to satisfy Islamic modesty standards, threatens the natural secular order instituted by the god Secularis when he created the universe through a combination of blind chance and evolutionary processes. Grand Secular Jean-Jacques Russo spoke at a press […]Read This
The Divine Metaphor
Eight weeks ago, I fell for a woman in my hometown with whom I have religious differences. She’s a Christian with an evangelical background. I’m an agnostic atheist [1] with a history of aggressive anti-theism. We’ve spent weeks going back and forth about the wisdom of interfaith relationships, now trying to parse this verse or […]Read This
The Hot Take: Innocence Reaches, of Montreal
The below review was written by Will Boogert and Conor Fellin as they listened to of Montreal’s Innocence Reaches for the first time. They started writing when the album began, and stopped typing when the album ended. Except for grammar, the review has not been changed since that moment. “Let’s Relate” Conor: Not sure how […]Read This
Rail Gaze CD Club: Hearts and Bones, Paul Simon
Hearts and Bones is an easy album to overlook. Coming before it were four solo albums that sold better than it and had the hit singles it lacked. Coming after it was Graceland, which would justly receive universal recognition as Simon’s best album. And yet it’s Hearts and Bones that I find myself coming back […]Read This
Breaking Down Breakmaster Cylinder
I just don’t wanna be out there. I don’t matter. It’s nice to be any / every / nobody. –Breakmaster Cylinder, in an interview with Exolymph Conor and Will are sitting at a pair of microphones in a mid-budget recording studio, recording their commentary on Reply All. Conor: There you have it: the whole animal […]Read This
On Our Turntable: “Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts,” Bob Dylan
Blood on the Tracks is the album where the sprawling milieus of Highway 61 Revisited finally solidified and started to resemble narratives. This is evident on “Tangled Up in Blue,” but it’s even clearer on “Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts.” For all the complications, its story of marital infidelity is pretty easy to […]Read This
The Faith of an Infidel [5]: The Council of Salzburg
Part of an ongoing series on religion and philosophy. Read Part 4 or view all the posts. Sometimes life seems like the set-up to a bad joke. Last week in Salzburg, at the end of Ramadan, I ate an enormous meal prepared by a professional Syrian chef now living in a refugee camp on the […]Read This
Somebody you were hoping I might be: BoJack Horseman and the burden of fame
Like the show as a whole, BoJack Horseman’s third season features plenty of scenes of its titular Hollywood star mired in existential dread. But the episode that reveals the most about BoJack’s neuroses may be the one where BoJack cannot stop smiling. “Love and/or Marriage” opens on a high note for BoJack; after decades of […]Read This
Re: Best Reply All Episodes
Conor: Will, how have we been writing this blog for a month and a half without doing a Reply All article? Will: That’s a great question. A group of geeks who find nerdy things to talk about and share them with an internet-savvy audience? We should have murals of PJ and Alex in our bedrooms. […]Read This
Early Tracks [2]: The Hidden Track
The crisp cold of a St. Louis winter. The thin feeling of my khaki pants against the car seat. The white of half a foot of snow. And a short harmony breathed over the last folksy strums of an acoustic guitar. Whether or not I experienced any of these things at the same time, I […]Read This