A Poet and a Picker Explore Everything from Romania's Election to How Steve Martin Learned Banjo

Whenever you need a break from the dueling pundits, have a listen to one of my Sunday Sanity shows.

For those who missed us live on Sunday, here’s an audio and video antidote for Trump’s lock on our brains - a conversation, poetry reading and picking party with a couple of remarkably creative humans - the provocateur poet Andrei Codrescu, who you may have heard as a frequent NPR commentator in decades past, and masterful bluegrass and trad musician John McEuen, best known for his 50 years in the legendary Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and for helping fellow high schooler Steve Martin learn banjo. There’s more context and content on each guest here.

Codrescu did discuss the happy news from his home country, Romania, summarized well in this Reuters report:

Romania's centrist Bucharest mayor, Nicusor Dan, won the country's presidential election on Sunday in a shock upset over a hard-right, nationalist rival who had pledged to put Romania on a path inspired by U.S. President Donald Trump's politics.

More here from Bluesky:

But we mainly explored each man’s life journey - with the 1960s a keystone moment for both - and fit in a few songs from McEuen and yours truly. I love McEuen’s version of “Old Rivers” (a person), from his latest album, The Newsman:

The full fidelity album version is on YouTube here.

I tossed in one of my recent songs, “Nibbling Ducks” - about how “those pesky chores, piling up, make my brain explode” (YouTube version).

Three flavors of autocracy

Codrescu reflected on living in three different times and flavors of authoritarian government, from Nicolae Ceaușescu’s dictatorship in 1967 to the National Guard crackdown on Detroit riots as he arrived there after fleeing Romania to Trump 2.0. Here’s a snippet but do enjoy and SHARE, the full episode.

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