Baby Steps

A little while ago, I got it in my head that it'd be fun to try putting a podcast together. I've been addicted for some time to podcasts like the /Filmcast, NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour, Filmspotting, TV on the Internet and The Canon, so you can blame them for inspiring this little endeavor.

You may have noticed that the podcasts listed above all focus on generally the same topics with roughly the same format. That is, round table discussions by two or more people on the subject of contemporary art, including film, television, books and music.  I was definitely interested in exploring the same topics, but it took me some time to settle on a perspective that I could bring to really contribute something new, different, or at least interesting to the conversation. I somehow convinced my wife to join me and we began work-shopping ideas and testing the waters with an hour-long, somewhat free-form recording that I may or may not release some day for those with particularly tolerant ears.

Inspiration finally struck with the arrival of our first son, shown above in close-up. Little Maxwell was born on May 3, 2016, in our current hometown of Seattle, and we're in the early stages of adjusting to parenthood. Because my wife and I bonded early on over a shared loved of music, movies, television and books, we've thought a great deal about how to introduce our favorite works in each of those fields to Max. Watching my nieces and nephews master the worldwide web at a disturbingly early age has taught me that the window of influence we'll have over our son's tastes and attention span will be incredibly narrow. And while my wife and I grew up with blank tapes, VCRs and cable TV expanding our media horizons relative to our own parents' childhoods, these technological baby steps pale in comparison to the nearly infinite access to media of all sorts that our son will enjoy as long as he has active wifi and at least one working digit.

So what do you show your child if you have just one opportunity to share a great love story that changed your life? Or a story that captured the heartbreak of lost love? What if you could share just one album with your kid that takes you back to high school, or comforted you after the death of a close friend? What if you could build a Curriculum for your son or daughter of the art that shaped the person you became and imparted the lessons you'd most want to pass down?

These are the questions we'll be exploring, bringing the perspective of two new parents and sorting through our favorite books, movies, TV shows and music to build a Curriculum for our son. On each episode, we'll focus on one topic (such as a genre, life lesson or time and place in our lives), and we'll each pick one work of art that best captures that topic. We'll discuss what our selection meant to us when we first saw it, what it says to us now, and what we hope our son will take away from it whenever he's "age appropriate" to experience it (whatever that means--a topic onto itself!). We hope it will inspire our listeners to provide feedback and share their own proposed selections for the Curriculum.

As I said above, little Max arrived just last week, so don't hold your breath waiting for the first episode. In the meantime, we'd love to hear your feedback on the idea behind the podcast. Email us at mapsandlegendspodcast@gmail.com and you can follow us on Twitter at @MALPodcast.

Until then ...