Paul F Tompkins tells his astrologer he likes his Kindle

When #PFTompkins tweeted this morning about a podcast he guested I was surprised and a little worried that the podcast was an astrologer. I would have been shocked and disappointed had he turned out to be a "believer". This was not the case, thank Jebus. He gently poked fun at astrology but was overall respectful and gently turned the reading into interesting stories about his career.

His jokes about misunderstanding the astrological T-square and the oily T-zone ("You must have heard that a thousand times!" "No, you're the first.") and the Libra scales (We used an actual scale to choose story ideas on the show but it always came out even because paper weighed the same.)

At about the 45 min mark of the second part of the interview (or "reading") Paul talks about his love of reading and how he loves his Kindle but misses real books. He had two arguments for real books over e-books. The first, that there was something to committing to actually carrying a book around with you that gave that book more "gravity" than just having it appear on a list of hundreds of books on your Kindle. The second argument was that there was something wrong with not being able to lend a book after you had finished reading it.

The first point makes sense and is different from the "sensual" argument that I find distasteful (leather binding and the smell of book glue does nothing for me). The idea that if you are bothered enough to lug a book around with you everywhere you go then it will have a greater impact when you read it makes sense. Perhaps if they added a Tamagotchi feature to the Kindle where only the books you fed and watered and exercised would live long enough to read to completion.

The second point is being addressed by Amazon with lending features added and tweaked as time goes by. Ancillary groups are even sprouting up on the internet to facilitate e-book lending in a social network framework.

The Pod F. Tompkcast shows up fortnightly or so, on Libsyn.

WTF with Marc Maron - POW! Best Podcast Ever.

IMO Marc Maron has the best podcast out there. I've listened to about 30 of the 1-hour WTF episodes and every hour was time well spent. The intensity he brings to his interviews is balanced out by his candor and honesty (and humor--the solo bits he does at the beginning and end of the show--hawking his sponsors and begging for donations--are sometimes the funniest parts of the episode). Ira Glass's blog post highlights some of the outstanding interviews: Louis CK, Jud Appatow, Robin Williams, Ben Stiller--as well as the infamous Carlos Mencia interviews.

He gets comedians to really open up. He uses his own stand-up cred and shared history and issues in the business to draw out thoughtful, frank and often hilariously funny stories. The Ray Romano episode really shows how Marc can draw out a "mainstream" comedian into a serious, funny and adult conversation.

I just saw Marc on CNN as a guest on what looks like comedian Peter Dominic's new "What The Week" spot. An homage to Maron? Marc didn't look too upset. Hopefully it indicates that his podcasts are giving him the greater visibility that will lead to bigger and better things.

Podcasts can be downloaded as mp3 from his site for free. Buy/donate what you can. We do not want to see this go away.

Best Advertisement for coffee ever: (sip) POW! I've just shit myself!