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    Society & Culture

    Do By Friday

    A weekly challenge show hosted by Alex Cox and Merlin Mann.

    Advertise
    • Apple Podcasts
    • Google Play
    • Spotify
    Latest Episodes:
    Theymaphrodite Feb 11, 2026
    Show notes

    Links

    • Marty Supreme | Official Trailer (A24)
      Josh Safdie's new film about a ping-pong hustler, starring Timothée Chalamet.
    • How A24 Created a Viral Marty Supreme Spectacle (Vogue)
      The jacket drops, the Balenciaga collab, and the marketing machine behind the film.
    • Orlando (1992, Sally Potter)
      Tilda Swinton as Virginia Woolf's time-traveling, gender-shifting nobleman — this week's mini-challenge.
    • Watch Orlando free on Tubi
      Go watch it. It's right here.
    • Quentin Crisp
      Plays Queen Elizabeth I in Orlando; Merlin imprinted on that image.
    • Tony Zhou, "Edgar Wright: How to Do Visual Comedy" (Every Frame a Painting)
      The video essay that made everyone realize Wright is doing something nobody else does.
    • The Wicker Man (1973)
      The original folk horror — the thread connecting Hot Fuzz, Midsommar, and The Witch.
    • Off Menu podcast
      Florence Pugh's episode, in which she reveals she does not drink water.
    • Off Menu — Lucia Keskin (Chi With a C)
      BAFTA-winning comedian, discussed in the member show. "The quietest guest we've ever had."
    • Claire Foy had intestinal worms from filming The Crown (Yahoo News)
      The truly disgusting reason she no longer drinks caffeine.
    • Man throws shoes at Bush
      They all throw their shoes.
    • Sarrasine — Balzac (Project Gutenberg)
      The Balzac novella about a sculptor who falls in love with a castrato — the text Barthes famously dismantled.
    • S/Z — Roland Barthes
      Barthes's semiotic disassembly of Sarrasine — Merlin's "oh fuck you, you should read Sarrasine" recommendation.
    • Gender: An Ethnomethodological Approach — Kessler & McKenna (U of Chicago Press)
      The book that changed Merlin's life in a 1988 Gender Studies class: what if there weren't just two genders?
    • Gender Trouble — Judith Butler (PDF)
      The definitive text — Alex's rec that Merlin bought a beautiful copy of and still hasn't read. Here's a free one.
    • Who's Afraid of Gender? — Judith Butler (Bookshop.org)
      Butler's newest book — the one Alex was actually talking about. Why are we weird about gender again?
    • "A Question and Three Answers" — Merlin Mann
      Three perspectives on one question about being trans in America.
    • Claude Code (Anthropic)
      Alex is getting into it and making $200; Merlin's teaching his to not watch Tommy read the paper.
    • Good Time (A24)
      The Safdie Brothers' sweaty Robert Pattinson thriller — context for understanding what Safdie does.
    • Uncut Gems (A24)
      Adam Sandler in a diamond district panic attack — the other essential Safdie before Marty Supreme.
    • The Curse (Paramount+)
      Safdie and Nathan Fielder's deeply uncomfortable TV series.
    • Ricky Jay
      Magician, card sharp, actor, historian of the unusual — referenced during the shoe-throwing bit.
    • Baby Driver — Opening Titles / Coffee Run (feat. "Harlem Shuffle")
      The scene that is its own argument. Edgar Wright syncing every footstep, every door, every beat.
    • Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, "Bellbottoms"
      The song that opens Baby Driver and never lets go.
    • Ayoade on Top — Richard Ayoade (Bookshop.org)
      Ayoade wrote an entire book about the Gwyneth Paltrow movie View from the Top. It's called Ayoade on Top. Of course it is.
    • Olivia Colman is hooked on Ayoade's book premise | Graham Norton
      The specific clip — Ayoade explaining View from the Top to a delighted Olivia Colman. Truly one of the great things.
    • Can I Ask You a Question? by Jennifer Venditti (A24 Shop)
      Venditti's casting book — the woman who found the faces for Good Time, Uncut Gems, and Marty Supreme.
    • Billy the Kid (2007, Jennifer Venditti) — watch free on Tubi
      The documentary that led to her casting work with the Safdies.
    • Defunctland, "Journey to EPCOT Center: A Symphonic History"
      A feature-length orchestral documentary about EPCOT Center that has no business being this good.
    • Defunctland, "Disney's Animatronics: A Living History"
      Bonus Defunctland for the curious.

    Your Session Crashed Feb 04, 2026
    Show notes

    Links

    • Patton Oswalt - KFC Famous Bowls - YouTube
    • Reconcilable Differences #279: I Promised Myself I Wasn't Going to Be Excited - Relay
    • Jeremy Renner Official - Wikipedia
    • The Rock Diet - What Dwayne Johnson Eats in a Day
    • Series 7, Episode 7 - 'The perfect stuff' | Full Episode | Taskmaster - YouTube
    • Don't Blink! | Blink | Doctor Who - YouTube
    • Blink (Doctor Who) - Wikipedia
    • "The Stallone Tangent" - Episode #133 - The Flop House Podcast - YouTube
    • I Fifteen Love You | Do By Friday
    • DBF Episode 62: I Fifteen Love You : r/DoByFriday
    • Merlin Mann’s Taskmaster Starter Episodes - YouTube
    • Prompt 3
    • iTerm2 - macOS Terminal Replacement
    • Drafts MCP Server for Claude/AI Integration - News & Updates - Drafts Community
    • Claw: macOS app for Claude Code
    • Synology
    • CleanShot
    • MacWhisper
    • Nora’s Wu-Tang Tattoo on The Leftovers: The Story Behind It
    • Chappelle's Show - Wu-Tang Financial (ft. RZA and GZA) - Uncensored - YouTube
    • Digital Underground - The Humpty Dance (Official Music Video) - YouTube
    • Robert Lowell, Setting the River on Fire: A Study of Genius, Mania, and Character, by Kay Redfield Jamison (Alfred A. Knopf) - The Pulitzer Prizes
    • Robert Lowell, Setting the River on Fire a book by Kay Redfield Jamison - Bookshop.org US
    • U.S. Citizens Testify Against ICE Agents in Minneapolis - YouTube
    • Renee Good’s Brothers Give Emotional Testimony on DHS Tactics - YouTube
    • Tubi - "Orlando" (1993)

    Next week's challenge: watch Orlando (1993)

    Future Clowns of America Jan 28, 2026
    Show notes

    Links

    • The Nutty Professor (1963)
      Jerry Lewis as Professor Kelp / Buddy Love
    • Hank Azaria on Professor Frink
      Based him on Jerry Lewis in The Nutty Professor
    • Tropic Thunder
      Simple Jack; "you went full [redacted]"
    • Be Kind Rewind
      Video essays on women in film history
    • Stewart Lee
      British comedian; Paul Nuttall of UKIP
    • Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle
      BBC Two series (2009-2016)
    • Tailscale
      Mesh VPN; part of the Iron Troika
    • Amphetamine
      macOS app to prevent sleep
    • AutoMounter
      Keeps network shares mounted
    • Synology
      NAS; Merlin's home server setup
    • TP-Link Archer AX55
      The router
    • NextDNS
      DNS with ad blocking; Iron Troika member
    • Cloudflare
      Third member of the Iron Troika
    • DynDNS
      Dynamic DNS; the old way
    • Let's Encrypt
      Free SSL certificates
    • Passkeys
      Passwordless authentication
    • Hide My Email
      Apple's email aliasing
    • Linda Stone
      Coined "email apnea" and "continuous partial attention"
    • "Are You Breathing? Do You Have Email Apnea?"
      Linda Stone's original article
    • Claude Code as elevator music
      Matt Webb on the contemplative rhythm of working with Claude Code
    • J. Edgar Hoover
      FBI director; Clyde Tolson
    • Cary Grant & Randolph Scott
      Lived together; "Riding the Trails Alone"
    • The Carter Family
      First family of country music
    • Cowboy Carter
      Beyoncé's country album
    • Country Music (Ken Burns)
      2019 documentary series
    • Trypophobia
      Lotus seed pods; a clown situation
    • Pansy Division
      Queercore band; pun on Panzer Division
    • Reformation Iconoclasm
      Defacing religious art
    Backpack Full of Stones Jan 24, 2026
    Show notes

    Links

    • TLC - "Waterfalls"
      Alex was four.
    • No Such Thing as a Fish
      QI researchers' podcast; Merlin's been listening for years
    • No Such Thing As Debreadtion — No Such Thing As A Fish — Overcast
      The episode Merlin mentioned
    • Ken Burns' Jazz
      Episode 9 "The Adventure."
    • TLC - "Unpretty"
      Merlin's favorite TLC song.
    • Dead Drop
      Spycraft term for passing info without meeting
    • Ken Burns' Baseball
      Source of the Lincoln "tiredest" quote
    • A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms
      New Game of Thrones spinoff
    • Why Are Icelandic Horses Not Called Ponies? (Iceland Mag)
      Pony-sized but Iceland said it's a horse
    • Ship of Theseus (Khan Academy video)
      The philosophical paradox behind "Thesean Horse"
    • Saint John Coltrane Church (KQED)
      Yes, there's literally a church for this album
    • John Coltrane - A Love Supreme (1965)
      The album that inspired the church
    • "Is he quare?"
      Comedy repetition reference
    • Harry Enfield
      British comedian; "Is he queer?" sketch
    • Paul Whitehouse
      The other half of the old men in the club
    • I Spy books (Walter Wick Studio)
      Merlin's analogy for how Claude Code sees things
    • "40, 45 Years" - Stewart Lee
      The callback king
    • Claude Code (Anthropic)
      The AI tool Merlin won't shut up about
    • Rik Mayall: Lord of Misrule
      2014 BBC tribute documentary; narrated by Simon Callow
    • The Young Ones (IMDb)
      What you most likely know Rik Mayall from
    • The Young Ones - "Bambi" / University Challenge (YouTube)
      Fry, Laurie, Thompson vs. the lads
    • Nell (1994)
      Merlin's first memory of Liam Neeson as a lead
    • Nell (1994) Trailer
      "Can't abide a canna peas," is a line Merlin feels like he remembers Jodie Foster's Nell saying
    • Scotiabank Saddledome: Building Design
      Say it soft, and it's almost like praying.
    • Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing
      Bob and Paul's fishing show
    • Game of Thrones - "Fire and Blood" (Fandom)
      Season 1 finale; Daenerys and the dragon eggs
    • Lucy Liu on the "Dragon Lady" Stereotype (NextShark)
      "I could have been wearing a tuxedo and a blond wig"
    • The Slop Hash
      Merlin's project to get you excited about making something cool.
    • "I never said she stole my money" has 7 different meanings
      Stress a different word, get a different sentence.
    • The Butterfield Diet Plan (YouTube)
      "The results have been increbidle"
    • The Night Left Eye Burned Down Andre Rison's Mansion (Investigation Discovery)
      It started with sneakers in a fiberglass bathtub
    • Memento Mori
      "Remember you will die"
    • Anterograde Amnesia
      The condition from Memento — can't form new memories
    • One Hundred Years of Solitude
      García Márquez's masterpiece
    • Kieran's very good post
      "Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father was discovered and taken by ICE."
    • Hammer
      A tool so durable it works across time
    • Cottaging: History of the Term (Idiom Origins)
      How they got John Gielgud, Wilfrid Brambell, and poor Brian Epstein.
    • Brian Epstein (Beatles Bible)
      Beatles manager; arrested 1957, blackmailed for years, died a month before decriminalization
    • Clarke's Three Laws
      "Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"
    • Ducking Stool
      Chair on a stick for dunking witches and scolds
    • Roget's Thesaurus (Project Gutenberg)
      Category 1: Existence
    • 12 Facts About Taking of Pelham 123 (Mental Floss)
      They fictionalized the dead man's switch to foil copycats
    • The 36-Hour Day (Johns Hopkins Press)
      Read it before someone you love has dementia

    Some folks I love and admire do come off sounding a little like the same people who loudly hated Little Richard and disco music.

    Honestly, sometimes it's legit difficult to notice when we've gotten more emotionally invested than we'd realized in seeming right.

    And that shit is a LOT to decide to carry forever.

    🐘

    Recursive Hallucination Loop Jan 14, 2026
    Show notes

    Links

    • Ground loop (electricity) - Wikipedia
    • Hallucination or Confabulation? Neuroanatomy as metaphor in Large Language Models - PMC
    • Graze: Custom Feed Builder for Bluesky · Graze
    • Serverless Statusphere: a walk through building serverless ATProto applications on Cloudflare’s Developer Platform
    • AT Protocol
    • How to Transfer Your ChatGPT Memory
    • Works for ChatGPT Data - Google Drive
    • Stewart Lee - Wikipedia
    • Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle - Wikipedia
    • Stewart Lee vs The Internet - Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle - Series 3 Episode 1 Preview - BBC - YouTube
    • English Arrested for Being English? Stewart Lee's Humorous Take on British Culture | TikTok
    • Stewart Lee S4E6 - Childhood - YouTube
    • Stewart Lee S3E3 - Satire - YouTube
    • Stewart Lee - [1/2] Give It To Me Straight, Like Pear Cider That's Made From 100% Pears - YouTube
    • Stewart Lee - [2/2] Give It To Me Straight, Like Pear Cider That's Made From 100% Pears - YouTube
    • Stewart Lee On The Challenge Of Stand-Up - YouTube
    • Comedian Stewart Lee on why he won't tour Trump's America - YouTube
    • Stewart Lee in Conversation with Alan Moore - YouTube
    • Jerry Springer: The Opera - Wikipedia
    • Taskmaster Origins - Rare Footage of the First Ever Show! (Edinburgh 2010) - YouTube
    Shiny Boob Beaver Book Jan 08, 2026
    Show notes

    Links

    • I am the mucus man. | Do By Friday
    • Playboy
    • Penthouse
    • Oui (magazine)
    • Hustler
    • Gent
    • Liquid IV
    • Imodium
    • Mr. Microphone By Ronco (Commercial, 1978) - YouTube
    • "Supply is limited" scene from The Simpsons (TV Episode 1992) - YouTube
    • The Simpsons: Sending Our Love Down The Well - YouTube
    • ROYGBIV - Wikipedia
    • Stewart Lee - Wikipedia
    • Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle - Wikipedia
    • Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle - YouTube
    • Stewart Lee - Emigrants - video Dailymotion
    • Lazy Comedy Slags - 28 years old - YouTube
    • I'm Alan Partridge - Wikipedia
    • Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing - Wikipedia
    • The future of being trans on the internet | The Verge
    • NetNewsWire: Free and Open Source RSS Reader for Mac and iOS
    • Lumberjanes - Wikipedia
    • Mallory Ortberg Accidentally Inspired A New Episode Of 'Black Mirror' By Making Fun Of The Show
    • Next On "Black Mirror" - The Toast
    • Brian Regan - Big Yellow One's the Sun - YouTube
    • Brian Regan - The Emergency Room - YouTube
    • MBMBAM / Adventure Time: Curse A Real Sword - YouTube
    I am the mucus man. Dec 31, 2025
    Show notes

    Late Night with David Letterman - "Camping With Barry White" (May, 1983)

    A Considerate Dancer Dec 17, 2025
    Show notes

    Links

    • Nurse Ratched - Wikipedia
    • Ratched (TV series) - Wikipedia
    • Sarah Paulson - Wikipedia
    • Blue Lights (2023 TV series)
    • The Now Habit a book by Neil Fiore - Bookshop.org US
    • Getting Things Done a book by David Allen and James Fallows - Bookshop.org US
    • Makebelieve Help, Old Butchers, and Figuring Out Who You Are (For Now) on Vimeo
    • Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Maps (Official Music Video) - YouTube
    • Ted Leo - Since U Been Gone / Maps - YouTube
    • Margaret Qualley - Wikipedia
    • Bleachers - Tiny Moves (Official) - YouTube
    • Jack Antonoff and Margaret Qualley Take Us Behind the Scenes of "Tiny Moves"
    • Jack Antonoff - Wikipedia
    • Steel Train "I Feel Weird" - YouTube
    • Kenzo World feat. Margaret Qualley - YouTube
    • Kenzo Perfume BTS: Spike Jonze & Margaret Qualley’s Creative Journey - YouTube
    Three-Eyed Raven of His Dreams Dec 10, 2025
    Show notes

    Links

    • Ep. 1. "Shifty: The Land of Make Believe" (Adam Curtis, 2025) - YouTube
    • Adam Curtis on the BBC, Politics & AI - YouTube
    • Adam Curtis - Wikipedia
    • HyperNormalisation - Wikipedia
    • Can't Get You Out of My Head (TV series) - Wikipedia
    • Shifty (TV series) - Wikipedia
    • SHIFTY – A brand new Adam Curtis series - BBC - YouTube
    • The True Story of the Aberfan Disaster in The Crown Season 3
    • The Queen Learns of the Aberfan Disaster | The Crown (Olivia Colman) - YouTube
    • Death of Diana, Princess of Wales - Wikipedia
    • Ryan White - Wikipedia
    • Oliver Sacks - Wikipedia
    • Williams syndrome - Wikipedia
    • Oliver Sacks: The Mind Traveller - 'Don't Be Shy, Mr Sacks' - YouTube
    • Strong Songs – Season 07 Episode 08 - "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic" by The Police
    • Mr Blobby - Wikipedia
    • Jack Whitehall is Terrified of Mr Blobby - The Big Fat Quiz Of The '90s - YouTube
    • The 10 Most Bizarre UK No. 1s of the 1990s - YouTube
    • Sentencing Review: Deposition of the Captain | kung fu grippe
    Basic Beaver Information Dec 03, 2025
    Show notes

    Links

    • Mule Skinner Blues - Wikipedia
    • Jimmie Rodgers - "Blue Yodel No. 8" (1930) - YouTube
    • Jimmie Rodgers – Blue Yodel No. 8 (Mule Skinner Blues) Lyrics | Genius Lyrics
    • Carter Family - Wikipedia
    • It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels - YouTube
    • Carter Family picking - Wikipedia
    • The Carter Family - "I'm Thinking Tonight of My Blue Eyes" (1935) - YouTube
    • The Carter Scratch – The Bluegrass Jamboree
    • No More the Moon Shines on Lorena (Alex Chilton, Live) - YouTube
    • Oliver - "Good Morning Starshine" - YouTube
    • Randy Newman - "Sail Away" (1972) - YouTube
    • Official Extended Trailer | Country Music | A Film by Ken Burns | PBS - YouTube
    • The first minute of Ken Burns' "The Civil War"
    • The Civil War (miniseries) - Wikipedia
    • Ken Burns effect - Wikipedia
    • Pan–tilt–zoom camera - Wikipedia
    • Jodorowsky's Dune - Wikipedia
    • Dr. Strangelove - Wikipedia
    • The Knappett | Taskmaster - YouTube
    • Gillian Anderson: Green glass jello and G Spots | Off Menu with Ed Gamble and James Acaster Podcast - YouTube
    • Jovan Musk for Women Eau de Cologne Spray
    • Beaver Lodge Construction Squad | Attenborough | BBC Earth - YouTube
    Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 48 Next

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