On my iPod: Too Beautiful to Live

I’m moving back into a labwork-intensive schedule at the moment, which means that I’m burning through podcasts like nobody’s business. Fortunately, I’ve recently been sucked into the orbit of Too Beautiful to Live, the online incarnation of Luke Burbank’s daily talk/music/newsish show. I only found TBTL after it lived up to its its name by getting dropped from the air by Seattle-area radio station KIRO.


Photo by bonacheladas.

Luke and his co-conspirators Jen “Flash” Andrews and Sean DeTorre put together an amalgam of music, pop-culture sound cues, news commentary, and whatever else happens to drift through Luke’s head at the moment of recording. Topics range from the current status of the Large Hadron Collider to Alec Baldwin’s self-esteem issues; one recent episode revolved around plumbing issues in the Burbank residence.* It’s weird and silly and oddly compelling, and it works great in the background while I’m racking pipette tips.**

Which sounds like damning with faint praise, now that I re-read it, but really isn’t. I mean, Studio 360 doesn’t usually make that particular cut. Anyway, you should totally subscribe.

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* The appropriateness of which subject matter was discussed in today’s episode, which was basically a recorded conversation between Luke and his girlfriend on a drive to down to Portland, and which achieved an almost “30 Rock”-grade degree of meta.

** Except for that one occasion when I had to dive across the lab to hit the volume control and kill Jen’s Swedish Chef impression just as my (Swedish) dissertation advisor walked in the door.