Dear Listener,
We start Episode 193 with the kind of parenting lesson that gets learned through SPF failure: a Nashville-area track meet, no hat, no sunscreen, a badly sunburned face, and the realization that veteran track parents know things first-season track parents do not. From there we make room for the Iliad's catalog of ships, Manhattans, sweet vermouth standards, rye preferences, the bottles saved for future Kohlmeier time, and the recurring truth that our food and drink detours are mostly about craftsmanship.
The middle of the episode belongs to red sauce. We work through Shindig pizza, The Livery's tinga de pollo influence, the difference between Italian pizza sauce and the Chicago-style sauce Stan actually wants, the Blue Apron calzone recipe that unlocked the Lemon red sauce era, and why a simple pie with sauce, cheese, and basil should be enough if the sauce is doing its job. We also stop for soppressata, endive, Oberon, summer beer timing, and the way a happy orange label can make a beer feel like June.
Then we turn road food into identity politics. Buc-ee's outside Texas and Portillo's outside Chicago send us into a conversation about whether a place keeps its meaning when the people who made it are missing, which somehow drags Dante's exile from Florence into the fast-food lane. Stan finally closes the In-N-Out gap in Lebanon, Tennessee, and we audit Animal Style, no cheese, light sauce, sport peppers, limp fries, Shake Shack, Quarter Pounders, and whether the twisties will defend the burger. We finish with five minutes that becomes much more than five minutes on Othello, Desdemona, Iago, Cassio, The Sopranos, Shakespeare outdoors in Wisconsin, Denzel's Macbeth, Star Wars watch order, King Lear, The Tempest, and The Great Divorce left for next time.
Thanks for listening,
Stan Lemon & Jon Kohlmeier
P.S. This week's word count is, Jon: 3,148 (20.5%) and Stan: 12,239 (79.5%).