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The best new podcasts for the week of November 30, 2019: Catch and Kill and more

The best thing about podcasts is that you can listen to them while you’re doing other things: Washing dishes, going for a run, coloring, and especially, driving. But there are so many podcasts these days that it’s simply impossible to keep up. New ones are debuting all the time, and it’s hard to know whether they deserve a spot in your feed.

Every week, we highlight new and returning podcasts we couldn’t put down. Whether you’re looking for the latest and greatest or you’re just dipping your toe into the vast ocean of podcasts, we’ll find you something worth listening to. This week, we’ve got podcasts about the restaurant biz, a mysterious condition, and Ronan Farrow.

Copper & Heat

Copper and Heat Podcast
Image used with permission by copyright holder

It’s not always a guarantee, but anecdotally you’ll often find that people who have worked in food service will tip well barring almost anything. The food arrives cold or the waiter is surly, and they’ll still leave 20%. Waitstaff often get blamed for factors beyond their control, and the money they make that night could mean the difference between paying the electric bill or not.

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It’s also pretty common knowledge that restaurant profit margins are thin, and there are a lot of invisible costs that go into the burger’s price tag on the menu. Katy Osuna is trying to shed some light on what goes on behind the scenes in season two of Copper & Heat. In the first episode, she explains the profit margins at State & Lemp, a now-closed restaurant in Boise, Idaho. Episode two is all about staffing issues. The industry relies heavily on immigrants, and good help is so hard to find, that owners are willing to look the other way when it comes to workers who are undocumented.

Black Friday

Black Friday Podcast
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Every couple of years, there are news stories about someone turning orange from eating too many carrots. No one freaks out, because it’s a harmless condition, carotenemia, with a known cause: An excess of beta-carotene.

Episode one of Tycho Newman’s new audio drama, Black Friday, is titled “Acute Spontaneous Melanization.” It’s a very scientific name for a fictional condition. If the name Sam Gregor makes you think of the main character in The Metamorphosis — Gregor Samsa — it’s likely not a coincidence. Sam awakens to find he’s undergone a transformation. His skin has darkened overnight. Everything else is the same, but now he looks like a black man. At first, the world seems to treat it with the same nonchalance as it does carotenemia, though there doesn’t seem to be any clear cause for Sam’s increased melanin. It barely rates a mention on the local news. But Sam has to navigate a world that treats him differently, and, the first episode hints, he’s not alone.

The Catch and Kill Podcast

The Catch and Kill Podcast
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Ronan Farrow is 31 years old and has written two books, to which I say a hearty congratuwelldone. His latest is Catch and Kill, and there’s a new companion podcast.

While investigating accusations of sexual assault against Harvey Weinstein, Farrow had some frightening experiences. He was being followed, and in the first episode, Farrow speaks with Igor Ostrovskiy, one of the people doing the spying. Ostrovskiy became a source for Farrow and appears in the book. The podcast gives more of the private investigator’s background, explaining why surveilling reporters made him uncomfortable. Future episodes will feature more audio Farrow taped along the way, including what he recorded when he said NBC tried to squash his story on Weinstein.

Jenny McGrath
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Jenny McGrath is a senior writer at Digital Trends covering the intersection of tech and the arts and the environment. Before…
Fifteen years later, this subversive superhero movie still kicks ass
The poster for Kick-Ass with the main characters.

The superhero genre saw a drastic rise in prominence throughout the 2010s. Spearheaded by Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy, Christopher Nolan's Batman saga, and the X-Men movies from 20th Century Studios, the genre became a true force to be reckoned with in the cinematic landscape. Of course, the arrival of the Marvel Cinematic Universe in 2008 led to a superhero explosion, the undeniable peak for the genre in the mainstream. Sandwiched between Marvel's early efforts and their eventual dominance is Matthew Vaughn's 2010 subversive superhero exercise, Kick-Ass.
Adapted from the eponymous comic book by Mark Millar and John Romita Jr., the film is a landmark in superhero cinema. It wasn't a commercial success, nor did it turn the titular superhero into a household name capable of going toe-to-toe with Marvel and DC's finest. However, Kick-Ass was a full 180 for the superhero genre, pushing its boundaries to the extreme and inviting more chaotic and daring perspectives into the space. At a time when the superhero genre is fighting for its life, Kick-Ass seems like a true breath of fresh air, aging like fine wine despite (or because of) the sheer volume of superhero properties released every year. On its fifteenth anniversary, it's time to look back at this hyper-violent and explosive gem of the superhero genre, which remains as fresh today as it was in 2010.
Can an average Joe truly kick ass?

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Looking back at the movie, it's quite impressive how it managed to assemble such a group of up-and-coming actors and provide what would essentially be their big break. Taylor-Johnson, a teen heartthrob in his native UK thanks to the 2008 teen rom-com Angus, Thongs, and Perfect Snogging, got his breakthrough in the West with Kick-Ass, which would eventually lead to his career as a leading man throughout the 2010s. Similarly, Moretz became the go-to child actress for the early part of the 2010s, with Hit-Girl establishing her as one of her generation's most promising talents.
Several underrated actors received a boost from Kick-Ass. Aside from continuing a strong collaboration with director Matthew Vaughn, which had begun with Stardust and continued with the Kingsman franchise, Mark Strong cemented himself as one of Hollywood's favorite bad guys. Meanwhile, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, who had risen to prominence as McLovin in the 2007 cult comedy Superbad, got the chance to show a different side to his on-screen persona.
For his part, director Matthew Vaughn graduated to the big leagues after this film, going on to helm the widely praised X-Men: First Class and the Kingsman series. Indeed, Kick-Ass is one of those movies that one looks back to with raised eyebrows at the sheer talent involved, both in front of and behind the camera.

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