Did you know that Jim Infantino has a podcast? Now you do. In October of 2021, I (yes, this is Jim writing) had a conversation with my longtime friend, and the producer of my first cassette, Ha , Lionel Cassin. Lionel was living in Texas at the time, working for a University there, and told me that because of a recent move to a new town, he had zero friends. I was alarmed, having recently read an article about how having no friends can lead to an early death . The long pandemic meant that Lionel was working from home, and I thought this combination was potentially lethal. I told him that we would have a phone conversation at least once a week for an hour or so because I value our friendship, and want him to stick around on this earth for as long as possible. We did this for a few weeks, and because Lionel is particularly fascinating and unusual, IMHO, I thought that it was a shame our conversations about books, tech, and culture, weren’t being recorded. Lionel spits out roughly six or more references to books, music, and unusual discoveries on the web every ten minutes and I wanted to be able to go back and refer to these references without taking notes every time we talked. “This project was never set up to be popular; it was and remains an excellent excuse to have read more