2Kevins, RIP: 2nd Half of My Podcast with Grace & Steel
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Here’s the second half of my podcast talking with Kevin Grace of 2Kevins Grace and Steel.
They’ve change their name based on my suggestion, which is always a bad move based on my 40 year track record as the world’s least cool guy.
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I thought you might be interviewing the two AA ladies who do those awesome Trump videos.
Grace and Steel sounds good. Reminds me of the title of the book Iron & Silk, by Mark Salzman, who was sort of the boomer version of Tim Ferriss, minus Tim’s talent for self-promotion.
Both of these names sound homoerotic though.
Grace won’t like it, but I think Steel & Grace sounds even better. I was trying to leave a comment there using the SoundCloud system, where you peg your comment to a time-point, but it’s not working.
Who comes to mind, Abbott or Costello? Martin or Lewis?Replies: @Dirk Dagger
You’re a superhero to an entire sphere of the web.
Quit being so modest. Nobody’s buying it. You KNOW how cool you are.
They didn’t get rid of 2Kevins.
Guys, change the name of the podcast simply to Grace & Steel. Much more elegant and memorable than the ungainly “2Kevins with Grace & Steel.”
Here's to unsolicited advice from neophytes!
I shake my head when I think about my own "binary thinking" back in my National Review days. We like things to be as simple as choosing a side and trusting that our team is best.
I read that book.
Guys, change the name of the podcast simply to Grace & Steel. Much more elegant and memorable than the ungainly "2Kevins with Grace & Steel."Replies: @Dennis Dale, @Grumpy
Yes, and you can still use the “2Kevins” title as an alternate, unofficial title in various spots; maybe name the bit where it’s just the two Kevins riffing on some subject could be called 2Kevins or Between Two Kevins.
Here’s to unsolicited advice from neophytes!
Guys, change the name of the podcast simply to Grace & Steel. Much more elegant and memorable than the ungainly "2Kevins with Grace & Steel."Replies: @Dennis Dale, @Grumpy
Many thanks to the two Kevins for this podcast!
I shake my head when I think about my own “binary thinking” back in my National Review days. We like things to be as simple as choosing a side and trusting that our team is best.
I suppose I should add that this was a great interview. Good questions. Even better than the first installment.
Grace and Steel has that Guns n’ Roses opposite thingy going on. Do they want to use the abbreviated n’ and how are they going to get some umlauts into their name? One way would be to use a double omission apostrophe [Grace ‘n’ Steel] to give them some heavy metal street cred.
Grace is Canadian, but is Steel?
Googling "Kevin Grace" gave me a headline that Tesco fired someone so yclept in a major accounting scandal. Keep the "Michael"!
Steve, you need to purge the repetitive ‘you know’ – this soon becomes intensely irritating and I found myself playing ‘you know’ bingo.
Also, learn to get your ideas out faster – increase the cadence of your verbal dialogue by up to half, there are too many pregnant pauses; it’s like the cogs are turning a bit slow.
Also there are way too many ‘errs’.
Of course the interviewers are familiar and comfortable with the format, otherwise they wouldn't be podcasting.
I recall reading about two Oxford philosophers in a friendly dispute (A.J. Ayer and G.E.M. Anscombe).
Anscombe: You talk quickly so people will think you are clever.
Ayer: And you talk slow so people will think you're profound.
Also, learn to get your ideas out faster - increase the cadence of your verbal dialogue by up to half, there are too many pregnant pauses; it's like the cogs are turning a bit slow.
Also there are way too many 'errs'.Replies: @Steve Sailer, @newyorker, @Anonymous
In other words, I should learn how to think faster.
I’ll get to work on that right away.
I was thinking exactly the same thing about Trump starting a TV network. I guess this just shows how uncool I am.
Since a nightingale is a bird that sings at night, surely the nightingale should be a ‘bird’ who ‘sings’ (to the cops) at night. Make her also sing at a club at night to give it a double meaning. Obviously she must be a criminal’s girlfriend whose conscience was pricked by something. But why does she deserve a requiem? Grace and Steel must have tried to convince her that she had done enough and she shouldn’t risk her life to get them some last piece of information. But of course she wouldn’t listen and then is shot just as she is giving them the information. They risk their lives to try and save hers, of course, but to no avail.
Or maybe this sounds too 30’s-ish?
Since heavy metal umlauts are non-functional, just stick them anywhere.
Regarding Tibet, from http://www.dalailama.com/messages/tibet/10th-march-archive/1997
Obviously you finish with “Steel,” not “Grace.” There seems to be a gene for knowing in which order two words sound best, and maybe half the population has it. “Steel & Grace” would be the way to go to emphasize the feminine.
Done correctly, talking slowly imparts gravitas. Don’t speed up your cadence, it’s bad advice.
Not to mention, Steve is flying a stealth bomber, not an F-16. They’re not built for maximum speed.
Also, learn to get your ideas out faster - increase the cadence of your verbal dialogue by up to half, there are too many pregnant pauses; it's like the cogs are turning a bit slow.
Also there are way too many 'errs'.Replies: @Steve Sailer, @newyorker, @Anonymous
This probably has a lot to do with the podcast format which I believe is by phone. Missing are the body language and other cues you would have when people talk to each other in person. This can explain the slowdown of the interviewee unfamiliar with the setup, trying to divine the imterviewer’s intentions and real agenda.
Of course the interviewers are familiar and comfortable with the format, otherwise they wouldn’t be podcasting.
Grace should like it. You remember the second name, not always the first.
Who comes to mind, Abbott or Costello? Martin or Lewis?
Who comes to mind, Abbott or Costello? Martin or Lewis?Replies: @Dirk Dagger
Are you dog-whistling to Biden?
https://m.facebook.com/steelandgrace
Officially, that great Canadian convenience chain Stash n’ Hoard has only a single apostrophe, but all the signs I’ve seen say STASH ”N” HOARD. I don’t know how they handle the French.
Grace is Canadian, but is Steel?
Googling “Kevin Grace” gave me a headline that Tesco fired someone so yclept in a major accounting scandal. Keep the “Michael”!
Marvelous. You come across much better, I thought, that in the first part of the interview. Maybe you should do more of these. Might reach a larger or at least a different audience. Maybe when Mark Steyn stands in for what’s his name.
Also, learn to get your ideas out faster - increase the cadence of your verbal dialogue by up to half, there are too many pregnant pauses; it's like the cogs are turning a bit slow.
Also there are way too many 'errs'.Replies: @Steve Sailer, @newyorker, @Anonymous
William F. Buckley, Jr., Noam Chomsky, and John Kenneth Gailbrath were slow talkers. James Carville, NFL DB’s, and lot of blue-collar NYC types and hustlers are fast talkers. Chomsky and a lot of intellectuals have a lot of “uh’s” in their speech.
I recall reading about two Oxford philosophers in a friendly dispute (A.J. Ayer and G.E.M. Anscombe).
Anscombe: You talk quickly so people will think you are clever.
Ayer: And you talk slow so people will think you’re profound.
Grace and Steel has a great ring to it, although 2Kevins always brought to mind that Fiery Furnaces line “once upon there were two Kevins”, sung halfway through this characteristically weird track . Of course, one of the Kevins would need to black for the obscure reference to work fully. Can’t have everything, I guess.
Facetious snark aside – it was meant as constructive criticism, feel free to use it or not. You produce valuable, pretty much unique perspective and observation, as well as much mirth.
It is clear that you don’t get much practice in real-time dialogue – likely for all the wrong reasons. It is skill that can be cultivated based upon feedback. Idiosyncratic ticks can be addressed, but this requires awareness of them before one can bring one’s will bear to address them.
Good luck and keep up the good work.
Unfortunately, you’re right. Grace and Steel is cooler-sounding, but it’s not as memorable as 2Kevins. It was a bad idea to change the name.
I see they’re keeping “2Kevins” in the name. “2Kevins with Grace and Steel” is pretty okay. If their podcast fails, it’s as likely to be their horrible, off-putting intro music as much as anything else. If I didn’t know you, Steve, were going to be on the show after it, the music would make the podcast a non-starter for me.
Steve, good interview. Your comments on respectability and reputation are worth noting. I’ve done a bit of small-time local writing and radio that, I guess, ruffled a few feathers. Once I earned a minor rough-up by a crooked cop who, I think, was trying to ingratiate himself with a local Mr. Big who’d taken offense to some of my scribbling. It’s a hit to the belly when you believe you’re doing some civic good, and you find out the guys in the cheap seats just want to mess you up.
I have very mixed feelings about the worthwhileness of measured, reasonable dissent. Yep, I learned a lot, I talked myself into believing I was doing my civic duty, etc. The reality is that you need institutional support, or a significant bank account of your own to stand a chance of making a dent in public consciousness, even when your t’s are crossed and i’s dotted. I work at a state university, too, so it came as something of a shock to me that most faculty are pretty comfortable with canned thought, unless there’s a specific issue that touches on their academic expertise.
I’ve heard many speakers whose verbal ticks were distracting, but there’s nothing in Mr. Sailer’s speaking style that bothers me. I hope that we’ll hear and see more of him.
By the way, the F-104 Starfighter stuff was fascinating.
By the way, the F-104 Starfighter stuff was fascinating.Replies: @NickG
Me too.
Steve has much to add to contemporary commentary. To my mind he is arguably one of the most astute observers of our age. He is clearly one of the most honest, straight shooting, informed observers out there. More, he displaying huge intellectual integrity – and is very WYSIWYG. Such bias as Steve has – and we all have these – he wears on his sleeve, and that’s a good thing. More should do this.
He warants far more recognition and a way higher profile than he has.
Preferably we will hear/ see more of Steve, purged of most of the ‘you knows’, much depleted in ‘errs’, with a less ponderous, even reticent cadence.
Thoughtful natures don’t often make for snappy extemporization. Conversely, I notice a lot of very good extempore speakers are glib intellects–Newt Gingrich and Mike Huckabee are two guys I think are very good in the room, and quite possibly mad idiots both.
I think Obama has always taken people in by being a perfectly capable but not very compelling speaker off the cuff–wanting to apply the Black Premium by which competence is labeled genius and buffoonery wit, they tell themselves he’s not the careful conventional intellect he appears, but a thoughtful, methodical type.
The world’s least cool guy? I always thought that was *me*.
‘Lace and Steel’ was an obscure tabletop role-playing game. I really, really doubt this was what you had in mind.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lace_%26_Steel
But hey, that’s what I believe, and it’s been tested by research.
Unz does have a Canadian columnist, albeit a science one.
I’ve noticed that writers are seldom fast talkers. Well, at least really good writers who say something interesting.
No quiet center?
All chaos?
No inner party that knows what is going on, as in Orwell’s 1984?
Really?
Then how come Israel has all these fences and how come NYT doesn’t say Israel should use Golan Heights as refugee center?
The rulers of globalism knows what is happening and they know what they are doing.
Iraq War and disintegration of the Middle East have been planned for a long time by those in the center of both parties.
And globalists have been working for a long time to ‘diversify’ Europe and to inculcate Europeans that they ‘will not survive’ unless they adopt waves of non-Europeans as the ‘new Europeans’?
As for Tibet, it’s no longer an issue. Tibetans reminded people of Palestinians and the dangers of massive immigration.
When was the last time anyone heard anything about Tibet?
Tibet hasn't been much of an issue since about 1959 when force settled the issue apparently for good. I don't think it's become any less of an issue lately than it was maybe 20 years ago. As a backburner issue, it continues to hang around like a basketball team that's down by a lot the whole game but not quite enough to give up.
Call NYT ‘Slim Times’ or ‘Slimes’.
I hear about Tibet all the time, but that’s because I go out of my way to follow the Tibet news. I don’t know why there are no good Tibet blogs. The last time everybody heard about it was … probably 2008 when they did some riots. Those are good for a headline or two. Maybe somebody noticed when the exiles had democratic elections for their leader in 2011.
Tibet hasn’t been much of an issue since about 1959 when force settled the issue apparently for good. I don’t think it’s become any less of an issue lately than it was maybe 20 years ago. As a backburner issue, it continues to hang around like a basketball team that’s down by a lot the whole game but not quite enough to give up.
Since it’s two-cents time, I would’ve liked the name “Steele and Grace from Under the Rubble”. It reminds of “Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos”. It’s better if Steele’s name goes first since he’s the Dick Smothers of the pair. “2Kevins; with Grace and Steele” sounds off because it makes it sound like there are four people involved.
By the way, I appreciated Sailer’s brief pro-Tibet comments in this conversation. Really nothing more than that is required to understand the essence of the situation. I don’t know why the liberals who conspicuously support Tibet don’t draw the fairly obvious conclusion that good fences make good neighbors. On the other hand, I can’t say I’m very surprised any more when people fail at putting 2 and 2 together.
The Tibet issue continues to hang around because, in fact, the Chinese have a piss poor job of repopulating it with Han. Really, Xinjiang is the only place where Chinese Communists have carried out a successful program of population movement. (Inner Mongolia and Manchuria had already been repopulated in the late imperial period.) Even in Xinjiang, though, note that northern Xinjiang has been ethnically heterogenous for a long time, while southern Xinjiang is still predominantly Turks. As for Tibet, if one can believe the government statistics, not only does the Tibet Autonomous Region still have a Tibetan majority, so do vast swaths of land in the provinces east of there. The basic problem is that Chinese people just don’t want to live there; so the government would have to try really hard to change the population and they really haven’t made a concerted effort. Not only does the altitude cause real health problems, the Chinese also seem to exaggerate those problems to be even worse than they are. To boot, there’s not a lot of economic activity happening in these places. For these reasons, I think the government population stats are plausible as far as the countryside goes. Those numbers presumably reflect the legal residents of the counties in question, and there’s not a lot of reason anybody would go to the trouble of living there illegally. In Lhasa, there are obviously large numbers of illegal Han residents; during the last ten years or so, the same has probably started to be true of other urban centers such as Shigatse and Gyantse. This makes sense because subsidies from Beijing are Tibet’s main economy at this point, so you’d expect the impact to mostly be felt in the capital and to a lesser extent in other cities. Basically not at all outside of the autonomous region, where the Tibetan areas are a basically just a bunch of hillbilly backwoods villages that nobody cares about at all.
By the way, nobody seems to notice that there already is an independent Tibetan country, which is Bhutan. Of course, this is quite a bit like, if Germany were suddenly wiped off the map, and I said, “well, at least there’s still a German country, i.e. Austria”. For historically contingent reasons, the locals prefer to emphasise their distinctiveness, but it’s hard to deny that basically Austria is culturally German and Bhutan is culturally Tibetan. The Bhutanese language, Dzongkha, is quite close to Lhasa Tibetan. Of course, I’m referring to the Ngalop élite of Bhutan; the majority of the population, I believe, are assorted hill tribes, i.e. basically just a bunch of hillbilly backwoods villages that nobody cares about at all.