An Interview with My Dad, Frank Howlett (episode 9)

The invisible star of the “Something I Learned This Week” segment joins me to help close out Season One. We learn: how he fell down some of his mini-research holes, which temporary Jeopardy host he loved best, and what he really thinks of Millennials. Doing my part to make my Dad slightly more traceable online! 

This is not my dad. Photo credit: Alex Huskinson, WikiCommons.

SHOW NOTES: 

Not many show notes today because we aren’t doing a specific hole! We mainly rehashed some of the Something I Learned This Week segments from the past season. If you’d like to go back to the original writing on these topics, check out the final part of each of these episodes: 

Polyglots: Episode 1, Sailboats, with Rebecca Jay

Jeopardy host tryouts: Episode 3, German Chocolate Cake and Terrapin, with Laurie Morrison

Generations: Episode 7: Alleged Murderess Lillian Green, with Leah Felicity Lucci

J.K. Rowling vs. trans people: this was a tidbit Dad wanted me to read on an episode and I didn’t feel like it worked for a quick something-I-learned-type discussion. So Dad and I got into it here. It was very hard to find a breakdown online that actually explains the impact of what J.K. Rowling said. The closest I found was the article “Harry Potter and the Author Who Failed Us” by Aja Romano on Vox. It has lots of links if you want to read Rowling’s original tweets, or if you want to read how the “science” she cites is flawed. 

The Foodie Flamingo picture book is now out! You can order it from your local bookstore. Here is a book page with links to all the major retailers that carry it. 

The city of Uruk: Here is the link listener Katie Molski shared with me: https://www.worldhistory.org/uruk/. The link explains more about the people she referenced in her email. Innana, for example, was a goddess of the region. She does appear in the Epic of Gilgamesh, but I believe Katie was more referring to what the website says about her.