The Willard Price Adventure Podcast Jenny Anckorn and Amy Mugglestone

A gem of a podcast that makes the world tolerable!

These women are really funny, and could/should be hosting a truly stellar podcast. They are good podcasters, tho they really need to use some better quality equipment. They sound like they are in completely different cities using their computers built in mics over Skype.

The problem is their single-tracked determination to make the same political statement over and over: the books are racist, imperialist, and sexist. Now these are books that they read and obviously enjoyed as children, and they are now re-reading them in order to tear them apart. Realize that these are cheap adventure books for children in the 1940s and 50s, and are pretty much pulp fiction and was panned as such by reviewers of the time.

Not sure why they thought it would be worthwhile to read the books to make the same race, culture and sex shaming points, but it’s a waste of their talents. They take it to the point of hypocrisy. Everything the white boys say and do is stupid, everything the natives say and do is brilliant. Every time the boys act like your average boy, it’s sexist. They rightly highlight the lack of females, but they do so frequently by making schoolboy gay jokes that perpetuate stereotypes, and use calling the boys gay as an insult and demeaning their behavior by characterizing it as gay. How they can’t see how much of an insult that is to people who are gay I don’t know, since they are trying to pass themselves off as modern thinkers, and everyone else as regressive. Tho I wouldn’t say they are homophobic, it’s beyond me how they can’t see that in their neurotic quest to tear down the main characters in the books (two white male brothers) that they have no problem with making campy homophobic insinuations.

Another perfect example of their hypocrisy is they make a huge deal to point out the racism of the author because he refers to the people of the Amazon as Indians. Then they proceed to call them Indians throughout the ENTIRE podcast. Plenty of descriptors are available to them: natives, indigenous people, locals, or simply their tribe, but no, they are going to call them Indians; but they aren’t racist when they say it because they are enlightened women.

I have listened to 10 episodes now, and with every one I lament what could be. They are funny, have a great vibe together, and have a witty style. It’s the constant one-dimensional political agenda-making that ruins the show. Hell, they don’t even need to stop reviewing the books, it’s not a bad idea, they just need to lighten up. People will see the issues for themselves, they don’t need to try to score political points all the time. It’s like they are trying to tell the world how liberal and modern thinking they are....over and over.....episode after episode.

I really wish a good podcasting company finds them and fixes the show, or puts them in a new show, because combatting racism by being racist, combatting sexism by being sexist, and combatting imperialism by making homophobic jokes isn’t cutting it. We need good comedy podcasts, and these women could have a great one. I regret the waste of talent and potential.