Today’s the day! Human soul patch Chris Gaines gets his day in the sun as Garth Brooks dons a wig and a smoldering, sexy, cheeks-sucked-in face for his best rockstar playacting. Pucker up your pair of kissable ellipses, because this bad boy is going to soft-rock your whole world.

The Garf/Gaines pair is a real Jekyll/Hyde situation… but in the end, it turns out Chris Gaines is actually a lot less fun than we thought he would be. Oh, well. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Learnin’ Links:

• To blave
• Bill Clinton and “depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is”
• Richard Bachman
• VH1’s Behind the Music on Chris Gaines
• Garf’s interview where he explains Chris Gaines
• The Gaines album cover, and the Garf album cover.
• SNL Californians
• The outdated and racist term “miscegenation,” and the tokenism with which Gaines treats black people
• It blows
• Black Tuesday

If you want to buy the Chris Gaines album, you can do it here and support us! http://amzn.to/2AH2ET5

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There are 7s all over this album… it’s a real Dan Brown-type situation. That’s right, it’s Garth Brook’s album “Sevens”! We lost count at some point, but there are probably 7 instances of the number 7, or something.

Learnin’ Links:

• We reference Kevin Spacey in Se7en… not exactly timely. Forgive us—we recorded this a while ago. Oops.
• The album cover
• Flannelgraph and the Borscht Belt
• Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule
• Fugue and fugue state
• A Mighty Wind
• “Escape (The Piña Colada Song)”
• The Cowboy Church of Junction City, Oregon (I’d link to their site, but… it’s a little bonkers)
• ​Pierce Pettis, the songwriter
• “Christmas in the Trenches” (live version!), a  much better song than “Belleau Wood”
• The Christmas Truce
• The 1812 Overture is not about the War of 1812

If you want to buy Sevens, you can get it here and support us: http://amzn.to/2zmnkBf

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In what way can horses be “fresh”? Is Garth riding with all his freshest of horses? Do horses have placentas? Nathan and Cameron seek answers for all these questions—and more—on another action-packed episode of Think Outside the Box Set!

This week’s album, “Fresh Horses” by Garth Brooks, is sort of a letdown, with few memorable songs. But that’s OK, because at least he induces one emotion in us: ennui.

Learnin’ Links:

• The movie Fresh Horses starring Molly Ringwald
• The album cover of “Fresh Horses”
• (It’s a) Departure, off the album Putting the Days to Bed
• The Oklahoma city bombing
• “A relationship is like a shark” quote from Annie Hall
• An article about the origin of the phrases “balls to the wall” and “balls out”
• Cult of domesticity, AKA cult of true womanhood
• “I am large—I contain multitudes” (a quote from Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself”)
• The hurdy-gurdy, “the 14th century version of the keytar”—which fails to be uilleann pipes
• Steve Buscemi’s volunteer firefighting after 9/11

We end this episode with a tune called “Hangman’s Reel” from Cameron’s other podcast, Get Up in the Cool. It features Hunter Walker on lap dulcimer, Brian Bell on guitar—and Cameron on banjo. Check it out here!

If you want to buy “Fresh Horses,” you can get it here and support us: http://amzn.to/2yflAL6.

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Today’s Garth Brooks album: In Pieces. Nathan and Cameron discuss their cowboy-baby fetishes, and Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney show up to lend some wisdom.

Be sure to check out “Beyond the Box Set,” which is a real podcast! And it’s really good. Dammit. Now we feel worse for accidentally stealing their name.

Learnin’ Links:

• The order Coleoptera, which includes beetles
• Liverpool English (AKA Scouse)
• The shirt Garth is wearing on the cover
• Richard Nixon’s dog, Checkers
• For those who don’t stand outside the fire
• The dogwhistle term “welfare queen“
• Reel
• Andalusian cadence 

If you want to buy In Pieces, you can get it here and support us: http://amzn.to/2gw4Y6w

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We talk about Garth’s very good album The Chase. Garth takes a stand for what’s right, especially in his first song “We Shall Be Free.” That song was more controversial than Garth anticipated, and it won a GLAAD Media Award for its lines about people getting to love whoever they choose.

The episode runs a little long… but we just got so excited about a Garth album that we can actually really enjoy!

Learnin’ Links:

• The album cover
• Bill Clinton on the Arsenio Hall show
• Toni Morrison called Bill Clinton “the first black president” (turns out she was actually making a point about the Monica Lewinsky scandal).
• “STILL I THINK HE’S RATHER TASTY!”
• Randy Newman’s Faust musical
• Blue-eyed soul
• James Taylor, Garth’s big man-crush on this album
• “Ue o Muite Arukō”—also known under its racist renaming, “Sukiyaki”
• The original version of “Dixie Chicken”
• “Take a load off, Danny”
• The Mountain Goats’ album Get Lonely
• The complete works of Karla Jo on Songmeanings

If you want to buy The Chase, you can do so here and support us: http://amzn.to/2gT8BUm.

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Cameron and Nathan discuss Garth Brooks’ third album Ropin’ the Wind—spoilers: it’s not very good. But they manage to divert the conversation to Serbia, Nathan’s great aunt, a folk singer named John McCutcheon, and the Essenes, all in the name of avoiding talking about Ropin’ the Wind!

Learnin’ Links:

• Beograd Fortress
• Dead Sea Scrolls
• Dewayne Blackwell
• John Wayne’s white supremacy
• Latigo
• John McCutcheon, and his song “Cup of Coffee”
• Lonesome Dove

If you want to buy “Ropin the Wind”, you can buy it here and support us: http://amzn.to/2y7syOW

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Cameron and Nathan discuss Garth Brook’s second album, No Fences. Garth’s biggest-selling album, No Fences is a solid improvement on his self-titled.

Learnin’ Links:

• No Fences
• Country and Western music in a Boston accent at Faneuil Hall
• Roscoe Holcomb
• Poe’s Law
• The Fleetwoods’ version of “Mr. Blue”
• countrygenius.com

Support us by buying No Fences on Amazon at: http://amzn.to/2xbsbFO.

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Cameron and Nathan launch their podcast, Think Outside the Box Set. They begin by explaining the premise: "learning to appreciate an artist’s back catalog."; Then, they head into a discussion of their first subject: Garth Brooks.

Support us by buying Garth Brooks on Amazon at http://amzn.to/2wSiB5A.

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