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Learnin' Links:

• "Hillbilly" vs. "Race Records"
• "Pussy" by Homeboy Sandman
• Biden's thoughts on the Obamas

Listen along to Fun here!

You can support us in several ways:

• Kick us a few bux on Patreon! By becoming a supporting member, you'll gain access to special bonus episodes, including a weekly mini-show, What's in the Box Weekly!
• Buy T-shirts, sweatshirts, and more at our merch page!

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Surprise, mothertruckers! Wicked cowboys never die! That's right, Garth Brooks has returned for another heartwarming exercise in perfunctory Christmas mirth. Watch those reindeer paws, because we're about to bump-n-hump deep into the black magic of Christmas. 

Learnin' Links:

• Attention: We were not aware that “Zat You, Santa Claus?” is a real song, done much better by Louis Armstrong
• The Allmusic review for this album
• Sen. Sumner was beaten on the floor of the senate for being an abolitionist
• Humping in the meaning of schlepping (definition 2)
• “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” and its changed lyrics
• Chance the Rapper and the last Christmas
• Jay Pharaoh's lost episodes of Fresh Prince sketch

Listen along to Garth Brooks & the magic of Christmas: Songs from Call Me Claus here (if you have access to Amazon Music)

You can support us in several ways:

• Kick us a few bux on Patreon! By becoming a supporting member, you'll gain access to special bonus episodes, including a new weekly mini-show, What's in the Box Weekly!
• Buy T-shirts, sweatshirts, and more at our merch page!

Support Think Outside the Box Set

Merry Christmas, everyone! It's a very special heartwarming episode dedicated to Garf's very special Christmas album Beyond the Season. Recorded live in Chicago on Thanksgiving, Cameron and Nathan are joined by:

• Ashely Bowman
• Becca DeWhitt
• Rachel Y

Merry holidays and happy seasons to all! Sponsored by the OKVixen Corporation.

Learnin' Links:

• Ryan Robison's awesome drawings!
• We did like the Chase
• Banned in Boston
• Black nativity 
• Holiday Inn is racist
• Seth Martin, who wrote many new verses to "The Friendly Beasts"
• Mardi Gras babies—is THIS what Ashely was talking about??

You can support us in several ways:

• Kick us a few bux on Patreon! By becoming a supporting member, you'll gain access to special bonus episodes!
• Buy T-shirts, sweatshirts, and more at our merch page!

Support Think Outside the Box Set

Garth's very last album forever: 2016's Gunslinger. We wish we could say it's a triumphant return to form… but it's more of a flaccid, bland return to form. At least it's not horribly offensive? 

This is our shortest episode ever! There isn't much to chew on here. Though we do manage to talk about more interesting things than these songs, like a movie that Cameron mysteriously calls Bang Bang Driver. 

Learnin’ Links:

• The album cover, where Garf looks like Will Ferrell
• The Ewok Adventure
• Wow. Led Zeppelin had at least three successful plagiarism suits brought against them.
• Will Ferrell and Chad Smith Drum-Off!
• Heads Carolina, Tails California
• Jake Jolliff, an amazing mandolin player, son of professor Bill Jolliff whose classes Nathan and Cameron took
• Cotton-Eyed Joe—which might not be racist? It's hard to tell
• The Greek bouzouki, and the Irish bouzouki

You can support us in several ways:

• If you want to buy Gunslinger, you can do it here and support us. 
• Kick us a few bux on Patreon! By becoming a supporting member, you'll gain access to special bonus episodes!
• Buy T-shirts, sweatshirts, and more at our merch page!

Support Think Outside the Box Set

Garth makes a not-at-all triumphant return after 13 years of hiatus with his album Man Against Machine. And boy does it stink to high heaven. 

Not only did Garf not appear to learn anything in his time away, it seems like he regressed in some important ways. For instance, it appears he's spent the better part of a decade in "the friendzone." We expected better from you, Garf. 

Learnin’ Links:

• The coming man against machine battle
• GhostTunes, Garth's aptly-named and short-lived music service
• It's "Ukraine," not "the Ukraine"—get it right, NATHAN
• William Penn's swordplay cosplay
• Triumph of the Will
• The real story of Romeo and Juliet
• Manifest Destiny
• Jingoism—which is a word we've used a lot, but here's a definition if you don't know it
• "Love Doesn’t Trump Hate. Accountability Does." by Aleo Pugh
• there's also another good article called "Love Doesn't Trump Hate"
• David Bowie on Soul Train—he actually wasn't the first white artist. Elton John was.

DO NOT buy this album on Amazon. Avoid it. We don't even want the sweet affiliate link ¢a$h for this one. 

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Garth Brooks didn't want to make this album. But he did. Because his record label made him do it. After the Great Gaines Failure of 1999, Garth wanted to hide under a rock and retire until 2014. But his word is bond, and so is his contract with Capitol Records to print money.

Even for all that, though, it's not even that bad. There are many Garf albums that are worse or more objectionable.

We also learn that Cameron and Nathan have a hard time spelling "Beer run." How many Bs are in there, again? 

Learnin' Links:

• The album cover
• Sometimes, people confuse 911 and 9/11… Or 7-eleven and 9/11
• The DC snipers, which actually happened in late 2002
• Anthrax, and anthrax
• George Jones
• Dixie Chicks' controversy
• The pin-pen merger, a feature of many Southern accents (featured in the song "Beer Run (B Double E Double Are You In?)"
• Sonnets from the Portuguese #43
• ApologetiX… ew
• Squeezits

If you want to buy Garth Brooks’ Scarecrow, you can do it here and support us: http://amzn.to/2z4DlJi.

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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.

Support Think Outside the Box Set