Rob's Recs: 'Slow Horses,' 'The Murderbot Diaries,' and more

Stuff I wrote, stuff I watched, stuff I read!

Man, the ‘60s were wild. Imagine being a student radical at the UW-Madison, only to discover that people you thought were your friends, including the girl crashing on your couch, were actually informants for local police and the FBI. And that’s just a sidebar to John Mattes’ story on the wildly entertaining podcast “Lawyers Guns and Money,” which focuses on Mattes’ post-collegiate life investigating CIA gun-running in Miami in the ‘80s. I talked to with podcast creator Jack Bryan about Mattes’ wild story.

Maybe traffic isn’t so bad. If Madison author Amy Pease hadn’t been stuck in her car on her way to work, she might not have dreamed up the scene that became the first chapter of her first mystery novel, “Northwoods.” I had a good time talking to Amy about the book, which comes out Tuesday, including whether she named her female Wisconsin sheriff character Marge as an homage to “Fargo.” (Ho-Marge?)

Speaking of “Fargo,” my wife and I just started the fifth season and it looks great. We finished the third season of Apple TV+’s “Slow Horses,” and although it seemed a little short at six episodes and a little too heavy on action in the last two episodes, we really liked it. I just want to see more of Jackson Lamb farting and insulting people, please.

I finally read one of Martha Wells’ novels in her “The Murderbot Diaries,” “All Systems Red.” How come nobody told me how funny these books are? The books is basically a sly workplace satire masquerading as sci-fi adventure, as a dypseptic cyborg develops reluctant attachments to the humans it works for. And you think you have trouble relating to your co-workers.

I published my Top 10 (fine, 11) Movies of 2023 list last week, and had a great time talking to Nate Carlin and Richelle Wilson on WORT-FM’s “A Public Affair” about the list, trends in moviegoing, superhero fatigue, and other stuff. You can listen here.