Why is Epstein's jacket all knotted up?

Remember the episode where this happened? No, you don't. There wasn't one.

Mystery girl Starlee Kine

Leave it to me to arrive at the depot after the train has already left. This week, I more or less accidentally discovered a marvelous new-ish podcast called Mystery Show, hosted by This American Life's ever-delightful Starlee Kine. (Her breakup story, entitled "Doctor Phil," is one of my favorite TAL pieces of all time.) Kine's new show, as the title might indicate, is devoted to solving mysteries. But these aren't true crime stories (murders, disappearances, etc.), and they aren't the great secrets of life and the universe (what killed the dinosaurs, does God exist). At least not yet.

 As of now, the show has gotten to the bottom of smaller, quirkier mysteries. An author, for instance, wanted to know why one of her unsuccessful books somehow wound up being toted around by Britney Spears. Another woman wanted to know the fate of a little video store which seemed to disappear overnight. One man wanted to know the origin of a novelty, custom-made belt buckle with a built-in miniature toaster.

And then there was, for me, the most intriguing of them all: Why did Aladdin Industries' Welcome Back, Kotter lunchbox from 1977 depict a scene in which Barbarino and Epstein seem to be fighting over a knotted-up jean jacket, since no such scene ever occurred on the program? Starlee Kine answers all of these queries with a surprising amount of compassion and detail.

All episodes of the podcast can be found here at the show's website. I blew through all six episodes in about a day and a half. The trouble is, by the time I finally found Mystery Show, its first season was already over. I don't know when Season Two is starting, but Kine insists that there are more mysteries in her future. I hope so.

(today's zomby) AND A PHIL COLLINS PUPPET SINGS OF HEARTBREAK AND HAIR LOSS!

So now we know what Zomby watches on television, which as I argued previously may well be the truest, most accurate way of gauging one's soul.

But what kind of music does Zomby listen to? My best guess: Phil Collins. I think of Phil Collins as the patron saint of the lonely and heartbroken, mainly due to a 2007 radio story from This American Life called "Dr. Phil" by Starlee Kine.

Phil Collins was famous for turning his real-life romantic setbacks into popular songs,"In the Air Tonight" and "Against All Odds" chief among them. Back in the 1980s, a satirical British puppet show called Spitting Image took Mr. Collins to task for this and produced this scathing, dead-on parody:



Eerie, isn't it? "I'm So Lonely" may be the ultimate Phil Collins song, even though Phil didn't write it. It certainly works as a good theme song for both Ziggy and Zomby, both of whom can relate to the themes of loneliness and male pattern baldness.

Incidentally, one of the side effects of British comedy is that it occasionally forces you to look up some of the more obscure references. I'm sure we all know who Bob Hoskins is, but the other British celebs named in the song are not so well-known here in the States. For the record, Mel Smith is a British comedian and actor probably best known to American audiences as The Albino in The Princess Bride.

And Eddy Shah? Well, he's a rather infamous UK newspaper tycoon who very recently was arrested in connection with a sex scandal. At the time of the Spitting Image broadcast, though, he was just a famous businessman.

Now don't you feel better informed about the world? Incidentally, there was no bad blood between Phil Collins and Spitting Image. In fact, not long after this parody aired, the puppeteers were hired to do the deeply weird video for "Land of Confusion," a song by Phil's band Genesis.