The Oh, Hello and

Welcome to Behind the News. My name is Doug Henwood. The usual two guests today

Kate Wagner will talk about McMansions a topic she writes about with frequency

intelligence and wit,

and towards the bottom the hour, Donna Minke which will talk about her visit to a conference of genteel Nazis.

First, Architectural Excess.

Kate Wagner writes the blog McMansion Hell, which mixes prose analysis with annotated

photographs to those residential abominations.

As she says in the about page of the site, by alternating comedy-oriented takedowns of individual houses with weekly informative essays about

architecture, urbanism, sociology, and design, McMatch in Hell hopes to open reader's eyes to the world

around them and inspire them to make it a better one. Like many of the best

things in life it's often quite funny but also quite serious. Giant ugly

houses are certainly crimes against beauty, but they also emerge from society

where ostentation and social isolation

blend into a toxic cocktail.

Wagner's academic background is in music and acoustics.

She's currently a grad student in the latter subject at Johns Hopkins,

but she's long been interested in architecture.

She informs me that she's heard way too many jokes about frozen music go at his definition

of architecture so I won't make one.

She's turned that interest into a marvelous sight of aesthetic and

social criticism. A few months ago she faced a legal challenge from Zillow which

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