Fine Beats & Cheeses

Get your Shbop Shbop on today and gather around the street lamp with your friends as we explore the delightful tones of Doo Wop music with our friend, author and podcaster, Emily Edwards. Fun show! Emily J. Edwards earned her degree in Writing, Literature, and Publishing from Emerson College and took the long road to becoming an author, working for over a decade as a wine and spirits journalist,...

Venture back to September 2023 where we talked to our friend Geraldine DeRuiter about the Piano Man himself, Billy Joel. This episode was joy. We've wanted to do this episode for The Longest Time: we talk about Billy Joel!! WE LOVE HIM, and so does our guest, culture writer Geraldine DeRuiter. We talk about the relatability, joy, and thoughtfulness of his music, and why it holds up. Such fun....

Join us as we avenge Keanu Reeve's movie dog as we talk the first installment of the sensitive hitman movie series, "John Wick", with returning guest and friend of the show, Robin Peace. We talk revenge, the cutest dog in the world, grief, the awesomeness of the aforementioned Mr. Reeves, and more. Check it out. Robin is the author and poet, R. R. Peace who published her debut fantasy novel, The...

Come with us back to October 2023 for this Rewind episode about wearing what you want, including supposedly unhip things like cargo pants! You know that favorite thing that you love to wear and buy over and over again no one else understands and you DON'T CARE? We do too! We talked to PR, Marketing, and communications expert Julie Khanna about her love of cargo pants, and the rest of us talk...

We take a trip back to the 70s, 80s and back to now as we sing, in a gravelly soulful voice, the praises of one Michael McDonald, Brother of Doobie, maestro of the piano, and owner of cool hair. Our guest is our friend, musician, author, and mental health advocate Andrew Walen, who is a longtime friend of Lynne and Leslie's, and a longtime devoted fan of Michael McDonald's. This was a really...

I hope you're happy today, because today you're getting served this hilarious and fun episode about 2004's dance battle spectacular featuring 2000's cute boys like Marques Houston and the band B2K. We are joined by return guest Dr. Briana Barner, who previously talked about podcasts themselves. Y'all, this was a jubilant and joyous good time, and we did it all for Lil Saint (you'll have to watch...

We'll tell you what we want, what we really really want, and that's for you to listen to this hilariously awesome conversation with past guest Melinda Hare about The Spice Girls'1997's classic campy music movie extravaganza, "Spice World". It was a hoot and a half and we hope you love it. About Melinda:"Born/raised in Northern California, I have a background in costume design and construction for...

You ever make a deal with evil spirits and stop aging but all your oldness and evil goes into a painting you have hidden in your house?Me either, but Dorian Gray from the Oscar Wilde novel "The Picture of Dorian Gray" did, and we discuss the 1945 movie based on that novel with visual artist Donja Hamlin Houston (who Leslie and Lynne have known since middle school). This was a really thoughtful...

2/3 of the Fine Beats team and their people are out of town on Leslie's book tour for her new novel, "Family And Other Calamities" (which you should totally read), so today we go back to November 2023 for this rewind episode!Once upon we were falling in love, but now we're only do a podcast!! Today we are talking about the dramatic 1980s classic "Total Eclipse of the Heart" by Bonnie Tyler with...

You ever been annoyed by a show or movie, but something keeps you watching it anyway? Then listen to today's new episode, where we talk Hatewatching with our guest Paula Chase. We discuss finding something good in the things that we kinda don't like. It's a fun one.Co-founder of award-winning blog, The Brown Bookshelf, Paula Chase is a long time Inclusion advocate and recipient of the ALAN...