Episode 95
October 13, 2026
Erik Satie Three Piece SuiteKitchen Confidential
Hosted by Chris Piuma and Suzanne Conklin Akbari
HOARDING (6)
Every day Satie jots down little jests, scraps and theories, and tosses them into his hat: an endless add-one-more-leaf scrapbook. One more vision or vexation, whim or witticism, placed in the store. An encyclopaedia of minor things. He notes down every passing thought – this, too, is a kind of hoarding. The lines of demarcation are very porous. Isn’t what I am doing here itself a form of hoarding?
Chris is back, and has been thinking about music, encyclopedias, and keeping things light with Erik Satie Three Piece Suite, music writer Ian Penman’s curious book about a curious composer. Suzanne, meanwhile, was inspired by a recent movie adaptation to revisit Anthony Bourdain’s culinary memoir Kitchen Confidential, and is thinking about what, exactly, the book is trying to do, and how it compares with other books about food we’ve read.
Thank you to recent guest host Michael Collins for playing Satie’s Gymnopédie No. 1 and Gnossienne No. 3 on the piano for us!
![[Episode artwork]](/images/podcast/spouter/episode/s/spouter-season-2.png)
Show Notes.
Ian Penman: Erik Satie Three Piece Suite.
Also by Penman: Fassbinder: Thousands of Mirrors.
Anthony Bourdain: Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly
Also by Bourdain: A Cook’s Tour: In Search of a Perfect Meal and No Reservations: Around the World on an Empty Stomach.
Alexander Tharaud’s album Erik Satie: Avant-dernières pensées is a great place to start listening to Satie’s music. Listen on YouTube.
Entr’acte (René Clair, 1924). (The Wikipedia page includes a photo of Erik Satie, René Clair, and Francis Picabia.)
Alexander Tharaud plays the Embryons déssechés.
Igor Levit attempts to solo Satie’s Vexations.
Our episode on Boethius.
About Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project.
Eric Siblin: The Cello Suites: J.S. Bach, Pablo Casals, and the Search for a Baroque Masterpiece.
Greg Tate: Flyboy in the Buttermilk: Essays on Contemporary America.
Ted Gioia: The History of Jazz.
Rhian E Jones & Eli Davies: Under My Thumb: Songs That Hate Women & the Women Who Love Them.
The 33 1/3 series of books about albums.
Our episode on The Aeneid.
Tony (Matt Johnson, 2026). (Suzanne’s review on Letterboxd.)
Our episodes on How to Cook a Wolf, A Moveable Feast, and Home Cooking.
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