This week the Pop Almanac opens with talk of fevers, both SXSW and cowbell related (this dovetails into a minor debate about whether "Don't Fear The Reaper" is a great song or the greatest song).

Brendan and Duncan then segue seamlessly into the subject of brackets: With the NCAA's March Madness about to start, many pop culture outlets are making brackets of tv shows (or tv episodes, or tv characters), and even though he's a frequently listmaker himself, Duncan finds the concept of having people vote for seeded brackets of things to be entirely too arbitrary. Naturally the show gets existential, because what's our relation to pop culture with a hierarchy?

Should we apply brackets, and the mentality of favorites and underdogs and so forth, to things that aren't competitions to begin with? The eighth episode dealt with the idea of needlessly comparing two things — in this week's we wonder why we'd need to do the same thing times sixty three.

That being said don't miss CultureMap's SXSW Music Hype Bracket! It is topical and informative.

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