La Venganza Será Terrible (oficial) · Alejandro Dolina

LVST 9 de abril de 2026

·1 hr 24 min·7 clips

Lending a book is strictly a gift the recipient never thanks you for — the volume enters their library at amazing speed and severs all connection to its original owner.

1. La Venganza Será Terrible's April 9 episode centers on a satirical essay about objects that are lent and return broken, deformed, or not at all, hosted by Alejandro Dolina. 2. Dolina hosts with Burton as co-host; production is by Maike Iglesias and Eugenia Gorostiza; sound by Miguel Vincent; historical and literary research by Cora Barengo. 3. The episode's thesis is that lending any object is functionally a gift, because the physical or temporal transformations undergone during use sever the object's link to its original owner. 4. The essay opens with books: 'el préstamo de un libro es en rigor un regalo' — a loan of a book is strictly a gift whose recipient never thanks you for it; the volume enters the borrower's library instantly and loses all connection to the owner. 5. Dolina recalls first hearing the word 'traspapeló' from his mother, who used it to explain to a neighbor why a book had not been returned — framing the invented excuse as a social ritual. 6. Dolina confesses he still possesses a copy of Domingo Faustino Sarmiento's 'Facundo' lent to him by a woman named Janina — identified only by her ex-libris stamp — and cannot remember which Janina it was. 7. Hand tools undergo 'immediate denaturalization': the borrower uses them at the repair site itself, which may not be their home, and the tool is simply left there. 8. Lent cash money 'evaporates in the debtor's memory until it becomes invisible,' and in Argentina's inflationary context, 20 pesos lent in 1930 and returned today would require 13 zeros of adjustment — approximately 200 million pesos. 9. Garden chairs are analyzed as objects lent for events — when you need 20-30 chairs for a garden birthday — and structurally unsuited for return; Dolina and Burton digress into a furniture-rental company that only rents in units of 100. 10. Cigarette lighters are pocketed by reflex during the course of a smoking interaction: the borrower cannot remember receiving it within seconds; when the owner claims it back, the borrower denies ever receiving it. 11. Borrowed clothes return morphologically transformed: a pullover stretched at elbows and collar by 'an invasive anatomy,' its usual detergent replaced by a penetrating perfume resistant to washing, 'preserving the physical memory of a body that is not ours.' 12. Dolina recounts a medium shirt lent and returned geometrically square rather than rectangular — the borrower's body having stretched it horizontally while shortening it vertically. 13. The trump and the flute are identified as instruments too intimate to lend, analogous to underwear rather than to a violin or guitar — because the mouthpiece carries the physical trace of its player. 14. Dolina recounts finding a used trumpet mouthpiece for sale that had a 'pestilent smell,' concluding it must have been played by Armstrong. 15. A phone charger lent to relieve someone's anguish returns with the cable violently wound, which stresses the internal copper connections; Dolina digresses into a documentary showing technicians extracting half a kilo of lint from inside phone connectors. 16. The borrowed-bed segment is the episode's most transgressive: Dolina describes lending a bed to a couple while traveling, then refusing to use the bed afterward because 'the pillow feels the aroma.' 17. Dolina's ping-pong table story is personal: as a child, he lent the family's table to a neighbor separated by one wall from their patio, and after a period during which he was allowed to play there, the neighbor began refusing entry — 'we use it here' — while Dolina heard his classmates playing on his table through the wall for years. 18. The episode's tone is digressive and comic, with Dolina's deadpan essay delivery interrupted by Burton's interjections and both hosts pursuing tangents about inflation, furniture rental, and sock-lending etiquette. 19. Long-term fans of Argentine radio culture, listeners who enjoy meditative comedy about social friction, and anyone who has lent and lost a book will find this episode particularly resonant. 20. Listeners unfamiliar with Buenos Aires cultural references, Argentine slang, or La Venganza's multi-decade inside jokes will find many segments require prior familiarity.

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