What People Do - SoundSage

View Details

As part of an ongoing volunteering job with Kantcon, a fantastic tabletop gaming convention here in the Kansas City metro area, I record and write up interviews with a few of their sponsors each year.

KJ Davis’ company, A Little Help Company (ALHc), focuses on mentorship and boutique publishing support for indie creatives who may need a little extra guidance navigating public events, creative projects, and business growth. (Note: I interviewed Davis for an episode about her company in 2024.)

Want to learn more about Davis and the work she does? Listen to this episode, and check out these links:

The all-inclusive directory
Davis' books

View Details

Walter Stewart is co-owner of one of the best tabletop gaming stores I've ever visited: Tabletop Game and Hobby in Overland Park, Kansas.

Want to learn more about Stewart and the games he talks about? Listen to this episode, and check out these links:

Gloomhaven
Flip 7
Azul
King of Tokyo
Ark Nova
The Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship
The Hobbit: There & Back Again
Cozy Stickerville
Starcraft
Magical Athlete
Mythic Bastionland
Hamsters & Himbos
Brindlewood Bay
Sword World
Old Gods of Appalachia

View Details

Rikki Tahta in the UK talked to me about his company, MeetMax Games, and why the games are fun, how the games work in groups, and his inspiring and revolutionary take on games for corporations and events: Fun over functional.

Want to learn more about Tahta and his team's work? Listen to this episode, and check out these links:

MeetMax Games
Games of theirs that he mentions in the podcast
- At the Races
- Elephants on Mars

View Details

Yup.

I think it's been 100 or so episodes.

So, I thought I'd mark the occasion with a conversation with somebody else who's made podcasts and watched them ... not grow. (That's Jimbo Radio; I've been on a few times and thoroughly enjoy my conversations with James.)

The What People Do podcast started more than six years ago with a recording in a library meeting room with a former colleague right as COVID spun up before the lockdown. It continues, every month or so, recorded online now in my apartment living room.

Why did I make it? Because I get tired of self-promotional, ad-ridden podcasts. I wanted to make a thing that just ... exists ... to serve my own curiosity and interest in relating to, and asking questions about, people's lives.

There has never been a direction or a focus beyond 1) the people who ask to be interviewed, or 2) the people I ask to interview. There are more rabbis and RPG folks only because that's closer to my wheelhouse as I volunteer to make content for a local RPG convention and pursue my own rabbinate and Judaism in general.

Well, don't I normally supply links? Well, here ya go. If you'd like to ever support me financially, feel free to subscribe to my Substack or ask to collaborate on something with me:

My rabbinic Substack
My random Patreon
My random YouTube
My sort-of-outdated Linktree

View Details

Rabbi Norman Solomon served in many important capacities in the United Kingdom during his decades of service as a pulpit rabbi and educator.

But the title of his latest book—which promised a delve into what we might mean in the modern world with our talk of God—promised to be a rich read. And it has been, with its very personal and idiosyncratic writing style and conventions. Anyone with an interest in thinking about God in Judaism or Christianity in the modern world might find much to agree with, smile at, and wrestle with in the book.

I was also delighted to find out Rabbi Solomon has a delightful sense of humor. You will be too.

Further resources Read Making Sense of ‘God’: What God-Talk Means and Does* book * Peruse Rabbi Solomon’s writing for the Torah.com website

View Details

I met Carole as the star administrator of the New York City-based rabbinic school I attended in 2025. (Shout out, Jewish Spiritual Leaders Institute!)

It always felt like there was a lot more under her surface in the moments when she’d pop up, or in the times she’d email. When she shared a cool introspection exercise with our graduating rabbinic class, I had to learn more about her.

Turns out, she’s fascinating herself … nonprofit administration, yoga teaching certification, independent film, commercial work, and community theater.

So … I asked Carole about her acting and film experience as a trick to talk to her, because she seemed cool.

She is.

View Details

A hundred years ago, Judaism’s path of moral self-improvement was stuck mostly in the Orthodox world where the classic books of the field were in their original language. When the wider Jewish world began taking notice of Mussar, study and books in translation blossomed in availability.

That’s the beautiful world that Rabbi Greg Marcus and I inhabit today, where the rabbi walks us through his own Mussar origin story, why he became a teacher of it, and where it’s all going from here.

So, self-help with a Jewish flavor: Judaism has had it for hundreds of years! Let’s gooooooo …

Further resources: Peruse Rabbi Greg Marcus’ website and his American Mussar website * Read The Spiritual Practice of Good Actions: Finding Balance Through the Soul Traits of Mussar* book * Take the Soul Trait quiz

The Spiritual Practice of Good Actions: Finding Balance Through the Soul Traits of Mussar

View Details

People talk about "main character energy" when it's a bad thing: You're the center of the universe, you're the hero or heroine in your story, and your story is how you see the world. Everyone is important only in how they connect to, or affect, you. You need your needs met (Karen!) before others, because, well, you're the most important person.

But there's another more playful way to become the main character: in story. Pretending to be a hero—whether you get lost in a movie, a novel, or a tabletop role-playing game—can be fun, give you agency, allow you to see possibilities in your life that are papered over in the regular day-to-day grind.

With that, I present to you the journal I've been using the past week or so: Just Roll With It from ParadoxPort. The habit-making, goal-seeking, fantasy-RPG-inspired notebook uses character sheets, callings, spells, maps, and monsters as playful stand-ins for a regular journal's more pedestrian language.

Are you forming a new habit or weaving a spell? Are you facing a roadblock to success, or a fishy-faced Deep One? Did you die ... or did you just run into some bad luck, make some bad choices, or make a new habit that didn't quite stick?

You get the idea.

I'm still enjoying the journal, and I think I explain why well in this conversation with its creator, Ari Levari ...

Enjoy.

P.S. No, this podcast episode is not an ad. I just really like the journal.

Further threads to follow

Just Roll With It: Hardback Edition (also available in printable PDF)
Online storefront
YouTube channel, where you can find Ari's own podcast
Wondering whether to try it?
- "What makes Just Roll With It different from other journals or planners?" Most planners optimize productivity. ParadoxPort focuses on meaning, identity, and momentum. Instead of "do more," we help you explore how and why you change, using play as the engine.
- "Do I need to be a gamer to use the journal?" Not at all. While the journal is inspired by tabletop RPGs, it's designed to be approachable for beginners. If you enjoy creativity, structure, or exploring goals in a playful way, you'll feel at home.

View Details

I stumbled onto Christina’s name in my quest for one of my favorite Jewish folk tales. Turns out, she’d shared a version from a Christian book on her blog, which was also filled with marvelous thinking on men and women, trauma and therapy, and ways for folks to flourish.

It was a fascinating conversation touching on evergreen topics of psychology as well as a vision of problems she sees in contemporary life, especially in romantic entanglements and families.

Enjoy.

Further resources* Peruse Christina’s blog * Read “The Sorrow Tree” post that brought me to her e-doorstep * Explore her Facebook posts

View Details

There is Jewish music, with melody and harmony and rhythm. There is chanting for Torah reading, with melody and meaning.

And then there is Jewish chanting.

Rabbi Shefa Gold talks about her entry point into it, demonstrates what it sounds like, and explains how it works in this insightful conversation ...

Further resources:

Rabbi Shefa Gold’s website
Are We There Yet? Travel as a Spiritual Path
Flavors of Gratefulness app and sample chants (link)
Flavors of Praise app and sample chants (link)
In the Fever of Love: An Illumination of the Song of Songs
Love at the Center: Immersing in Shir Hashirim (link)
The Magic of Hebrew Chant: Healing the Spirit, Transforming the Mind, Deepening the Love
Torah Journeys: The Inner Path to the Promised Land

View Details

You’ve experienced this before, right?

You know you’re supposed to do something. You’ve learned that a good habit is what you need or a bad habit needs to be changed. You know you should spend more time on this and less time on that. You know it’d be good for your emotional health, your body, or your soul.

But you don’t do it. There’s a gap.

Dr. Kyra Bobinet, MD-PhD, calls it the “Know-Do” gap.

It all stems from work she’s done for years studying, researching and trying to make practical information about how your brain works, namely your habenula (huh-BEN-yuh-luh). It’s the part of your brain that tracks your failure. It can keep you out of trouble: “Last time you tried between those trees, you fell and almost died. Don’t do it. Bad!” But it can also keep you mired in bad habits, indecision, and self-doubt: “Remember when you tried that diet, and you fell off it? What a failure. Don’t try losing weight again. You’ll never do it! You’ll fail again!”

Dr. Bobinet has a magic (but, really, not so magic) way to calm down your habenula and self-critic: the iterative mindset, which she details in her book Unstoppable Brain (2024, Forbes Books).

You’ve got to change from focusing on failures and trying to keep adding good habits and removing bad habits the same way … and recognize that every time you hit a bump, it’s time for a new iteration. Change things up! What worked to help you last year, last week, yesterday, may not work again. Iterate, iterate … change, change … try, try …

I interview Dr. Bobinet here about all that, plus, especially, her nearly brand-new smartphone app Fresh Tri, which offers a platform to learn about her research and how it applies to your habits and health as well as anonymous community support and tips and ideas to change your thinking when your habenula gets going and you’re sure this one’s the absolute failure. It’s all free content and functionality right now with the possibility that more targeted videos and help might be pay-to-play. But for now … go play with all that’s there!

So, stop logging failures, start logging iterations … and listen in …

View Details

No, not game, like deer and pheasant, but game like … board games, tabletop games, card games, miniature games. Basically, all the games of the world that happen solo, in pairs, in groups, around tables, at home, at cafes (like the one next door to his shop), and out in parks and fields and anywhere else you can roll some dice or move some tokens or share and swap some cards. Everything but the video games. The video games you go somewhere else for.

Monopoly. Dungeons & Dragons. Apples to Apples. Cards Against Humanity. Vampire: The Masquerade. Warhammer 40K (this guy likes it so much, he's fighting to get a TV show made of it).

These are for the brave souls meeting at parties and in groups and using their imagination, competitive spirit, and full-throated laughter to fuel game experiences that happen in meatspace.

TableTop Game & Hobby in Overland Park, Kan., has been open more than 30 years, and Stewart, years ago, was a young teen harassing the full owner then (now his partner) with stories about his games and characters and weird niche passions. Now, he gets to do the same for a new generation of teens as he’s gone from employee to manager to co-owner.

Want to know more about it? Listen in … and check out these links:

TableTop Game & Hobby is, by far, my favorite RPG stores, thanks to inventory and, mostly, a great big room to play in for years and the best customer service I have ever experienced in a hobby store of any kind. Visit the website online, but if you’re in town, o ever in town, go there!
I’ve interviewed a lot of folks and gaming and gaming accessories, some as volunteer help for the best gaming convention I’ve ever been to, like TableTop also in Kansas City, but also for my own curiosity. Here are the episodes:
- My friend Jahmal, about running role-playing game sessions for money. He is a fantastic mixture of practical, philosophical, rule-delving, and story-loving. You might love getting nerdy with his stuff here, too.
- Gabi Dyck about hand-made dice.
- Sam Chupp about helping to make some of my favorite role-playing games.
- Noah Gibbs about helping to run another fantastic local gaming convention.
- KJ Davis about helping creatives get their work done.

View Details

I am a big fan of thinking of productivity and task management, but I’ve been through dozens of them and I no longer think that any tool is going to magically spirit away whatever issues I have with self-motivation, focused productivity, or values-based action.

Buuut … I still like to toy with this stuff. Back in the day, David Allen’s book Getting Thing Done changed my life, and I still fall back on GTD’s principles every day. Because I like to experiment, I was willing to switch to Cherry Task from the GTD-based FacileThings in the past couple months, because Ken Fleisher’s interactions about his product and productivity in general on Reddit were so open-minded and thoughtful.

So, I’ve switched to Cherry Task. I use it, on and off, every day or two. I’ve learned to enjoy being able to reach out directly to the designer every few weeks with problems. I appreciate its focus on visual appeal and usefulness of color and symbol. It’s a nicer thing to look at than many other task management or GTD-focused tools out there on the internet.

If you like productivity talk, if you want to hear how the sausage of a task management app gets made, tuck your napkin into your shirt and get to it … let’s try some Cherry Task!

For further reading:

Request to get it on Cherry Task’s beta testing here.
Read more thoughts from Ken on his blog here.
WHAT?! You haven’t read David Allen’s Getting Things Done or tried out his new workbook? Buy them new in bookstores all over, or online, or used or new here.

View Details

He's a scholar. A therapist. And a rabbi. And all three of those disciplines have touched on his work deeply studying what Judaism has to say about the supernatural and especially the afterlife.

Rabbi Simcha Raphael takes me on a fascinating, personal, and well-researched dive into his decades' long work into a realm that doesn't get as much attention as it does in Christianity: what happens to us after we die.

If you think about God, life and death, and the lesser-known parts of our world, "the window, not a door" we can peek through of the afterlife, this is a must-listen ...

You may also be inspired to read one or more of his books if this conversation grabs your attention. Recommended is a visit to his Da'at Institute and the books:

Musings With the Angels of Death: Poems of Love, Life and Longing, one poem from which is shared in this episode
The quintessential Jewish Views of the Afterlife, now updated and in its third edition.

Other books of thought and poetry on end-of-life issues and care appear on the same website.

P.S. For those into the feminine aspects of spirituality, Jewish of otherwise, an upcoming interview will feature the rabbi's wife, also a rabbi, who is working on a special deck of oracle cards drawing from Jewish ideas of the feminine aspect of God, the Sh'chinah.

View Details

After interviewing Rabbi Rifat Sonsino about a co-edited book he worked on called A God We Can Believe In, the other co-editor reached out and said he had more to say on it. Given that I peppered Rabbi Sonsino mostly about other books he'd worked on that had been influential in my understanding how pluralistic and wide-ranging Jewish views on God were, I said absolutely sure of course yes to a new interview with Rabbi Richard Agler.

In this discussion, we use a little Jewish lingo (most of it explained), but overall, we're wrestling with a perennial problem with monotheism: If God is all-powerful and all-just, why do we see bad things happen to people who have not committed injustices? Why do tragedies happen to good people?

Rabbi Agler's previous book, titled The Tragedy Test, wrestled with that firsthand as he, a decades-long pulpit rabbi, was faced with the unexpected death of his own child. He came out with a God that he could believe in. Then, with A God We Can Believe In, he and Rabbi Sonsino asked thinkers to share the more modern ideas about God that they use in their own lives.

I especially invite you this time to buy either of Rabbi Agler's books, as proceeds go to the Tali Fund, whose good work he talks out in this podcast as well as on his own website here.

View Details

Israel and Zionism: Could I have picked a hotter topic? Well, cool your jets, man.

Sam Brody, PhD, an associate professor of religious studies at University of Kansas, is going to bring a nuanced view of Zionism, theology, politics, and the ever-in-the-news dilemma of the nation-state of Israel by exploring an early thinker on the topic who’s most famous these days in bookstores for his religious work alone: Martin Buber.

If there are terms you don’t get as you listen, stop and look them up. It’s not too deep. Then, bask in Brody’s thoughts on the evolving thinking of Buber, whom he says brings an “anarchist” reading to the Bible to support his ideas about what kind of people the Jews are and what kind of place Israel could be.

His book is Martin Buber’s Theopolitics (what a fantastic word!), published in 2018 by Indiana University Press. Sure, the academic hardback is $90, but the ebook is only $9.99. Don’t be a cheapskate.

When I asked what people completely new to Buber should dig into first—how they should order their first dive into the life and ideas of this empathetic Jewish philosopher famous for his ideas on relational thinking—he recommends some books at the tail end of the podcast (before Brody’s recommendations, I recommend you read a way-too-short and over-simplified snapshot about Buber here, and if you’re into philosophy, head here):

I and Thou, in many old and new versions all over, here in a 100th anniversary reissue
Buber’s Hasidic stories (here or here, all available in earlier cheaper editions, too) about the great Eastern European rabbis—and the first of them, the Ba’al Shem Tov—from the past few centuries who focused on making Judaism more attainable and emotional overly scholarly and intellectual
Thinker Paul Mendes-Flohr, of blessed memory—either reading his book on Buber or watching a talk he gave about the book in synagogue
“Then after that,” Brody says in our interview, “you can read my book.”

After speaking to Brody, I think about the clash of politics and theology in a way, way different way. So this interview was, without exaggerating, eye-opening and mind-shifting for me.

May it be for you, too!

View Details

Religions emphasize, in different measure at different times and for different reasons, belief/theology and practice/ritual/tradition.

Judaism, in general, is a religion that focuses more on practice than belief. And it famously has multiple ways to remain “tied in” to the ethnoreligious tribe: To be Jewish is to do Jewish religion, to be Jewish is to be a part of the tribal nation of Israel (as differentiated from the secular state today), and to be Jewish is to be a part of the tribe of Jewish people. Religion. Nation. Tribe.

Traditionally, you are a Jew whether you believe in God or not, but other religions aren’t so forgiving on the point. Can you be a Christian without believing Christ is Lord? Can you be a Muslim if you don’t believe Muhammad was a prophet? But you can deny God and remain in the Jewish people.

All that to say, when I was studying for conversion more than 20 years ago, one of my favorite books was not about the practice of Judaism, but the range of belief systems available to those under the umbrella of Judaism: Finding God by Rabbi Rifat Sonsino. When a student of mine said she was questioning the existence of the Jewish God, I offered her parents a few books to read with her, and one of them was this one. I was happy to see Rabbi Sonsino had updated the book as well as written others.

When I reached out to him, and this was me really reaching for the stands, I was thrilled to hear he’d talk to me about theology and his books. This podcast episode is the result.

If you’re interested in Jewish theology and thinking about God in general, our conversation will be interesting and enlightening. If you, like Rabbi Sonsino, find the rational/scientific/modern world is quite impressive, and your ideas about God are flavored or curtailed by that, Rabbi Sonsino is your jam.

In the ideal world, you’d want to read more after hearing this. Great! Start with Rabbi Sonsino himself. His blog is free and updated at least monthly.

Want to dig into books covering the wide range of Jewish theology in Rabbi Sonsino’s bibliography? Consider:

Finding God: Selected Responses (Behrman House);
or The Many Faces of God (Behrman House), which relies on wonderfully chosen direct excerpts from modern thinkers.

Interested in Rabbi Sonsino’s own exploration of theology and the God-wrestling he describes in this episode? Try:

6 Jewish Spiritual Paths: A Rationalist Looks at Spirituality (Jewish Lights);
And God Spoke These Words: The Ten Commandments and Contemporary Ethics (Behrman House), a perfect one for Christians and Jews who draw from these teachings;
or, last but not least, his most recent book, A God We Can Believe In, co-written with Rabbi Richard Agler. This comes with a lengthy, free book-club-like set of discussion questions to put the book’s content to work for you in rolling the idea of God around in your own head.

Whether you believe in God, believe in something god-like, or think the idea has outlived its usefulness, well, hear what Rabbi Sonsino has to say first ...

View Details

I know Ilana from a teaching gig. Ilana's mom asked if I wanted to interview the budding podcaster. I said, of course, sure, absolutely.

You can find everything they're working on around the project of helping kids make a difference in causes they care about at the very well-named Kids4Justice.org. You can also get right to the podcast The Power Pod on Spotify. Episodes are VERY short with snappy music and great guests, and Ilana actually does work to edit a podcast, which I am too much of a sloth to do. They've interviewed musical activists and artist activists, and talked to experts about LGBTQIA+ rights, campaigning, social movements, and protests.

Don't like this episode? It's because I don't put as much work into mine as Ilana does. Go listen to The Power Pod, yo!

View Details

He's a dad. He's a granddad. He was a decades-long sporting goods salesman in his town. And he worries about the negativity in the world today and wanted to take a stab at sharing the philosophy that helps him.

That's Larry Stigsell and his new book, Looking Through Our Eyes of Curi Osity.

I knew Larry through his son; we used to work together in B2B publishing.

I think you get a feel for Larry's energy and goodwill, and the evergreen sensibility at the base of his advice to everybody, in the new book, this interview, and his fun experimentation with videos on YouTube.

If you're ever thought of self-publishing a book, take a ride on Larry's magic carpet for a bit in this episode and try to heat up a bit in the joyful energy for his confidence and friendliness ...

P.S. The cool thumbnail from the book cover is from Larry's graphic-designer son. You can find that dude, Shawn Stigsell, on LinkedIn.

View Details

It’s been a few weeks now that I’ve been keeping a commonplace book. A few hours after discovering the concept and chasing some internet rabbit holes, I found Richard Orodenker, a former Temple University faculty member, who uses a commonplace book, has studied historical examples of them, and used them as projects in some of “Intellectual Heritage” classes with college students.

I immediately contacted him and asked if he’d be interviewed on the books, their use, and his practice and study with him.

He agreed. And, thus, another episode of What People Do was borne ... tada!

Orodenker employs a commonplace book with quotations and things from books he’s read on the right-hand side of a journal spread, and his own journaling thoughts and reflections on the left-hand side. Commonplace books are sometimes nothing but scrawled notes, and other times gorgeous, intricate, and artistically wondrous works from artists and scientists.

I have found the commonplace book helpful as a way to note, reflect on, and re-read things that jumped out at me in all the things I try (new psychology exercises, new spiritual exercises, journaling) and all the things I read (nonfiction, prayers, poems, websites, articles). I keep my commonplace book and journal separate for now, but maybe someday I’ll swing the Orodenker way and throw them together!

If you love smart professors, old things made new again, and journaling, reading and self-reflection, this episode is a must-listen.

For further exploration:

Orodenker’s The Common Place Book Project appears here.
If you’re into baseball and the Philaldephia Phillies (they’re my arbitrarily chosen MLB team), enjoy this. Orodenker has written about sports writing for some more scholarly works as well, including this and this.

View Details

KJ Davis is a self-described "working neurodivergent matriach, military vet spouse, small business owner, and descriptive fantasy sci-fi author." All the aspects were interesting to me (we didn't talk the "military vet spouse" part, sorry).

The idea of a small business that serves to help creatives take their burning passions to the people is a neat one. What if you're shy, nervous, inexperienced, afraid of failure, or have other social or psychological issues that make it hard to take those first steps in self-promotion to get your name out there?

That's what KJ does ...

Note: This episode is a special bonus episode featuring a sponsor at our local game convention, Kantcon, which is dope and you should check it out every year. The 2024 one is July 5-7!

For further enjoyment:

Visit KJ's website here. There, you can find absolutely everything about all of her clients (art! snacks! books!), see some creativity-friendly merch to buy, and check out her fantasy novel series.

View Details

Noah Gibbs is a fellow tabletop gamer and Kansas City metro local. But he’s got even stronger feelings about the local gaming and convention community than me. He’s been working with a charity convention to raise funds for local causes for a few years. He still games regularly (I’ve lapsed). And, guess what, his connections at local gaming conventions led him to the Kansas City metro years ago. Folks he’d met at Kantcon helped get him established here. He met his wife. Now he’s a proud dad, too.

Find out more about Noah, his volunteer work at Meeple-a-thon, the joys of gaming and nonprofits ... and answer the question, “Sorry, umm, what’s a meeple?”

Note: This episode is a special bonus episode featuring a sponsor at our local game convention, Kantcon, which is dope and you should check it out every year. The 2024 one is July 5-7!

For further enjoyment:

Noah Gibbs is assistant director of Meeple-a-thon, which runs Sept. 27-29, 2024. In the area? Come play! Just want to donate? Click here!
Meeple-a-thon is sponsoring the Paint and Take table at Kantcon July 5-7, 2024. (See? It takes a village to make conventions happen!)
Meeple-a-thon supports various nonprofits (A Turning Point!), but its biggest recipient remains Hillcrest Platte County’s Youth Housing Program.
Noah’s Paint and Take legacy predecessor is Michelle Farnsworth, whose commission website is “Mini Painter, Ink” here. Go check out her stuff!
The miniatures Noah 3D prints are cat people from Kawna Minis. You can find them here.
Games mentioned in this podcast:
- Advanced Dungeons & Dragons
- Red-box Dungeons & Dragons
- Fistful of Seamen
- BattleTech
- KeyForge
- Warhammer 40K
- Alpha Strike
- Marvel: Crisis Protocol
- Star Wars: Shatterpoint
- Carcassonne
- Betrayal Legacy (based on Betrayal at House on the Hill).

View Details

Georgios is a philosophy student and one who brings others along with him. Now, when I say he’s a philosophy student, you think, ahh, he’s taking a class.

No.

Georgios has a job. He lives in the real world with us outside academia. But he carves out time to study Aristotle and other writers and thinkers for fun and wisdom in the time he isn’t working.

That’s so amazing, this is my second time interviewing him. My first one looked at Socrates, Aristotle and what to do with this life.

This new one considers a new book from Georgios’ working group of thinkers wrestling with a more obscure work of Aristotle’s: The Categories.

It sounds like it’ll be boring, but if you’re into clumsily asked philosophical questions answered with passion by a Greek, well, here you are!

For further enjoyment:

Read Georgios’ Substack on his and other group members’ insights into the Aristotle readings. Here are collected summaries from Chapter 1 and Chapter 2.
Join Tom and Georgios in Aristotle’s Organon Study Group Zoom Link every Tuesday 08:30pm CET/14:30pm EST.
Check out Georgios’ Reddit post here for details on buying his book. Just 5EUR for the ebook to anyone who Paypals him at theduedissident@protonmail.com and mentions Brendan! Or you can buy it on Amazon, too.
Dive into Georgios’ own subreddit, Philosophy of the Frontier. “Here, you will find philosophical content that I have written in the past two years,” he says.

View Details

This episode gets into every angle of a musical instrument you’ve, for sure, heard yet may not know what it’s called.

Elliot Kanshin Kallen touches on the history of this Japanese flute, the emotions you can conjure from it, how it compares to other breath instruments, and, best of all, plays some notes for us a few times to make a point. We even talk a little Zen Buddhism (because it ties into the history and use of the instrument).

The angle of the mouth ... how many holes and why ... its complicated popularity and disappearance in Japanese music over the centuries ... and where it shows up now ... it's all here.

This is a must-listen for fans of music and Japanese history.

For further enjoyment:

See Kallen play in this short video.
Visit Kallen’s website here.
Visit the International Shakuhachi Society, where Kallen is president and archive curator, here.
If you’re in Sonoma County at the right, check out the Sonoma County Matsuri, a celebration of Japanese arts and culture in California.
Kallen makes musical recommendations during this podcast, but here are a few in our conversation and some that didn’t make it in:
Shakuhachi Music: A Bell Ringing in the Empty Sky from Yamaguchi Goro (Nonesuch)
The Japanese Flute by Miyata Kohachirō(Nonesuch)
Anything from Kallen's friend, Riley Lee, who jokingly says, if you’re in a place and hear New Age-y music with a shakuhachi, well, it’s probably him (website)

View Details

It’s a new year, 2024, and that means James Gomes re-read Siddhartha by Herman Hesse for the umpteenth time. It’s a short book, it’s in the public domain, and Gomes says he gets something new out of it every time.

I know that happened for me. He set up an online book club, and I read along with him. I had read the book a few years ago, and based on my reading this time, I didn’t remember as much as I’d thought. I got new insights, but like most things in my brain, they passed away.

We touch on the biggest themes of existence, life, death, purpose, and more in a wide-ranging discussion this time. They are not resolved. There are big unanswered questions about who the hero is, who's right, and who's wrong. The ending is ambiguous, or open to interpretation. You can get something new every time you read it.

Enjoy. :)

For further reading:

You can read see the start to Gomes' Siddhartha reading plan and its resulting posts here.
You can read a translation of the book here.
You can listen to my last conversation with Gomes on the book here.

View Details

I interviewed Kevin Jones about soft skills in security and law enforcement work for another podcast here. I enjoyed the conversation so much, and I was so intensely curious about his work in law enforcement, that I asked him to drop in for this podcast to talk about his career in law enforcement as well, near the end, about his transition to private security at a regional airport and now overseeing safety programs in a school district.

Everyone has an opinion about cops, but there aren’t many easy ways to try to get behind the curtain of law enforcement and ask what it’s like to be a cop.

Kevin delivers.

View Details

I met the Stoics a long time ago, as an adult, sitting in a field outside a local library and reading Epictetus’ Enchiridion (the Handbook). In fact, it was probably one of these copies.

Well, before Epictetus, there were the Cynics, and their philosophy was a little harder to follow. The famous Diogenes lived more like the animals than the Greeks around him, enjoying the sunshine, wearing whatever he could find, eating whatever he could find. A famous anecdote has him living in a large wine cask, and Alexander the Great asking him, with respect, what boon he could offer. To paraphrase, “If you could move a little to the left, you’re in my light.”

So, the Cynical philosophy makes for good anecdotes, inspiring countercultural ideas, and a way of life that is probably out of reach of the average person … who doesn’t want to be homeless, wear rags, and live modestly and easily on whatever can be scrounged up.

That’s a very rambling way of saying I saw a new translation of the Cynics at my local Barnes & Noble, and I jumped on it … then jumped on hunting an interview with the translator, M. D. Usher. And he’d written a marvelous assortment of other books—academic ones, popular and accessible ones, and even ones for kids.

If you’re interested in practical philosophy and its connection to animals, us, and the web of life we share … well, enjoy my discussion with Mark Usher, the Lyman-Roberts Professor of Classical Languages and Literature in the Department of Geography and Geosciences at the University of Vermont in Burlington …

For further reading:

How to Say No: An Ancient Guide to the Art of Cynicism (Princeton University Press, 2022)
How to Be a Farmer: An Ancient Guide to Life on the Land (Princeton University Press, 2021), which covers some new, bad-ass translations of short pieces on interconnectedness, homesteading and agriculture from millennia ago.
Plato’s Pigs and Other Ruminations: Ancient Guides to Living With Nature (Cambridge University Press, 2020) expounds and illustrates Usher’s ideas, drawn from ancient philosophy, about our place among the other animals.
Diogenes (2009) and Wise Guy: The Life and Philosophy of Socrates (2005), available used here and here, kid-friendly picture books on the two great thinkers
A 10-year-old article about Usher as an alumnus of University of Chicago

View Details

There is a beautifully un-nail-down-able question-and-answer I have been rolling around, like a stone in a rock polisher, for many years now: What is consciousness?

It’s the big thing that seems to separate us from other animals: We are conscious or self-reflective or imaginative or reasoning in a way that other creatures, great and small, do not seem to be.

This quest, which has carried around in the world of neurologists, psychologists, philosophers, theologians, self-help gurus, physicists and more ...led me to Adam Toon, an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Exeter.

His most recent book, Mind as Metaphor: A Defence of Mental Fictionalism (2023, Oxford University Press), discusses a related question he himself has been noodling on: What if our consciousness can make more sense if we admit that many of the truths of reality we hold are convenient fictions? We know some ideas we hold about ourselves and the world aren't true, or not totally true, but they’re useful or convenient or accessible or … well, lots of things.

What if we admit things that aren’t real are useful to believe? Is that the way we can better understand some part of this weird reason, consciousness, self-awareness we seem to have?

Let us find out, and along the way discover what brings a former math-and-theoretical-physics-obsessed guy to the world of thinking about science, not just doing science.

Further stuff you might like:

Adam also wrote in 2012, as part of a "New Directions in the Philosophy of Science" series, Models as Make-Believe: Imagination, Fiction and Scientific Representation.

A favorite book of mine on mind is A Strange Loop by Douglas Hofstadter. If you were ever to read it, I would certainly re-read it and discuss it with you!

A favorite podcast of mine on consciousness is Buddhist. The Amaravati Monastery, like Toon in the U.K., shares episodes online here.

View Details

I enjoyed working for a few years with David Doherty with a multimedia publishing and events company in veterinary medicine.

My favorite part was, every couple months, I'd go break into his office, sit down and ask him about sales. I thought his philosophy was fascinating. I don't like sales, but if I had to think about sales, heart about sales, wrap my head around sales ... I enjoyed doing it with Doherty.

Today, Doherty is VP of Market Development with Coffman Group, a franchisee of the Sandler Training method. The Sandler book Doherty mentions is on my to-read list, because if he likes it, I want to read it.

ANYway, whether you hate sales and selling, or you're super interested in it, I guarantee this interview will pay off. There's both high-level thinking and in-the-trenches advice (just a skosh). My favorite part is, David was a killer salesperson, then led salespeople ... but he had to both reinvent himself and get back to basics with a new, shared vocabulary for sales when he wound up in his latest gig with Coffman.

Everyone sells, even if you don't like to think about it (me). Why not come up with a better mindset around the work ... and consider small tactics that might tweak your selling for the better?

Further research:

David Sandler wrote a number of books, and Sandler Training has reworked them with new titles especially to take account of the changes in our life from the late 20th century (no internet) to now (internet everything). Because I like older books, I'll eventually read some version of Sandler's You Can't Teach a Kid to Ride a Bike at a Seminar. But if you're interested in more modern titles, there are a slew of "books and job-aids" offered here.
You can reach Doherty from Coffman Group's website here.

View Details

I used to work at a magazine for video store owners. By the time I’d gotten there, it was a vanity publication for the gigantic red-headed stepchildren of Hollywood: home entertainment companies. You know, the big money and focus went into the movies heading to cinema, and direct-to-video/DVD/Blu-ray and the home release of those movies was … not as cool, not as big, etc.

My interviewee, Mike Keller, has been collecting videos, DVDs and Blu-rays for a long time now. We discuss the transition we’ve all lived through: It seemed like everyone was buying video in various formats for their home collections … and then … they weren’t. I mean, everything’s streaming, right? But Keller keeps on keepin’ on. After all, you never know when that streaming service is going to get rid of that TV show or movie … and then … no more watching for you!

If you like movies, movie collecting, collecting, or walks down Memory Lane … you’ll love this chat.

And, yes, that's Keller's wall of awesome home entertainment in his own home ... bask in its glory ... :)

Last bonus! Because Keller’s favorite genre of movie is horror, he ponied up a couple lists for you to peruse. Thanks, Mike! You can find out where to watch these streaming on JustWatch.com or go buy new or used copies on your favorite e-commerce website ... or, y'know, check your local library!

15 Horror Essentials
(that probably everybody has heard of, but they're still essential!)
(loosely ranked)

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

The Shining

Carrie

Night of the Living Dead

Psycho

The Exorcist

Dracula (1931)

Halloween

Black Christmas

Alien

Poltergeist

Suspiria

Friday the 13th

A Nightmare on Elm Street

The Ring

15 Lesser-Known High-Recommendations

Carnival of Souls (1962)

The Midnight Hour (1985)

Slumber Party Massacre (1982)

Spider Baby (1967)

Prison (1987)

The Gate (1987)

Manhunter (1986)

The Vanishing (1988)

Prince of Darkness (1987)

Phantasm (1979)

Psycho II (1983)

Slugs (1988) (completely hilarious)

Superstition (1982)

The Brain (1988)

Pin (1988)

View Details

I stumbled onto James Gomes (pronounced "GOHMZ," not "GOH-mez") on Reddit.com, which I have since abandoned as a forum for anything other than dumb questions, confirmation bias and echo chambers.

However, I found a few interesting people along the way, like James. We were both into old books, and I was surprised to hear he'd read and re-read a particular book, like, every year ... for many years.

In this episode, we find out the particular pull of Herman Hesse's Siddhartha for James as well as how a non-reader became a regular and repeating reader at all.

Spend this conversation with us thinking about why you read and whether repeat readings help or comfort you.

Further reading:

Tired of hearing about the treat and want to see a dog going hard on a Yummy Combs treat? Here's a video.
Roetheli mentions the Lil' Red Foundation. Find out more about his and his wife's philanthropic work here.
Read more from the Animal Health Digest and subscribe here (it's free!).

View Details

It started before college. But when he showed up and could organize his life and calendar the way he wanted, well, there was so much TV to watch. All the time. And Michael Strumsky hit college during not “destination television,” but during the era of DVDs and online show sharing. He could watch and re-watch shows all the time, at all hours, any time of day.

What did he do? What did he do?

He eased up. He got busy. Let’s see how it went …

Want more Michael? He interviews people more than interesting than him on the appropriately named People More Interesting Than Me. Subscibe and listen now!

View Details

I read books all the time, but very, very rarely do I read a book more than once.

That was Leo Tolstoy’s Confession. I had seen references to the Russian great’s short work of religion, morality and personal experience.

Basically, Tolstoy hit middle age, wildly successful as an author with a happy family, and he wanted to die by suicide. For years, he struggled, and the short work is the story of his despair, his reasonable questioning, and the way out he found (it wasn’t suicide).

Today, David Patterson is a literature and history professor at the University of Texas, Dallas. And, years ago, he translated the version of Confession that I read. I was delightfully shocked when he agreed to be interviewed about the work. (I reference this conversation in a dream here.)

Here, David talks Tolstoy, religion, and the meaning of life with me.

Want to learn more?

David Patterson’s translation is available used and in a newer edition (Barnes & Noble).
If you read Tolstoy's Confession and are equally blown away, you can join me in reading other works infused with themes of religion and the meaning of life here.
Patterson is currently working on his 41st book. Eighteen Words to Sustain a Life: A Jewish Father's Ethical Will (available wherever fine books are sold, like Barnes & Noble) is David’s living ethical will of advice and thought in the Jewish tradition and by Cascade Books.

View Details

There are some dudes who play cricket in a big grassy field out here between a walking trail and some suburban homes. There’s a long stretch of concrete in this Kansas suburban field, and a port-a-potty nearby. Some Saturdays I would walk by and see these guys out there, but I felt weird about stopping and asking about their game of cricket.

So, I found Ganesh online. And he answered all my dumb questions. And I think … I THINK … I understand the mechanics of the game and its appeal.

Among me asking questions over and over to try to figure out the rules of cricket, Ganesh shares why the sport has a such a powerful appeal for Indians: It’s as if it was made by England for India … “a true Desi sport,” he says.

Take it away, Ganesh.

P.S. Here are some links if you want to learn more about the 1983 Cricket World Cup, the second One Day World Cup in 2011, and that movie about the fascinating national hero and cricket champion, M.S. Dhoni (watch it on Hulu).

View Details

Some content creators get so busy that they can't find time to plan, film, edit, post and promote their own stuff online. They turn to a growing international corps of creatives to do it.

This guy’s one. His favorite claim to fame right now? Editing a Minecraft video from Mr. Beast that now has 1.7 million views. Holy crap snacks.

Now, he might be off to his next greatest adventure, leaving rural northwestern America for … urban Florida!

Find him at tssvideoediting.com.

Let’s dig into the calm but cool world of this video editor …

View Details

In recent years, I have fallen back in love with New Age, space music, and the droning, atmospheric, accessible Neoclassical genre. Imagine music to TV shows, movies and moods that don’t exist … or only exist in the composers’ and performers’ own heads.

Works like Max Richter’s Sleep and Johann Johannson’s Virðulegu Forsetar have played and replayed in my head as I lie on my bed dozens of times now. Their droning but moving parts, atmospheric sound and noise, and accessible melody and harmony, slow and calming and transporting … I can’t get enough.

That’s why a chance to interview Hipster Pug, a maker of Neoclassical, ambient and experimental music, was exciting.

Forgive some of my excited, stumbling questions. Settle in and discover why we both love these genres and how this new musician fell in love with, not just listening, but making the work himself …

Want a flavor before we start? I mention his “journey of dreams.” Listen right here on Bandcamp. If you like it, throw him a few bucks and buy the whole thing!

Want to dive into Neoclassical, to see what’s what? Here are some artists and selections discussed during (or after we finished recording) this episode:

“Infra 5” from Max Richter’s Infra (one of our guest’s favorites), here on YouTube
Orphée from Johann Johannson
“Particles” from Ólafur Arnauld’s Island Songs, here on YouTube
nouveau chapitre EP and Neon Noir album from Hipster Pug himself
artists from the label that carries Hipster Pug, Monochrome Motif, focusing on “Post Classical,” “Cinematic” and “Electronica” music

Want my favorite work these days? This is it: spoken word, machine noise, manipulated vocals, beautiful drones and music.

View Details

I stumbled onto James Payne on Reddit.com, where he asked folks in my town if they’d go check on, and take measurements of, a big piece of public art he’d loaned to the city a few years ago.

I know that art! I’ve gotta talk to this guy!

And he agreed.

I got to ask Payne about his art sensibilities, how he got entranced by big sculptures, and the moment spirals grabbed his attention.

If all went as planned, I went out at the end of May to spend an hour or two meeting Payne in person and watching a team slowly dismantle his sculpture for relocation to Colorado. And if all went as planned, Payne has continued to garner new opportunities to make and showcase more big, big art.

You can find the most up-to-date online gallery of Payne’s art at bxiie.com. You can see the installation before it was taken down in Olathe, Kan., at that website titled “Isolation/Wood, Steel/2021.”

He’s in IT today, but some day Payne would like to be a full-time artist. I’d like to see that too. In the meantime, we’ll all take what we can get from him …

View Details

Pamela Topjian published a book last year about her experience escaping an abusive partner and figuring out how she’d wound up there in the first place: I Didn't Come This Far to Only Come THIS Far.

She was once trapped in a terrible marriage. Now, she lives a life she says she never expected to live. How did she get from there … to here?

She tells us.

You can, of course, run off and read Topjian’s book on Kindle. Or you can check out her evolving channel of thinking, hypnotherapy and meditation here on YouTube.

As I say at the end of this episode, I am most excited to read her upcoming book about her experience as a nurse. YAY! Something to look forward to this year!!!

I Didn't Come This Far, to Only Come THIS Far: A true story of my own journey through a life of betrayal, abuse and neglect. To one of peace, love and freedom.

View Details

I can’t share his name, but he calls in from France. He wanted to join the military, and he’s serving a five-year stint. He’s gotten promotions, and after basic training, he got into exactly the unit he yearned for. He doesn’t regret his choice to join the military. He wanted a unique, powerful experience. He wanted to join that brotherhood of men and women that develops only when you’re pushed your limit, under fire, in danger, and exhausted. He found what he wanted.

He also found Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and he sought help at the urging of his girlfriend (now his fiancee). It helped.

The good, the bad … his life in the military. Let’s get started …

View Details

The folks at the gaming convention Kantcon let me interview Gabi Dyck of Gamer Girl Jewelry recently to help me help them promote my favorite gaming convention in the country. (Full disclosure: It's them. They're my favorite. But I’ve only ever been to Kantcon over and over again for years, so I’m biased.)

You’d think with tabletop RPGs roughly 50 years old that hand-made dice would have totally been a thing by now. But Gabi Dyck, founder of Gamer Girl Jewelry, told me that hand-made dice are relatively new. Turns out, there’s a lot of equipment that makes it a more complicated hobby and business than, say, crochet (which, yes, Gabi has also enjoyed).

It all started when Gabi saw her first set of handmade dice (bought for her by her partner—a keeper!). She was captivated and knew she had to make dice-making her business. That’s why, today, it’s her full-time job to make shiny dice, colorful dice, dice that sparkle, and dice with sparkles inside that move—like functional snow globes that double as a gamer’s best friend.

You can find Gabi most active online on TikTok @gamergirljewelry, which includes a link to all her socials, storefronts and favorite ways to reach her.

Listen in if you’re into arts, crafts, hobbies, gaming, or just really excited entrepreneurs …

P.S. The pic here showcases one of the cool dice dragon guardians that Gabi makes and talks about in the episode. One of her hand-made d20s is nestled in the crook of its tail. If you like the dragon or the dice, well, you'll like Gabi's work.

View Details

Ultimately, I think the fundamental question we tumble into, like rolling down a mountain of sharp, rocky points, bloodied and bruised at the bottom of the Mountain of Life time and time again, is, “What are we supposed to do with this life?” The philosophers phrase this question in many ways: What is good? What is God? What is truth? What is kindness? Why do we gather together? What are the best ways to gather together? Why do we rule and consent to be ruled, and what are the ways to do that?

On and on and on.

But, really, isn’t the question also about work, action, energy, initiative, direction, drive, desire, purpose? “What do I do next?”

My thinking about activity and work as paramount might be because I’ve got it on the brain because I’m reading Work by James Suzman. But, if not work, then play? And if not play, then charitable helping? And if not charitable helping, then family or friends?

We are alive. We are doing things.

In that vein, this rambling (and, yes, I’m the one who gets lost during the conversation and is always trying to get found) chat between me and my favorite Greek mirrors the wandering ways of our first conversation. We’ve talked before—last time about Thucydides.

We were going to talk about Plato’s Protagoras. But we hint at another dialogue that focuses, like Protagoras, on sophists, guys who get paid to teach other people how to sway people in conversation or debate. That’s Gorgias. But then we were going to talk about Aristotle.

My favorite part, by far, of this conversation is the end: Georgios’ analogy of “Society as a Board Game.” Don’t miss it. And Socrates’ answer? Well … that’s the last few seconds of the podcast …

So, all that to say, if you get lost, go read a translation of either of those dialogues. Here are two:

I read Jowett’s translation of Protagoras, and I suspect Georgios did, too. Here ya go.
And Jowett’s Gorgias? Tada.

The picture? That's supposed to be Protagoras. But my buddy told me last time I stuck in a bust of an ancient, I got it wrong. So ... I think this is Protagoras.

View Details

Josh was an atheist.

But Josh’s mind was blown, in a good way, in experiences where he consumed psychedelic drugs.

Here, he talks about his pre-psychedelic world, his mind shift, how religions might be onto something, and the benefits and dangers of psychedelics in this one.

Let me be clear: In talking to Josh openly about his experiences, I am not recommending anyone follow his path. I’m not telling you it would be good for you, personally, to use particular drugs, or drugs at all. That’s a personal choice for grown adults, folks. Josh uses the drugs to learn things about himself, loved ones and the world, not bliss out at parties. Listen all the way to the end for Josh’s story of one psychedelic experience he had that was a very, very unpleasant one.

If you are toying with the idea of trying out psychedelics sometime in the future, Josh says, as unexciting as it is, you need to do your homework first. Research, research, research. And on that note …

To feed further curiosity

Josh’s podcast, Pursuit of Infinity: Get on it.
Josh also name-drops the Psychedelics Today website as an excellent resource.

View Details

Beth Mayorga hosts her own podcast, The Fan Fic Maverick. What is “fan fic”? The definition is always being fought over in online forums, but Beth says it simply: You’re writing stories using someone else’s IP (intellectual property).

An early form of this in the 1960s that Beth and I mention are Star Trek stories written by fans shared way before the internet was big about Kirk and Spock’s evolving relationship outside the "approved" TV show—sometimes romantically. No, that doesn’t mean all fan fic is erotic fantasy. Any time a writer or a creator makes stories using someone else’s characters, that’s fan fic.

But, wait, wait: Isn’t that what happens in myth? Heck yeah it is. So, in this convo, we situate fan fic in its wider place in literature as the newest outgrowth of a practice that’s thousands of years old: making up new stories using characters you didn’t make up.

To feed further curiosity Ready to dive in? You’ve got two options.

Head to Archive of Our Own, which is jammed with one of the internet’s biggest repository of fan fic on just about anything you love. Pick a character you love. A theme you want expressed. A story from movie, TV or books you want continued. Dive in.
Go the podcast route, and join Beth and Sara as they feature a two-part fan fic history in their two podcasts: Part 1 is at Sara’s Talkin’ Fanfic, and Part 2 is on Beth’s podcast.

Dig Beth? She promises, at the end of our interview, that she’s working on some written, video or podcast stuff on the history and culture of fan fiction writers. YAY!

Enjoy. :)

View Details

What is spina bifida? What is it like living with the ongoing of the birth defect as a creative twentysomething American?

Noah Mussay talks about childhood, school, work, life and sled hockey, and gives us a few pointers on the way he prefers strangers ask about his condition (hint: be curious, not entitled).

Note: After the last question here, I asked Noah what he does for fun outside of work and his former sled hockey days. He said he’s reading Robert Jordan gigantic “Wheel of Time” series. He talked me into it, and I’ve got a copy of the first book coming from the library. I'm 48 now, and I tried to read it way, way back when it first started in 1990, when I was 15. Thanks, Noah. I’ll let you know what I think.

Second note: Noah says he's noodling around the idea of doing a podcast where he talks to other people about their lives with disabilities. He's got a great voice and ideas, so I really, really hope he does. I'd listen!

View Details

Jeffery D. Long spoke to me last year about religious pacifism, especially in reference to the brand-new book he co-edited (and wrote chapters for), Nonviolence in the World’s Religions: A Concise Introduction (Routledge, 2022).

Now, the Carl W. Ziegler Professor of Religious Studies at Elizabethtown College talks to me about a book coming out this year: Discovering Indian Philosophy: An Introduction to Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist Thought (Bloomsbury, coming 2023). It’s a sneak peek! And I am incredibly interested in the topic. I have delved into Buddhism, which had its start in India way back when. And I’ve been fascinated by the study of Americans who brought Eastern philosophy and religion back with them in the back half of the 20th century.

Long, however, a convert to Hinduism, wanted to do his part of help place Indian philosophy not only in its place in world religion, but in the Philosophy Department proper.

What can we learn about what we think and how we think from the great traditions of the Indian subcontinent without silo-ing those ideas just in religion?

I was hungry to learn, and Long thrilled me with answers to questions I didn’t even know I had ...

Photo by Navneet Shanu

View Details

There is a joy that comes with interviewing someone about something you are deeply familiar with. You have lots of follow-up questions. You have lots of chances to push back. You know what to joke about to show inside knowledge and how to carry the interviewee deeper and deeper into the shared pool.

There is another joy that comes with interviewing someone about something you know nothing about. Well, OK, to be fair, Adam Gray and I both teach languages, and we both play video games (check out his podcast here).

But Taiwan? Nothing. I got nothing. It's off the coast of China? There's some disagreement about who should be in charge of it, and what that looks like? That's it.

So, I was delighted to get Adam's immigrant take. He has spent 16-ish years teaching “cram school” there, where students finish up their day at regular school then spend hours in the afternoon and evening in English immersion classes with Adam and thousands of other teachers around the island.

So, I get to learn from Adam what it’s like to leap into a new country with a new career, live overseas for more than a decade, wrestle with the Chinese language, explore Chinese and Taiwanese politics as a bystander, and, generally, enjoy and flourish living in a new country.

Adam’s got a voice for radio, answers every question I have, and seems like a bright example of a success story on a career path that many English speakers, all over the world, dive into: teaching your native language around the world.

We end on a discussion about something I find particularly interesting: the generational changes, as parents who went through strict and stressful education want their kids to have it easier, but wind up, maybe, making it harder for their kids to learn what they need to know.

Image of Kaohsiung City in Taiwan by tingyaoh from Pixabay

View Details

I spoke to a veterinarian-and-amateur-historian recently, and he turned me onto the Crusades. I’ll admit, I hadn’t thought much about them beyond the basic line: zealous Christians from Europe led failed (and very bloody) military attempts to hold Jerusalem and other parts of Jesus' old stomping grounds. The leaders, I remembered, were surely motivated by greed and holy-war violence.

Not so fast, says professor emeritus John France. The truth of things is more nuanced and multifaceted, but, yes, still very violent and bloody. But this medieval historian argues compellingly that, well, we forget, as moderns, just how bloody medieval Europe was—how violence was a common experience for generation after generation there. France was there in academia for a slow sea change in medieval history, where they revisited the myth that all these crusaders were hungry for power and gold. (They actually spent a lot of their own money on these religious excursions.)

Find out what you didn’t know about the Crusades with the brilliant professor emeritus from Swansea University in Wales, the delightful and thoughtful John France ...

To Feed Further Curiosity:

I have been reading an edition of The Concise History of the Crusades by Thomas F. Madden. It has a lot of names and locations that are hard to track, and it goes by pretty fast, but Madden writes with an excited, passionate voice and carries me through the moments when I get lost and hope to find purchase in the timeline again. Most illuminating are the different reasons and results of the separate crusades and groups gathered up under the umbrella of “crusading.”
France credits Jonathan Riley-Smith (The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading) with helping to change the vision of the Crusades from ruthless power grab to a more nuanced take.
France himself has written some academic books covered here. If you really want to go down the rabbit trail of medieval military tactics and history, France mentions De Re Militari.

View Details

The very kind academic Monica Kirkpatrick Johnson answered questions about teenagers in society last year on this podcast. At the time, she told me she was a helping hand in research done right at the beginning of the COVID pandemic, say, March 2020.

The research had to do with social norms, Dr. Kirkpatrick Johnson told me, and her colleague—Washington State University sociology professor Dr. Christine Horne—could tell me more.

Well, she did.

Dr. Horne and I discuss sociology, American culture, a little about her biggest bit of research (bridewealth, paid from groom's family to bride's family, in Ghana), and a lot about the research she did about brand-new social norms that developed, in real time, during the pandemic in 2020.

What are social norms? Are they good or bad … enervating or oppressive … both? And how did Democrats and Republicans judge each other for their choices about mask-wearing, vaccine-taking, shopping and store-closing during the pandemic?

You’re not done with COVID until you’ve done a little reflection and processing with us …

To feed further curiosity:

Read one of Dr. Horne's co-written bridewealth research papers here.
Read the abstract for Dr. Horne’s COVID paper here.

Note: There’s some weird crinkling on some of this audio. I think, maybe, a camera was focusing in and out, and you could hear it on the mic. Honestly, I am becoming increasingly fascinated by the live sound artifacts that get captured electronically. Sorry about that. But, y’know, this podcast is free, so beggars can’t be choosers. And Dr. Horne is so interesting, I’d listen to her thoughts on society and sociology through a loud wind storm. YMMV.

View Details

Retired historian Dr. Jeremy Black has now allowed me to interview him three times. THREE TIMES. He gets an award for entertaining my curiosity.

In each interview, he dances through a historian’s perspective and answers both detailed questions about fiddly bits of the world’s past as well as giving detailed and thoughtful big-picture answers about war, religion and life in general.

In this episode, Jeremy discusses A History of the Second World War in 100 Maps (2020, The University of Chicago Press). He kicks off by explaining some wanted the book to be yet another chronological map book (1939, 1940, etc., etc.), but he pushed back to organize it along thematic threads and made sure many countries’ maps were represented.

Interested in history, maps, World War II, propaganda, racism, why German Nazis weren’t as great as some say they were (including themselves), and, lastly, why we ignore old-fashioned weapons like artillery in favor of obsessing over drones? Jeremy Black will interest you.

P.S. Jeremy likes maps so much, he’d make a map book a year (he’s already got a rail map idea). Publishers, he’s proven his prolific output (he has published 11 history books in 2022 alone).

Caveat: There’s a delightful grandfather clock chiming a few minutes in. I left it in, because the chiming is really charming. Why am I suffering with these terrible smartphone beeps when the time could be announced in this way in my own apartment?

To Feed Further Curiosity:

Jeremy talked with me about Agatha Christie and Sherlock Holmes here. He talked about the big picture of war throughout human history here.
Jeremy recommends other books of his at the end of the podcast. Here are some samples from his corpus:
- A Short History of War (I read it; I liked it)
- Strategy and the Second World War
- Rethinking World War Two: The Conflict and Its Legacy
I talked about maps (and old books) with college professor John Krygier here.

View Details

I regularly search on Amazon for “veterinary business” and “veterinary management” and “business” books. Sometimes to buy, but usually, at first, to find new guests for a veterinary podcast.

That’s how I stumbled into Aaron Gruben’s new book A Theology of Beasts: Christians and Veterinary Medicine. The book brought together two things that fascinate me: DVMs and divinity. I bought it. I read it. I liked it.

The first half of the book is Dr. Gruben’s deep dive into Christians he found in ancient and modern history who contributed to and focused on animal medicine. The back half is a collection of some philosophy and theology that Dr. Gruben has looked into that touch on how Christians can think about their place in the world as women and men of God whose ministry could include healing animals, soothing animals’ suffering, and modeling love for Creation to their clients.

Those who might enjoy the book? Christian veterinarians, Christian pet owners, Christian agriculturalists, Christians with horses (early vet med is a lot of horses), and Christians with teenagers thinking about a career in veterinary medicine.

Those who will enjoy the podcast? Anyone curious about vet med, animals and religion.

Let’s dive in …

To Feed Further Curiosity:

Dr. Gruben also writes time travel fiction and has developed curriculum focusing on chivalry. Chivalry, I wondered. Tell me more. So I asked, and he delivered, including book recommendations for someone who knows next to nothing about the Crusades. Then the author of one of the books Dr. Gruben read about the Crusades agreed to do a podcast interview with me. And then Dr. Gruben wrote me some questions to get me started in my interview with the guy who wrote the book Dr. Gruben liked. Convoluted? Sure. Amazing synchronicity? Heck yeah. That podcast interview, hopefully, will be coming soon ...

View Details

There is the hypnosis done for entertainment—on the stage or in a room of conference-goers. Like, say, this. A hypnotist gathers a group, asks the members to relax, and watches them, with their eyes closed, to see if they’re receptive to the hypnosis. The hypnotist kicks out the ones who are “faking it” or aren’t relaxing. Then the others cluck like chickens or get hot or cold or act silly.

There is another hypnosis, built on the same principles, used as a therapy technique. Ray has used hypnotherapy to help people stop smoking, give up other bad habits, and explore their trauma. That’s the front half of this podcast episode.

In the back half of this episode, we wander into a world less scientific, more “woo woo” and still wickedly fascinating: hypnosis used for past life regression. A woman on Oprah.com wrote about her good experience trying it. A professor at University of Virginia wrote about his concerns about its use. Here’s the Wikipedia article on it. Decide for yourself.

However, I’d urge you to listen to Ray’s poignant account of her very real, very felt experience from past life regression that gave her some insight into her irrational love of water and her obsession with certain colors.

Oh, my experience with hypnosis? I went on two dates with a nice Jewish woman years and years ago, and our first date was to a comedy hypnotist show. I volunteered. She did not. I sat, closed my eyes, and followed the hypnotist’s directions. Breathe this way. Breathe that way. You’re hot. You’re cold. You feel this way. You feel that way. I never felt lost or out of sorts—I was happy doing whatever the hypnotists. But I was always myself; I never lost myself. And that’s how Ray talks about hypnosis. You need to want to be hypnotized, which means you’re not out of control. You’re aware of what’s going, and you’re allowing it to happen. Some people can do it. Some people, in that moment, aren’t ready. Some people hate that.

Caveat: I step on Ray’s introduction (“My name is Ray”), because I’m blathering about some other person’s introduction when we get started. That’s all. Apologies.

To Feed Further Curiosity:

If you want to know more about hypnotherapy, Ray recommended, hey, just go search “hypnotherapy” on the internet and evaluate things yourself. If you want to know about its use in past life regression, do the same thing. But she said she did like a particular book on past life regression, Many Lives, Many Masters, by psychiatrist Dr. Brian L. Weiss.

View Details

Everybody’s talking about mental health these days. That's, by and large, a good thing.

But did you ever wonder why the incidence of diagnosed depression has been skyrocketing even as we talk more openly about our mental and emotional issues? What's going on?

That’s what I talk to retired professor emeritus Dr. Allan Horwitz about. Dr. Horwitz has tilted at the DSM (The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) windmill with books like All We Have to Fear: Psychiatry’s Transformation of Normal Anxieties into Mental Disorders (2012) and The Loss of Sadness: How Psychiatry Transformed Normal Misery into Depressive Disorder (2007). It was that 2007 book that caught my eye recently. In it, Dr. Horwitz and Dr. Jerome Wakefield argue that in the late 20th century, the psychiatric community chose to remove context from its depression diagnoses. Despite centuries (millennia even) of ancient thought and modern psychiatric approaches to anxiety, sorrow and depression that poignantly considered and recognized how great sadness could be an orderly, normal response to terrible circumstances (romantic breakup, divorce, death, illness and other rough life events), American diagnosticians chose in editions of the famous and widely used DSM to ignore almost all context for painful episodes of sadness (save a short period of time for grief after the death of a loved one).

Drs. Horwitz and Wakefield made the pitch to the psychology and medical community that terrible sadness sometimes might be a normal, healthy response in some cases, not a disordered response needing immediate medical intervention … and, of course, pills.

To boil it down: Sometimes you feel bad about life, but you should feel bad about life, because life, in that moment, is bad and hard and hurtful. You may not be crazy! You may be functional and responding appropriately to crappy things. He’s not saying all the people with diagnosed anxiety disorders, depression or trauma should not seek help. He’s saying in some cases, if he had his way, he would counsel “watchful waiting” for medical health professionals to see whether things improve with changes in life circumstances.

Did the psychiatric community listen for later editions to consider more context in diagnosing Major Depressive Disorder? Listen and find out …

Caveat: Nowhere is Dr. Horwitz saying people with mental illness or struggling with mental problems should not seek help. He’s only saying we might not be doing the best service to individuals in need of help—either psychiatric, medicinal, psychological, etc.—if we are diagnosing too many people with more severe mental illness than they actually have.

To Feed Further Curiosity:

A fairly comprehensive listing for Dr. Horwitz’s journal articles and books appears here. Other interesting stand-outs besides the two referenced earlier for non-academic readers who are deeply interested in the topic could also include What's Normal?: Reconciling Biology and Culture and Anxiety: A Short History. All of Horwitz’s works are accessible to laypeople but are deeply researched enough and often focused towards clinicians wrestling with the big picture of “Who’s sick?” and “How do we know it?” and “Are we using the right tools or benchmarks to assess the difference between normal, painful psychic pain and mental disorders?”
Also recommended by Dr. Horwitz is the book Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights Into the Frontiers of Evolutionary Psychology by Dr. Randolph Nesse. Dr. Horwitz says the book is very accessible and covers many of the hypotheses and new ideas that have come out of theories that try to figure out how our current feelings might have developed over the millennia, what they might be trying to do, and how they might be supporting or sabotaging us in the modern world today.

View Details

Veterinarian Dr. Gene Maxwell remembers someone coming up to him after a show in his town where he’d played some easy-going tunes on his guitar, influenced by folk, country, bluegrass, jazz, whatever. And she said his music was relaxing. He was elated inside. Because that’s what sitting and playing guitar does for him today: The tones of the guitar relax him like a feedback loop of calm.

He says everyone’s life at the veterinary hospital is better if he gets 20 minutes of guitar time in before showing up. And he’s never felt the pull to make his life all about the music. The guitars and the equipment to make those heart-pleasing tones sit around his house, and they’re there when he needs them.

Find out what music on the side feels like to this practice-owning animal doctor. Have you neglected that little itch inside to get some deep-down healing from a strum, a blow, a hum, a chant, a thump?

To Feed Further Curiosity:

You can listen to the first album from the band that included Dr. Maxwell, The Company I Keep on Spotify and other streaming services right now. If you want a physical copy of that CD or the follow-up album, they're available $10 each from Dr. Maxwell himself; email him at imbcreative@yahoo.com It would mean a LOT to me if at LEAST one listener bought them the way I did. They're some of the last CDs I bought and held onto ...
Dr. Maxwell has very helpfully put his released solo stuff from the past few years on ReverbNation here.

View Details

I mean, he doesn’t just study Xenophon. Dr. Gregory McBrayer teacher political philosophy and international relations as Director, Core Curriculum, and Assistant Professor of Political Science at Ashland University.

I’ve been on a kick lately reading excerpts from late-19th-early-20th century series. (Find my writing here.) And each time I wrap up a thinker, I thought, “Hey, wouldn’t it be neat if I talked to somebody who knows that thinker better to see if my impressions were right, what I missed, and what cool rabbit trails other people fall down when it comes to that thinker?”

And Dr. McBrayer very kindly agreed to answer some of my questions about Xenophon. The thinker seemed the most modern and readable to me, and Dr. McBrayer agrees. He loves Xenophon, which made this interview pop with enthusiasm for me. Especially interesting is his perspective on the ancient Greek. See, Xenophon was used by students for many, many years to learn and translate from. Why? It’s straight-forward. But Dr. McBrayer says, hey, sure, it’s straightforward and direct. And other folks think Xenophon was the “dumb jock” at the ancient Greek thinker table. But is there more to Xenophon than meets the eye? He sold me on it. Listen to the episode, and maybe you’ll be sold, too. We also talk American politics, touch on Plato and Aristotle, and have a good old time …

To Feed Further Curiosity:

A series of translations (Cornell University’s Agora Editions) of ancient and medieval works includes two Dr. McBrayer mentions. One is edited by him. The other he calls out as his favorite translation of Xenophon’s semi-fictional tale of Cyrus the Younger, which he recommends as folks’ gateway drug to the ancient Greek:
- The Shorter Writings by Xenophon, edited by Dr. McBrayer with one selection translated by him
- The Anabasis of Cyrusby Xenophon, translated by Wayne Ambler.
Dr. McBrayer co-hosts a podcast with two scholarly friends titled The New Thinkery. The discussion wanders from sarcastic ribbing, funny philosophical observations, and very in-depth looks at both philosophy most would consider obscure (medieval Islam, for instance) as well as takes on more familiar films and literature. If you like smart-people-discussion podcasts and don’t mind lots of philosophical digressions and wanderings, then scroll through the titles and find a book, movie or topic you’re interested in and try it out. Dr. McBrayer’s co-hosts include David Bahr (editor of The American Mind) and University of Colorado, Boulder, professor Dr. Alex Priou.
Dr. McBrayer is involved with the Ashbrook Center at Ashland University, “an independent, non-partisan nonprofit with the mission of restoring and strengthening the capacities of the American people for constitutional self-government.” The website teachingamericanhistory.org eats up some of Dr. McBrayer’s time in his quest with others to offer primary documents of American history and government for the world to read online.

View Details

This is my big Episode 50. That’s, like, a milestone, right? And it’s with a nice guy I know, so I like it even more.

I worked with Greg for years at a veterinary publishing and event company. Now, he’s working on revving up his business in commercial photography, which I think is interesting. What is commercial photography? In Greg's case, he specializes in tabletop product pics, headshots, and pet portraits. You know, not artsy-fartsy photographs (although he takes those, too, and they’re real purty), but work for businesses. The kind of shots that leave you smiling at an executive’s facial expression, or curious about a new beer, or intrigued by packaging of just about anything.

In this interview, he drops some tidbits about two basic mistakes people make taking amateur pictures at the end, so stay tuned …

Audio note: Greg’s audio is a little crackly sometimes. Hey—nice guys and gals agree to record interviews with me remotely, and I don’t harangue them about their setup, alright? ALRIGHT? Love you all! :)

To Feed Further Curiosity:

You can find Greg Kindred Photography here. He takes good pictures of anything, he stays calm and collected, and he’s creative.
Here’s a pic of me and Greg with ex-co-workers with that company. I found it in the set of “Events" pics Greg has on the above website. He’s the tall guy in the shades far left. I’m the tall guy in the middle back with the mostly shaved head. We both have foam fingers because we rule. He looks about the same years later. I’ve chonked
Greg is planning to crowd-fund publishing costs for a book of Kansas City breweries. He’s already got interest from local retailers to sell it. I’ve seen the proof-of-concept book, and it’s awesome. I don’t care about beers or Kansas City that much (I’m from Cali, so sue me), but the book is really pretty and interesting. Hurry up, Greg.

View Details

I stumbled onto the writing of David Grayson as I reflected on my (sometimes) daily reading of The University Library. Grayson's way of seeing the good in people and letting curiosity turn his feelings of urban oppression into natural wonder were inspiring. Open, curious conversations with people are kind of what this podcast is about.

So, I went on the hunt for someone to talk to about the guy whose method of talking to people was so inspiring.

And I found Nick Grabbe (grab-AY). Nick worked for decades as a journalist in Amherst, Massachusetts. Born in Washington, D.C., and custom-built to work as a big-city journalist, Grabbe turned to what he calls “simple living” in the small Massachusetts town he moved to. That’s what Grayson himself extolled for many years in his columns written for newspapers in the early 20th century.

But, it turns out … there was no David Grayson. It was a pseudonum. Who was this Grayson guy? Grabbe will explain. And along the way he’ll tell us about journalism and the appeal of a less hectic way of life—both of which held Grayson’s attention, too, as you’ll discover ...

More to see:

Want to learn more about a simple-living, small-town-focused journalist’s career? Buy Nick's self-published Print and Privilege: Newspaper Writer Tells His Story (2021, Off the Common Books).
Do you want to try out a David Grayson book, or an essay or character study or two?
- Gutenberg’s offerings (website)
- Internet Archive’s offerings; just ignore the ones that look newer (website)
Read more from David and his wife on the simple-living blog Adventures in the Good Life.
If we have titillated your curiosity, you can learn more from an online exhibit about Grayson and an event Nick spoke at. The website features photos and letters like the ones Grabbe references in this podcast.
Read Nick’s entire essay/speech/presentation on Grayson he delivered at the event referenced above.

View Details

I met Noah when he came to a big synagogue in the Kansas City Metro and spent a weekend with us there. I was teaching kids songs every Sunday, so he trooped around with me and my brilliant guitar-playing assistant and interacted with every age group with us during the day. He says in this podcast that he loves getting down with the kids on the ground and interacting with them in the moment, and that is exactly what I remember most about his presence: He was right there with you.

I still play a few of his songs, old and new, at my current Sunday School gig, and I always loved his energy and … really, his being he brings during music. And that’s funny, because he plays with my opening question. I tell guests, “You’ll start with, ‘I’m BLAH, and I do BLAH.’” And, well, he takes me literally. But then he gets on a philosophizing train in the moment about how “I am” can be so powerful—what we tell people about ourselves, how we feel about ourselves, what we really are. And he comes to a much wider statement when he gets to the end of it here, and I dug it.

Then we go on to talk about how Noah got into music, got into Jewish music, got into and out of rabbinic school, and got into his current place. He still makes Jewish music. He still visits and works with synagogues. But he’s dipped back into his old love of theater recently, and he took the COVID break from shul-touring to make a new, different kind of music, which he’ll talk about here.

Anyway, I always wanted to find out how Noah got started and why he does what he does in his way. And he very kindly told me. And now you.

If you like his vibe, you also like him here:

M.O.V.E., a BeMajor Production by Noah Aronson, on Apple Music, Spotify, or in his album release concert on YouTube

The BeMajor Podcast, with links here

BeMajor, which offers Noah’s guidance on music in wellbeing, music theory, songwriting, and more

He doesn’t market a single thing about any of this in the podcast, but I wanted you to know, if you like him, there’s more to like.

P.S. This is two podcasts in a row where something was a little wonky about the audio. In this case, Noah sounds fabulous, and I sound scratchy/staticky. Thankfully, I shut my piehole most of the podcast.

P.P.S. My old boss in her new career as kick-ass executive coach is thinking about healthy feedback right now, and so my last question was about feedback. His answers were great. Thanks for the question, Marnette.

View Details

Recently retired history professor Jeremy Black was very gracious in allowing me to interview a while back about something I was curious about: war. Black has written many, many books, and a darn big pile of them specifically about military conflicts. His historic perspective—looking at how many common narratives about why wars start and how they’re won are often wrong—was amazingly refreshing, but … we’re not here to talk war.

We’re here to talk morality. Religion. And detective fiction.

Black has just published two new books on Sherlock Holmes (The Game Is Afoot: The Enduring World of Sherlock Holmes; Rowman & Littlefield, 2022) and Agatha Christie (The Importance of Being Poirot; St. Augustine's Press, 2022). Any fan of either, or detective fiction in general, surely will delight in the perspective of a history-trained literary appreciator (is that a word?) of the books. I’ve read a little Arthur Conan Doyle and none at all of Christie, but talking to him for a little while inspired me to do more of both and to take seriously the visions of society, morality and theology inside the works and, for sure, inside the writers’ own intentions and lives.

View Details

Two things everywhere around us: Religion. Space.

But most people don’t bring them together.

Scientists unhappy with religion shake their head at our species’ small-minded tribal violence that bubbles up in religious conflict or old-fashioned “sky daddy” thinking. Religionists unhappy with science shake their head at scientism’s obsessive materialism and lack of answers and responses to our very human needs to understand, to be comforted, to be awed.

Now that the two strawmen/women are out of the way, most of us can acknowledge religion doesn’t end at the atmosphere, and space is as even more of a wild testimony to the universe’s wonder and the necessity of the “why?” questions that, sometimes, are best discussed and studied in the social sciences.

Blah blah blah, from me. Let’s talk Deana Weibel, PhD (DEE-nuh WHY-bull). She’s a professor in both the Anthropology and Religious Studies departments at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan. She studies sacred spaces, including sacred spaces and people’s relationships to those places. She came up to me at Spaceport America as a visiting anthropologist observing and asking questions of folks like me there, who were waiting to see if their friends’ and family members’ remains would go up on a rocket. They didn’t. She wanted to ask me a few questions about Judaism and space (I didn’t have good answers). But I snuck her my card to interview her for my podcast, because when you’re confronted with an anthropologist who studies religion and space, you want to know more.

Cool claim to fame: Dr. Weibel wrote a paper about what she calls the ultraview effect. The Overview Effect is one name for what astronauts say they experience when they look out at Earth from above and get a new, powerful perspective on humanity and our small planet. Weibel heard another astronaut talk about an experience of fear and awe that came with looking out at the stars in the other direction, causing “a transformative sense of incomprehension and a feeling or shrinking or self-diminution.” Anyway, the Brit-rock band Kasabian recorded a song called “T.U.E. (The Ultraview Effect),” which appears on their 2022 album. And the lyrics do talk about perspective, so it sounds like song and idea are intertwined. We get into the ultraview effect, but not the song, in this podcast.

So, settle back and let’s study the stars … or strap in, we’re going for a rocket ride … whatever metaphor you like … where does religious yearning meet with space exploration … ?

P.S. There’s a tinny vibration in some of the audio here. Apologies. Don’t hate me. I can’t afford this genius for every podcast, alright?

View Details

Last month, we heard from academic Joel Schlosser on Herodotus, inspired by my own blog on some excerpts.

Now, a nice Redditor, Georgios, from Greece who's read all of Thucydides agreed to discuss the ancient historian with me. We wander close to Thucydides and far afield, but most of all his enthusiasm, enjoyment and sense of humor about the principal characters and events from these old battles and political intrigues made our chat sparkle.

Interested in slowly reading ancient works with Georgios? Check out his Aristotle Study Group here.

View Details

I have started reading a new set of old excerpted classics, this one gathering writers’ bits and baubles into generally geographic volumes: Greece, Rome, the British Isles, etc. I also write about them. (I write about another set here.)

The first selection in the first volume comes from the ancient Greek historian Herodotus. (You can read my thoughts here.)

Much sharper than my own thoughts, however, are the thoughts of political theorist and Bryn Mawr professor Joel Schlosser, writer of Herodotus in the Anthropocene (The University of Chicago Press, 2020). Schlosser explores exactly what I felt reading Herodotus and what I hope anyone exploring the ancients today wants: something relevant to them now.

In our chat, Joel answers burning questions I had about Herodotus, his own personal experience discovering the ancient historian, and, most important, what we can learn right now about how we think about the world and our place in it.

Herodotus tried to figure out how the ancient Egyptians dug canals, built great buildings, and won and lost wars. And, most of all, why his Greek world was the way it was after the great battles between Persians and Greeks. Be just as curious as Herodotus! Listen ...

P.S. If you’re taken by Schlosser’s observations, buy his book and enjoy, also, a few of his blog posts from the past few years as he worked on it:

“While I imagined myself in conversation with Herodotus, wondering what he’d make of the anarchists’ message of radical equality – was it an update of Herodotean isêgoria, the equal voice he viewed as central to Athens’ flourishing? – I gazed upon the Acropolis with humbled amazement.” (link)
“Herodotus writes for an audience. He wants us to lose ourselves in the story and then to its comedy.” (link)
“Herodotus talks of the phoenix, which immolates itself only to be reborn from its ashes, as well as crocodiles and the special burials Egyptians give to their victims.” (link)
“Herodotus exemplified a form of inquiry that was broad-minded and imaginative in ways Thucydides simply wasn’t.” (link)

View Details

Kit Smith is one of the most confident, stable and exuberant kindergarten teachers I've had the pleasure to work with. (We cross paths in a local synagogue's Sunday School).

She's now eyeing a well-deserved retirement from decades of educational work at a private school and her regular Sunday School gig with me.

I absolutely needed to talk to her about how she became a teacher, what teaching means to her, what her teaching philosophy is, what is most exhilarating about working with small children, and what has been the toughest part (hint: not the kids).

If you're interested in education and little kids, this is a must-listen.

View Details

She’s an awesome veterinary practice manager and management consultant in her day job, but Tracy Sheffield moonlights doing local theater and getting called in for small parts that are just perfect for a horse-smart extra.

Find out about her latest gig in an upcoming episode of Walker (find out where to watch it here), how she got started, years ago, watching Animal House get made at her mom’s workplace, and, last but not least, how she helps race horses who can’t race anymore (more about the Roses to Ribbons Old Fashioned Horse Fair).

Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash

View Details

University of Omaha at Omaha’s Heike Langdon explains what goes into an Urban Studies concentration, what she likes best about nonprofit work, and why she was attracted to a field that touches on serious societal problems today and historically.

She’s focused, especially, on redlining in a few large American cities as her degree’s final project. What’s red-lining? Glad you asked. And she’s studying this while she’s working at this cool place on campus that brings together multiple nonprofits under one roof.

Let’s get learning …

View Details

Louis teaches “Industrial Tech” at North Kansas City High School. That’s exciting enough. But one of his classes—and a ton of his extracurricular student assistance—is building robots with kids there.

The team competes under the international umbrella of the FIRST Robotics Competition.

Louis switched from his engineering degree to a new world of teaching skills like that to kids.

Here’s Louis’ adventure in teaching and how his kids’ robots are the same, and different, from those cool BattleBots on TV …

View Details

"If you believe that, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.” Maybe that line wouldn’t work on you, but what about somebody who says they’ve found gold, uranium, oil somewhere in them thar hills?

Retired geologist Dan Plazak (pronounced “PLAZ-ick,” not “PLAY-zack” as I figured) wrote a book on it: A Hole in the Ground With a Liar at the Top: Fraud and Deceit in the Golden Age of American Mining, an easy-to-pick up collection of swindle stories published in 2006 by University of Utah Press.

I talk to him about his childhood interest in geology that blossomed into a career, details on some seedy tales from the book and his research, his take on fracking, and his digging into doodlebugs. Don’t know what a doodlebug is? You will when you read the next book he’s working on, but he’ll tell you in this podcast, too. (And here in the January 2021 issue of the Geophysical Society of Houston Journal on page 31.) Listen on ...

P.S. Because of some audio problems, I had to rely only on Dan’s side of the audio, so mine is a little rough. But who cares what I say anyway?

View Details

I’ve known Hilal Dogan for years now. She first came onto my radar when I worked for a veterinary publishing and CE conference company, and she was rocking The Veterinary Confessionals Project. She was a veterinarian by this time, although she put the project together during her time in veterinary school (hear more).

But that’s not my favorite thing about Hilal. My favorite thing about Hilal is she is a driven, goal-oriented free spirit. She is a paradox, and I love it.

Her latest goal, just achieved? Yoga teacher certification at this Denver studio. She jumped right into it during the pandemic the instant they opened their doors, and she adjusted her life of locum tenens (fancy word for part-time) veterinarian work around this new passion.

I love talking to Hilal. Now you get to enjoy it, too. Also, I left in our stumbling start, because I think it’s funny.

Learn about yoga. Learn about Hilal. Think about life with us …

View Details

If you’ve been to a used bookstore, a thrift store or a house with many, many books, you absolutely positively have seen one: a reprint of another book collected in a series to make great work more accessible to average reader of modest means—and squeeze out the last dollar from books that otherwise would drop out of print.

I stumbled onto John Krygier’s online collection of such books as I work my way through the University Library and went hunting for others reading, collecting or studying works of great literature meant for the common woman and man. Before that, in this episode, we delve into geography, his college teaching specialty.

Then, it’s on the Modern Library and more.

If you’ve ever wondered what geography is all about, the weird nuances of maps, or the joy of collecting less-expensive rarities, this is for you.

P.S. John Krygier mentions The History of Cartography, Atlas of Design, and Lawn People.

View Details

When I spoke to her, Hannah was a manager at The Dusty Bookshelf in Manhattan, Kan., home of Kansas State University. Her location—there’s another in Lawrence, home to University of Kansas—sells new books, used books, gifts and other sundries and, yes, coffee. Hannah liked the coffee side of things so much, the hustle and bustle, helping folks fast and efficiently, that she was about to run off on a new adventure to manage a coffee shop in downtown Chicago. That’s a big leap for a young lady who grew up a “townie” in the college town, loves the small town, but, yeah, wanted to try something different.

So, the best part for me is, I also got to ask Hannah all about how she was planning to make the big move into a new apartment, a new city, a new-ish life of more opportunities to do more cool cultural stuff.

This podcast, then, is a two-fer: Bookstore managing! Making the big jump!

Big thanks to Hannah, to, who was the only manager, worker or owner at used bookstores nationwide who responded to my weird, cold-calling email request to answer my questions about life in bookstores. So, either I’m bad at asking folks for interviews, or bookstore owners, by nature, don’t want to be interviewed for stories, preferring the life behind the counter and between the pages to being a voice on the internet.

This was going to be part of a series, but, hey, until I grab half-a-dozen interviewees, let’s just say Hannah Emery is the best, most bad-ass bookstore manager I’ve ever interviewed … they broke the mold when they made her … and she’ll get to stand, at the end of this phase of her book-selling career, as a solitary statue of wisdom for us to enjoy ...

View Details

Jainism, birthed out of the rich religions of India, asks practitioners to be as careful as they can in not hurting a single thing. They step carefully on the ground and wear masks to avoid inhaling and accidentally killing the little things we thoughtlessly murder. Now, that, but writ large: Gandhi, and the nonviolent movement that sought Indian independence from British rule.

Well, we don’t talk about any of that, because as a fellow religious convert, I much more wanted to discuss Jeffery D. Long’s switch from small-town Missouri Catholicism to Hinduism over the decades. It turns out, the tale started when he was very young, but then culminated when he was much older: a seeking that finally a home in a newly embraced religion, but also an over-arching belief in the ability of man and man’s systems to change to embrace more peace, less war and violence.

Dive a lot into Long the main, some into his newly co-edited (and contributed) book, Nonviolence in the World’s Religions: A Concise Introduction (Routledge, 2022), and some more into his wanting to highlight the peace at the heart of some of the world’s religions at a time when the world is increasingly critical of the violence that bubbles up from religion’s adherents.

And, bonus, listeners! Long recommended books at the end of our recording session for beginners curious about Hinduism or other strands of Eastern religion he’s explored through the years. This is not an exhaustive list. Email him and I bet he’ll pony up with one.

A Survey of Hinduism, 3rd edition by Klaus K. Klostermaier (from SUNY Press, from Half Price Books online)
Vedanta: A Simple Introduction by Pravrajika Vrajaprana (from Vedanta Press)
Jainism: An Introduction by Jeffery D. Long (from I.B. Tauris)
Buddhism: A Very Short Introduction by Michael Carrithers (one of a long, lovely series on everything from Oxford)
What the Buddha Taught by Walpola Rahula (a marvelous one I read a year or so ago, from Grove Press in its most recent edition, with many older editions everywhere in the used-book market)
What the Buddha Thought by Richard Gombrich (from Equinox Publishing)
Empty, Empty. Happy, Happy. by Tyler Lewke (Redwood Publishing, 2019, on Amazon)
Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda (from the Self-Realization Fellowship, whose wide publishing has made this book a mainstay in used bookstores for decades)

Editor’s note: This interview is the second of a three-part series on Nation-Building, War and, right here, Peace. (Also in the works is a series on Birth, Adolescence and Old Age.)

View Details

Oh, that means she does art projects at the local museum? No. Right, well, that means she helps creatives unstick when they’re working on their novels, like, say, Julie Cameron? Well, a little closer. No, Portia (at Mind Full Creatives) is really on the path of helping anyone with unleashing their creativity, but especially those who want to unleash creativity and actually get something done, whether that's a “solo-preneur” or a group of corporate bigwigs or multiple internal teams clashing right now over dreaming into the future and trying to find out what sticks.

I used to work with Portia for years in veterinary publishing, and now she’s one of my career-reimagining heroes (along with her, who’s a career coach now). She’s been on the podcast before about another job. That’s how fast she shifts. Ha!

What does Portia do as a creativity consultant? If you’re feeling stopped up or frustrated about idea generation or idea execution, what can you do?

“Identify when you feel creative and happy, and make more of that in your life,” she says here.

Let’s dig in.

View Details

How do you keep learning when you get old? Keep learning when you get old. It’s not a riddle, say Tania Rodriguez and Leah Ferguson (with the red streaks on the left, if you see the thumbnail) working at the Calla Lab at UC Riverside with their inspiring leader, Rachel Wu, PhD. (Stay to the end to hear how awesome Wu is.)

Rodriguez is a first-year PhD student in the psychology program studying low-income minority older adults helping them to increase cognitive function and stave off cognitive decline in their later years. Ideally, she’d like her research to help us understand how older people can learn new skills and keep their brains healthier later in life. When you’re old and you want to learn something, you can, she argues.

Ferguson is another first-year student in the program, and she’s studying “learning based off of necessity” to help other underserved communities, like people with disabilities or citizens returning to society after being institutionalized in prison.

Our conversation rolls through neuroscience, how experiments are conducted (Calla Lab looks at brain waves and neuroscience evidence of learning, too), what learning looks like for older folks in tougher circumstances (like marginalized communities and people post-prison), and how they plant the question in everyone, even their own relatives: Why do you think you can’t learn things you want to learn when you’re old?

Can an old dog learn new tricks? Rodriguez and Ferguson say, heck yeah (not literally). Let them sell you on it!

This is the second in a three-part series on childhood, adolescence, and old age. Catch the adolescence episode here.

Editor’s note: I had to frantically buy premium Zoom while this conversation went on because, with two awesome guests, free Zoom was going to boot me after 40 minutes. If you can’t tell when I had to mute my mic and frantically enter credit card data, praying my guests wouldn’t stop or ask me a question, I did my job. Why, Zoom? Why?

View Details

Kelly and I used to work together, and she was always very high-energy, a big laugher, a loud, ringing and positive voice. She was in sales, so none of that should surprise. But what I found out later, after I’d worked with her for a while, was she was an actress. Maybe on temporary, busy-life hiatus, but she’d had a whole ‘nother life before this one in the arts, in New York acting school, in New York performing and tryouts. Years before.

And she was back at it, trying out for a local this, working with a local group that.

This is Kelly’s story, from small-town midwest life as preachers’ daughter, but supportive preachers, and her first kiss with Christian Slater as kids at Starlight, and then acting college under greats in New York City and a solid 10 years trying to make it. And, finally, one day, deciding, no, this is about as far as I want to go. So, then, family, kids, back to the Midwest, and a more peaceful and differently amazing life.

When I found out I knew a real actor, and when I had a chance to ask her about it, well, I did.

And, at the end, Kelly says she was kinda glad her kids are going their own way and didn’t decide to try to make it.

Kelly is happy being an actress, couldn’t even get away from it, but in her own way in her own time.

View Details

"Whimsy ponderable”: how Carol Branson’s friend described her art. I’d call it child-like, folk-art-flavored found art. You can see the fun, but it makes you think, too. Her online gallery starts with old guitars and goes from there. My daughter is particularly partial, in a major way, to the skateboard art. There’s wood, metal, paint and lighting elements: found objects transformed into feelings and color.

Carol shares how she started in art, how theater and art played roles in comforting and guiding her as she was outed as a gay woman before high school, and how working with her hands has played such a big part in her careers (from theater manager to arborist) and her free time. Her art’s shown up in churches, at art galleries and even Union Station. As the pandemic winds down, she’s trying to find more nice ways to show her art and interact with the folks who come by to tell her how it makes them feel.

Let Odd Job Grrl, a business/pseudonym she came up with when she needed to invoice something on a letterhead, share with you her even-keeled, joyful, found-art approach to making things because you want to, not just the things the world tells you to make …

P.S. My refrigerator came on and started making noise, so I cut that part out. Sorry, if you wanted to hear it.

View Details

I throw inflammatory questions and opinions about teenagers at Washington State University sociology professor Monica Kirkpatrick Johnson, and she handles them with aplomb.

Teenagers have a rough time, and different teenagers have different rough times depending on who they are, where they live, what their parents are like, and how much money they've got. Most interesting, and sounding right, Monica discusses the "package" we're born with: Our rough or easy teenage transition as a life stage usually has to do with more than one factor ... here and abroad.

Let's talk adolescents ...

Want to read more? Monica recommends two "easily accessible" books (not overly mathematical) and one a little denser:

Not Quite Adults: Why 20-somethings Are Choosing a Slower Path to Adulthood, and Why It's Good for Everyone by Richard Settersten and Barbara E. Ray
The Accordion Family: Boomerang Kids, Anxious Parents, and the Private Toll of Global Competition by Katherine S. Newman, with a less U.S.-centric take
Not Under My Roof: Parents, Teens, and the Culture of Sex by Amy T. Schalet, which compares U.S. views on adolescent sexuality to Dutch teens and parents.

Sneak peek? She's also working with another academic on learning how people are reacting to each other, masked or unmasked, in this pandemic. Got to have her back to talk about THAT!

My own sneak peek? Monica's great interview is the first in a three-part series about childhood, adolescence, and old age. More to come there!

PHOTO CREDIT: Photo by Ivan Samkov from Pexels

View Details

Jeremy Black spoke to me Jan. 1, 2022, so he seems the perfect guest to share first in this new season.

He talks about one of the most emotionally fraught issues of human civilization, War and Violence(TM), with a historian's pragmatism and a respect for those affected by the war, especially the dead.

I start off on some rant here about war being "bad," and he adds nuance and refuses to be baited into black-and-white thinking. One of his most recent books, A Short History of War (2021, Yale University Press), succinctly presents a complicated view of war that belies our current take that war is always and mostly caused by modern nations and politics: "Bellicosity in the shape of the will and readiness to fight leads to war, rather than war arising because misunderstandings produce inaccurate calculations of interest and response."

The best bonus, for me, turned out to be his rearview mirror picture of academia as Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Exeter.

He's also excited for you to read A History of the Second World War in 100 Maps (2020, University of Chicago Press), if you're interested enough in learning some of the geographical facts and realities that affected the biggest multi-country conflagration in the 20th century.

And a little teaser? He's not just a prolific writer, but he's clearly an avid reader, and he's working on books on Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie. I've never been much for mysteries, but I might be enticed into exploring these classic writers in a deeper way.

Jeremy Black's interview is the first of a three-part series I hope to do on Nation-Building, War and Peace. (Also in the works is a series on Birth, Adolescence and Old Age.)

Enjoy. And happy (belated) new year ...

View Details

I found Jonathon Stolls on TikTok, where @pedestriandignity highlights the ugly, unpleasant and, worst of all, dangerous world of pedestrian travel in today's towns and cities. Sidewalks are overgrown, shoved next to roaring highways, or stop in the middle of nowhere for no reason. And that's just for those who can walk comfortably: What about the strollers? The wheelchairs? The walkers?

Pedestrians don't have enough dignity. The commercial and residential world around us ignores them.

This episode should move you. Are you moved? Then get moving! Get out of your metal car box and flee your climate-controlled, artificial, sanitized home for the free air, wind, sun and greenery of the world. Take your friends! Take your colleagues! Imagine what life as an embodied person moving through the world could look and feel like ...

I love this topic, I dig Stolls' energy, I love his art and activism in Intrinsic Paths, and I support his Patreon. You should, too, if people in nature is a thing you think about.

View Details

She saw her aunt doing it decades ago and got into it then. This spiritual movement of body and energy is less exercise (Tai Chi) and more moving chi. Do the movements standing. Or sitting. Or visualize them lying down.

Rachel (who was my very first What People Do podcast guest ever) swears by Tai Chi Chih (tay chee chuh) and has found such joyous rewards through the movements that she's a certified teacher.

Dive in with us ... and check out the originator, the man it came to, Justin Stone doing a movement here.

View Details

He studied and worked with Lama Surya Das for years. He's got a cool podcast, online courses, a published set of meditations and he's working on an app. This cat has some cool thoughts and a thoughtful and very ecumenical and open-minded approach to quieting the mind.

P.S. The picture is my daughter from years ago from, and she learned a little meditation with a counselor in a group in elementary school. But she doesn't do it now. I don't think. She should start again. I mean, she just started middle school in person. She's gonna need it.

View Details

Educational games get a bad rap. If more of them were made by Adam Clare, maybe I'd like them more. Adam admits some of the things that make bad educational games bad, but then makes interesting distinctions between free play and designed games and delves into how education infuses his views on the environment and, yes, on COVID. I mean, can we escape it? We can't.

You should play Dr. Trolley's Problem, if you're curious. While rudimentary in its graphics, wave after wave of consideration, reconsideration and repositioning of the classic philosophical problem makes it a good thought experiment to explore where you come down when it comes to life, death, utilitarianism and hard choices.

While we didn't discuss it, Adam also helps curate news on Things Are Good. If you need a nearly daily dose of positive news in a maelstrom of negativity, bookmark it, kids.

View Details

I noticed during then pandemic that one of the home owners whose property butts up against a trail at a nearby park started putting up flowers. And signs. And a bench. And nice messages for folks who were being emotionally beaten up by the pandemic.

It started with being irritated with a bunch of overgrown poison ivy and a tendency to flood during rain. And it turned into something special. People sent him letters. Park walkers talked to him on days when he was out working on it. Somebody painted his garden, and that hangs in his home office. Somebody wrote him a poem.

But it turns out that land wasn't his land ... so ...

P.S. The picture is my daughter from years ago from, you guessed it, another park. She just got back from Europe. She's a world traveler now!

View Details

It's been a long time, so we're gonna call this season two, yeah?

We're back with a personally helpful conversation about writing: how she does it, how she did it, how she started, and, because I'm self-centered, what I can learn (and by extension, you can learn) from her about my own writing.

Find out how the first hit of audience dopamine hit for Gabs with her first fan, what she does to make sure she keeps writing in her busy life, and why she thinks anyone who wants to write should just write and not put too high expectations on the product and process.

If you've never written before, you think you might want to write a longer book, and you think you want some shared social accountability and some gamification, try NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). It helped her.

Want to read Gabs' cool new blog? I got you.

P.S. As always, that pic is my daughter, years ago, out on the prairie. I like it, so there you go.

View Details

My friend Ryan is a master of investigating technological problems as well as a beautiful, efficient, brilliant designer in physical media and in the digital world.

And he has hermit crabs. So, of course, I skipped right to that in my podcast with him here.

They live in his house. His 6-year-old (at the time) daughter wanted them and named them (but then, of course, Ryan winds up caring for them, reluctant-sitcom-dad-style).

“A larger pet was never going to get through the parental authorities,” Ryan says of his daughter’s winning pitch for the crustaceans.

Ryan learned a lot from his first four hermit crabs (the enclosure was too small for all of them, unknown to him at the time).

Join us as he explains his journey to better serve and care for his little beasts. And get Ryan’s quick checklist.

WANT TO KNOW MORE?

Hermit crabs are in the animal order Decapoda, which literally means "10-footed,” but whose order animals can have as many as 38 appendages. “They let a lot of people into this club who aren’t necessarily 10-footed,” Ryan says. “A lot of times it just means creepy-crawly at the bottom of the sea and you’ve got lots of appendages.” Go figure.

Want to learn more? Check out the Hermit Crab Association or any of the Facebook groups (you decide how nice the folks are and whether you want to stick around).

View Details

NOTE: Hey. I’ve been gone a while. I’ve got two podcast interviews lined up from before. Now they’re gonna come out. This one, now. Another one, soon. Then … I don’t have any more interviews lined up yet. I’m a firm believer that everyone has something important or fun or relatable to say about something. Who’s next? Also, there’s a grind as Bash’s phone call fell out, but I think the gist of it carries through.

“The only thing I know … is how to fail at writing plays,” jokes (not jokes) Bash Halow off the bat.

Bash is a speaker and an article writer and a practice management consultant for veterinary practices and a former veterinary technician and a former veterinary practice manager. And I bet, although I didn’t get into it, a lot of other stuff.

He promised me a couple years ago that if he got actors to read a play of his, he’d invite me to NYC. So right after getting laid off, I headed off to the Big Apple days after my layoff. NYC was neat. My best friend showed me around town (we mocked many things). And Bash’s play, read by actors and actresses he knew, was really marvelous: surreal, emotional, strange, funny, old-fashioned, modern. It kind of was all the things.

Best of all, no matter how smart it got, it always fixated on heart and emotion. Kinda like every time I’ve ever seen Bash teach or work on something.

So that’s how we wind up here, with Bash, talking plays. They are a way for Bash to bring the ideas and thoughts floating around his head out into the light, in engagement with other artists and audiences.

“I can’t be the only one who thinks like this!” he says as his inner voice. “Let’s try one more time!”

But to just explain it you, well, “that just lets all the air out of it,” Bash says. Better to leave the Easter eggs and the hints and the clues and leave you to think it over yourself.

Find out how 8th-grade English teacher Ms. Knox pushed Bash into stream-of-consciousness journaling (“like unlocking Pandora’s box,” he says), how Michael Cunningham (The Hours) manages his writing process and why he thinks his latest play has truly said what he wanted to say in writing.

My favorite thought? “If you’re writing something and it feels great, it’s probably great,” he says. Don’t hand other people your bulls***. You know when it’s good.

WANT TO KNOW MORE?

Remember Matthew Shepard? His tragic murder inspired was a major impetus behind Bash’s latest play.

Bash has a couple of one-act plays for sale. I adore them. They’re heavy on the surreal and just my cup of tea. His latest I saw in NYC is more than a few steps beyond these, so beg him for a copy. Maybe he’ll share.

Our intrepid interviewee name-drops a Jeremy Irons performance in a play where a playwright talks about a cricket-bat approach to writing. It’s The Real Thing by Tom Stoppard. Check out a little of the dialogue and thoughts from a blogger here.

Heard of Tereze Gluck, sister of a Noble Prize winner? I had not. She wrote a story Bash loves, “The Coast of Massachusetts.” (Read free here with a JSTOR registration.) “She was such an original thinker,” Bash laughs. When Bash asked her once if she missed writing later in life, she told him, with wry humor, "No, no, no, it’s easier to take Prozac.” Here is a collection of short stories you can also read free.

View Details

Dr. Finch and I have sat a few times at veterinary conferences and mused over introversion, work and life stress, and mental health. She’s one of the world’s genuinely good people, so when she talked years ago to me about how she used coloring books in veterinary practice to decompress, I was intrigued.

Now, years later, she needed her friend and veterinary technician colleague, Allison Parker, to talk her back into daily coloring again.

With the pandemic, “life has gotten more stressful for everybody,” Finch says.

She loses herself in the coloring, though, so it needs to be solitary: “It’s not often I can do it. … I’ll light a candle, I don’t watch TV. I don’t even usually have music on.

“It’s really calming, a constant hum, not trying to think about saving lives or sick pets or complicated things. … It’s a simple thing to do instead of all the complex things we do.”

Listen in as poor Shawn puts up with my endless questions and shares where she is with the practice of putting colors inside the lines today (and she does keep her colors inside the lines). If you haven’t tried coloring again since you were a kid, it’s time you did.

WANT TO KNOW MORE?

There was a big adult coloring book craze: “Was it because of me?” asks Shawn, laughing. “I’m so cool, and everybody else wanted to be cool?” It started here, petered out, and now … where did it go? (“Maybe everyone’s still secretly coloring!” she says.)

Want to get into coloring books? Don’t start with a big buy, Dr. Finch says. She recommends printing a page or two off the internet (she makes sure the art she uses is free for printing) and using whatever coloring implements you have around the home. Want a sample page? We made one at Vetted magazine years ago. Want more? Try here or here or here. Once you know you love it, then go crazy.

Dr. Finch rocks Sharpies of all colors. But, y’know, there are crayons and pencils, too, for y’all if markers feel too intense.

Yes, the thumbnail is Shawn's picture. It's great.

View Details

“Just because we can do something to -- or for -- an animal,” asks Robin Downing, DVM, MS, DAAPM, DACVSMR, CVPP, CCRP, “does that mean we should?”

A practicing veterinarian, teacher and business owner, Robin’s interest in pain, animals and caring for living things has translated in the past few years into study of how the field of human bioethics could shape, and be shaped by, the in-the-trenches concerns and situations that practicing veterinarians face every day. She’s now pursuing a PhD in the subject.

Robin has started translating human clinical bioethics’ four principles – respect for autonomy, nonmaleficence, beneficence and justice – into a world where the patients can’t speak and where the concerns, feelings and resources of pet owners are standard parts of every care conversation. (Robin explains the translation here.)

How do nonspeaking animal patients help us make medical decisions for them? How do we balance “benefits and burdens” to decide whether a medical treatment isn't harmful? And is the medical treatment fair, recommended for any patient in that situation?

If you’re concerned about animals, people and life in general, and fascinated by the places where modern medicine asks us to make more complicated questions about how and why we treat patients of all species, you’ve got to listen to this.

My favorite part about this conversation? I argue that patients and pet owners aren’t ready to deal with death and dying in themselves and their pets. She agrees a bit, but also pushes against me in arguing that, given the right information at the right time in the right way – thanks to better communication – people know what the right decision is for them, their family and their pets. She’s about communication and empowerment, and that’s inspiring.

“Many of the situations wherein there is a derailed set of decisions on behalf of the patient … it really is a failure of communication,” she says.

WANT TO KNOW MORE?

I get Robin to talk about death early by name-dropping my favorite smartphone app this month.

Dive deep into the four principles of clinical bioethics here. Read more about her here.

Robin name-drops a book showcasing the need for better bioethical thinking in hospitals to remedy the “paternalistic perspective” of physicians in Strangers at the Bedside by Dr. David Rothman.

Dr. Michael Blackwell, behind the Program for Pet Health Equity at the University of Tennessee, is fighting for better veterinary care for underserved communities. He’s interviewed for this video from Vet Candy.

Wait, what’s IACUC? An Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee makes sure animal testing in labs and universities is above board.

View Details

Veterinarian Dr. Jules Benson does not compete crazily at cycling, but he loves all the other aspects of it: the choice of how and where to ride each day he goes out, the acquisition and enjoyment of a new bike with a new frame (hopefully lighter?), the touch of masochism that comes with pushing yourself hard physically.

He tells himself, like all the other less-than-perfect cyclists, that speed doesn’t matter, but, y’know, it always does. Because isn't that some of the fun of bicycles, whether you’re cruising down a road to the beach, hoofing it to work, careening and bumping down a mountain trail, or staying off pavement and on gravel to avoid cars? Zoom zoom.

Jules sees biking as so multifaceted, “it’s anything you want,” he says.

Early on, I drag Jules into talking about the details of tire choices (he’s not kidding about the deep discussions on tire width and air pressure), but then he properly drags me back to talk about more interesting ideas behind cycling: the why, the how and the who of it.

He talks a few times about the “clannish” world of cyclists, like other hobby communities (I know the music world’s well), that talk about insiders and outsiders.

“I can live without that,” Jules confesses. “I’ve never felt the need to have sharp elbows [in competition]. I’d rather be a collaborator and be someone who is part of something bigger.”

Of course, we talk about the pandemic, because Jules explains, with bike shops closed for months, “he’s had to work out a lot of things himself” when it comes to maintaining and changing things on his bike. (Now he’s back to his local bike shop, and he encourages you to visit yours.)

Jules sounds a balanced view of his hobby, and I learned a lot from it. You will too. Dig into the kinds of fans in hobbies and how Jules uses the bike as a tool not a torture device (“not flagellation, but how hard can I go and how much can I push myself,” he says) as well as how cyclists navigate the dangerous world of city commuting. This and more. You might be inspired to get back on that bike for some fresh air, pump your legs, and lean into the wind: "The cadence of turning the pedals and knowing that’s all you have to do,” Jules explains. “That’s a nice place to be.”

WANT TO KNOW MORE?

After the podcast, Jules shared these websites and cycling personalities for reference and further learning:

Benson name-drops Selene Yeager in the podcast. He also mentions efforts like this by the cycling community to get more women in on the fun of the sport.

“Marrianne Vos is the most dominant living cyclist on the planet in terms of medals and palmarès (cycling lingo for a cyclist’s achievements and wins).” Also, talking about diversity in cycling, Jules name-drops an organization for another issue of diversity in veterinary medicine, Pride VMC (Veterinary Medical Community).

"Phil Gaimon is a retired professional spreading the good word on cycling and being kind to each other,” Jules says.

Nerd it out with this glossary.

Here are my notes:

Jules’ No. 1 tip in dipping into cycling for the first time? Make sure your bike, however cheap or expensive it is, has been put together properly by a professional: brakes in the right spot, things tightened properly, etc. He’s even seen the fork the wrong way around.

British immigrant Jules tells us it’s pronounced “al-you-MIN-ee-yum,” like it’s spelled “aluminium.” It is, in the Queen’s English. In America, we jettison the second “i.” Huh. Who’s weird? You decide. I like both pronunciations, and I like people always arguing about it.

Benson drops a quote: “Riding a bicycle is the closest you can get to flying.” That was attributed to Robin Williams in a Wall Street Journal story (gated content). Williams loved cycling ...

Types of fun, Jules tell us? Yeah. Jules says 1, 2a, 2b and 3. This one breaks it down as 1, 1.5, 2 and 3. Tuh-may-to, tuh-mah-to.

Jules lays out some of the lingo and familiar names from the online cycling community: A nuanced view of “Freds” and “Dorises.” Congratulate another cyclist with “chapeau,” from cycling’s French influence. Rollers and punchers. Weight weenies and MAMILs. 853 steel, Spirit for Lugs, aluminium (!) Cannondale and big bike maker Tom Ritchey.

Dost thou dare to explore the secret workings of the Velominati? (Jules says this started as a joke poking self-referential fun at cyclists, but the rule-makers eventually took the rules a little more seriously.) Hate it and want to see push-back? Bam.

Jules has stopped to talk to car drivers who’ve unsafely (and illegally) passed him too close on the road. He name-drops the humorous look at this, Portlandia’s "Bicycle rights!”-yelling character, Spyke (first on the list of clips at Thrillist.com).

Curious about Race Across America, which Jules’ friend did and needed a year to recover from? Well, the hyperlink already came earlier in this. It’s right. The name of the thing. Just … just click on it.

View Details

Gina Spadafori lives within what feels like spitting distance from California’s capitol city, Sacramento, but it’s also really rural right around here. It’s kind of the perfect spot for a politics-following writer and editor who decided to raise animals in her yard.

But this yearning for living close to animals and on a stretch of land didn’t come from her happily urban and suburban family.

“My maternal grandmother used to tell me, the best day of her life after World War II was when they were able to get anything they wanted at the supermarket,” Gina says, “and she didn’t have to have a victory garden, she didn’t have to can, she didn’t have to have chickens, and that was … the happiest day of her life.”

It started with horses and goats. But the horses were tough work on a solo micro-ranch. (“The first winter I was here, the entire pasture was under a good 10 inches of water,” she says.) Most recent head count? Seven goats, including two kids; nine chickens; one barn cat; and four dogs, who are the family members of her farm.

Find out the philosophy behind her relationship with the food animals she raises (“The chickens don’t have names,” she says, if she’s eating them), how micro farm vlogging transitioned from social media fun to just getting things done on the property, and what joys all this work brings.

P.S. I blow it at the very end and call Gina a “micro-farmer.” Gina sees that as a business farming, where farmers sell at least some of that produce. Makes sense. Gina’s got more, y’know, a ranch.

WANT TO KNOW MORE?

Check out this video of the Pasadena, California, urban homestead that inspired Gina. (Check ‘em out on Facebook.)

Interested in small farming vs. big farming? Gina’s not a fan of big-ag's poop lagoons. See a Vice story on them here. She also questions mono crops and massive fertilizer use. Better is the work of Joel Salatin, the sustainable agriculture in Gina’s own county and Sacramento’s own farm-to-fork rep.

Gina travels in the veterinary medicine world, and her friend, Dr. Patty Khuly, was on the chicken and goat kick before her. Dr. Khuly warned Gina that her first backyard animals, chickens, were a “gateway livestock.” And it proved true. Dr. Khuly talks up goats here.

Intrigued by the mention of Bernadette the Weather Duck? You’re welcome.

View Details

“I always loved comedy,” Tekurah says, since high school. Jake Johannsen was her first standup crush in the Bay Area.

“When somebody makes me laugh, I become attracted to them,” she says. She and her friends would crowd into a car on a day off school to stand around the studio for a drive-time radio show with lots of standup comedy guests. Funny, yes, but intoxicating and attention-holding in a way that comedy albums and TV appearances and sitcoms don’t quite compare: “Live comedy is my thing,” she says. “As an introvert, I save up all my energy, go to the club, then go home.”

That’s my superficial take of a deep discussion we have about humor here. You’ll dig it.

Find out why she can’t watch Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (“my secret shame,” she says), why she sits in the front row, and why her podcast has “paw” in the title but isn’t about animals (I had to drop that last one in to promote her kick-ass work).

WANT TO KNOW MORE?

Tekurah lived through one comedy boom of the 1980s. Boom. It came back, kids. Will it come back again after COVID-19? Dunno. Here’s how it hit hard in the UK.

Comics with troubling opinions, jokes and history? She had no trouble saying bye to following the work of comedian Louis C.K. after this. She tried Joe Rogan at a club (Bill Burr, whom Tekurah digs, talks to him here about COVID-19), but that didn’t work out. I couldn’t find Todd Glass’ politically incorrect joke (which, maybe, he doesn’t even perform anymore), so we’ll leave that out.

The Comedy Store, which Tekurah found, is in West Hollywood. She's right: A comic died by suicide next door during a strike.

Tekurah was weaned on public TV’s Comedy Tonight, hosted by Alex Bennett, who chats up Robin Williams and others on drive-time radio in San Francisco here

Patton Oswalt and Blaine Capatch did crazy stuff on Comedy Central (case in point, with the voice of Penn Jillette)

Rooster T. Feathers is where Tekurah saw Carlos Alazraqui (“one of the first comedians I saw live,” she says, and who did cartoons and played Garcia on Reno 911)

Tekurah digs Jimmy Pardo (“The man who saved me from listening to Adam Carolla,” she says, and his fans’ “misogynist” ideas about what women have to offer men, and vice versa). She also digs Maria Bamford, with a joke about religion that’s “so perfect.”

View Details

Note: Our audio is clippy as all get-out. Don't hate us. Or, rather, hate me. Jahmal is getting better at this, and I brought his quality down. Take me. Take me as tribute. I cut so much good stuff outta here. I’m a damn shame. Y’know why? Because I did a podcast of someone else’s a couple week ago, and my audio was too loud, and I bet she went back in time to change the sound levels on this. That’s definitely more likely than I just didn’t pay any attention when I recorded it.

I talked to a guy online who said he knew some people. I showed up at a guy’s apartment, and there were a bunch of guys there. One of those guys, if I remember correctly, was Jahmal. Now I don’t even talk to that first guy online anymore, but Jahmal, well, I still talk to him.

Jahmal is one of the best role-playing game DMs, game masters, judges, referees, storytellers, whatever, around. He has a unique, damn near patent-pending (or should be) way of letting each game session evolve with the interests, problems, goals, pains and pleasures of the players who show up to pretend to be other people and roll some dice (usually) to decide conflicts.

There’s a special high the right game with the right people can deliver, he says, as stories go directions and characters take actions and players think up things no one thought possible: “There are moments in games where folks are doing their thing … and this synergy happens, I hate that word, but this synergy happens, and we’re all in this new space, and we’re all there … and the light bulbs come on for everybody. And no one saw it comin' sittin' down that night.

“My high is only capped by the table’s high.”

In this one, we explore what role-playing games are, why rules in games are important, and the difference between drama and shenanigans. It gets deep into the details, but stick around …

WANT TO KNOW MORE?

You need Jahmal’s Patreon page like a flower needs water. He shares play sessions with his son and others, has in-depth discussions with other game makers, and he shares his thoughts regularly on games and things that touch on them. Check out his Transformers post.

Want to find a friendly game store in your neighborhood? Try this website.

What’s a dice pool? Roll dem bones!

There are a lot of games out there. Here are a few mentioned:

Apocalypse World (“Rated ‘R,’” says Jahmal, for adults) and other games “Powered by the Apocalypse,” such as Urban Shadows, Monster of the Week and Monster Hearts

Ars Magica

Burning Wheel, which Jahmal loooooves

Dungeons & Dragons

Gamma World

Mutant Year Zero

Pathfinder

Star Wars

View Details

Dr. Ernie Ward is big on nutrition and exercise, but his love for surfing, paddle boarding and other sports in and around the ocean turns out to be bigger than that. He and his wife (his girlfriend at the time) bonded over a love of the ocean with SCUBA diving. And it’s his way of getting closer to nature.

“It's that connection with the energy … nature … this body that engulfs the entire planet,” Ernie says of the ocean. It’s a personal challenge, with risks, and a chance to interact with a water world full of fish, sharks and more. “I know that when I talk like that, people start to go, ‘Oh, Ernie’s getting into his woo-woo stuff.’"

Don’t tune out the “woo-woo”! Give it a chance. Ernie pitches us on how time on the water centers him and enriches his marriage (“We began our relationship in the water”), his family (“We raised our daughters surfing”), his mental state and his physical health (It’s an alternative to his Ironman work, which can be harder on the legs). And how he almost died in hurricane surf (roughly around minute 19).

(PHOTO CREDIT: "Raglan" by tkw954 is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

WANT TO KNOW MORE?

Ernie surfs, but he also paddle surfs and paddle boards. Check him out paddle boarding with his dog and surfing.

Ernie’s wife, Laura, was always a little turned off by surfing: too much jockeying for position, too out of the norm for a thirtysomething woman to surf with all those testosterone-riddled teens. Now, she’s into it, especially after a surfing trip she and Ernie took right before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. The L.A. Times write about gender in surfing here.

Calcific tendinosis of the Achilles? “It just means my Achilles has turned into a solid mound of hard flesh, and it’s a real problem,” he says. Ouch.

Ernie mentions a book from his friend, Steven Kotler, Stealing Fire; it’s on my reading list now. (Ernie clearly had Hunger Games on the brain, and he calls it Catching Fire.) Check out Kotler's website.

View Details

It started with ideas. Dr. Melissa Detweiler, a small animal veterinarian in a Midwestern small town, had a lot of them, and writing blogs, commentary and opinion seemed like the route. But she didn't know, as a veterinarian, which audience to tackle first: pet owners or those "in the profession," vet med.

"I wanted to say the things [in my blogs] to pet parents that maybe I held back from saying in the exam room," she says. Then she started writing pieces for veterinary magazines to her peers.

Her podcasting took a similar route, with her first podcast ("This Vet's Voice") aimed at veterinary clients, but her next aimed squarely at the emotional challenges of life for veterinary professionals ("DVM Divas").

Originally, it seemed a far-off idea. Audio snippets, sure, but a podcast? "Who can do that? That's not something little ol' me can do with my iPhone and earbuds," she says. "I used the voice memo app on my phone [for my first audio]."

And she says she was terrified at the outset, using a podcast alter ego name. Pet owners can get pretty bent out of shape online about things involving their pets. "[The alter ego] was my security blanket," Melissa says. "I can kind of hide under this umbrella here. It felt like it freed me up a little bit."

Now, well, she's out there, with two partners-in-crime (although it's not about crime, people) on her latest podcast.

Find out how she got more comfortable with her voice on audio, how she and her podcasting partners manage the conversation and what small-town America thinks of it.

(PHOTO CREDIT "File:Veterinary Office with dog.JPG" by MarkBuckawicki is licensed under CC0 1.0)

WANT TO KNOW MORE?

Voiceover work is getting heavily advertised these days in work-for-home pandemic times. Melissa says she took an online course from Carrie Olsen, and she found it helpful in her podcasting.

View Details

Veterinarian and veterinary faculty member Dr. Ryane Englar still considers herself a “baby dancer,” although her teacher and dance partner, Lowell, saw her potential and gently encouraged her over their years of practice to dive into competition with him.

We start off the podcast with a fascinating consideration of how two dancers work together, one leading and one following, to maintain strict posture, movement, speed and flow by staying close together.

“If I start to slip, my pro partner can turn me so it looks pretty to the audience, but we both know he’s doing it to get me back where I need to be,” Ryane says.

Her descriptions of interaction between professional dancers and amateurs, men and women, leading, following and back-leading is fascinating. The art feels very gendered, with men leading and women following, and that just seems like an element of the art as performed today. However, Ryane says same-sex couples are “starting to make an appearance” in competitions and are actually common with certain dances in Europe.

The best part is hearing how dance added some tools to Ryane’s toolkit in her personal and professional life and gave her something that wasn’t about her veterinary work, “more than a definition,” she says.

Find out how Ryane got started dancing as an adult (ballet as a child didn’t do it: “I thought forever I would never dance beautifully,” she says), how Lowell helped her learn how to fall, and how it brings confidence in life and in dancing.

As Ray Davies sings, “Come dancing … ”

(Image by Peter H from Pixabay)

WANT TO KNOW MORE?

Ryane drops a lot of names of different dance styles, and she covers it a little bit from “the student perspective.” But if you want to dig in at wikidancesport.com: American rhythm, American smooth, International ballroom, International Latin.

Arthur Murray Dance Centers are Ryane’s choice. Find one around you?

View Details

Journalists want to help. Journalists want to get to the truth. Journalists don’t want to make mistakes. Mix in all three of those, and you’ve got a recipe for well-intentioned, purposeful perfectionism of a sort.

“I don’t think you have to be a journalist because you’re a worrier,” Portia says, “but I think it’s a driver.”

It’s the hunt for the second set of eyes on a piece, the second look, the critic’s skepticism. Portia gives that to team members, and she needs it from others. So, ultimately, part of the easing of anxiety comes from building in trust and collaboration with a team of people who’ve got your back.

Another big part of managing anxiety for Portia was discovering the power of the negative stories she would tell herself. Why think you’ve failed before you’ve found out?

“At the end, when it’s finished, and you’ve published something and moved on, and you don’t have feedback [yet],” Portia says, “why assume it’s broken or wrong when you could make a choice to say, ‘That was a success’?”

Find out how she manages giving and negative feedback, how she makes time to unwind, and what elementary-school kids called Portia (for only a bit).

(PHOTO CREDIT: Image by rawpixel.com)

WANT TO KNOW MORE?

Do you struggle with anxiety? Take a quiz.

Do you struggle with negative self-talk? Start tackling that.

OOOooooh. That’s what a carboy is.

Portia mentions leadership training. I got mine from Sunroad Coaching founder Marnette Falley in a previous life. So did Portia.

View Details

Star Trek debuted on CBS in 1966, the brainchild of creator Gene Roddenberry. Mindy, though, caught it first in afternoon reruns after she’d get home from school. She thinks that original series is good, but she really thinks everyone should be a Star Trek: The Next Generation Trekkie.

“Roddenberry gave us hope for the future,” she says. The new direction in the latest two shows, she feels, is more about “me” and less about “us,” losing some part of the original’s optimism and group solidarity.

The other big theme that pops up for Mindy in the shows is what makes us human and what we owe to the artificial beings we create. She says such Star Trek characters as the android Data and the hologram “The Doctor” spark the same sense of empathy she feels for pets. She hates seeing them abused and mistreated in films and TV shows.

“We brought the pet into our world, so anything that happens to them is our fault,” Mindy explains, and that’s “graduated” to thinking about other beings we might create in the future. It's the most philosophical and moral discussion we’ve gotten into on this podcast!

P.S. Mindy finally caught a bit of those new “Star Trek” shows. She says she liked them more than she thought she would.

P.P.S. I use one expletive. Don’t judge.

(PHOTO CREDIT: "Star Trek Exhibit Mall of America" by Margalit Francus is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

WANT TO KNOW MORE?

Check out StarTrek.com.

Humanists cover a little of Gene Roddenberry’s thinking from the show here. (Here’s a more pessimistic view on Roddenberry spun out of a book review of a two-volume history of the show.)

Mindy gives an eloquent, heartbreaking description of a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode about a world that depends on the torment of a single being for its civilization’s success. Brendan was reminded of a dark tale of a place that relies on hurting a being for its own happiness. It’s “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” by Ursula K. LeGuin. Brendan said it was 30 years ago; it’s closer to 50 years ago, first published in 1973.

The Fifty-Year Mission: The Next 25 Years: From The Next Generation to J. J. Abrams: The Complete, Uncensored, and Unauthorized Oral History of Star Trek

View Details

I could have called her a midwife, but isn’t the word midwifery (pronounced MID-wiff-ree) cool?

Midwives act as emotional support, an educational resource and healthcare advocates for pregnant women. Roughly 97% of Cheryl’s mothers want a home birth. And 85% of them will have a home birth, with 15% going to a hospital instead. This is a hands-on relationship, with long, regularly scheduled appointments to check up with expectant mothers and their partners and listen to them and their concerns. It’s a close relationship, with many families coming back more than once for repeated home births.

“We’re coming to your environment, and we’re helping you to have your baby your way,” Gates says.

It’s a matter of preference. Other expectant mothers will only relax and feel safe in a bed at a top-notch hospital to give birth. Cheryl remembers, after a brain injury, how nice it was to get out of the hospital and into her own bed at home. She doesn’t dig hospitals.

The clients she can’t, in good conscience, take on? Those who say “no matter what” they won’t go to the hospital for a birth. That’s a dangerous choice, she says, as the health of mother and child before, during or after birth may necessitate a move to the hospital.

“You have to be willing to get help when you need it,” she says, “because that’s how it stays safe.”

Learn about what life is like for a midwife and for expectant mothers who don’t want to give birth in a hospital, what racism looks like in the hospital room, and how one generation’s bad childbirth experiences can haunt the next.

(Photo courtesy Pixabay; no, that's not a Cheryl-midwifed baby)

WANT TO KNOW MORE?

Learn more about what midwives and nurse-midwives do as well as doulas.

It was only one incident in many years of midwife work, but Cheryl mentions years ago that one healthcare provider had a sign on the wall that said expectant mothers who had a doula or had taken a Bradley class were not accepted as patients. The American College of Nurse-Midwives and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (what Cheryl calls “ACOG” in the podcast) play nice together now.

Twilight sleep, knocking expectant mothers out during childbirth, many strapped to their beds, was totally a thing. Yuck.

Cheryl mentions the 2008 documentary The Business of Being Born (The Business of Birth Control is up next from the filmmakers.) You can stream it free right now. Here are a few reviews here, here and here.

View Details

I worked with Marnette, and I always liked the fact that her wardrobe in middle management and then upper management was cut from a different cloth than the standard executive. Layered, frilly, colorful tops under antique-looking jackets (“I put on a jacket, it’s just not a jacket anyone else wears,” she says). They top multilayered skirts, concealing just the tops of well-worn, well-loved cowboy boots. She talks about bloomers, and because I’m oblivious, I never thought about the fact that she wore bloomers (handmade, by the way), but now that I think about it, yeah, bloomers. Who wears bloomers? Marnette wears bloomers. And they’re fun.

“I dress for fun,” she says. “I think it’s entertaining. I shop for the things I like for sport.”

It started with Halloween, she tells us, as she realized in her 30s that dress-up was amazing and she picked similar costumes every year: “I basically want to dress like a princess-witch-gypsy every day of my life,” she says. Other people describe it as “boho chic.”

I could’ve asked Marnette for pictures of her favorite outfits, but, y’know what? Marnette dresses for herself. If you want to talk to her about this, you’ll just have to email her.

I’ve only scratched the surface. There are leadership and confidence thoughts here along with wisdom that comes with successful experimentation like this in life. Don’t miss Marnette’s centered approach to people’s judgment about style, how personal expression fits into the corporate world, and how it makes her more confident.

WANT TO KNOW MORE?

Marnette says she has a hard-and-fast rule: She only wears what she loves. She was Marie Kendo before Marie Kendo was a thing. (Kendo’s rule 6 is “Ask yourself if it sparks joy.” If not, say, “thank you” for its service and get rid of it.) Wait, you already heard about Kendo and you’re sick of her? Now you’re a part of the wonderful cycle of 1) See a new thing, 2) Love a new thing, 3) Get tired of a new thing, 4) Hate the new thing? Read this and this and this and enjoy your irritation.

Marnette loves Pinterest. and see if her style is your style.

Where does she get her ideas and her clothes? She mentions Pinterest (see her boards), thredUP, thrift stores, boutique stories (a little price-y) and her own two hands (she makes her own bloomers).

I ham-handedly describe one impression I have of Zen Buddhist poetry and practice. I don’t know enough about this. Who let me talk? Get a different view of Zen’s play with language. Taste some Zen Buddhist poetry. Shake things up with a Zen Buddhist koan, a seemingly nonsensical whack to the proverbial head to awaken you?

(IMAGE CREDIT: The Spanish Gypsy "Preciosa" by Bisson Freres)

View Details

Yeah, who’s the guy who cut off his guest at the start of the podcast recording? That would be me. His name is Peter, and he’s an environmental engineer for a steel company.

He started as a mechanic out of high school, headed for physics in college to become a professor, but then found a love for geology and graduated with a degree in that.

He does a lot of paperwork, but he also does a lot of site visits and gets to get his hands dirty sometimes.

“I still enjoy getting outside, and I don’t know if I’d want to be cooped up inside all day,” Peter says about a potential life in academia.

Learn about steel recycling, electric arc furnaces vs. blast furnaces, and more. My favorite part? Peter fights back against my question about having an unsolvable problem. There really is no such thing, you’ll find out: Tackle it in baby steps until you get closer, he says.

WANT TO KNOW MORE?

No, no, NO. An environmental manager (Wikipedia), not an environmentalist (Merriam-Webster.com).

Curious about electric arc furnaces? Watch this video. (No, this isn’t Peter’s company, and no guarantee this is what this looks like in his facilities.)

Peter used to work on Saturns. Remember those?

View Details

Jennifer likes to draw dragons. Fantasy monsters and people, elves, things out of fantasy books. Animals. (Her sketch of Batgirl was my smartphone wallpaper for weeks.)

"I get ideas in my head of something that would look cool of a scene or an animal, and I like sharing that idea," Jennifer says.

Like many artists who don't do it for a living, she usually doesn't need to hit deadlines that aren't self-imposed and doesn't need to draw stuff she doesn't care about. Much of her art is for her, her own heart, her own interest and the interest of friends and supporters (like the folks at her workplace who were encouraging and kicked off her adult art kick). Before, when she drew as a kid, she says she "didn't have the support system. It was getting in my own head a lot. Being very negative toward my own stuff."

"Becoming more involved with the internet ... has helped that too," she says, "because I'll throw my art out into the world and people will ... click 'Like' on it. And it won't be a lot of people, but it'll be a few people, and I'll [say,] 'Oh, I don't know that person, and they liked my art, so I ... made a random stranger happy by posting this.' That brings me joy."

Jennifer discusses the power of pre-work before art projects (when she doesn't, sometimes she notices "this one thing is off, and I could have changed that, but in order to change it ... I have to start over"), what making art feels like and how coworkers' and friends' support brought her back to art as an adult.

Note: After about 39 minutes, this podcast peters out a bit into Jennifer and I bandying back and forth, as we search for stuff on the internet to recommend (all below in "Want to know more?") and I mangle the spelling of her online handle.

WANT TO KNOW MORE?

Find Jennifer on Instagram (drawntofury), Patreon (caeodos) and Twitter (caeodos1)
Want to try an art challenge or exercises? Especially 'cause most of us are stuck at home during the pandemic? Jennifer mentions ...
- Intokber (art prompts and shared results)
- The Etherington Brothers (unique art style and drawing ideas)
- the Jake Parker weekly e-newsletter (with prompts and more)
- The Sketchbook Project (with DIY sketchbooks and the chance to send them back to a library to be digitized and shared)
- Sketchbook Revival (a free regular event with Karen Abend and others)
Toothless from the "How to Train a Dragon" movies based on a cat? Yeah. Want to see a Tortle? Yeah you do.
Curious about Dungeons & Dragons? It was the gateway drug (check out this flowchart at Wired) for so many middle-aged nerds today, and it maintains its strength as the dominant tabletop role-playing game in the market with its new owner Wizards of the Coast (which also owns the Magic: The Gathering card game, which I play online). Jennifer also mentions Critical Role, a very popular online show featuring voice actors playing tabletop D&D.

View Details

Note: There are a few four-letter words sprinkled throughout these 45 minutes. Instead of “feces,” we, umm, say, y’know. That S-word. Skip this podcast if that bothers you.

As we all sit through this COVID-19 crisis, packed under "stay at home” orders in most states, it’s a good time to remember, yes, the toilet paper you’re having trouble finding, but also that wonderful sewage system that keeps your shelter nice and safe.

As far as I’m concerned, keeping the system working is one of the most important jobs around. A quote attributed to Gandhi agrees: “Sanitation is more important than independence.” Armies can dig trenches for poop and move on. Thinly populated farms can use outhouses. But without a place for urine and feces to go, we can’t be packed like sardines into modern urban and suburban environments.

Electro mechanic assistant Kevin works on sewer lift stations. He helps make sure they keep running. As you’ll learn in the podcast, most water and sewage moving around a city uses gravity as much as possible (most everything with liquid is pitched at very small angles to keep it moving, he says), but when stuff collects lower than where it needs to go, Kevin’s motors push it on through to its next destination.

“It’s like a rollercoaster,” he says. “My sewer lift station is the thing that lifts you up to the top of the hill so you can ‘gravity’ back down to wherever you’re going.”

Kevin also explains a bit how he got into this gig (no, he didn’t pick poop on purpose), what he wants you never to flush in the toilet, what smells the worst down there ("Poop’s not even close,” he says. “And it’s oily. It sticks.”) and what’s the creepiest living thing he’s seen running around.

“This job is stable,” he says. “I don’t think anyone’s gonna’ stop pooping in the near future.”

Warning, all the best stories are in the last 20 minutes or so. Don’t skip!

Want to know more? * The Environmental Protection Agency has an eight-pager on sewer lift stations. Nerd out. * Early on, Kevin talks about folks who keep the pipes clean, using rodders and jetters (links go to Youtube videos about those devices, but not the exact devices Kevin’s colleagues use). * In addition to Kevin’s No. 1 choice for stuff not to flush, don’t dump F.O.G. Here’s one utility’s FAQ. * Kevin schools me on motors and engines; he’s mostly right. Brush up on your terminology with a layperson-friendly explanation from MIT. * Kiewit’s fleet of Caterpillar equipment is mentioned. Kiewit builds stuff. Like everything. * The insect Kevin says he hates the most is a house cricket. We don’t think that’s it. We think he means a big one of these. * Hyperion is big, and Kevin’s never been there. But this website story calls it the “Disneyland of Poop.”

CAPTION: "Abercynon" by gwallter is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

View Details

Note: I happened to record this podcast as the world's coronavirus pandemic started to kick into gear. I'm now back home under the similar "shelter in place" order (or some version of it) that you are. This one seemed usefully short and easy for my first week under quarantine. Stay safe. :)

Zahara just turned 11, and this podcast is short. She's not necessarily used to answering detailed questions, hearing herself blather on (like me) and she had no preparation. She did a great job.

Zahara says folks use TikTok for dances, for art, for anything short and visual. I got onto TikTok a few months after it started, got bored with it and came back to it to keep up the young un's. It is hellishly addictive, providing just enough amusement to keep you swiping up and down. Some creators are phenomenally talented at whatever craft they're showcasing, but I agree with a creator's video I saw a while ago: TikTok is designed to give mediocre people the chance to do fairly mediocre things and maybe blow up virally from it. ("They're dances that people make up to songs, and then other people do them," she says.) In other words, amazing dancers doing dances are viral ... but so are any good-looking for high-energy Tomasina, Dick or Harriet.

There are also sad videos, where a TikTok user makes one to sing about or dance about or talk about, "like, when your dog has to go to the hospital," she says.

Zahara's account is private, only for friends, per her father. :)

Want to know more? * TikTok is this. Tik-Tok is this. There's a big difference. Tik-Tok's dancing skills are way under par for the preteen girls on TikTok. * TikTok has a darker side, so watch over those kids, gang.

View Details

I am a convert to Judaism, and Joshua is a convert to the Catholic Church. And he has always been one of the most fun people to talk about religion with, which led me to understand that us weird converts have something about us and our journeys that crosses spiritual paths. There is something about being a person who chose a faith that is always a little different than someone born into one. (If you hear us thumping the table a lot, forgive us: We're excited converts.)

Joshua exemplifies the intensity of the convert, having traveled from dissatisfaction with religion in his teenage years to marrying his awesome wife, and the both of them growing into a life of service and learning in their new church.

Today, he's a permanent deacon for the Roman Catholic Church, a level of lay leadership and service to the Church. Joshua explains what drew him to the diaconate and what it's like doing the work. (He had to go through the stages of Instituted Lector and Instituted Acolyte, FYI, which were set up with Vatican II back in the 1970s.)

The process is a lengthy curriculum of study, service and spiritual growth over five years. And anywhere along the way, the people watching your development in the program can tell you, y'know, this isn't for you.

"It's the Church, your wife and yourself making the decision, is this calling really there?" Joshua says.

And Joshua was never totally sure; he says he understood deeply his own flaws, and he always wondered whether he belonged in this service: "I know all my own sins and my past, and I'm going, 'I'm not the pious guy who should be a deacon.' But ... God doesn't use pious guys all the time. Sometimes he goes out and finds the guys with that past, and you can talk to those people living in those circumstances ... and explain to them the faith."

He also shares a very personal tale of dreams that guided him toward God and through life as well.

Joshua's spiritual and religious journey is a fascinating one, and you'll learn some awesome stuff about what's happening during that Catholic service.

Want to know more? * The Archdiocese of Newawk (New Jersey) has a bit more about the history of the position (it's new ... and old!) in the Roman Catholic Church. * Here's one diocese's deacon formation application 22-pager. * Joshua mentions the four pillars of deacon formation. Bam! * Want to get a little more feel for the reverence, ritual and tradition Joshua likes as a self-described "traddy" (more Latin, older hymns)? Check out this interview with a fellow traditionalist Catholic (Joshua didn't suggest this, so this may or may not represent Joshua's feelings) * Yup. Bible stories on felt board is definitely a thing. * Want a feel for what's on that altar with Joshua and the priests? Check this sample out.

View Details

I worked with Theresa Entriken, DVM, for many years at a company that offered magazines, websites, podcasts, educational products and national conferences to veterinarians and their team members. But I wanted to come at this veterinarian from a tangent: birdwatching.

While an avid hiker, Theresa says she glommed onto the hobby from her husband (also a veterinarian).

“Hiking, I do like to do for exercise, you cover a lot of ground,” she says. “When I hike with my husband, it’s a lot slower, because you tend to stop and look at things you see fluttering in the trees. And I do like to bird by ear, observing what’s in your environment and just putting the images to the sounds.”

Imagine, then, hiking … only with an intense curiosity constantly pricking up your ears your eyes scanning the trees and the skies, your ears listening and your footsteps falling more gently to catch a distant bird call. Theresa’s thoughtful, measured voice puts me perfectly in mind to imagine a crisply cold, quiet birdwatching trip in a Minnesota bog.

“It’s slowing down and taking notice of what’s around you,” she says. “[Birds] are these biological works of art that are just available for you to enjoy.”

Found out what a “life bird” is, whether birdwatching is ever not relaxing but frustrating, and why Theresa is fired up about suburban backyard plants for conservation.

Want to know more? * Yes, scientists think birds are descended from dinosaurs. Cool, right? * What locations does Theresa mention? Sax-Zim Bog in Minnesota (check out their friends page on Facebook or their website), Lyon State Fishing Lake in Kansas (website) and Loess Bluffs (website) and Marais des Cygnes, the latter two both in Missouri (website). * What are some specific animal species she mentions? American Three-Toed Woodpecker (photos), Barred Owl (photos), Boreal Owl (photos), Gray Fox (photos), Great Gray Owl (photos), Great Horned Owl (photos), Long-eared Owl (photos), Northern Hawk Owl (photos) and Spectacled Owl (photos). * Theresa talks about a birding database, a cool citizen science and hobby app, at eBird.org. * What does a birdwatcher’s list – their version of a personal avian bingo card – look like? If you want it prepackaged for you, maybe something like this. * The coolest toy, of course, as Theresa says, is binoculars. Pick up a cheap pair at retail to get started. If you really get into it, then you can invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in a stellar pair of binoculars or even a scope on a tripod. * Theresa’s enthusiasm about birding got me to start reading a book that’s been on my bookshelves for more than a year. * Last but not least, Theresa says folks interested in wildlife and birdwatching should check out their state’s conservation magazines. Here’s a sampling I found searching on the internet right now: + Outdoor Alabama (website) + Alaska Fish & Wildlife News (website) + Arizona Wildlife Views (website) + Arkansas Wildlife (website) + Colorado Outdoors (website) + Connecticut Wildlife (website) + Outdoor Delaware (website) + Outdoor Indiana (website) + Iowa Outdoors (website) + Kansas Wildlife & Parks Magazine (website) + Kentucky Afield (website) + Louisiana Conservationist (website) + The Maryland Natural Resource (website) + Massachusetts Wildlife (website) + Minnesota Conservation Volunteer (website) + Mississippi Outdoors (website) + Conservation Magazine in Missouri (website) + Montana Outdoors (website) + Nebraskaland (website) + New Hampshire Wildlife Journal (website) + New Mexico Wildlife (website) + New York State Conservationist (website) + Wildlife in North Carolina (website) + North Dakota Outdoors (website) + Wild Ohio Magazine (website) + Outdoor Oklahoma (website) + Pennsylvania Wildlife (website) + Wild Rhode Island Journal (website) + South Carolina Wildlife (website) + South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks Conservation Digest (website) + The Tennessee Conservationist (website) + Texas Parks & Wildlife (website) + Virginia Wildlife (website) + Wisconsin Natural Resources (website) + Wyoming Wildlife (website) + Miscellaneous - Anthropocene (website) - Audubon (website) - Defenders of Wildlife (website) - Mother Earth News (website) - Nature Conservancy Magazine (website) - National Parks Magazine (website) - National Wildlife (website) - Sierra (website) - Spire: The Maine Journal of Conservation and Sustainability (website)

View Details

For my debut episode, I introduce to you both good and bad. Let’s start with the bad. I ask board-certified music therapist Rachel Rilinger questions from a distant location, which is really right across the table from her, but apparently I, as a grown adult, can’t manage my settings on my microphone. But you didn’t want to hear from me. The good part of this episode is all the great stuff from Rachel!

We kick things off with Rachel by talking about certification for music therapy. Don’t stop here. Keep going. She respects the education and the work of her chosen profession, which she reveals she’s been excited to do since she was 15 years old. Then we get into what’s really amazing about music therapy, how it helps with mental illness, rehabilitation, chronic conditions – with everything where music can be a modality to heal and help.

You’ll hear Rachel’s origin story and feel her intense passion for the work. You’ll even get a little about the neurology behind music and why it can do things other therapy and treatment can’t. And you’ll get to hear Rachel rock the autoharp. (After demonstrating the power of ascending and descending notes, she says that “in a nutshell, our brain wants to do what the music’s doing. We’re built to respond to that.” And that can be put to therapeutic use.) And, finally, Rachel touches on the mystery of life, the “why” and the spirituality behind music. Last but not least, don’t leave before Rachel tells her story about the power of music therapy. (“There are times when I felt like a magician,” she says.)

As for the audio quality, maybe by the third of fourth episode I’ll have my crap together? Stick with me. Can you believe what amazing things people do?

Want to know more? * Need more details on music therapy? Maybe think you want to be one or know someone who’d make a great one? Want to see the definition of music therapy Rachel likes? Want to hear about legislation in your states that supports the professionalizing of board-certified music therapists? Want to find a music therapist? Find out about this profession from the American Music Therapy Association. * Rachel plays an autoharp in this episode and explains why it’s amazing. Here’s more on this cool instrument. * And, yes, the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying has Rachel’s frog story. (It’s on page 42 here.)

View Details

I had an amazing interview with Jahmal Brown, somebody who gets people and games and nerd culture and is an all-around exciting person to bounce ideas off of. I even got to meet his awesome dog. And my own user error scuttled it all. So. Yeah. His website is madjayzero.com. Check it out.

What People Do: Recent Episodes

brendanhoward