Category: INSIDE VOICE

I’ve been a fan of Mike Doughty since his Soul Coughing days and his new Ghost of Vroom project brings back the his earlier found art/jazz collage vibe to effectively comment on the craziness of navigating a pandemic from an small room in NYC. In Counterpart J.K Simmons struggles to navigate a post-pandemic world exuding German-ness; doppelgängers, bureaucracy, science, […]

For years now, comparisons of the US to individual European states has troubled me. Primarily because in terms of GDP, population, and geographic size, the individual US states make for a more apples-to-apples comparison than the entirety of the union. So, why in the midst of this global pandemic are we still comparing US as a whole […]

The researchers stated that the impact generated an environmental calamity that extinguished life, but it also induced a vast subsurface hydrothermal system that became an oasis for the recovery of life. So, not only do we know exactly where the asteroid hit, we can also see the consequences of it in the K-Pg boundary in the sedimentary all over the globe. It’s one […]

In Europe, the growing conditions for beer ingredients – barley, oats, wheat, hops – are comparatively pretty narrow relative to grapes and other cereal grains. While beer traditions, and very intriguing ones, do exist outside of England, Netherlands, Germany, and Belgium. I’m focusing on these 4 countries for right now as they’ve been the most influential […]

After MPR read the headline, the 9 year old immediately asks: “Hey Google, what’s third degree murder?” #MyHeartKeepsBreakingAgainAndAgain == == On Sept 11, 2001, a dozen years into the militarization of local police departments, I was working for a startup an old skyscraper on the north end of the Chicago Loop. The CEO survived the […]

For their mental health, we’ve been strongly and persistently encouraging the teenagers to make in-person plans with their friends. Provided they stay outside and don’t climb on each other – we’re cool. Ensuring in-person social interaction is far tougher for the elementary school kids, as coordination still happens through parents. Turns out, asking about comfort […]

According to Kevin Stroud over at The History of English Podcast, the reason we speak English is in part due to the Black Death. The plague was an indiscriminate killer, peasants, scholars, royalty alike. At this point in our story in the mid-1300s (which is one of my most beloved Stroud-isms), French and Latin were the the […]

With work shifting to video conferencing, rather than in-person meetings, we’ve lost the signaling of accessories – fountain pens, fancy bags, stickered laptops. So, inspired by the back of my iPad (that no one sees any more) and NASCAR paint-jobs, I created my own fake background for Zoom. Unfortunately, without a physical green screen, the […]

== “Hey Google, how do you make gin?” “I’ve found a recipe for ‘how do you make gin?’. Would you like the ingredients or instructions first?” “Ingredients.” “OK, now playing dance hits of 2010s on Spotify.” For all their promises of convenience, Google Assistants are at best undelightful and at worst mildly frustrating. And, Google […]

Thanks to MusicMayhem [1] our Fridays are now marked by 90 minutes of music trivia against our neighbors. Last week the two teenagers of the house competed on their own – three teams in one house. This week we came back as a singular force to achieve 2nd place overall. While all have our strengths, […]