↬ Kwame Nkrumah 3/13/21

Bigger than a song—a pounding, intense synthasis of music, poetry, and history. Impressive piece of work by Kojey Radical.

↬ Bad Idea 2/25/21

Showstopper from the musical Waitress.

↬ Hey Big Star 12/28/20

Kishi Bashi — a great pop song about a star!

↬ Bad Friend 12/28/20

Rina Sawayama — really great, heartbreaking song about friendship. Pop music fixates on romantic relationships, and I think it’s so refreshing to hear a love song that isn’t about a lover.

↬ Chicago 12/6/20

Sufjan Stevens’ Chicago, performed by the Staves.

↬ Jason Isbell 8/13/20

Jason Isbell is a rock.

↬ Hildegard von Blingen 6/24/20

A medieval cover of Somebody That I Used To Know. Somehow this elevates the song to a new level.

↬ James Hoffman 4/22/20

I totally have a crush on this guy. He’s got the best YouTube coffee channel, and he’s extremely relaxing and wonderful to listen to.

↬ Safe Nested-Object Query Pattern 4/18/20

I found this really nice pattern for getting values from nested objects in JS when you can’t be certain that the object is well formed—if any level of the query fails, it returns null.

↬ Petite Overture A Danser 4/11/20

A remarkable, delicate piano piece written by Erik Satie in 1897.

↬ I think Sweden is in big trouble 4/9/20

Looking at the spike in Sweden’s death rate, it looks to me like their strategy of trying to let the virus run its course and have the nation develop herd immunity is going to be a disaster.

↬ The Stravinsky of Toilet Paper 4/8/20

This episode of Roderick On the Line killed me.

↬ We're not the Jetset 4/2/20

John Prine. A delightful little country song.

↬ Lucky Sometimes 3/27/20

A peaceful, sweet Pokey LaFarge song that I’m listening to on repeat.

↬ Mission to Zyxx 3/26/20

I’ve been listening to this show that’s a semi-improvised space epic.

↬ Extreme Measure 1/4/20

This makes me shudder.

↬ American Scandal: Enron 11/23/19

I binged this 5 part podcast today. It has re-enactments that I would guess take liberties with reality, but it makes for a good story that explained the Enron scandal in a way that I never really got.

↬ Labrador 11/7/19

This Aimee Mann song is just the best.

↬ Heavyweight #27: Scott 10/24/19

Heavyweight is one of the the best podcasts out there. This episode, about a son trying to retrieve a lost family heirloom for his father, resolved in an unexpected and beautiful way.

↬ Wild Wild Woman 10/17/19

I made this playlist a while ago, and it has stood the test of time. The theme is cool hip-hop and hip-hop adjacent songs by women (of course). It’s named after a Your Smith song.

↬ Madison Cunningham 8/20/19

The most infectious refrain I’ve heard in awhile.

↬ Lizzo: Tiny Desk Concert 8/5/19

She is just incredible. Honestly.

↬ Pedestrian Polo 8/1/19

For some inexplicable reason I watched a lot of Red Skelton when I was a little kid. I don’t know why I was watching tv from the 60’s when I was young, but I was. That might be my problem. Anyway, this dumb Red Skelton bit bit still cracks me up.

↬ Magnum PI Credits 7/28/19

One of my favorite credit sequences. I adore Thomas Magnum.

↬ The Making of Boris Johnson 7/22/19

An interesting episode of the Daily this morning about Borris Johnson, the likeliest candidate for the next Prime Minister of the UK. Paints as being a politically savvy, yet incredibly cynical character.

↬ Week 29: Haze 7/21/19

This week’s Failure.

↬ Stewart Lee on UKIP 7/17/19

I was just thinking of this recently, and funny enough my brother actually brought it up too. A very politically relevant bit about immigration by the very funny Stewart Lee. I’ve probably said this before, but he might be the only stand-up comedian I consistently like.

↬ Red Lights 7/17/19

Chloe x Halle. Beautiful, understated, relaxing, and catchy.

↬ They know what they're doing 7/11/19

This isn’t the biggest outrage by any means, but it’s remarkable how aware Trump that his allies rely on disinformation to further their political causes.

↬ Week 27: Still Going Sweet 7/6/19

This one’s really good, and I got to talk about Frederick Douglass in it.

↬ Week 26: Haunted by Butterflies 6/29/19

↬ Caroline Smith 6/20/19

I love this girl. Her album ‘Half about Being a Woman’ is one of my all time favs. I was just wondering what happened to her and discovered she’d moved to LA, changed her name to ‘Your Smith’, and is putting out new music.

↬ Make the Bus 6/17/19

IDK why, but this song is deeply imbedded in my psyche in such a way that it will spontaneously get stuck in my head when I haven’t heard it for months.

↬ Week 24: And Now We Pass 6/15/19

This week’s poem.

↬ Week 23: Collector of Small Things 6/8/19

↬ Find My 6/7/19

It’s not on a blockchain, I think this is the most interesting thing in enterprise cryptography right now.

↬ Play Date by Panic 6/2/19

Panic (a long time independent Mac software dev company) is coming out with this delightful looking handheld gaming device called the Play Date. It’s bright yellow, very cute, has a black and white screen, and best of all it has a crank!

↬ Week 22: On the Way Back Around 6/1/19

I like this one. I feel much better than after last week.

↬ Would you like to take a walk? 5/19/19

This old-timey song sung by Annette Hanshaw is just so delightful. Very simple, incredibly sweet. No dramatic I love you—just a humble, unassuming question. Would you like to take a walk?

↬ David Blight — The Civil War and Reconstruction Era 5/18/19

This Open Yale Course, HIST 119, by David Blight about the Civil War is fantastic. I’ve listened to the podcast version about three times. Blight has the best teaching voice I’ve ever heard—it’s more like he’s reading a story than giving a lecture. He doesn’t fetishize the war in any way, but makes it relevant and interesting.

The Civil War is one of the historical events that really matters in American history. Highly recommend this if you’re interested.

(note: currently the intro lecture in the podcast version is missing, so you’ll have to listen to that on the actual site. I do recommend you listen to it, even if the syllabus stuff is tiresome.)