We start with garage-life banter and accidentally wander into Frank Lloyd Wright, Aldo Leopold, and why certain landscapes make us feel more alive. We end with a surprisingly practical story about building a tiny contract R&D company that helps pay for med school and sets the stage for early self-driving tech.

• half-story houses, attics, and the strange logic of real estate listings
• Taliesin and building on the brow of a hill
• Aldo Leopold, land stewardship, and the Wisconsin savanna idea
• whether conversations can be graphed and why Poisson shows up
• Claude vs ChatGPT vs Gemini and refusing unpaid beta testing
• garages as storage for deferred projects and “suspended dreams”
• Seattle versus San Francisco light, color, and messiness
• Sea Ranch, seasonal mood shifts, and the relief of sun
• why meadows feel like home and forests feel like introspection
• “make it real” as a rule for poetry, storytelling, and improv
• BlueSky as a place to release thoughts without dumping them on family
• Triple Vision, contract R&D, and early freeway car detection systems
• med school logistics, pickups at HCMC, and the calm of being late together

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

We start with a real question hiding inside a joke: what anxiety looks like when you’re good at covering it up. Then we wander through photos, music, engineering, bad gadget design, and the strange ways our parents’ lives quietly steer our careers.
• Podcast anxiety versus baseline life anxiety
• Describing tree-ring images and lichen wall art as forest design
• Acoustic treatment ideas and turning decor into function
• Macro photography versus photomicrographs and choosing lenses under weight limits
• Arctic tundra textures, color, and making prints you can swap out
• The career question: who we’d be without our parents’ jobs
• Growing up around community music, sound booths, and engineering projects
• Why microwaves and touchscreen cars have terrible user interfaces
• Choosing ecosystems and land over medicine and money
• PCC breakfast sandwiches, free samples, and the Fremont troll detour
• Big-picture idea of salvaged wood and local wood economies

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

Ben and Laura (his mom) swap stories about church, meditation, dance, and the lost art of a shared Sabbath, tracing how ritual, rest, and community shape attention and belonging. Between memory palaces and eyeglass rants, we look for teachers, practices, and spaces that make patience feel possible.

• growing up Catholic as routine not worship
• memory palaces and extemporaneous hosting
• managing kids in church and small-town community
• Buddhist meditation versus ten-minute sermons
• the value of Sabbath, rest, and ritual
• delayed gratification, good teachers, and momentum
• attention economy pressures on children
• modern parenting empathy and resources
• dance as worship and embodied practice
• lenses over frames and choosing substance

You heard it here first, everybody. Tune in next time to That’s a Good Question.

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

We swap stories with Max Tomlinson about starting bands, writing mysteries, and why community keeps both alive. From London’s free shows to San Francisco’s 1977 streets, we map how scenes, jams, and practice shape skill and voice.

• Colleen Hayes series set in 1977 San Francisco
• London music roots and first bass gigs
• Lo‑fi aesthetics and the Trogs’ influence
• Jam structure, curation, and learning by doing
• Song‑first practice tactics and confidence
• Blue Bear network and seed bands
• Rehearsal spaces, logistics, and momentum
• Festival shout‑outs and scene building
• Gear wish list and lighthearted plugs

Max Tomlinson@WordPress.com

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

We first fix a messy audio and move on to a discussion of modes of learning, how mentorship differs from lectures, and how campus culture shapes curiosity. A lost bag redemption story closes the loop with a reminder that service, done well, teaches too.

• fixing the audio and finding our rhythm
• tag‑team washer repair as hands‑on learning
• yoga flow, language quirks, and listening closely
• questions about draft age and civic logic
• teaching versus mentorship and impatience with lectures
• small groups, campus culture, and incubator classrooms
• airline misstep turned customer service win

Reach out if you ever want to be a guest. We’d love to have you on.

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

We stumble through an echo-filled start and end up asking what deserves to last: the files in our clouds, the paper on our shelves, and the stories we tell about ourselves and our families. Along the way we trade travel mishaps, childhood labels, and a full-throated song that cuts through the noise.

• echo chaos sparks a bigger theme about signal and noise
• guest experiments vs co-host flow and who interviews whom
• travel moments that imprint more than expected
• childhood labels, interests and how families reinforce them
• shaping passions through environment and exposure
• video vs audio and the cost of storing everything
• cloud permanence myths, backups and local archives
• journals, legacy and what you actually want found
• curation over hoarding and making keeps easy to sort
• singing with intention and finding a voice through noise

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

Two brothers chase one thread through many lanes: how meditation, language, craft, and city trees point to a more grounded life. We end with a simple tool for singing and everything else: ask how to enjoy it 10 percent more, and let the body lead.

• Nonduality and the Zen of simple attention
• Craft as presence through pottery and baskets
• Work and leadership as spiritual practice
• Self‑reliance, emotional fluidity, and team trust
• Reframing sin, repent, and mercy
• The Sopranos as a lens on grace and fear
• Urban forestry myths and real benefits
• Foraging, stewardship, and regulation
• Soil, gratitude, and interdependence
• Singing, primal sound, and active relaxation

Soil gets paid through love, through attention

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

Ben interviews his brother Adam, also a grad student studying trees. Adam goes into how he's using cellular structure in oaks to reveal climate history. Along the way they talk grad school realities and other student job related stories.

• why oaks can extend climate reconstructions farther back in time
• sanding protocols, imaging, and AI for cell-level features
• grad school workloads, TA work, and lab culture
• work outside of grad school
• sponsor shoutout to Tiger Shark Industrial Abrasives

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show