Grumble Goat

There is much in our world to be grateful for. Air travel, edible underwear, or online quizzes to tell us which Disney villain we are, for example. There is no Thank You card large enough to express our admiration for essential workers like GrubHub delivery people or prison wardens. Therefore we have a day – a national holiday – where we can sit in the comfort of our homes and quietly...

It is the age of technology. Civilians have the ability to joyride into space. Warfare has evolved into isolated strikes by unmanned drones. At the touch of a button, food is delivered to your door, which has an electronic eye that vets the delivery man and opens itself. The world of the future is a marvel of efficiency. Science has even unlocked the ability to manipulate our DNA. But there is ano...

The days are growing shorter. The darkness encroaches as the weather grows chill. The veil to the nether seems more and more threadbare. It is that bloodcurdling time of year known as Halloween. Behold, the Grim Grumbling Ghosts have convened to haunt you with their most horrifying grumbles! Heed their gruesome tales well, lest you get drawn to that empty hollowness beyond the graves of the Grim G...

Earth is more than a rock. Gaia, or Mother Nature, has gifted us with bountiful energy. The ocean currents rage ceaselessly throughout the globe. The air whips through the atmosphere, sometimes strong enough to level cities. Underground, the planet contains so much energy that it rips through mountains to escape. Yet humanity’s favorite source of power is just burning things. Like a drunken...

Civilizations develop around commerce. Communities begin with trade and bartering; but a city, a capital, a metropolis hatches from a metronomic economy. Like a heartbeat, goods arrive at a focal point and money flows out. Like the port of Alexandria, the caravans of the silk road, and the bazaars of Arabia, the flow of mercantile was paramount to the growth of human globalization. And now in the...

Guest Grumbler: Emeka Nwafor Trading goods and services is a natural part of life. Crows and cats pay for food with – sometimes unwelcome – gifts. But humanity, as with all natural things, has taken this concept and exacerbated it to the point of machiavellian purgatory. Now, the whole world is propped up by the flow of advertising. Like the mummery of a Hollywood set – glamour o...

In our long history, humans have created many companions: Tamagotchi, Roomba, Zune, Shake Weight… but no artificial companion will ever replace Man’s Best Friend. Dogs are the quintessential domestic animal that have been with us from nomadic to cave to agricultural to modern life. And as such, they are perhaps our greatest and final connection to our animal nature. Thence, occasionall...

Since time immemorial, humankind has celebrated the athlete. There is a primal sense of combat in sport which allows us to release our more aggressive urges vicariously from the comfort of an armchair by cheering for our favorite athletes. We raise our gridiron competitors to divine levels of heroes. The Flash is a runner, Hawk-Eye is an archer, Superman is a high-jumper that can leap tall buildin...

Guest grumbler: Molly Densmore The dawn of civilization – the moment humanity ascended above all other animals as the one true ruler of Earth – was when Humankind harnessed the power of fire. Ever after tasting the elemental mana of the gods, humans have insatiably quested for even more. With the maniacal focus of Tim the-Tool-Man-Taylor we yearn for more power. The wheel became the st...

Life relies on certain elemental replenishments. There is Oxygen – tasteless, odorless, monotonous air. There is water – which we’ve all but replaced with Caramel Mochas or Mountain Dew. And then there is food. Food is such a rich world of abundant creations. Food is an art form – it is an identity – it is the traditions that are passed down through generations. From...

Guest grumbler: Mary Elise Jones One of the most primal and eternal conflicts in the universe is the everlasting battle between hot and cold. It is the chaos of the Big Bang, the massive energy of white dwarfs against the singularity of black holes. George R.R. Martin’s epic story of ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’ is that same struggle, as is Toklien’s calm Hobbits vs. the fires...

The automobile has revolutionized human civilization in countless ways: drive-ins, drive-throughs, drive-ways, parking garages, walk-signals, etc. Cars far outnumber humans in this world; and considering their speed and weight, they must be strictly regulated, less they become dangerous. Stop signs, stop lights, lane markers, and one-ways signs became the standard for all our roads. The cars grew...

Guest grumbler: Patricia McCarthy Through the long eons of life on this planet, evolution has sculpted the most efficient, perfect forms for the animals that grace the Earth. The human body is arguably the greatest of all Mother Earth’s children: elegant, lean, dexterous, and intelligent; yet arrogant. We look down at our forms and think: bland. We must add clothes. Pretty clothes. What then...

Guest Grumbler: Corey Thompson Previous to the internet age, information sharing across the globe was logistically improbably. Ergo, as civilizations developed in different corners of the Earth, complex systems evolved in different forms – like language, or religion. Fortunately for the rise of globalization, numbers were always the same. If you have 1 apple, and someone gives you 1 apple, y...

The billions of cells that make up our bodies all require oxygen. Evolution has provided a streamlined solution to this crucial need: the circulatory system. This is your heartbeat, your pulse, your rhythm. With or without your consideration, this system keeps you alive all day and all night. You need never think on it; until it stops. Just beneath the surface of New York City is another circulato...

The internet has reversed the erstwhile stream of entertainment. Content used to flow down to the masses from elite studios; and the peons sucked what enjoyment they could out of corporate-sifted films, books, or radio. Now, with the world wide web, every soul with an IP address is a content creator. Youtube and TikTok put you in the director’s chair to broadcast whatever type of videos you...

The universe is a vast, empty vacuum of nothingness, dotted here and there with noxious gasses and dead rocks. Earth, however, is a teaming, mutating, breathing, chaotic ball of lush life. Organic matter is embedded in every inch of this rich biosphere. From bacteria to phytoplankton and dodos to platypus, life has covered the Earth for eons. There’s dead dinosaur juice in the ground and the...

Our lives are often based on routine. Easily, we slip into the schedule of work and sleep. But enrichment comes from the sweet variety of life. There are many sweet things the world presents us for the taking: a walk in the park, perhaps; a lingering glance from an attractive stranger; the aroma of a fresh bouquet; a soft kiss from your best gal. And then there are some things that are not sweet....

Humankind loves a crowd. We are a social animal. The ‘gatherer’ in ‘Hunter/Gatherer’ may often be mistaken for gathering of fruits and nuts, but we are gatherers, nonetheless. We gather at our lockers, watercoolers, sports arenas, and the occasional mosh-pit. Now that the quarantine is lifting, we can finally travel to the exotic places we love to gather. For some of us, th...

The modern world that we’ve created is driven by algorithms. Every human is numbered at birth, every car has a unique VIN number, and this podcast is blasted out from a particular IP address. Somehow we know the exact number of hippos in existence. Everything is a number and it’s all in the algorithm. So how can corporations claim to offer individualized plans? How can a corporation cl...

In the vast expanse of the universe, Life is seemingly unique to Earth. When we discover new planets, the very first question astronomers ask is: Is there water? Water is the key to all life as we know it. Our vast knowledge of the universe only exists because of millions of years of evolutionary advancements that all hinged on a primordial soup of amino acids and an abundant supply of water. But...

As the universe erodes into entropy, humankind instinctively tantrums against nature’s inevitable transition into chaos. We like order. Whether it’s arbitrarily graphing the elements of the universe in a periodic table, or tidying up our living room, we like to put things in their proper place. Cleaning, though, is often a messy endeavor. Dusting, polishing, spilling, and absorbing nee...

Guest Grumbler: Michael Giansiracusa “Never has the world been more divided. Every single person is always at peak rage. The only thing that matters is winners and losers; and the only defense is outright offense. The quintessential global war of rhetoric cannot ever end without the unconditional surrender of the consummate whole of all who ally with the side of absolute evil.” Alterna...

Guest grumbler: Hannah Karpenko In mankind’s eternal quest to bring light into the darkness, we have unlocked maddening varieties of bulbs. From the simple origins of fire and candle, lighting has evolved through the centuries to finally achieve its ultimate form: the luminous, gaseous, lifeless glow known as fluorescent. Like the omnipresent, brimstone glow of hades, humanity can now light...

Guest Grumbler: Allyson Boate Since the dawn of civilization, humanity has stared toward the heavens, calculating the movement of the stars in an attempt to predict the repeated rise and fall of our most important star. The sun’s rhythm, though, is awkwardly syncopated. What’s not so obvious is that we’re what’s wobbling. Somehow we have settled on there being 24 spans of a...