Life Elsewhere

Steve Wasserman  is as charming as his eloquent writing, he's a raconteur, a cultural essayist & he talks to us about  Tell Me Something, Tell Me Anything, Even If It’s A Lie . He takes the reader on an exhilarating journey through the world of books, featuring personal reflections on Susan Sontag, Huey Newton, Barbra Streisand, W. G. Sebald, Christopher Hitchens and more. In thirty splendid e...

The results of the 2024 presidential election may mean untold sleepless nights for progressives. The reasons for the outcome are already clouded by agitated finger-pointing. While pundits pontificate, critical analysis is met with flabbergasted disdain. With  Nuts and Bolts: The Formula for Progressive Electoral Success , political organizer and strategist,  Robert Creamer  had months before the e...

Moments after Steve Kornacki paused slightly then continued reeling off percentages in whatever county in whichever swing state had just committed to Trump my iPhone and media feeds started going berserk.  “We are doomed!”  screamed one message and another declared  “This is the end!”  The votes across the nation were still being tabulated yet the numbers were indicating positively that Harris cou...

Vince Beiser -  Power Metal - The Race For The Resources That Will Shape Our Future An Australian millionaire’s plan to mine the ocean floor. Nigerian garbage pickers risking their lives to salvage e-waste. A Bill Gates-backed entrepreneur harnessing AI to find metals in the Arctic. These people and millions more are part of the intensifying competition to find and extract the minerals essential f...

Here in these parts we just experienced two, yes, two major hurricanes in less than two weeks. First Helene, then Milton came a-blowing. For a little insight on the trauma of suffering through a hurricane, go to the artwork for this volume, enlarge it enough to read clearly, so you can read my account.    Continue reading here

Jill Barton -  The Supreme Guide To Writing Jill Barton’s  unbridled enthusiasm for writing and the law is evident from the moment we start chatting, plus she is blessed with a winning smile. And, there’s the clue to how a law professor and author has analyzed 10,000 pages of Supreme Court opinions which ostensibly should be staid and academic and revealed the astonishing news that the Justices ha...

Calahan Skogman -  Blue Graffiti He is proud to be from a small town in middle-of-nowhere Midwestern America. And he wants you to know why. With his debut novel,  Blue Graffiti ,  Calahan Skogman  relishes in portraying a place he is all too familiar with, albeit Johnston is a figment of his imagination. Pouring his soul out in words about the environment he grew up in was not enough for  Mr. Skog...

Augustine Sedgewick  -  Coffeeland: One Man’s Dark Empire and the Making of Our Favorite Drug What do you know about coffee? A wonderful new book will change how you look at - or taste coffee again.  Augustine Sedgewick  takes us on an extraordinary adventure of discovery, revealing details and history, even the most ardent coffee lover will be surprised by. In  Coffeeland - One Man’s Dark Empire...

Liran Einav & Amy Finkelstein -  We’ve Got You Covered: Rebooting American Health Care Few of us need convincing that the American health insurance system needs reform. But many of the existing proposals focus on expanding one relatively successful piece of the system or building in piecemeal additions. These proposals miss the point. As the Stanford health economist  Liran Einav  and the MIT...

Blue Honey -  Sick & Tired We begin with  Sick & Tired  a cut from a well-crafted album by Perth-based,  Blue Honey . Five members here if you don’t count the two teddy bears I spied in their PR photo.  Sick & Tired  is an LP I certainly recommend, plus top marks for the impressive drumming. ⁠Mary Jane Dunphe -  Stage Of Love ⁠ ⁠ Stage Of Love  is from the album of the same name by poe...

Chuck Collins -  Alter To An Erupting Sun Altar to an Erupting Sun is a near-future story of one community facing climate disruption in the critical decade ahead. Rae Kelliher is a veteran environmental activist and pioneer in the death-with-dignity movement. Facing a diagnosis of terminal illness, she engages in a shocking suicide murder, taking the life of an oil company CEO for his role in dela...

Setting up a Zoom conversation with three people you have not met before could be really daunting. Do they all have sound and lighting that works properly?  Will we have to spend ages in edit sweetening the audio? What happens if they talk over each other? We shouldn’t have worried. There was singer, guitarist  Jen White  in Las Vegas, lounging comfortably in a cozy corner of a sofa, ensconced wit...

Norman B. Talk Show Reel

Kris Berle & Skydrips -  Keep An Eye On You Skydrips  a live DJ act from Berlin, Germany teams up with artist and musician,  Kris Berle  for a nice gentle hip-swayer,  Keep An Eye On You . They say, the song is a dialogue between the Moon and The Earth as a way to find a deeper meaning in life. Sounds fair enough. The other side is equally as good.  ⁠Hyroglifics -  Hotwire (ft. Liza Jane) ⁠ ⁠...

Ahmed White:  Under the Iron Heel: The Wobblies and the Capitalist War on Radical Workers In 1917, the Industrial Workers of the World was rapidly gaining strength and members. Within a decade, this radical union was effectively destroyed, the victim of the most remarkable campaign of legal repression and vigilantism in American history.  Under the Iron Heel  is the first comprehensive account of...

Golden Vessel & Filous -  Great Big Warm House We begin by heading down to beautiful Bondi Beach where the dedicated crew at  Mammal Sounds  work 24/7 to release exceptional work, here we have top-rated Australian artist  Golden Vessel  who has teamed up with Austrian artist  Filous for their new single  Great Big Warm House , the first cut from their collaborative EP scheduled for release in...

Before I pressed record, I shared this true story with  Steve Turner . Bruce and John of SubPop came to me and said,  “You know John Peel, right? Could you send him some of our records?”  I did know Peel and I did send him a package of early SubPop releases - Green River, Tad, Nirvana etc. Peel played this new music on his legendary and highly influential show, not just once, but night after night...

As  Wreckless Eric  he needs little introduction — he wrote and recorded the classic  Whole Wide World  and had a hit with it back in 1977. Since then it's been a hit for countless other artists including The Monkees, Cage The Elephant and Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day.  Eric’s  version featured in the 2022 Expedia / Superbowl / Ewan MacGregor travel ad, and the Cage The Elephant version i...

David Neiwert  The Age of Insurrection: The Radical Right's Assault On American Democracy From a smattering of ominous right-wing compounds in the Pacific Northwest in the 1970s, to the shocking January 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, America has seen the culmination of a long-building war on democracy being waged by a fundamentally violent and antidemocratic far-right movement that...

Naoise Mac Sweeney -   The West: A New History In Fourteen Lives Prize-winning historian  Naoíse Mac Sweeney  delivers a captivating exploration of how Western Civilization the concept of a single cultural inheritance extending from ancient Greece to modern times - is a powerful figment of our collective imagination. An urgently needed emergent voice in big history, she offers a bold new account o...

Media Responsibility. Can the outrage over CNN’s “Town Hall” with Trump be a case of the pot calling the kettle black? After all Trump was good for ratings as the head of CBS said before Trump became President. And over on Morning Joe on MSNBC they had qualms about having Trump call in regularly before he became President. To cover Trump and the unprecedented nonsense he spews, is that the Media’s...

Glazyhaze -  A Glimpse Of Light Glazyhaze  formed in northern Italy in 2021 by  Irene Moretuzzo  and  Lorenzo Dall’Armellina .  A Glimpse Of Light  is from their  Just Fade Away  LP, they say there are dream pop/shoegaze band based in Venice. Competent work here and terrific sleeve artwork, too.  Para Lia -  Sunchild ⁠ ⁠ Para Lia  is  René Methner  (all instruments and vocals) and  Cindy Methner  ...

“It’s incredible the amount of hate I have received from people who haven’t even read my piece”   Agustin Fuentes  on the extraordinary response to his recent essay for  Scientific American  titled,  “Here’s Why Human Sex Is Not Binary” . The esteemed anthropologist is keen to point out that although his headline might sound provocative to naysayers, if they only took the short amount of time it t...

44 Ardent -  Hold The World In Your Hands The creative energy that emanates from  Mammal Sounds  located at  Bondi Beach, just outside of Sydney, Australia is truly astounding. Jez and his crew must work 24/7 in order to  be involved with so many cool releases. To prove that point,  44 Ardent  is back with a new single,  Hold The World In Your Hands , the Brisbane-based producer never fails to del...

Keeley , fronted by singer, guitarist, songwriter and enigmatic Dubliner  Keeley Moss , took time out from a hectic schedule to chat their debut album  Floating Above Everything Else . The album showcases the breadth of  Keeley’s songwriting, bristling with lush harmonies, muscular beats and inventive atmospherics, weaving gleefully between indie-rock sub-genres. As with all her songs, this set hi...