What People Do

Beth Mayorga hosts her own podcast, The Fan Fic Maverick . What is “fan fic”? The definition is always being fought over in online forums, but Beth says it simply: You’re writing stories using someone else’s IP (intellectual property).  An early form of this in the 1960s that Beth and I mention are Star Trek stories written by fans shared way before the internet was big about Kirk and Spock’s evol...

What is spina bifida ? What is it like living with the ongoing of the birth defect as a creative twentysomething American? Noah Mussay talks about childhood, school, work, life and sled hockey , and gives us a few pointers on the way he prefers strangers ask about his condition (hint: be curious, not entitled).  Note: After the last question here, I asked Noah what he does for fun outside of work...

Jeffery D. Long spoke to me last year about religious pacifism, especially in reference to the brand-new book he co-edited (and wrote chapters for), Nonviolence in the World’s Religions: A Concise Introduction  (Routledge, 2022).   Now, the Carl W. Ziegler Professor of Religious Studies at Elizabethtown College talks to me about a book coming out this year: Discovering Indian Philosophy: An Introd...

There is a joy that comes with interviewing someone about something you are deeply familiar with. You have lots of follow-up questions. You have lots of chances to push back. You know what to joke about to show inside knowledge and how to carry the interviewee deeper and deeper into the shared pool.  There is another joy that comes with interviewing someone about something you know nothing about....

I spoke to a veterinarian-and-amateur-historian recently, and he turned me onto the Crusades. I’ll admit, I hadn’t thought much about them beyond the basic line: zealous Christians from Europe led failed (and very bloody) military attempts to hold Jerusalem and other parts of Jesus' old stomping grounds. The leaders, I remembered, were surely motivated by greed and holy-war violence.  Not so fast,...

The very kind academic Monica Kirkpatrick Johnson answered questions about teenagers in society last year on this podcast. At the time, she told me she was a helping hand in research done right at the beginning of the COVID pandemic, say, March 2020.   The research had to do with social norms, Dr. Kirkpatrick Johnson told me, and her colleague—Washington State University sociology professor Dr. Ch...

Retired historian Dr. Jeremy Black has now allowed me to interview him three times. THREE TIMES. He gets an award for entertaining my curiosity.   In each interview, he dances through a historian’s perspective and answers both detailed questions about fiddly bits of the world’s past as well as giving detailed and thoughtful big-picture answers about war, religion and life in general.  In this epis...

I regularly search on Amazon for “veterinary business” and “veterinary management” and “business” books. Sometimes to buy, but usually, at first, to find new guests for a veterinary podcast .   That’s how I stumbled into Aaron Gruben ’s new book A Theology of Beasts: Christians and Veterinary Medicine . The book brought together two things that fascinate me: DVMs and divinity. I bought it. I read...

There is the hypnosis done for entertainment—on the stage or in a room of conference-goers. Like, say, this . A hypnotist gathers a group, asks the members to relax, and watches them, with their eyes closed, to see if they’re receptive to the hypnosis. The hypnotist kicks out the ones who are “faking it” or aren’t relaxing. Then the others cluck like chickens or get hot or cold or act silly.  Ther...

Everybody’s talking about mental health these days. That's, by and large, a good thing. But did you ever wonder why the incidence of diagnosed depression has been skyrocketing even as we talk more openly about our mental and emotional issues? What's going on?  That’s what I talk to retired professor emeritus Dr. Allan Horwitz about. Dr. Horwitz has tilted at the DSM (The Diagnostic and Statistical...

Veterinarian Dr. Gene Maxwell remembers someone coming up to him after a show in his town where he’d played some easy-going tunes on his guitar, influenced by folk, country, bluegrass, jazz, whatever. And she said his music was relaxing. He was elated inside. Because that’s what sitting and playing guitar does for him today: The tones of the guitar relax him like a feedback loop of calm.   He says...

I mean, he doesn’t just study Xenophon. Dr. Gregory McBrayer teacher political philosophy and international relations as Director, Core Curriculum, and Assistant Professor of Political Science at Ashland University.   I’ve been on a kick lately reading excerpts from late-19th-early-20th century series. (Find my writing here.) And each time I wrap up a thinker, I thought, “Hey, wouldn’t it be neat...

This is my big Episode 50. That’s, like, a milestone, right? And it’s with a nice guy I know, so I like it even more. I worked with Greg for years at a veterinary publishing and event company. Now, he’s working on revving up his business in commercial photography, which I think is interesting. What is commercial photography? In Greg's case, he specializes in tabletop product pics, headshots, and p...

I stumbled onto the writing of David Grayson as I reflected on my (sometimes) daily reading of The University Library. Grayson's way of seeing the good in people and letting curiosity turn his feelings of urban oppression into natural wonder were inspiring. Open, curious conversations with people are kind of what this podcast is about.  So, I went on the hunt for someone to talk to about the guy w...

I met Noah when he came to a big synagogue in the Kansas City Metro and spent a weekend with us there. I was teaching kids songs every Sunday, so he trooped around with me and my brilliant guitar-playing assistant and interacted with every age group with us during the day. He says in this podcast that he loves getting down with the kids on the ground and interacting with them in the moment, and th...

Recently retired history professor Jeremy Black was very gracious in allowing me to interview a while back about something I was curious about: war. Black has written many, many books, and a darn big pile of them specifically about military conflicts. His historic perspective—looking at how many common narratives about why wars start and how they’re won are often wrong—was amazingly refreshing, bu...

Two things everywhere around us: Religion. Space. But most people don’t bring them together. Scientists unhappy with religion shake their head at our species’ small-minded tribal violence that bubbles up in religious conflict or old-fashioned “sky daddy” thinking . Religionists unhappy with science shake their head at scientism ’s obsessive materialism and lack of answers and responses to our very...

Last month, we heard from academic Joel Schlosser on Herodotus , inspired by my own blog on some excerpts. Now, a nice Redditor, Georgios  from Greece who's read all of Thucydides agreed to discuss the ancient historian with me. We wander close to Thucydides and far afield, but most of all his enthusiasm, enjoyment and sense of humor about the principal characters and events from these old battles...

I have started reading a new set of old excerpted classics, this one gathering writers’ bits and baubles into generally geographic volumes: Greece, Rome, the British Isles, etc. I also write about them . (I write about another set here .) The first selection in the first volume comes from the ancient Greek historian Herodotus. (You can read my thoughts here .)  Much sharper than my own thoughts, h...

Kit Smith is one of the most confident, stable and exuberant kindergarten teachers I've had the pleasure to work with. (We cross paths in a local synagogue's Sunday School). She's now eyeing a well-deserved retirement from decades of educational work at a private school and her regular Sunday School gig with me. I absolutely needed to talk to her about how she became a teacher, what teaching means...

She’s an awesome veterinary practice manager and management consultant in her day job, but Tracy Sheffield moonlights doing local theater and getting called in for small parts that are just perfect for a horse-smart extra.  Find out about her latest gig in an upcoming episode of Walker (find out where to watch it here ), how she got started, years ago, watching Animal House get made at her mom’s w...

University of Omaha at Omaha’s Heike Langdon explains what goes into an Urban Studies concentration , what she likes best about nonprofit work, and why she was attracted to a field that touches on serious societal problems today and historically.   She’s focused, especially, on redlining in a few large American cities as her degree’s final project. What’s red-lining? Glad you asked. And she’s stud...

Louis teaches “Industrial Tech” at North Kansas City High School. That’s exciting enough. But one of his classes—and a ton of his extracurricular student assistance—is building robots with kids there.  The team competes under the international umbrella of the FIRST Robotics Competition .  Louis switched from his engineering degree to a new world of teaching skills like that to kids.  Here’s Louis’...

"If you believe that, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.” Maybe that line wouldn’t work on you, but what about somebody who says they’ve found gold, uranium, oil somewhere in them thar hills?  Retired geologist Dan Plazak (pronounced “PLAZ-ick,” not “PLAY-zack” as I figured) wrote a book on it: A Hole in the Ground With a Liar at the Top: Fraud and Deceit in the Golden Age of American Mining...

I’ve known Hilal Dogan for years now. She first came onto my radar when I worked for a veterinary publishing and CE conference company, and she was rocking The Veterinary Confessionals Project . She was a veterinarian by this time, although she put the project together during her time in veterinary school (hear more) .  But that’s not my favorite thing about Hilal. My favorite thing about Hilal is...