Bufnagle: the Podcast

Rafe goes solo and reviews and discusses the 2021 movie The Green Knight , a retelling of the 14th century chivalric tale of Sir Gawain, the Green Knight, and the famous Christmas challenge. The review and discussion points out a number of deviations from the poem but the movie is not much worse for the modifications; such is artistic license. A truthful telling of the tale reveals that knights mu...

Who knew there was so much to know about badgers and that so much of if was so awesome? Join Harry and Rafe for a lively and humorous discussion of all the things that one can find out about badgers: * They are fast. * You can eat them but you need to be careful. * They might eat you but they won't be careful. * People used to think that they had really strange ways of mining. * They are all...

Picking up where we left off from the last episode, Harry joins Rafe to discuss further the Mathematics Genealogy Project and how one can show, for example, that Rafe is related to Nicolas Copernicus.  Along the way, Euler and the number e are discussed further, we pick up tips on tessellations, and we wonder how things would have been different had Liebniz's father had not married his third...

Starting in the late 1600s and  ending  (at least for now!) in 1868, Rafe traces two branches of a mathematical genealogy.  This list of some of the great minds of the history of mathematics includes two Bernoullis, Euler, Poisson, Gauss, and many others, people who developed tools that today we take for granted. All this work, of course, was done before computers or calculators, using arcane nota...

Harry and Rafe discuss Rafe's lifelong love of working with wood and what makes wood a great medium for construction and why it generally produces sawdust and mistakes. They discuss some biology, chemistry, engineering, and other things that one must learn to successfully tackle working with wood.  In the end, then conclude that one should either buy or build heirloom furniture and that one o...

Harry and Rafe discuss standards: systems and methods that allows boundaries that result in flourishing, flexibility, and diversity. After a long discussion on everything from iron gas pipes to computer software to measurement systems to Lego, we learn that the right restrictions can actually improve flexibility and allow everyone to flourish and that Virtue provides a standard that allows all of...

Rafe goes solo and tells a 40-year tale of computers, serendipity, generosity, and gratitude that starts with a Christmas present in 1980 and continues to today with a very welcome unofficial retirement. This episode is kindly sponsored by BlendJet. Use our special link ("bufnagle") to save 12% at blendjet.com . The discount will be applied at checkout! ***** As always, you can reach the...

Brock "Cinder" Friedman, America's Favorite Naval Aviator, joins the Buf again to catch us up on his life and to discuss the nuances of celestial navigation.  We'll learn how to take delivery of a new helicopter, how to use a sextant, and why you need need to keep your chronometer in good working order! ***** As always, you can reach the Buf at bufnagle@bufnagle.com ***** As yo...

Harry and Rafe entertain 7 (or 8, depending on how you count) fan questions and get to the bottom of important issues like breakfast foods, quarterbacks, vacation cruises, biographies of great people, and a lot more! "Everyone has failures; who cares about those?  Tell me about greatness!" This episode is kindly sponsored by Nom Nom.  Try Nom Nom today, go to https://zen.ai/bufnaglethepo...

Rafe does a solo show and discusses the plethora of home automation technology available today.  When is it Good?  When is it Bad?  Is it just a gimmick or does it solve a real problem? Like all technology, it is only a tool and is neither Good nor Evil.  If it helps you seek the Good, then keep it; if it causes you to falter, jettison it! This episode is kindly sponsored by Nom Nom.  Try Nom Nom...

Harry and Rafe conclude Bufnagle: the Podcast, Book Club Edition and the discussion of Alfred Lansing's book Endurance , the tale of Earnest Shackleton's ill-fated adventure to the South Pole during 1914, 1915, and 1916. After two weeks fighting the Drake Passage, the James Caird and its six voyagers are out of potable water, South Georgia Island is within striking distance, but reefs an...

Harry and Rafe continue with Bufnagle: the Podcast, Book Club Edition and the discussion of Alfred Lansing's book Endurance , the tail of Earnest Shackleton's ill-fated adventure to the South Pole during 1914, 1915, and 1916. Within days of arriving at Elephant Island, Shackleton and five others depart in a modified James Caird in a last-ditch, do-or-die, Hail Mary attempt to reach civil...

Harry and Rafe continue with Bufnagle: the Podcast, Book Club Edition and the discussion of Alfred Lansing's book Endurance , the tail of Earnest Shackleton's ill-fated adventure to the South Pole during 1914, 1915, and 1916. The men finally make a run for land after escaping from the ice but things go from bad to worse as the crew is met by one obstacle after another: constantly changin...

Harry and Rafe continue with Bufnagle: the Podcast, Book Club Edition and the discussion of Alfred Lansing's book Endurance , the tail of Earnest Shackleton's ill-fated adventure to the South Pole during 1914, 1915, and 1916. Following the destruction of the Endurance, Shackleton's men are forced to face changing plans amongst the slowly drifting ice floes of the Weddell sea.  Hopin...

Harry and Rafe continue with Bufnagle: the Podcast, Book Club Edition and the discussion of Alfred Lansing's book Endurance , the tail of Earnest Shackleton's ill-fated adventure to the South Pole during 1914, 1915, and 1916. We take up with Shackleton and his intrepid band of merry men stuck in the ice of the Weddell Sea in February of 1915 and follow their exploits through the Antarcti...

Harry and Rafe present Bufnagle: the Podcast, Book Club Edition with discussion of Alfred Lansing's book Endurance , the tail of Earnest Shackleton's ill-fated adventure to the South Pole during 1914, 1915, and 1916. Leaving England on the August day that England declared war on Germany in WWI, Shackleton led the ship Endurance to Buenos Aires and then on to South Georgia and then into t...

Harry joins Rafe to discuss a Twitter post that ponders the idea of wonders — societal constructions that neither the architect nor the benefactor nor the labors will ever see completed — and how we never seem to do that anymore. We may do things like age wine or whiskey in barrels for a couple of decades, but our inability to think about how our efforts should be directed toward the Good of those...

Every 12-year-old boy (and most everyone else too) should watch Rocky for what it teaches us about Virtue. Join Rafe this week as he discusses the 1976 Academy Award Winning Movie Rocky and how it shows that to fulfill your calling to become what you were made to become, you must discipline yourself to practice virtue.   Rocky is a story of a good man who could be Great, if he would only practice...

Harry walks the Buf through a parachute-jumping accident that could have been gravely serious had a calm head not controlled the situation.  But following such a mishap, how does one get back on the horse to jump another day? ***** As always, you can reach the Buf at bufnagle@bufnagle.com ***** As you know, this is an independent podcast so your hosts also carry all the expenses of running this po...

Rafe takes a short solo episode to discuss the Passion and how it is the oldest and most common story in history: power is threatened by Truth so Truth gets killed.  But Truth has that odd little habit of coming back, which gives us Easter. Technology may advance but Man stays the same: driven by power and thus corrupt.  There are no new problems; all the problems are old.  The solutions are old t...

Harry and Rafe discuss Millet's 1859 painting The Angelus , a copy of which fortuitously once hung in Rafe's elementary school library. Of course, this podcast being what it is, the conversation wends its way through all sorts of topics (other paintings,  Daylight Saving Time, drone delivery vehicles, Calvin and Hobbes, etc) but generally addresses the subject of placing art in locations...

America's Favorite Rocket Scientist, Bob Luzenski, joins the Buf to update us on Spring flowers, the US space program, and the wonders of total solar eclipses. Today's big lesson: if you are anywhere near the area of totality for the total solar eclipse that will pass over North America on Monday afternoon, April 8, 2024, do everything you can to ensure that you are actually in totality....

Big Brain Smart Head Sarah Schutte graciously returns to the Buf to join Harry and Rafe with a discussion of food and literature.   After some necessary preambles concerning aviation, the three discuss how preparing meals for others is Love manifest, how the Redwall series excels at depicting food, and how the kitchen is very often the center of a home. Join us for a conversation of airplanes, fas...

After an unexpectedly drawn-out introduction, Harry and Rafe get to the question at hand: what would you do with an obscene amount of money? This hypothetical question can help you steer your current limited amount of money toward those things that really matter, those things that reflect Truth, Beauty, and Goodness. (And remember, it cannot buy happiness, but it can buy you a boat or, in Harry&ap...

Rafe presents a solo episode discussing the difficulty that results from our fully-connected internet world.  It's really hard to win when there are over 7 billion people on the planet all playing the same game. So, what to do?  Don't play. Play the game where you are challenged to become the full realization of Imago Dei that you were designed to be.  You are in competition only with th...