Tales under the cat tree: Conversations on Imagination, Tech & Human Adventure

This updated episode for A Finnish Midsummer includes the original short story "The cottage on the shores of Yli-Kitka" in both Finnish and English, and a description of celebrating midsummer in the Finnish Archipelago. You can read the original story: English: https://tales.dups.ca/p/the-cottage-on-yli-kitka Finnish: https://tales.dups.ca/p/mokki-yli-kitkan-rannalla The sound of the Kuikka: Kuikk...

Please note, the podcast will take a break and return July 13, 2026 Welcome to my Canada Day special episode. Canada Day 2026 is special for me because twenty-five years ago on 1 July 2001, surrounded by many dear friends, I became a proud Canadian. That story comes towards the end of the episode. First, I want to celebrate a fellow Canadian and a fellow Newfoundlander. I've known Joe Teo for more...

This is part two of my series on Canada. Today, we will explore what it means to be Canadian in 2026 by looking back at the last 50 years of Canada through the eyes of two of my best friends. On a beautifully sunny day in a small tea garden in Berlin, Germany, I met up with Sylvia and Erwin Warkentin, fellow Canadians observing our country from afar. Together, we discuss the changes they have witn...

This is part 1 of four episodes celebrating Canada. On July 1 is Canada Day, and this year in 2026, it will be my 25th anniversary as a Canadian citizen. It is the country I choose to call home. Canada has as many problems as any other country. As we speak, Alberta, a province I called home for near a decade, is preparing for a referendum on separating from the country. Today’s episode is about so...

Johnny Nolan returns as my co-host for another Newfoundland Alternative music deep dive, but this time we are honoured to be joined by author and journalist Rhea Rolman. We wanted to explore the influence of alternative music on alternative communities in St. John’s, Newfoundland and how music is important in creating safe spaces during the 1990s and even earlier. The 1990s Analogue Culture: Yup t...

Today on the podcast, I’m joined by my old friend and former BioWare colleague, Brent Knowles . We chat all about the art and magic of world-building, drawing from Brent’s several decades of experience as a game designer and writer. Brent shares his creative journey, from drawing fantasy maps on grocery shop paper bags as a child to working on iconic titles like Baldur’s Gate 2 , Neverwinter Night...

In our previous episode we explored the idea of creating worlds for writing and especially table top roleplaying games such as Dungeons and Dragons. In that episode which is Episode 54 if you want to take a listen , I noted that because our entire lives are spent within the imagination of our own creations, there is a connection to manufacturing reality. This week, I invited back to the show my fr...

In this episode, we dive into an introduction on creating the fictional realities we love to get lost in. From the shores of Midkemia to the neon-lit streets of homegrown tabletop RPG campaigns, I explore how our imaginations construct and inhabit these spaces. Joining the discussion are my friends and fellow tabletop DMs, Andrés Díez de Castro and Nik Paro, who share the collaborative creative pr...

"If tomorrow your digital world disappeared through no fault of your own, would anyone know who you are?" We explore the fragile nature of memory and the misconception that our digital lives are permanent. From the ancient ruins of Sri Lanka to the disappearing "master servers" of early video games, this episode examines how the "ordinary person" remains at risk of being erased from history. The M...

Welcome to our One-Year Anniversary! In this special milestone episode of Tales Under the Cat Tree , we look back at a remarkable year of profound global change and incredible conversations. From history and pop culture to role-playing games and war photography, we’ve explored it all. We reflect on what it means to embrace being an eclectic "audio magazine" in an algorithm-driven world. Thank you...

Continuing the previous conversation, Dups and Dr. Erwin Warkentin explore the subjective experience of art, the impact of technological tools on creation, and global storytelling differences. Key Topics: Nuance and Subtlety: Finding hidden details in art, comparing Beethoven's "false cadences" and Rembrandt's framing to the environmental storytelling in games like Myst and The Last of Us . The De...

Dups and Dr. Warkentin discuss whether video games qualify as classical art. They examine the philosophy of play and compare traditional theater structures to modern game design. Key Topics: The Philosophy of Play: A look at Schiller’s concept of the "drive to play" ( Spieltrieb ) and how playing games connects logical and emotional thinking. Aristotle vs. Brecht in Gaming: Comparing linear, fixed...

This is the second part of our series on 80s and 90s alternative music from St. John's, Newfoundland with my friend Johnny Nolan. Today we feature music from Schizoid, Malpractice and The Reaction. A special note: On April 1, 2026, and this is not an April Fool's Joke. The student's union at Memorial University voted to shut down CHMR. In a day and age where voices are being muzzled around the wor...

From ancient times to today, gods and humans have hammered red-hot metal into shapes of weapons and crafts of beauty. In Ancient Greek mythology, Hephaestus and in fantasy, beings such as Sauron forge the ultimate weapons in the insane heat at the heart of volcanoes. Without human blacksmiths, who were the technologists of their day, we would not have the tooling and the world-building that have b...

This is part 4 of my series on BioWare. In this episode, I'm lucky to have Dave Chan talking about sound design and more. Dave started working at BioWare before me on games such as MDK2, Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate 2. We overlapped on games such as Neverwinter Nights, Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic and Jade Empire. Dave has had a long career in video games, for a full list please check...

March 21 is designated by the United Nations as the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. In South Africa, it is Human Rights Day. On March 21, 1960 police opened fire into a crowd of protestors at Sharpeville in South Africa. This event would start the process of the African National Congress (ANC) and the Pan-African Congress (PAC) being outlawed, Nelson Mandela being j...

Between 2003 and 2009 my friends and I used to host something called the St. Patrick’s Day Drunk Dial Contest. What was the St. Patrick’s Day Drunk Dial you ask? At its heart, it was a simple attempt to connect friends from university in Newfoundland and who were now spread throughout Canada and the world. St. Patrick’s Day, which is the national day of Ireland, is also celebrated around the world...

Why do humans purposefully subject themselves to freezing winds, exhausting altitudes, and perilous drops? In the first of our mountaineering series, host Dups opens with an autobiographical story from Indian Ridge in the Canadian Rockies. Then, Dups is joined by two long-time friends and climbing partners, Mike Mannion and Keli Ryan, to discuss the philosophy, humour, and hazards of modern mounta...

We walk through life as one among a multitude, but what happens when you are tasked with standing in the eye of historical storms? In this episode, we explore what it truly means to bear witness to the darkest and sometimes, most profound, moments of the human experience. Award-winning photojournalist Greg Locke joins the show to share his incredible journey spanning forty years of covering crime,...

Nine months ago, I asked if engineers were really adopting AI in larger companies. Today, that question is irrelevant. We have moved past chatbots and “vibe coding” into the era of agentic engineering . In this sequel to Episode 2, I explore how my own identity as a developer is being restructured—from writing syntax to managing autonomous fleets of agents that plan, code, and test on their own. I...

Grab a kettle of tea and dive into the isolated, vibrant, and "too radical" world of the St. John’s punk scene. In this episode, Dups and old-time punk musician Johnny Nolan reunite to spin tracks and tell stories from a time when you couldn’t throw a stone in downtown St. John’s without hitting a live gig. Inside the Episode Island Isolation: How being stuck on a rock in the Atlantic forced a tig...

In this episode, Duleepa Wijayawardhana | Tech Leader & Storyteller turns the tables on his former professor, Dr. Erwin Warkentin. What starts as a literary critique of a "raw" first-draft short story evolves into a profound conversation about memory, aging, and the terror of the first-person perspective. Erwin shares a story about a teenage boy, a school dance in -30°C Winnipeg weather, and a mem...

Every day we wake up and go about our business. Life changes—mostly imperceptibly, incrementally, crawling season after season. We accept new streets, new buses, and new buildings as normal. What once was a field of flowers is now a parking lot, t o paraphrase the famous song by Joni Mitchell , and before long, you might never know a field existed. However, something happens when you visit a place...

Have you noticed that you sometimes sound different or use different words when you talk to your parents? Or maybe you slip into specific expressions with people from the town you left behind so long ago? When I was in Newfoundland a few months ago, Sylvia Warkentin introduced me to the term “Cultural code-switching.” This was a term I hadn’t heard before, but it turns out it’s something I’ve been...

On this episode, I feature the works of Erik Granström , a Swedish author and roleplaying game writer. We delve into fantasy, fantasy writing and the worlds he has created and their relation to our reality. Also featured is music by Svavelvinter which features the vocals of Christian Älvestam . You can listen to the music on Apple Music and Spotify: The roleplaying games we chat about include * Dr...