On Podcasting

July 19, 2019

I had planned on writing this post later next week, but given the guffawing over this New York Times article, which asks a very fair question about the state of podcasting, I figured screw it.

The article — which you should read right now — starts with two twenty-something millennials in New York who start a podcast with a typical kind-of-original-but-kind-of-not idea. Their objective, of course, is to promote their “brand.” They want money and fame — and they want it fast. After six episodes they’re not exactly drowning in Benjamins, so they decide to call it quits.
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My Nameless Disease

April 15, 2019

I have a weird history with dreams.

My first memory was a dream. It was when I was three, and in it, I fell down an escalator. I guess it’s kind of weird that my first memory wasn’t one of the conscious world. What’s even weirder is that it’s such an incredible metaphor for my life. I can’t say I’d recommend it. 
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Why I quit my true crime podcast habit

April 7, 2019

I have two loves — Forensic Files and podcasts.

Forensic Files is a non-fiction true crime TV show. It takes a “whodunit” approach to the cases it covers, so it starts with a victim and ends with a murderer. Of course, this means you spend most of the half hour coming up with your own theories as the show slowly drops more details. It’s addictive as hell, which is why I’ve seen every episode at least twice. The show is less about the gruesome and often salacious details of the murders than about the forensic science that led investigators to solve them. Everything I know about biology — which I’ll admit is not much — I’ve learned from Forensic Files. It’s the pinnacle of edutainment.

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Why I’m learning Esperanto, a constructed a language

July 5, 2018

Languages have never been my strong suit.

An assumption many Canadians have run into abroad, myself included, is that most people in our country are bilingual. I’ve found that many non-Canadians believe this in spite of knowing that exactly one province in our federation is majority francophone.

“But isn’t it taught in all the schools?” they ask.

It is — poorly. At least, I felt it was taught poorly to me. I can’t pin all of the blame for my monolingualism on Ontario’s public school system: my dad actively discouraged my French language education. But I feel as though a pretty important element that nine year-olds should know before they’re taught a second language was conspicuously absent from my first French class in fourth grade.
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Muay Thai adventure final post: I’m back

June 2, 2018

I’ve been back from Southeast Asia for about three weeks now. Many of you have wondered what’s happened to my serialized memoir on this blog. You’ve probably seen a lot of my posts on social media, so you might have a sense of my experiences over the past month or so, but little reflection on them. I’ve missed about 20-30 posts. I hope this one will make up for that. It’s just a more concise version of what I would have written anyway, and brevity is always a good thing.
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