How distractions can be beneficial or detrimental, from a certain point of view. --- Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane I recommend you now listen to: On Pauses A link to the WBEZ Chicago story referenced in this episode.

This week, talking through three terms I’ve historically had trouble understanding: epistemology, ontology, and teleology. --- Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane

This week, how numbers are both a universal language and symbols representing deeper meaning. --- Click here to support the Wednesday Blog:https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane

This week, I discuss how my experience working with genealogy databases helped prepare me to be a professional researcher. --- Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane

This week, some thoughts on the divestment of our social media attention and why I choose to use different platforms for different sorts of messages. --- Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane Photo of the author by Hariprasad Ashwene, 2024.

This week, looking ahead to the next 25 years here are three things that I hope we see become ordinary things by 2050. --- Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://wwww.patreon.com/sthosdkane

This week, to begin Season 5, I discuss some hopes of mine for the first quarter of the twenty-first century through reflections on three things that I imagined might be possible twenty-five years ago. --- Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane

Season 4 Finale: This week, to celebrate Christmas I’ve decided to write a bit about naming conventions that I’ve come across, and to explain why I use my full name professionally. Nollaig shona daoibh | Merry Christmas! --- Click Here to Support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane…

This week, for my birthday I want to write to you about my belief in all of us and how democracy remains our best hope. --- Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane

This week, how the same tools can be used to weave a variety of different stories. --- Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane

This week, some notes on the story I released here last week, more about Carruthers Smith and the other stories who populate that tale. --- Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane

This week, a story about excess and secrets all in a museum built by an old reclusive Gilded Age tycoon named Carruthers Smith. --- Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane The episode artwork this week was generated by Dreamstudio. I really need to get back to sketching.…

This week, an odd sort of sorrow that explains my reading habits. --- Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane

This week, some words on the places I visited and the people I met on this North American Tour I finished on Sunday. --- Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane

This week, to start November, a realization I had recently about how to overcome less severe colds. --- Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: ⁠https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane⁠ Photo: a moose diorama on display at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University in Philadelphia taken by the author in August 2022.…

This week, I have a spooky short story for you, based on an experience I had over the summer. --- Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane Photo: an empty corridor in the Paris Métro as seen by the author on the evening when this spooky story takes place.

This week, some words about silence in communication. --- Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane Photo: the poster for the new film "Lee" which is discussed in this episode.

This week, I want to write to you about the revealed joys found in the experience of editing. --- Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane

This week, I discuss the two Irish words for the horse, and what they tell us about the history of the Irish language. --- Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane

This week, a great celebration commences in our national pastime. --- Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane

This week, to conclude a month of chaos I interviewed environmental journalist Ben Goldfarb about his book Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter. --- Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane. Links Ben Goldfarb's Website: https://www.bengoldfarb.com NOAA Fisheries, "Oregon Beavers Engi…

This week, I address news that the latest version of ChatGPT will help with your math problems. --- Links: New York Times, 12 Sep. 2024, Cade Metz, "OpenAI Unveils New ChatGPT That Can Reason Through Math and Science." Eddie Burback, 1 Sep. 2024, "AI is here. What now?" YouTube.

This week, some moderation in Maverick’s “need for speed.” --- Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane

This week, some animalistic thoughts. Photo credit: Fighting African Elephants in Stanley Field Hall. Taxidermy by Carl Akeley . 41411 is on the left with two tusks and its trunk is raised. 41410 is on the right, with one tusk. (c) Field Museum of Natural History - CC BY-NC 4.0 --- Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/s…

This week, I take you along on an investigation I undertook recently into a family heirloom from World War II. --- Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane

In the last week, I’ve learned about the impermanence of things after a flood struck our house. --- Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane

In celebration of the last few weeks of the Summer Olympics in Paris, I want to write to you about the optimism that the Olympics embody. --- Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane

This week, how it’s good to pause and notice the ways we supersede older things with the new while benefiting from the old all the same. --- Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane

This week, some words on two books about exploration that I’ve read this summer: Hampton Sides’s The Wide Wide Sea, and Michael Palin’s Erebus. --- Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane

This past weekend, history was made when President Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race. The next 48 hours inspired tremendous hope again. --- Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane

This week, I feel compelled by this past weekend’s events to write about the follies of political violence. --- Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane

This week, I have a short story for you that I wrote three years ago after the death of a dear friend. --- Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane

This week, I’m writing to you with this week’s holiday in mind, with some of my aspirations and hopes for America. --- Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane

This week, a few words about the trip I just completed to London and Paris. --- Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane

This week, I have a short story for you, in the style of an Irish aisling, a dream narrative, about a tiger basking in the warm February sun. --- Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane

This week, I conclude my three-part reflection on Dante’s Divine Comedy with the Paradiso. --- Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane

Last week, I wrote my thoughts on the first cantica of Dante’s Divine Comedy. This week then, the second part, the Purgatorio. All quotations from the Divine Comedy come from Robin Kirkpatrick’s English translation published in the 2012 Penguin edition. --- Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane…

A while ago, I began reading Dante's Divine Comedy. So, over the next three weeks I will be writing my own reflections on each of its three parts. This week then, I begin with the Inferno. --- Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane --- Dante: Inferno to Paradise, https://dantedocumentary.com The Blues Brothers,…

Last week, I listened to an essay from the New York Times Magazine about the possibility that one might lose their first language if they use another too much. Today then, I write to my own experience in this matter. --- Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane

Last week, the 7th of May 2024, marked the 200th anniversary of the premiere of Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 9. Today then, I want to talk with you about the hope which runs through that Ode to Joy. The recordings of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony heard in this episode came from the 1956 album by the ProMusica Symphony Orchestra and Chorus under…

This past weekend, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art debuted a new retrospective exhibit on the life and work of Franco-American artist Niki de Saint Phalle. One of her great initiatives was to express rebellious joy in her art, especially later in her career. --- Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane…

Over the last week, I've been thinking about how much I still use cash, and what that says about my lifestyle as a whole. Guests: Alex Brisson, New York City Elizabeth Duke, Kansas City, MO George Vial, County Donegal, Ireland --- Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane…

Over the last week, I've been thinking about the standards we define to cast a model of normality, or in an older term normalcy. This week then, I try to answer the question of what even is normal? --- Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane

This Monday, North America experienced its second total solar eclipse in the last decade. --- Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane

This week, after going down the rabbit hole of the Chicago Manual of Style's monthly Q&A newsletter, I thought I'd talk a bit about grammar. --- Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane

Last week, I returned to Chicago, this time on a business trip to attend a conference, and on the way took time to slow things down and enjoy the lived experience. --- Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane

This week, to begin Season 4 of the Wednesday Blog podcast, I want to talk about what it means to exist. I know, small topic for a Wednesday. --- Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane

This week, to round out Season 3 of the Wednesday Blog podcast, a few words about my love for museums. --- Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane

This week, I want to talk a bit about how the period I study resonates in our everyday lives through the foods we eat. --- Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane

Today, one week after this city's great triumph and great tragedy, I've decided to reflect on the week now passed. --- Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane