I rarely laugh at jokes. I like jokes and I do laugh, but I usually laugh at attitudes, sounds, references, situations, and timing. Laughs for me, are a sign of playful intent. And since play is best unstructured, I rarely laugh at jokes.
Primitives
Gearing Up
During a game of chess near the end of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Miranda, the fourteen-year-old daughter of Prospero, envisions drunken sailors staggering off the wreckage of a ship. Miranda — a cultural critic with an Orwellian bent, comments, “O wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world! That has such people in’t!”
What is Happening in Our Skies?
On this week’s episode, Nathan, Mike, and Mahler the Fake News Dog talk about out-of-body experiences, a vegan planet, ticks, Lake Tahoe microplastics, toilet to tap, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, Hubris syndrome, turning cancer against itself, self-healing metal, We Agnostics, unidentified aerial phenomena, the Los Angeles Thread Millipede, pickleball Gandhi, and so on.
Damned Fools
On this week’s episode, Nathan, Mike, and Mahler the Fake News Dog talk about mammals eating dinosaurs, test monkeys, CRISPR poplar trees, hot oceans, the Saudi Arabia Arizona Alfalfa Corporation, Algal Greenland, the politicization of the weather, drinking water forever chemicals, repulsive taste, toxic flame retardant in human breast milk, child firearm mortality rates, the U.S. Cyber Trust Mark, Dark Stars, Alzheimer’s in Southern California, union-busting, Union Beer, and so…
The Billionaires’ Club
On this week’s episode, Nathan, Mike, and Mahler the Fake News Dog talk about unicorn meat, bird anti-bird spikes, a salmon’s sense of smell, methane-spewing holes, the Blackfeet Nation bison, Arkstorm, Farmers Insurance, solar geoengineering, superheroic white paint, over-the-counter birth control, the “thousand year veto,” cartooning industry shock waves, the lawful “thumbs-up” emoji, the richest 500 people on earth, the Week of Cone, sex at Wimbleton, and so on.
Rolling a Joint
On this week’s episode, Nathan, Mike, and Mahler the Fake News Dog talk about the Orca Uprising, PFAS v pets, The Return of Tulare Lake, clear-air turbulence, the slo-mo universe, AI pollution, solar maximum, social media disinformation, Euclid, Africa’s split, Diego Rivera, postmortem sperm retrieval, smartwatching Parkinson’s, psychedelics, and so on.
