In 2004, I co-founded a company (with Josh Petersen and Buster Benson) that conceived of and built the social networking site 43 Things. The purpose of the site was to ask the question, “What do you want to do with your life?” With this prompt, users created a list of up to 43 life goals (43 was…

This essay is the backstory for our song “Stringlyjack,” which you can listen to below or over here.

In 2007 I read an article in The New Yorker titled “An Error in the Code,” by Richard Preston, about a rare inherited disease called…

This essay is the backstory for our song “Ogallala,” which you can listen to below or over here.

As with many children of the 1970s, my first awareness of “the environment” as a thing that humans had royally screwed up was sparked by…

This essay is the backstory for our song “Song for Brangien,” which you can listen to below or over here.

This week we welcome a special guest essayist: Daniel Spils!

This essay is the backstory for our song “Time Lapse Photography,” which you can listen to below or over here.

When my cousin Avi was preparing to relocate from California to Seattle a few years ago, he told me he was…

This essay is the backstory for our song “Emphasis,” which you can listen to below or over here.

I was waiting in an exam room at the emergency veterinary clinic when I found out my cousin had succumbed to the vodka he would not, could…

This essay is the backstory for our song “The Last Day,” which you can listen to below or over here.

This week we welcome a special guest essayist, dear friend and writer Charles H. Fischer, who was with us during the events that…

This essay is the backstory for our song “Invisible Baby,” which you can listen to below or over here.

Our last trip to Los Angeles included a jaunt to the suburbs to stay the night with old friends at their new home. They had just…

This essay is the backstory for our song “Snake Poem,” which you can listen to below or over here.

The first poem I ever encountered was likely a classic English nursery rhyme — one of many that my mother recited aloud while bouncing me…