What People Do

Episode 22: Ryan Kramer has hermit crabs

My friend Ryan is a master of investigating technological problems as well as a beautiful, efficient, brilliant designer in physical media and in the digital world. 
And he has hermit crabs. So, of course, I skipped right to that in my podcast with him here. 
They live in his house. His 6-year-old (at the time) daughter wanted them and named them (but then, of course, Ryan winds up caring for them, reluctant-sitcom-dad-style).  
“A larger pet was never going to get through the parental authorities,” Ryan says of his daughter’s winning pitch for the crustaceans. 
Ryan learned a lot from his first four hermit crabs (the enclosure was too small for all of them, unknown to him at the time).  
Join us as he explains his journey to better serve and care for his little beasts. And get Ryan’s quick checklist. 
 
WANT TO KNOW MORE? 
> Hermit crabs are in the animal order Decapoda, which literally means "10-footed,” but whose order animals can have as many as 38 appendages. “They let a lot of people into this club who aren’t necessarily 10-footed,” Ryan says. “A lot of times it just means creepy-crawly at the bottom of the sea and you’ve got lots of appendages.” Go figure. 
> Want to learn more? Check out the Hermit Crab Association or any of the Facebook groups (you decide how nice the folks are and whether you want to stick around). 

Episode 21: Bash Halow writes plays

NOTE: Hey. I’ve been gone a while. I’ve got two podcast interviews lined up from before. Now they’re gonna come out. This one, now. Another one, soon. Then … I don’t have any more interviews lined up yet. I’m a firm believer that everyone has something important or fun or relatable to say about something. Who’s next? Also, there’s a grind as Bash’s phone call fell out, but I think the gist of it carries through. 
“The only thing I know … is how to fail at writing plays,” jokes (not jokes) Bash Halow off the bat. 
Bash is a speaker and an article writer and a practice management consultant for veterinary practices and a former veterinary technician and a former veterinary practice manager. And I bet, although I didn’t get into it, a lot of other stuff. 
He promised me a couple years ago that if he got actors to read a play of his, he’d invite me to NYC. So right after getting laid off, I headed off to the Big Apple days after my layoff. NYC was neat. My best friend showed me around town (we mocked many things). And Bash’s play, read by actors and actresses he knew, was really marvelous: surreal, emotional, strange, funny, old-fashioned, modern. It kind of was all the things. 
Best of all, no matter how smart it got, it always fixated on heart and emotion. Kinda like every time I’ve ever seen Bash teach or work on something.  
So that’s how we wind up here, with Bash, talking plays. They are a way for Bash to bring the ideas and thoughts floating around his head out into the light, in engagement with other artists and audiences. 
“I can’t be the only one who thinks like this!” he says as his inner voice. “Let’s try one more time!” 
But to just explain it you, well, “that just lets all the air out of it,” Bash says. Better to leave the Easter eggs and the hints and the clues and leave you to think it over yourself. 
Find out how 8th-grade English teacher Ms. Knox pushed Bash into stream-of-consciousness journaling (“like unlocking Pandora’s box,” he says), how Michael Cunningham (The Hours) manages his writing process and why he thinks his latest play has truly said what he wanted to say in writing. 
My favorite thought? “If you’re writing something and it feels great, it’s probably great,” he says. Don’t hand other people your bulls***. You know when it’s good. 
 
WANT TO KNOW MORE? 
> Remember Matthew Shepard? His tragic murder inspired was a major impetus behind Bash’s latest play. 
> Bash has a couple of one-act plays for sale. I adore them. They’re heavy on the surreal and just my cup of tea. His latest I saw in NYC is more than a few steps beyond these, so beg him for a copy. Maybe he’ll share. 
> Our intrepid interviewee name-drops a Jeremy Irons performance in a play where a playwright talks about a cricket-bat approach to writing. It’s The Real Thing by Tom Stoppard. Check out a little of the dialogue and thoughts from a blogger here. 
> Heard of Tereze Gluck, sister of a Noble Prize winner? I had not. She wrote a story Bash loves, “The Coast of Massachusetts.” (Read free here with a JSTOR registration.) “She was such an original thinker,” Bash laughs. When Bash asked her once if she missed writing later in life, she told him, with wry humor, "No, no, no, it’s easier to take Prozac.” Here is a collection of short stories you can also read free. 

Episode 20: Dr. Shawn Finch chills out with coloring books

Dr. Finch and I have sat a few times at veterinary conferences and mused over introversion, work and life stress, and mental health. She’s one of the world’s genuinely good people, so when she talked years ago to me about how she used coloring books in veterinary practice to decompress, I was intrigued. 
Now, years later, she needed her friend and veterinary technician colleague, Allison Parker, to talk her back into daily coloring again.  
With the pandemic, “life has gotten more stressful for everybody,” Finch says. 
She loses herself in the coloring, though, so it needs to be solitary: “It’s not often I can do it. … I’ll light a candle, I don’t watch TV. I don’t even usually have music on. 
“It’s really calming, a constant hum, not trying to think about saving lives or sick pets or complicated things. … It’s a simple thing to do instead of all the complex things we do.”  
Listen in as poor Shawn puts up with my endless questions and shares where she is with the practice of putting colors inside the lines today (and she does keep her colors inside the lines). If you haven’t tried coloring again since you were a kid, it’s time you did. 
 
WANT TO KNOW MORE? 
> There was a big adult coloring book craze: “Was it because of me?” asks Shawn, laughing. “I’m so cool, and everybody else wanted to be cool?” It started here, petered out, and now … where did it go? (“Maybe everyone’s still secretly coloring!” she says.) 
> Want to get into coloring books? Don’t start with a big buy, Dr. Finch says. She recommends printing a page or two off the internet (she makes sure the art she uses is free for printing) and using whatever coloring implements you have around the home. Want a sample page? We made one at Vetted magazine years ago. Want more? Try here or here or here. Once you know you love it, then go crazy. 
> Dr. Finch rocks Sharpies of all colors. But, y’know, there are crayons and pencils, too, for y’all if markers feel too intense. 
> Yes, the thumbnail is Shawn's picture. It's great.

Episode 19: Dr. Robin Downing studies (and teaches) clinical bioethics

“Just because we can do something to -- or for -- an animal,” asks Robin Downing, DVM, MS, DAAPM, DACVSMR, CVPP, CCRP, “does that mean we should?”
A practicing veterinarian, teacher and business owner, Robin’s interest in pain, animals and caring for living things has translated in the past few years into study of how the field of human bioethics could shape, and be shaped by, the in-the-trenches concerns and situations that practicing veterinarians face every day. She’s now pursuing a PhD in the subject.
Robin has started translating human clinical bioethics’ four principles – respect for autonomy, nonmaleficence, beneficence and justice – into a world where the patients can’t speak and where the concerns, feelings and resources of pet owners are standard parts of every care conversation. (Robin explains the translation here.)
How do nonspeaking animal patients help us make medical decisions for them? How do we balance “benefits and burdens” to decide whether a medical treatment isn't harmful? And is the medical treatment fair, recommended for any patient in that situation?
If you’re concerned about animals, people and life in general, and fascinated by the places where modern medicine asks us to make more complicated questions about how and why we treat patients of all species, you’ve got to listen to this.
My favorite part about this conversation? I argue that patients and pet owners aren’t ready to deal with death and dying in themselves and their pets. She agrees a bit, but also pushes against me in arguing that, given the right information at the right time in the right way – thanks to better communication – people know what the right decision is for them, their family and their pets. She’s about communication and empowerment, and that’s inspiring.
“Many of the situations wherein there is a derailed set of decisions on behalf of the patient … it really is a failure of communication,” she says.
 
WANT TO KNOW MORE?
> I get Robin to talk about death early by name-dropping my favorite smartphone app this month.
> Dive deep into the four principles of clinical bioethics here. Read more about her here.
> Robin name-drops a book showcasing the need for better bioethical thinking in hospitals to remedy the “paternalistic perspective” of physicians in Strangers at the Bedside by Dr. David Rothman.
> Dr. Michael Blackwell, behind the Program for Pet Health Equity at the University of Tennessee, is fighting for better veterinary care for underserved communities. He’s interviewed for this video from Vet Candy.
> Wait, what’s IACUC? An Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee makes sure animal testing in labs and universities is above board.

Episode 18: Dr. Jules Benson is an enthusiastic cyclist

Veterinarian Dr. Jules Benson does not compete crazily at cycling, but he loves all the other aspects of it: the choice of how and where to ride each day he goes out, the acquisition and enjoyment of a new bike with a new frame (hopefully lighter?), the touch of masochism that comes with pushing yourself hard physically. 
He tells himself, like all the other less-than-perfect cyclists, that speed doesn’t matter, but, y’know, it always does. Because isn't that some of the fun of bicycles, whether you’re cruising down a road to the beach, hoofing it to work, careening and bumping down a mountain trail, or staying off pavement and on gravel to avoid cars? Zoom zoom. 
Jules sees biking as so multifaceted, “it’s anything you want,” he says.   
Early on, I drag Jules into talking about the details of tire choices (he’s not kidding about the deep discussions on tire width and air pressure), but then he properly drags me back to talk about more interesting ideas behind cycling: the why, the how and the who of it. 
He talks a few times about the “clannish” world of cyclists, like other hobby communities (I know the music world’s well), that talk about insiders and outsiders. 
“I can live without that,” Jules confesses. “I’ve never felt the need to have sharp elbows [in competition]. I’d rather be a collaborator and be someone who is part of something bigger.” 
Of course, we talk about the pandemic, because Jules explains, with bike shops closed for months, “he’s had to work out a lot of things himself” when it comes to maintaining and changing things on his bike. (Now he’s back to his local bike shop, and he encourages you to visit yours.) 
Jules sounds a balanced view of his hobby, and I learned a lot from it. You will too. Dig into the kinds of fans in hobbies and how Jules uses the bike as a tool not a torture device (“not flagellation, but how hard can I go and how much can I push myself,” he says) as well as how cyclists navigate the dangerous world of city commuting. This and more. You might be inspired to get back on that bike for some fresh air, pump your legs, and lean into the wind: "The cadence of turning the pedals and knowing that’s all you have to do,” Jules explains. “That’s a nice place to be.” 
 
WANT TO KNOW MORE? 
> After the podcast, Jules shared these websites and cycling personalities for reference and further learning: 
>>> Benson name-drops Selene Yeager in the podcast. He also mentions efforts like this by the cycling community to get more women in on the fun of the sport. 
>>> “Marrianne Vos is the most dominant living cyclist on the planet in terms of medals and palmarès (cycling lingo for a cyclist’s achievements and wins).” Also, talking about diversity in cycling, Jules name-drops an organization for another issue of diversity in veterinary medicine, Pride VMC (Veterinary Medical Community). 
>>> "Phil Gaimon is a retired professional spreading the good word on cycling and being kind to each other,” Jules says.  
>>> Nerd it out with this glossary.  
Here are my notes: 
>>> Jules’ No. 1 tip in dipping into cycling for the first time? Make sure your bike, however cheap or expensive it is, has been put together properly by a professional: brakes in the right spot, things tightened properly, etc. He’s even seen the fork the wrong way around. 
>>> British immigrant Jules tells us it’s pronounced “al-you-MIN-ee-yum,” like it’s spelled “aluminium.” It is, in the Queen’s English. In America, we jettison the second “i.” Huh. Who’s weird? You decide. I like both pronunciations, and I like people always arguing about it. 
>>> Benson drops a quote: “Riding a bicycle is the closest you can get to flying.” That was attributed to Robin Williams in a Wall Street Journal story (gated content). Williams loved cycling ...  
>>> Types of fun, Jules tell us? Yeah. Jules says 1, 2a, 2b and 3. This one breaks it down as 1, 1.5, 2 and 3. Tuh-may-to, tuh-mah-to. 
>>> Jules lays out some of the lingo and familiar names from the online cycling community: A nuanced view of “Freds” and “Dorises.” Congratulate another cyclist with “chapeau,” from cycling’s French influence. Rollers and punchers. Weight weenies and MAMILs. 853 steel, Spirit for Lugs, aluminium (!) Cannondale and big bike maker Tom Ritchey. 
>>> Dost thou dare to explore the secret workings of the Velominati? (Jules says this started as a joke poking self-referential fun at cyclists, but the rule-makers eventually took the rules a little more seriously.) Hate it and want to see push-back? Bam. 
>>> Jules has stopped to talk to car drivers who’ve unsafely (and illegally) passed him too close on the road. He name-drops the humorous look at this, Portlandia’s "Bicycle rights!”-yelling character, Spyke (first on the list of clips at Thrillist.com). 
>>> Curious about Race Across America, which Jules’ friend did and needed a year to recover from? Well, the hyperlink already came earlier in this. It’s right. The name of the thing. Just … just click on it. 

Episode 17: Gina Spadafori is a micro-rancher

Gina Spadafori lives within what feels like spitting distance from California’s capitol city, Sacramento, but it’s also really rural right around here. It’s kind of the perfect spot for a politics-following writer and editor who decided to raise animals in her yard. 
But this yearning for living close to animals and on a stretch of land didn’t come from her happily urban and suburban family. 
“My maternal grandmother used to tell me, the best day of her life after World War II was when they were able to get anything they wanted at the supermarket,” Gina says, “and she didn’t have to have a victory garden, she didn’t have to can, she didn’t have to have chickens, and that was … the happiest day of her life.” 
It started with horses and goats. But the horses were tough work on a solo micro-ranch. (“The first winter I was here, the entire pasture was under a good 10 inches of water,” she says.) Most recent head count? Seven goats, including two kids; nine chickens; one barn cat; and four dogs, who are the family members of her farm. 
Find out the philosophy behind her relationship with the food animals she raises (“The chickens don’t have names,” she says, if she’s eating them), how micro farm vlogging transitioned from social media fun to just getting things done on the property, and what joys all this work brings. 
P.S. I blow it at the very end and call Gina a “micro-farmer.” Gina sees that as a business farming, where farmers sell at least some of that produce. Makes sense. Gina’s got more, y’know, a ranch. 
 
WANT TO KNOW MORE? 
> Check out this video of the Pasadena, California, urban homestead that inspired Gina. (Check ‘em out on Facebook.) 
> Interested in small farming vs. big farming? Gina’s not a fan of big-ag's poop lagoons. See a Vice story on them here. She also questions mono crops and massive fertilizer use. Better is the work of Joel Salatin, the sustainable agriculture in Gina’s own county and Sacramento’s own farm-to-fork rep. 
> Gina travels in the veterinary medicine world, and her friend, Dr. Patty Khuly, was on the chicken and goat kick before her. Dr. Khuly warned Gina that her first backyard animals, chickens, were a “gateway livestock.” And it proved true. Dr. Khuly talks up goats here. 
> Intrigued by the mention of Bernadette the Weather Duck? You’re welcome. 

Episode 16: Tekurah McCullough goes to comedy shows

“I always loved comedy,” Tekurah says, since high school. Jake Johannsen was her first standup crush in the Bay Area.  
“When somebody makes me laugh, I become attracted to them,” she says. She and her friends would crowd into a car on a day off school to stand around the studio for a drive-time radio show with lots of standup comedy guests. Funny, yes, but intoxicating and attention-holding in a way that comedy albums and TV appearances and sitcoms don’t quite compare: “Live comedy is my thing,” she says. “As an introvert, I save up all my energy, go to the club, then go home.” 
That’s my superficial take of a deep discussion we have about humor here. You’ll dig it. 
Find out why she can’t watch Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (“my secret shame,” she says), why she sits in the front row, and why her podcast has “paw” in the title but isn’t about animals (I had to drop that last one in to promote her kick-ass work). 
 
WANT TO KNOW MORE? 
> Tekurah lived through one comedy boom of the 1980s. Boom. It came back, kids. Will it come back again after COVID-19? Dunno. Here’s how it hit hard in the UK. 
> Comics with troubling opinions, jokes and history? She had no trouble saying bye to following the work of comedian Louis C.K. after this. She tried Joe Rogan at a club (Bill Burr, whom Tekurah digs, talks to him here about COVID-19), but that didn’t work out. I couldn’t find Todd Glass’ politically incorrect joke (which, maybe, he doesn’t even perform anymore), so we’ll leave that out. 
> The Comedy Store, which Tekurah found, is in West Hollywood. She's right: A comic died by suicide next door during a strike. 
> Tekurah was weaned on public TV’s Comedy Tonight, hosted by Alex Bennett, who chats up Robin Williams and others on drive-time radio in San Francisco here  
> Patton Oswalt and Blaine Capatch did crazy stuff on Comedy Central (case in point, with the voice of Penn Jillette)  
> Rooster T. Feathers is where Tekurah saw Carlos Alazraqui (“one of the first comedians I saw live,” she says, and who did cartoons and played Garcia on Reno 911)  
> Tekurah digs Jimmy Pardo (“The man who saved me from listening to Adam Carolla,” she says, and his fans’ “misogynist” ideas about what women have to offer men, and vice versa). She also digs Maria Bamford, with a joke about religion that’s “so perfect.” 

Episode 15: Jahmal runs role-playing games for money

Note: Our audio is clippy as all get-out. Don't hate us. Or, rather, hate me. Jahmal is getting better at this, and I brought his quality down. Take me. Take me as tribute. I cut so much good stuff outta here. I’m a damn shame. Y’know why? Because I did a podcast of someone else’s a couple week ago, and my audio was too loud, and I bet she went back in time to change the sound levels on this. That’s definitely more likely than I just didn’t pay any attention when I recorded it. 
I talked to a guy online who said he knew some people. I showed up at a guy’s apartment, and there were a bunch of guys there. One of those guys, if I remember correctly, was Jahmal. Now I don’t even talk to that first guy online anymore, but Jahmal, well, I still talk to him. 
Jahmal is one of the best role-playing game DMs, game masters, judges, referees, storytellers, whatever, around. He has a unique, damn near patent-pending (or should be) way of letting each game session evolve with the interests, problems, goals, pains and pleasures of the players who show up to pretend to be other people and roll some dice (usually) to decide conflicts. 
There’s a special high the right game with the right people can deliver, he says, as stories go directions and characters take actions and players think up things no one thought possible: “There are moments in games where folks are doing their thing … and this synergy happens, I hate that word, but this synergy happens, and we’re all in this new space, and we’re all there … and the light bulbs come on for everybody. And no one saw it comin' sittin' down that night. 
“My high is only capped by the table’s high.” 
In this one, we explore what role-playing games are, why rules in games are important, and the difference between drama and shenanigans. It gets deep into the details, but stick around …  
  
WANT TO KNOW MORE? 
> You need Jahmal’s Patreon page like a flower needs water. He shares play sessions with his son and others, has in-depth discussions with other game makers, and he shares his thoughts regularly on games and things that touch on them. Check out his Transformers post. 
> Want to find a friendly game store in your neighborhood? Try this website. 
> What’s a dice pool? Roll dem bones! 
> There are a lot of games out there. Here are a few mentioned:  
>>> Apocalypse World (“Rated ‘R,’” says Jahmal, for adults) and other games “Powered by the Apocalypse,” such as Urban Shadows, Monster of the Week and Monster Hearts
>>> Ars Magica 
>>> Burning Wheel, which Jahmal loooooves 
>>> Dungeons & Dragons 
>>> Gamma World 
>>> Mutant Year Zero 
>>> Pathfinder 
>>> Star Wars   

Episode 14: Dr. Ernie Ward does paddle boarding

Dr. Ernie Ward is big on nutrition and exercise, but his love for surfing, paddle boarding and other sports in and around the ocean turns out to be bigger than that. He and his wife (his girlfriend at the time) bonded over a love of the ocean with SCUBA diving. And it’s his way of getting closer to nature. 
“It's that connection with the energy … nature … this body that engulfs the entire planet,” Ernie says of the ocean. It’s a personal challenge, with risks, and a chance to interact with a water world full of fish, sharks and more. “I know that when I talk like that, people start to go, ‘Oh, Ernie’s getting into his woo-woo stuff.’" 
Don’t tune out the “woo-woo”! Give it a chance. Ernie pitches us on how time on the water centers him and enriches his marriage (“We began our relationship in the water”), his family (“We raised our daughters surfing”), his mental state and his physical health (It’s an alternative to his Ironman work, which can be harder on the legs). And how he almost died in hurricane surf (roughly around minute 19). 
(PHOTO CREDIT: "Raglan" by tkw954 is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) 
 
WANT TO KNOW MORE? 
> Ernie surfs, but he also paddle surfs and paddle boards. Check him out paddle boarding with his dog and surfing.  
> Ernie’s wife, Laura, was always a little turned off by surfing: too much jockeying for position, too out of the norm for a thirtysomething woman to surf with all those testosterone-riddled teens. Now, she’s into it, especially after a surfing trip she and Ernie took right before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. The L.A. Times write about gender in surfing here. 
> Calcific tendinosis of the Achilles? “It just means my Achilles has turned into a solid mound of hard flesh, and it’s a real problem,” he says. Ouch. 
> Ernie mentions a book from his friend, Steven Kotler, Stealing Fire; it’s on my reading list now. (Ernie clearly had Hunger Games on the brain, and he calls it Catching Fire.) Check out Kotler's website. 

Episode 13: Dr. Melissa Detweiler does podcasts

It started with ideas. Dr. Melissa Detweiler, a small animal veterinarian in a Midwestern small town, had a lot of them, and writing blogs, commentary and opinion seemed like the route. But she didn't know, as a veterinarian, which audience to tackle first: pet owners or those "in the profession," vet med.
"I wanted to say the things [in my blogs] to pet parents that maybe I held back from saying in the exam room," she says. Then she started writing pieces for veterinary magazines to her peers.
Her podcasting took a similar route, with her first podcast ("This Vet's Voice") aimed at veterinary clients, but her next aimed squarely at the emotional challenges of life for veterinary professionals ("DVM Divas").
Originally, it seemed a far-off idea. Audio snippets, sure, but a podcast? "Who can do that? That's not something little ol' me can do with my iPhone and earbuds," she says. "I used the voice memo app on my phone [for my first audio]."
And she says she was terrified at the outset, using a podcast alter ego name. Pet owners can get pretty bent out of shape online about things involving their pets. "[The alter ego] was my security blanket," Melissa says. "I can kind of hide under this umbrella here. It felt like it freed me up a little bit."
Now, well, she's out there, with two partners-in-crime (although it's not about crime, people) on her latest podcast.
Find out how she got more comfortable with her voice on audio, how she and her podcasting partners manage the conversation and what small-town America thinks of it. 
(PHOTO CREDIT "File:Veterinary Office with dog.JPG" by MarkBuckawicki is licensed under CC0 1.0)
WANT TO KNOW MORE?
> Voiceover work is getting heavily advertised these days in work-for-home pandemic times. Melissa says she took an online course from Carrie Olsen, and she found it helpful in her podcasting.