Jonah Asks

Welcome back to Jonah Asks!

Meet Chris. A husband and father. A baseball and math enthusiast. A data scientist. 

0:03
Cape Cod Baseball

Q. How did you get involved with scorekeeping in the Cape League? 

My dad became the general manager of the Chatham Anglers, now the Chatham A's. When I was in high school, he found a summer job for me. I learned how to do the official scoring.

On future major leaguers staying at Chris' house while playing Cape League:

"These guys have a connection. It's the last time before baseball gets serious. I think everyone has pretty fond memories of it. Getting a taste of what it's like--they play every day--but not quite as much pressure as it is once you start getting paid for it."

0:10

College Experiences

First attending Harvey Mudd in Southern California, then transferring to Bowdoin, in Maine. 
"Sports Were a Big Part of My Identity"

0:22

Family

Chris was in junior high when they divorced. He doesn't have specific memories of the divorce. It just happened. His mom moved to Maine. Chris visited his friend Mike in 9th grade. Part of the motivation to transfer to prep school was math. He was running out of classes at the local public high school. 

0:30

Data Science
 "Basically I do fancy counting and then tell people about it."

Chris is a data scientist in the Bay Area. He's worked for several companies. He works in order to make money so he can spend time with his family and do the things he enjoys, like play sports and score baseball. 

"Any app that you use is doing an experiment on you at all times and you don't know about it and someone like me is crunching the numbers in the background."

0:36

Baseball Scorekeeping--From Cape League to Oakland and SF

The Cape League All-Star Game was at Fenway Park. Chris got to score the game at Fenway. He started to think about how to get involved in MLB scoring. He read a book and contacted the author. He got a lucky break. 

Since 2013, Chris has scored MLB games in Oakland and San Francisco.

0:47

Analytics in Baseball and Opening Doors

We discuss shifting, stolen bases, walks, strikeouts, and home-runs and how data plays into the changes in baseball. 

Chris would like to help open the doors for more people of color in baseball analytics and create more opportunities.

0:56

Fatherhood

Watching our daughters become more autonomous. Learning how to maintain patience through meltdowns.

1:00

Trust  

We discuss trust in parenting and relationships in general. 

1:07

Attention and Technology
How We Use the Phone

Resources

Mapping Stem Inequality -- UNICEF

https://www.unicef.org/globalinsight/stories/mapping-gender-equality-stem-school-work

Five Great STEM Non-Profits

Khan Academy

Code.org

Scratch Academy

Revolution Robotics

Girls Who Code

Support
To support Jonah Asks, please share episodes, subscribe, or donate directly via Buy Me a Coffee https://www.buymeacoffee.com/jonahasks

Welcome back to Jonah Asks. 

My brother Ben loves baseball. He passed that love on to me. Or should I say I was indoctrinated at a very young age. Either way, I love baseball, too. In June and July of 1998, we went on an 18,000 mile, 40-42 day road trip around North America and saw thirty major league baseball games, one at each stadium. In this episode, we reflect on that trip, baseball fandom, brotherhood, and how memory works. 

Hope you enjoy. 

Welcome back to Jonah Asks!

Ben Sherman was a high school friend who I also worked and lived with for a couple years in 2002-03. It was great to reconnect with him after a decade or so. Ben has taught philosophy and now works in the non-profit world helping people in workforce development. Ben is thoughtful, compassionate and at times, quite funny. 

0:05 Arlington, Massachusetts

"The theater crowd at Arlington High School was just...deeply strange. They had their own pagan icon: the sacred oar. Every year, after the final performance, there would be a sacrifice to the sacred oar. My freshman year, they had bought a full-size dead squid from a butcher shop...and it got weirder after that."

0:13 The Coin-Flip: Oberlin vs Brandeis

Ben had to decide between going Oberlin and Brandeis. His dad had left it up to him entirely. 

0:17 Experiencing Different Sides of Arlington - 

Surviving High School: bullying and Social Life, Finding Real Friends, Embracing Weirdness and the Rocker Aesthetic

"In the mid-90s, Arlington was right on the edge of gentrification. You said there were different Arlingtons. People who ran the school board would talk about an out-an-out clash between old Arlington and new Arlington and we were right in the middle of it. We were not a ritzy town, we were not a working class town, we were both things at once. That caused some weird splits and polarization."

Ben: "In my experience, the portion of the school community that prioritized toughness and toxic masculinity...in a lot of cases, representing the young side of a working class that was being elbowed out of where their families had lived for years, was this hostile force. For me, it was having people randomly gay-bash you. Having people threaten violence."

0:24 Identity: Weirdness and Agency

0:29 Employment - Ben Works in Workforce Development

The fight for progress. Employment numbers, opportunities and low wages.

0:40 Family and Grieving

Ben's mom died of cancer when he was 8. He was the oldest of two boys. His dad remarried a few years later. Reflecting back on that time, Ben remembers when he was an early teen, thinking about how few memories he had from the year or two after his mom died. "It was a memory hole even at a time when it was surprising for it to be a memory hole."

0:50 Meeting Step-Mom

0:54 Mortality, Trust and Psychology

How we cope with childhood and how memory works.

1:00 Polyamory: Ethical Non-monogamy

Ben explains his definition of polyamory and his experience in relationships.

1:35 Waltham, MA, Communal Living in 2002

Ben and Jared Make a Vague Plan

"Let's find collective housing so we're paying a lot less per room right out of college."

Internet cables split ten ways. "You had people who were individually not really competent to run their own lives, but you put them together, you had a pretty good overlapping skill-set."

1:45 Bugaboo Creek Steak House

"It never could decide if it wanted to be Chuck E. Cheese or a dive-bar. The attempt to be both at once was pretty weird. (While serving steak)."

1:48

Student Debt, College and Connections

1:52

Existential Questions

The future of higher education, the future of the planet and jobs.

Welcome back to Jonah Asks. Meet Luke Tozour. A wonderful human with a keen sense of how sounds work together to create music. A devoted father and partner. A compassionate fellow. 

Opening
How Luke and Jonah met: a park in El Cerrito, California, with our two year-old girls. 

0:07
Pandemic parenting
Caution-Taped playgrounds

0:11
Balance
Finding balance as a primary parent with work and family in flexible work 

0:16
Winter Before the Pandemic: 18 months and another world ago

0:18
Moving: New Jersey to Pittsburgh to Boston to LA

0:21 
Music Engineering: LA music scene, working and learning.
Luke was nominated for a Grammy Award while working on Katy Perry's 2008 album "One of the Boys"

0:27
Recording Process: One take versus many takes

0:31
Luke’s production work on OK Go’s new educational project, put together during the pandemic. 
https://okgo.net/alltogethernow/

“Produce like a Pro” – YouTube series with Warren Huart
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpyUGZeMUtOvt57UACw3H2g

0:37
First Lines: Songs and Stories
We talk about the importance of first lines. 

0:40
Tension and Release in Music
2001: A Space Odyssey https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwxYiVXYyVs

0:41
Searching for Silence
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5djwK3DaZV0

0:46
Parenting: Patience and Communication with a Four Year-old
“This is developmentally appropriate.” Remembering to understand this is temporary and expected. 

1:00
Economy, Middle Class and Compassion

1:08
Appreciations

If you'd like to support the podcast directly:
https://www.buymeacoffee.com/jonahasks

Thanks for Listening and Be Safe,
Jonah

Welcome Back to Jonah Asks. Meet Carlo: a broad thinker and motivator, a father, a married gay man, and a great conversationalist. Carlo grew up in the Philippines and came to New York City at 18. Carlo and I are both dads of four year-old girls who attend the same preschool in the Bay Area. This was an invigorating and thoughtful talk.

If you're inspired and motivated by Carlo and interested in working with him, go to www.carloparsons.com

Topics we discuss:
*working online
*parenting
*youth in Philippines
*English fluency/accent
*family--birth order
*large families
*dancing
*identity formation
*attention
*motivation 
*social media
*politics
*clarity of thought
*personal mission

Thanks for Listening,
Jonah
.

Welcome Back to Jonah Asks. 

This was a really enjoyable interview. Martha Grover has written books, created zines, and artwork. Martha doesn't get hung up on the judgment of others and has been creating stuff for over 20 years. 

Find Martha's books and zines:
https://antiquatedfuture.com/artist/martha-grover 
http://www.perfectdaybooks.com/shop

It was a pleasure to dive into conversation with Martha. We went back and forth telling stories, while discussing the following topics:
*creative writing (memoir, essay, fiction, poetry, fantasy)
*the process of creating
*how books/authors are taught
*attention economy
*ADD
*audiobooks 
*television
*mental health/medication/depression
*family dynamics
*homeschooling
*fundamentalist religion
*schools as institutions
*marriage
*relationships
*health
*politics and activism

If you'd like to support the podcast directly:
https://www.buymeacoffee.com/jonahasks

Don't hesitate. Follow your instincts. Express yourself. Ignore the judgments of others...but keep your ears, eyes, heart and mind open.

Thanks for listening to Jonah Asks. 
Share, rate, and subscribe as you wish. 

Welcome back to Jonah Asks. 

Well...I did it. I interviewed my Mom. Deep in my gut, I knew I needed to do this interview when I started this project...and I waited nine months and 27 episodes because I knew it would be complicated. 

I love my mom. I appreciate what my mom did for my brother and I growing up. Our relationship has never been simple. Childhood was often tense and anxious and life was difficult for Mom. Teaching second grade and raising two young boys on her own was difficult. Mom balanced our home life with teaching and also being involved in our schools in Arlington and remaining involved in the school system where she taught, in Newton. A strong individual, Mom is now Grammy on Zoom, still doing aerobics (on Zoom these days) at 75 years-old, and still sorting through her endless boxes. 

This interview was an important and cathartic one for me, and she thought it came out pretty well, though "a bit rambly." I reminded her it was a conversation, not an outline. 

Topics we discuss: 
*education
*teaching philosophy (focusing on individual traits in order to encourage and support learning of each student)
*asking for support (or not)
*routines
*writing
*childhood memories -- Washington DC suburbs in the 1940s and early 1950s 
*Helen and Earl (mom's parents/my grandparents)
*maintaining joy, wonder and delight
*meeting my father in college
*getting married and divorced
*single-parenting
*choosing NOT to remarry
*the pleasure of sorting 
*relationship conflict
*divorce and children: psychology
*family dynamics after divorce
*appreciations

***

Thanks for listening. I'm glad I did this interview. Sometimes the hardest things are the most necessary.

If you'd like to support the podcast directly, click here:
https://www.buymeacoffee.com/jonahasks

Enjoy springtime!
Jonah