Riffing with Rick Lozano

 I started with one word—cactus—and somehow ended up writing a song about dehydration, bad survival advice, and a particularly undignified way to die. Welcome to Songtoberfest.

This one feels very on-brand for the podcast without trying to be on-brand. That’s probably why I like it.

Why do certain completely useless things stick in our brains forever?

For reasons I cannot explain, I still remember the word “thigmotropism” from high school biology. Meanwhile, names, birthdays, anniversaries, and other allegedly important information disappear constantly.

I have no lesson here. I just want to know why the hell thigmotropism is still taking up valuable space in my brain.

A couple of years ago, I found a brewery in Seattle that didn’t allow tipping.

At first, I loved the idea.

They paid people a living wage, offered benefits, and made a pretty convincing case for why tipping creates all kinds of problems. The more I read, the more I thought: why doesn’t everyone do this?

Then I talked to someone who actually worked there.

She loved it too.

Which left me with one small problem:

I really wanted to tip her.

I got an Amazon package yesterday that I had completely forgotten I ordered.

Which probably says something about whether I needed it in the first place.

That sent me down a rabbit hole about Amazon, convenience, instant gratification, small businesses, carbon emissions, packaging, dopamine, and all the complicated feelings that come with being able to get almost anything delivered to your door.

Naturally, I wrote a love song about it.

This is a stupid episode.

And I mean that as a compliment.

By almost every practical measure, this podcast is a terrible idea.

I’m not using it to teach, sell, build a funnel, or prove how smart I am. I’m mostly just turning on the microphone, following whatever seems interesting, and seeing where it goes.

Which, in a world of perfectly optimized content, might be the whole point.

At my father’s funeral, there was one thing we absolutely could not lose: the paperwork required to bury his ashes at Fort Sam Houston.

So naturally, we lost it.

With the funeral procession waiting, motorcycle cops getting impatient, and my family tearing apart the car, panic took over. Then, in the middle of all the chaos, we heard my mom laughing.

She had found the paperwork. In an interesting place.

This is a story about how pressure can make the obvious invisible—and a question I’ve been asking ever since:

What are you sitting on?

At 25, I did something I swore I would never do: I became a high school teacher.

At my old high school.

Which meant the people who used to grade me, discipline me, and generally terrify me were suddenly my coworkers.

And then I went to happy hour with them.

This is a story about discovering that your teachers have secret lives, questionable hobbies, surprising dance moves, and apparently wrestling personas.

Turns out teachers are people too.

And eventually, somehow, I became one of them.

I once cracked a water glass over a customer’s head.

Not exactly the kind of thing they teach you in waiter training.

What happened next was even more surprising: the guy didn’t kill me, the table somehow had a great time, and I ended up with one of the biggest tips I’d ever gotten.

This is a story about screwing up, recovering badly but enthusiastically, and one giant man giving me a line I’ve remembered ever since:

“The man that ain’t never done nothing wrong in his life ain’t never done nothing.”

Also, for the record, I was not the worst waiter at that restaurant.