A tambouras is running through the river… ambience. 

I don’t have much this week. The magic of the holiday passed pretty quickly as the news kicked back on with the new thing to worry about. Only they don’t seem too worried about it, which really worries me.

Honestly, just turn off the TV. **** them. Listen to this week’s episode, which is an earlier recording of Vermont’s Mad River and a buzzing tambouras (and a distant drum). Ignore the world.

Or turn on a semi-autobiographical film about two brothers in Montana who like to fly-fish the crap out of a river with their dad while speaking earnestly, often. The movie A River Runs Through It is the inspiration for this week’s title (and more, if I fished around for a deep, dangling metaphor or something).

I saw the film when I was 16 and would have preferred to be next door for the screening of Under Siege. I could just make out the muffled screams of slaughtered bad guys booming from the speakers in the auditorium to my right. I agreed to A River Runs Through It because my sister was bringing a friend I thought was cute.

We’re ending the year in a wonderfully bleak Vermont valley, already covered in snow and taking on more. Spend the night listening as the small flakes pile up around you and the winds howl over the peaks.

The holidays are gone, we flip the calendar back to the beginning with a new number to reign over it all. January, 2026. Ensconced in winter’s tomb until mid-April. But it sure looks pretty. The slight nighttime glow of Vermont’s small giants, the Green Mountains, covered in white, can make even the dullest early months feel magical. 

Just don’t forget to silence your phone — while we may be near South Royalton and far enough from everywhere else — the 5G will still bring in the incessant pocket buzzing of your phone (This is Vermont not the Oort cloud. You can get NYE messaging here).

Look, I’m pretty sure many of the other New Year’s–adjacent uncommon ambience posts are painted with personal feelings about my least favorite holiday. I’m not here to rain on anyone’s ball droppings — I’ve done that enough already. 

This is the day we celebrate “new beginnings” while our health care costs reset, local governments enact unpopular new rules, and we stand in front of couches or bar stools toasting “my year!”

And all night, messages and group chat alerts from all the people in our lives.

The cinephile friends continuing their NYE phone-buzzing group chat that you somehow got added to. Tonight they started a movie together at an exact time so the Statue of Liberty smashes the roof of the Manhattan Museum of Art at exactly midnight.

And you know damn well why you were added to that group — it was that movie take you absentmindedly assented that got you added to that group chat. Something about Rachel Dawes being swapped with Ellie Burr without changing either movie. It was a crowded party. A buddy was dangling on a trembling limb of being labeled “weird,” and so you swooped in with a reflexive “totally agree.”

Now you’re in a movie-people chat. Tonight they’re watching Ghostbusters II, randomly dealing out their dark-horse New Year’s movies, when — guys — you won. We’ve ceded Die Hard to Christmas. We don’t need to do that with every holiday.

There will be folks accounting for an earlier wave of pocket buzzing — the folks who don’t salute any dropping ball and want that known. Sending out all flavors of “in bed at 8 p.m., ttyl!”

Also, the post-midnight flurry of photos: sleeping children. They almost made it! Oh, how wholesome. You knew Anderson Cooper and platform-specific lip-synching wasn’t going to keep your kids awake.

The counter-culture folks still picking up Animal Crossing New Leaf for their long abandoned town’s celebration — 

And… I’m mocking NYE again — probably for the third year in a row.

Maybe spend a quiet evening amongst the snow of Southern Vermont. It’ll work great at counteracting whatever fireworks your neighbor saved from the 4th of July and is definitely setting off tonight. Nighttime winter Southern Vermont snow. Wind over the Green Mountains, falling snow, and quiet rural winter sounds. An ambient sound podcast episode for sleep, focus, and relaxation (trying some SEO suggestions from a pal as I typically use this entire text block to rant — I wouldn’t need to do this if y’all felt like subscribing to uncommon ambience).

Make it your New Year’s resolution to subscribe to the scrappy little sound podcast that only wants success for you in the new year — unless you’re evil.

Episode art made in photoshop.

White Castle steam-griddle station... ambience.

The perspective of this week’s episode is near the burger steaming station (if you’re curious how that operation goes, let Double Dare’s Marc Summers walk you through it). And not to worry — you can sleep at this steaming station; no one is worried about what you’re doing.

And BTW, this isn’t sanctioned or intended to be an ad. I’m just a fan and would love to imagine myself within arm’s length of those steamy sliders. I have a bit of a White Castle problem: I have the White Castle Pumas, I’m usually a sack of ten and a Cherry Coke (no fries) — if I were hungry enough to add fries at any other fast-food spot, I’m spending that hunger on another sack of ten.

And as a programming note: if the White Castle Corporation sends me a cease-and-desist, this description will instead be geared toward the oddly shaped meatloaf burgers my father would make, stuffed with Bac-Os, mushrooms, breadcrumbs, and onions. The patties were so oddly shaped, if they were in orbit they would be confused with Saturn's moon, Hyperion.

One of the most notorious of these family “burger nights” ended with us watching a VHS of my mother at work in the cath lab. Had to wait until the end because she said something funny. Aside from the occasional flying streams of blood, it was hella boring.

So watch this space!

Until then — we are boosting the Castle for free. And I have to think that the oft-trod subject of “Where the hell are they?” adds to their nostalgic appeal — at least for those of us who know there are a bunch in New Jersey, but we’re not quite sure where. I swear the White Castles of New Jersey operate in the Doctor Who universe. White Castles only ever appear like, “Surprise *****! I’m in Ledgewood now!” And then maybe it’s not there next time because… TARDIS perception filter.

And I haven’t seen the Dude, Where’s My White Castle? movie, so I could just be describing the plot of that. It’s a thread that runs through all of us. No matter where we as a species go — like, we could be going into space — we still somehow need to drive through New Jersey first (and hopefully near a food exit with a Castle logo).

I was on a road trip with a buddy in ’09, and White Castle was the “food exit” around Perth Amboy. I nudged him: “White Castle, man — let’s go.”

“Nah, man,” he said. “There’ll be one up there. Don’t worry.” My buddy never liked leaving the highways in NJ for local roads. I suspected the lack of legal left turns spited him somehow.

But I countered with a pre-I-told-you-so — like, “If you see a White Castle, even if you’re not hungry, you go. It doesn’t matter how New Jersey you think your destination in New Jersey is — you can’t count on White Castle being there.”

Parsippany burned us, and we ate Burger King or some ****.

Tonight we have a Christmas-themed triple feature of public-domain movies as heard from the projection booth: The Star of Bethlehem (1950), Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1948), and Scrooge (1935).

We’ll also be running trailers from three really bad Christmas movies: Die Hard 2, Santa Conquers the Martians, and Santa Claus (1985). Plus one trailer for a really good Christmas movie, Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas. Rounding things out will be favorite 1980s-ish Christmas commercials and other vintage theater messaging (and a random appliance warehouse ad bc I want it stuck in everyone else's head too).

So — The Star of Bethlehem was the only work I was familiar with before beginning this week’s episode. It’s inclusion is a shout-out to my late father, for his insistence that we make it to the midnight service to hear this story told again and again and again. Miss you, Dad.

Religiosity aside, it’s an astonishingly beautiful work. I have a computer, and I couldn’t dream of producing something this wonderful. If you gave me a time machine to the 1950s, my MacBook, and pitted me against the creative team of Lotte Reiniger and Carl Koch, I would lose every time.

Reiniger created articulated paper figures from spare cardboard and other materials, and the team animated them on glass over painted backgrounds. (Preservationists studying her paper figures believe they can tell what she was eating during production, based on what material ended up in the dolls.) One of their rigs also looked like the best bunk bed ever — photo on wiki. Honestly, give me a time machine just so I can hang out with this crew, they seem cool.

Rudolph (1948) feels lower-budget by comparison. This is not Rankin/Bass Rudolph, man. It’s based on Robert L. May’s 1939 story, not the song. And to steal an internet meme: this is Zack Snyder Rudolph. Hard times — you can feel them oozing out of that steely, cold color palette. Which makes sense: World War II had just ended when production began.

Going further back in time brings us to our feature film Scrooge (1935). The acting is solid and includes an Ebenezer expert (Seymour Hicks) as the lead. Variety, literally said Hicks could play Ebenezer upside down in its December 11, 1935 issue. And that Hicks played Scrooge for more than a quarter century both onstage and in two films including a silent Scrooge in 1913.

As for trailers:

Die Hard 2 — which is just Die Hard with the melodrama turned all the way up and relocated to an airport. Also, I’m positive the airplane-eject scene for John McClane was later pilfered by the GoldenEye folks… and it’s nowhere near as cool.

Santa Conquers the Martians, which I briefly toyed with making the feature; is awful.

And Santa Claus (1985)... Last year my family stumbled onto a smart tv Christmas-movie list, and I saw Santa ’85 and said, “Hon, I have a movie that will blow your ****** mind. It’s like Superman meets Kris Kringle and is still earnest. Everyone is acting out of their brains. It’s like Shakespeare. Like if Frank Miller did Shakespeare doing Superman.”And then I hit play like I was firing a heat-seeking photon torpedo at General Chang.

Three minutes later, we’re watching Santa drown in snow. A few minutes after that: bizarre McDonald’s product placement. A scene of people merrily eating Quarter Pounders while, through the window, an unhoused and hungry child stares lustfully at the food consumption. His face framed by the Golden Arches.

The movie is bad. But awesome bad. See it for John Lithgow, as an evil toymaker who excels at selling extremely dangerous **** to children. And Dudley Moore is a charming mutinous elf that tries to outdo Santa by creating candy canes that make children float. Definitely see it.

And happy holidays, y'all.

PS: If you’re looking for an uncommon ambience episode with a more modern Scrooge, check out last year's ⁠The Night the Reindeer Died⁠: Christmas Workshop Ambience. "Yule love it."

Zen Fidget Board… Ambience — As of late I’ve been hoping to create an audio space that has several things going on at once (that behave, hopefully).

I see this space as a listener drifting into a Matrix-ish Construct room (load room), yet instead of rushing racks of rifles or Morpheus alongside a small-market TV executive’s desk, we drift inside the gelatinous mass of a lesser-defined composition of sounds.

I usually have better sleep success with envelopes of sound that have smaller things going on. And as the episode title and cover implies, there are several things in here to follow while the envelope takes over.

My favorite episode for this is the basketball episode—I love the engulfing fans with the small bounces and squeaks of play. I should make that episode longer, as I’m waking up in the test-taking episode that stresses me out (I went to Military School). Some folks like dry sounds—I won’t knock it.

Also give us a follow on your pod-player!

A small New England college nestled in the Green Mountains during snowfall, ambience. It’s the holidays, 1968; the chorus of Norwich University and Vermont College readies for their performance of Winter Songs. And you are invited. 

Well somewhat invited — obviously the 60’s are long gone, man. And the perspective for this performance will play outside of Plumley Armory pattering with falling snow.Passing traffic on snowy South Main — yes I’m being an ****** on purpose it’s Christmas — into charming (blue collar AF and I say that with admiration) Northfield, Vermont.  

I hope everyone enjoys the holidays this year, whether you celebrate or not. Seriously, enjoy the holidays; now go away. 

I don’t want to give up too much on how the sausage is made for the folks who just read a few lines and bounce. Just a couple more sentences and those people will disappear. What did y’all think of the Steam cube? 

OK, I feel like we’ve shaken off the normies — I found an obscure vinyl recording of a 1968 choral performance (no background sounds those were added) by Norwich University and Vermont College.

I’m not entirely sure what part of the year this recording coincided. With several invocations of the Devine I assumed the original recording must be Christmas. And I definitely wanted to imagine there was snow coming down for this performance (which could have been Spring, it snows like hell some Springs up there).

I’m positive divinity and salvation were pretty evergreen in 1968 for military college students on the precipice of graduation and probably the Vietnam War soon after.

I have to think more than one voice in this recording will be silenced by that war. Not to dampen spirits, I think we could hold on to that in a world ravaged by basic human instincts. There’s a lot of “that” to hold on to this holiday season. 

Maybe that’s why we sing?

Rainy thanksgiving drive ambience! Buckle up for a chilly November Eastern Seaboard Highway tour as we audibly make our way North. The only heat provided by an obscure cassette of 1970s dancehall music.

We'll do the driving you just relax. Mic perspective from the backseat.

Thanksgiving, the forced pilgrimage to see family. Cramped, perpetually seated and needing to pee — which… we can have wifi in our cars but not a catheter? 

The weird limited edition Mountain Dew only making matters worse. The Swedish Fish nearly gone after the first traffic light.

“Hopefully traffic is ok” the oft uttered intention that goes kaput once outside of the neighborhood. I live in the DMV and the folks that traverse this unique area are the absolute worst drivers on the planet.

The Baltimore tunnels will be a mess. And stay away from any rest area crab cake sandwiches unless you want to add three more unplanned stops to your trip. 

And **** you, Delaware. If we get hit by a meteor I hope it first hits that Newark toll centered on that tiny bit of I95 that can back up traffic to the breakaway point coming from Baltimore.

Also don’t forget to gas up before New Jersey — I got yelled at near Carney’s Point once for trying to fill my own gas tank, “you know you could mess **** up.” Frankly just stay out of New Jersey, backups can be expected any place that skirts the heliopause of NYC traffic.

And happy Turkey day (to our international listeners I hope y’all have a happy Thursday). 

Oh and my threat of ambience from my sister’s chicken coupe still stands for the folks out there who are regulars that are not subscribed. Subscribe before I unleash a fussy fowl firestorm on this channel. We love you, love us back, or else. Also postscript — if you noticed I totally ripped off the New Jersey Drive poster (IE: you recognize it) welcome fellow traveller, can we chat about how fantastic the soundtracks are? “Suweeeeee, either want a Benz or a Beamer”

Mostly Heaven ambience.

Shepherdstown, West Virginia — a favorite recording place of mine. But this time, with a twist: we’re adding the “almost” to the “heaven” this week with the help of some pink noise, cymbals, and synth. Or the “heaven” to the “almost.”

My daughter and I went to Handmade Christmas in Shepherdstown, WV, and she said to the festive hot-chocolate guy, “You look like you really love Christmas.” And we got doubles and some Reindeer Munch at the local popcorn place. It was just me and the youngest this weekend on a mission to treat the weekend like a ****** sleepover. 

I also wanted to show support for a favorite business after a congressional rug-pull this week. If I could call forth one fictional lunatic to fight the overbearing bureaucratic nonsense of today, it would be Timothy Hutton’s character in Turk 182. But let’s face it — The Turk 182 guy would be ineffective in today’s realities. No one is going to care if you spray some sick graffiti on the mayor’s van. No one is going to pay attention if you send up a banner plane to shame a bureaucrat with a seven character sky note. However, Turk 182 guy is persistent and unhinged, and he would unleash wacky havoc.

You’re thinking, “I didn’t come to a sound podcast to read about politics.” And so I will not descend into cloud-shouting toward political tight-assed villainy hence forth. 

If you would rather be in Purgatorio, click here.

And if you like what you hear give me a follow on your podcast app! Otherwise the next episode is going to be from my sister's chicken coup and trust me that **** is not chill.

In this episode we say farewell to our summer friends as our unseasonably warm weather transitions into the blustery cold we expect from November.

Spend some time with the remaining stragglers of summer’s chorus from Halloween into November 1st (recording was between ~10 PM – 3 AM). You’ll hear our dwindling insect friends making last-ditch pleas for love or defending their turf. Look, I’m not a bug person, but from online reading, I gather that these insects hatched later and are still in their adult stage looking to mate or defend territory. 

I know a few scientific bug people personally, and they wouldn’t help me understand why these little bastards are still making noise. Science people who are quick to ask me for graphics help illustrating random insect **** but will not return my calls about the bug lifecycles in my backyard. Oh, my backyard insect questions too pedestrian for you?

Where was I? Yes, I’m not a bug person. I love how they sound outside and am positive they are extremely important to our world and human interests. However, I do not want these little creatures in my house. That’s why I like spiders — they play goalie, intercepting these freeloader ******* before they can get into the climate-controlled expanses of our home.

Similarly, I don’t like spiders when they are inside. And for the record, I’m mostly a catch-and-release person (vacuum and dump outside). Except when spiders land on me — I was working in the basement, a spider repelled on my head, and I started punching myself in the face.

Morning thunderstorm recorded inside a Buick — this falls into our annual and hopefully distracting series for Election Days or any other news you’re trying to avoid. Checkout last year and the year before for more.

And every year I also force the theme of “October Rain” — harkening to Use Your Illusion I, the yellow cover. In 1991 I asked Santa Claus for Use Your Illusion II, the blue cover. Which I wrote clearly on the wishlist my parents handed me in early December — we knew Santa wasn’t real but our youngest was still in the dark on that. On the wishlist I wrote “Guns N’ Roses, Use Your Illusion, ‘blue cover.’ And underlined blue a bunch of times to be sure. I wanted the mayhem of “You Could Be Mine” to power me through January in military school.

We were still in the age of the longbox format, the early 90s. A time when the mall music store clerks were still very serious and important people. And I’m not talking the drifter *** record store employee cliches I could heap upon you like a Flintstone rib. Yes let’s the envision vinyl salesperson still holding on to the seventies cursing this modern capalistic nightmare over a spinning plate — and they would be smoking Acapulco Gold and spinning The Raincoats, thumbing their hair behind their ears. I got news for you hippy, wait until 2025… where y’all are sorta experiencing a rebirth of popularity for your product, so never mind. 

Mall music stores in the 80s and early 90s felt important, before the Applebees enshittification of modern franchise decor — throw a bunch of **** on the walls with red lights everywhere and call it a day. For me Applebees franchise decor peaked in the late 90s with a restaurant called Bugaboo Creek who programmed the enshitifcation on the walls to talk at patrons. And yet it still endures…).

The music stores of yore were sterile white and felt like a NoMad dispensary. Clerks dressed in company outfits, black pants and some muted coral shirt with collar. Something an HR department screw might wear while laboring on the Island of Dr Moreau. The CDs popped out of slots in the walls in long cardboard boxes with beautiful artwork matching the cover of whichever album — the wasteful yet coveted longbox format era… ( I so want to pay too much money for the Paula Abdul Shut Up and Dance longbox, it’s gorgeous). 

Anyway, Santa Claus brought me the yellow cover, Use Your Illusion I — ********… In the end I think Use your Illusion I is the superior Use Your Illusion so maybe the figment was doing me a favor. 

Ok, so after writing all of the above I realized the name of the song is “November Rain;” still Use Your Illusion I, yellow cover. And I know what you’re thinking — why didn’t I clean up the “October Rain” bit and just start as “Every year I force the theme to fit ‘November Rain…?’” This is a bit, isn’t it? 

I’ve triggered the part of your brain that wants to compose a “well actually” email. And for what? A long jaunt across vintage music stores and a ***** talking deer on the wall? 

Look, something tells me you need to be reading this, you need a few extra paragraphs that aren’t hosted by some stiff in a suit staring at you from a faraway TV studio. Or posts authored by ****** Ms. Johnson. The neighbor you friended on Facebook because she insisted, and now your feed is full of her bad advice and weird AI cats. 

And truth be told I realized my error after finishing my episode cover design and I didn’t feel like redoing it.

"From the top of the world — fabulous 1340 KAB, Antonio Bay!"

Hey, it’s Halloween, and we’re taking a whack at another ’80s horror favorite: John Carpenter’s “minor classic,” The Fog.

Specifically, that moment after the radio station fire, the inspiration for this week’s episode. I really wanted to perpetually capture that long piano note, with the wind and fog horns. Oh those gloomy piano keys and castrated foghorns (or maybe the deep fog horns are only an east coast thing).

I still love this movie for its sound design. The audible tension created by the film's sound-team feels just as threatening today as it was back then. The contrast between the oddly cheerful KAB radio IDs and the ominous water spillage from a doomed piece of wood is personal fave. That, mid-jingle, a garbled threat cuts through, muttering about “...albatrosses around necks" still takes my breath.

Maybe The Fog is one of the sillier ’80s horror films in terms of premise — but as a kid, the idea of murderous lepers traveling in a glowing mist like corpse-pirate ninjas seemed totally plausible. I was shook.

Basically, the movie could be summed up as “YOU ONLY MOVED THE HEADSTONES!” — but on water. Never mind that The Fog came out two years earlier than Poltergeist. Actually, no — let’s mind it. Maybe Spielberg watched The Fog and thought, “We’ll do The Fog on land — I already did a water horror movie.” 

Or stories of history-born revenge haunting the modern world are a classic trope (think The Turn of the Screw, Candyman, A Christmas Carol, etc.) Either way, both Poltergeist and The Fog deliver the murderous ghostly dead in strange costumes.

And that raises a question: if ghosts exist, are they doomed to wear the outfit they died in? Or can they rotate through their wardrobe from life? (Because honestly, I’d love to haunt people in my Nike Air Pegasus from ’91. So sick...)

PS: If you’re looking for more horror ambience vibes follow the links to check out our episodes for Poltergeist, the Excocist, the Shining, or Susperia.

Early AM submarine breakfast prep ambience.

I am obsessed with the minutia of submarine voyages and there’s no books out there that can slake my middle-aged hunger for non-Clancy submarine stories. I’m more interested in the banal, what is work like when you’re job puts you far underwater and beyond rescue.

I’m positive I would feel the need to constantly ask shipmates how "we’re doing." I’m not even talking mission — “how are we doing on food?” “Are we sure we've charted all the underwater mountains?”

Not even amusing questions to read in a podcast description let alone under staggering amounts of water pressure.

I feel like hypochondria would be a terrible attribute in a submariner. Like the type of hypochondria exacerbated by weekend afternoons watching mild freak show cable telivision about bizarre medical diagnosis. Silent heart attacks, fugues that strike while you bathe. People that probably believe actual murders are hosted by Keith Morrison. And John Quiñones might jump out from behind any counter when a suburban mom loses her **** on a barista.

I would be a worse candidate for a submarine than the guy tapping "I am U-571 destroy me" morse code in that Matthew McConaughey sub movie.

But, administer that submarine **** directly into my veins. I love it (If you have any books recommendations along the lines of Blind Man's Bluff, torpedo them over... via comment or email —

Look, I doubt the Navy lets folks set up microphones on modern vessels. Maybe if the Titanic guy promised to make Red October 2 or Das Boot 2 they would let him drop a zoom mic in a ship's galley. But for now we will be riding in a fictionalized submarine. During breakfast prep.

Autumnal Reverie… Ambeince — Fall winds, blowing leaves, bumbling brook. Look, I’m sorry this episode is late. I couldn’t figure out what to write in the episode description and while I’m positive no one reads any of this anyway; I still wanted to say something besides “Fall winds; blowing leaves.”

Does writer’s block apply to ****** writers? That’s what I have. ****** writer’s block. That it’s holding back an ambience episode is annoying. But my usual shtick of pasting tuna casserole recipes into the text field seems lazy. Boil water (or microwave if needed). Cook the pasta from the box until tender. Drain and return to the pot.

I could have called back to my New England college days where mountains surrounded my University on all sides in central Vermont (Disney World for the leaf people). Add the packet from the mac & cheese box plus the required butter and milk (or a splash of whatever you’ve got — even water works in a pinch). Stir until creamy. I had a window that opened directly on one mountain that I’m sure would have looked pretty if I had been awake during the day to look at them.

Bluh, does anyone else feel like they could limbo? Dump in the drained tuna. Like my gut tells me i would be good at limbo — even though i know i wouldn't be good at limbo. it's weird, there's an ember of “enter a limbo contest" in my bones. Bake at 350 °F (175 °C) for about 15–20 minutes, until hot and bubbly.

Run to Greet the Child of Morning… Sailing Ambience — Sailing Odyssey ambience. I’ve been thinking of sailing lately, no reason — maybe I’m just missing the Vineyard (check out our MVY Harbor and Steamship ambience from this summer) or maybe it’s still on my mind from this week.

The Mediterranean was mentioned in my Night of the Living Dead episode from last week as well — a movie that was pushed in front of us on an AV Cart... we weren’t going to be finishing up with Polyphemus and heading back to sea with Odysseus. We were going to watch rural Pennsylvanians battle the undead.

We’re not doing either today—we’re justing going to sail without fear of interdiction from the sirens, the Laestrygonians, the lotus-eaters or worse.  

Let’s find Eos.

Night of the Living Dead from the projection booth, which includes lots of projector.

One of my teachers threw Night of the Living Dead on in middle school, and the chatter around the class was that the teacher was too lazy to get into anything. Which was probably true, but we were happy not to tackle more of Odysseus’ dangerous journey across the Mediterranean. Call me Outis.

Night of the Living Dead was my first true horror film.

The movie is groundbreaking, obviously, but not scary to modern eyes (even modern eyes in the early 90s when I saw it). The only truly frightening part happens in daylight at the end — the movie’s protagonist survives right up to the credits, then is shot unceremoniously by living men — authorities, ostensibly there to remedy the situation. The protagonist is then thrown into a bonfire with the undead he fought.

Which feels apt for this terrible world we’ve constructed for ourselves.

Rainy Night/ Highway Motel — spend a mid-90s motel overnight perched above a highway during a thunderstorm. 

So after graduating from military boarding school, I faced a nearly thousand-mile drive from deep in the Southeast to the Hudson Valley in New York. I believe we stopped to rest somewhere near Frackville, PA. It was late, and the skies were awash with rain and flashes of lightning. My father was exhausted, and he was almost immediately asleep after tossing the dust cover off the bed.

My heart was racing from the new freedoms I faced. No more reveille, no more taps; no more drill or retired military folks ordering me around. (I was a **** student who had to regularly navigate a retired Command Sergeant Major.) I was free—at least for a few months, before I would attempt another military school (college).

Whatever. That night I was free, old enough to try cigarettes or die in war. Mr. High School Graduate.

The summer felt like a budding verification of me. I had settled something, unshackled myself from societal expectations. I was going to be a big deal (oh, youth and your unobtainable optomism).

All of which is to say: I couldn’t sleep. I was excited. Also extremely bored. The motel room was stuffy. I couldn’t have the volume too high on the manual television—it would wake my father (not that there was anything on anyway). All my Wizard magazines and Mack Bolan novels were packed in the U-Haul box with wheels (the mid-90s being a decade or more before smartphones).

So I read Jonah in the room’s complimentary gold book… about a guy who refuses the Almighty and tries to escape across the Mediterranean. Jonah’s boat is hit with a giant storm, and the other folks on the boat are like, “**** you, dude,” and toss him into the sea. Where he’s eaten by a giant fish. And somehow lives half-a-week in a fish without a tv set.

I remember wishing I had packed Detroit Deathwatch in the car.

Missing the server room? Need someone to help with an offline printer? Spend eight hours among your favorite overly refrigerated colleagues.

Have you ever noticed how IT folks walk around with waiter eyes when they're outside their domain? You know, waiter eyes, like when you need a refill on your Mountain Dew and the dude or lady catches you in their peripheral… but just keeps walking?

And I get it. It’s lucky the people who make printers didn’t make Voyager, we’d have lost Voyager by the asteroid belt. You can just look at printer funny and it will go offline, but somehow just for your computer. And that's why IT is there right? Aside from guarding their overly air-conditioned domain.

Once, I had a manager ask an IT staffer to order him a new chair mat.

Usually, when I see IT roaming the office, I remember all those weird mouse issues I want answered. (Mac folks: have you noticed third-party Bluetooth mice acting up? Since updating to Sonoma, I’ve had nonstop issues with tracking speed resetting. And any time Bluetooth headphones are in use, it somehow causes lag in mouse movement. I’ve switched back to a wired mouse, for ****’s sake.)

So, I get why y'all hide in the server room.

Rainy Road to Reflect or Ruminate… Ambience

Sparse highway, light rain ambience. We are on the side of a small road just outside town. It’s night, and it’s raining. Imagine you’re a content Gene Kelly walking home after frolicking around main. Or Feel free to ruminate. 

That’s the general vibe around here. There’s a movie theater nearby showing cat videos (for a good cause) and it’s practically sold out. Catvideofest 2025 is repackaged cat timeline videos on a gigantic screen. And that it is pretty much sold out this weekend says something about our collective mood. 

Anyway, I did manage to get tickets and me my youngest will share an auditorium with a Spider-verse amount of other people.

That’s all from me — Oh, so if I controlled the universe for a day aside from solving every important global issue I would want to sneak a cameo of Ice Cube into that animated Will Smith fish movie that also stars Katie Couric as “Katie Current.” But I would add in Ice Cube so he could be like “even saw the lights of the Goodyear Blimp and it read ‘Ice Cube’s a shrimp.’” Which may occur in that movie, I haven’t seen it. 

New plan: I’m bringing back that short-lived trend from early-pandemic days that social media tried to cook up — shoe-kicking as greeting. I only saw people on my phone doing that dumb ****. I want to ingrain into humans that shoe-kicking is now retroactively high-five. Every famous high-five from history now feet kicking. From the business meetings to competitive sports. The mayhem.

PS: if you are interested in listening to cars pass but you would rather imagine yourself not being rained on -- check out last year's Vermont Route 100 episode recorded from the Mad River Valley.

Oh, My Neo Pleasant Purgatory… Ambience

Digital Purgatory—Neo-noir-ish but chill purgatory ambience, I was thinking of a (techy) modern island of Purgatorio mashed with elements from the Heavenly Kid and “Neo Bowser City” from Mario Kart.

Take a break on one of the rings as folks move about you, working out the flaws of their souls. I imagine mass transit and people movers nearby, working their way up to the next ring amongst stationary kiosks and sidewalk vendors.

But why purgatory? Global calamities have had me thinking more about the Inferno, and as summer loosens its grasp upon us and the morning chills of fall hint at the spooky season… It’s hard not to watch the television and be like, “I hope you go to hell.” (Preferably the one with her gate in Philadelphia).

Which is off-the-chain talk for a podcast meant to be chill.

How about purgatory? Talking purgatory won’t raise as many hackles (right?). So—I attended a religious military boarding school. My first course on Wednesday was Bible; during lights-out, a night guard would check to make sure I was in bed (and not setting fire to anything) and occasionally hand over a rapture comic book. All this is to say, even the underground thinking at school was, “there has to be an enchanted place to hold the so-so souls.”

So purgatory is accepted—just unloved, and underrepresented in popular culture. Aside from Purgatorio or Beetlejuice, there aren’t many mega-hits that focus on limbo. (And we covered Beetlejuice last year.)

I am an afterlife aficionado, and of the big three soul deposit locations, purgatory is represented the least in popular culture. (And I mean big three in the way that Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin could be counted as a big three of something. And purgatory would be Litecoin... also, I’m not equating the other two.)

There are notable purgatories to be found in pop culture. One deep-cut purgatory construction I’m fond of is from the 1985 movie The Heavenly Kid. The film’s afterlife layout is a mall hallway that leads to escalators carrying people into a blinding light, presumably heaven. It’s guarded by a couple of bouncers dressed like Vegas clergy, standing in front of an Applebee’s-looking “please wait to be seated” lectern.

Down a dark tunnel motorcycle ride is "Midtown" where an unhinged bar entertains unclaimed souls. The bar feels like a smokers-welcome 80s airport bar was smashed with Oscar's restaurant selection in Follow That Bird.

In the Heavenly Kid, a grizzled angel with probably an alcohol problem (portrayed by Richard Mulligan) drags the film’s hero into that unhinged bar. There’s a classic 80s “food is gross” buffet scene followed by a mission briefing. You, Heavenly Kid, are not quite good enough for paradise (because your a greaser). But if you can rescue this other downcast 80s kid—and turn him into a cool 80s greaser (take that almighty)—you will be cleared for the escalator.

The movie is garbage but contains one of my favorite purgatory moments in film. Have you ever feared an awful bar mirrorverse where every exit is the entrance so when you try to escape you just keep ending up in the same ***** bar. (BTW the angel character is charming—I would describe his vibe as Doc Brown from Back to the Future but played by Gary Busey).

The film’s purgatory mission begins on an afterlife subway train taking our likable bumbling dummy, the heavenly kid, back to Earth. I should mention that he originally dies a cliff-chicken loser. Who is offered the chance to be the hero, to "rescue" a kid from making his exact same mistakes. And rescue kid makes the exact same cliff-chicken mistake with the heavenly kid in the car. The heavenly kid drives off two cliffs in this movie... And then is let into heaven.

We didn't have much else going on in the 80s so we watched it. WOLVERIIIINES!!!

PS: to the purgatory heads (hello!)_drop a popular fiction purgatory below!

A Dying Summer’s Suburban Slumber (part 2)... Ambience

Evening pool aerator/ lawn mowing/ bugs ambience. This recording plays in three acts, the first bit is all mowing, then mostly pool aerator and birds, then a curtain of night insects descend.

The kids are back in school, and our local department store has already put up Jack-o’-lanterns. Summer is over — dead. I found eggnog at the grocery store. The bugs you hear are just one frost from calling it an existence. It’s time to recapture the sounds of late summer (to maybe revisit during hollow, depressing February).

I can say it was exactly a year ago if it’s been 364 days, right? What’s one day between friends? I’m sure Neil deGrasse Tyson would be like, “Well, wait a minute…” But he’s not a friend. I don’t even know him.

So — exactly, precisely, literally one year ago — I published the first A Dying Summer’s Suburban Slumber, an audio portrait of late summer bugs and hums in a Northern Virginia backyard (complete with manmade sounds like cars and the low buzz of an Applebee’s sign in the distance).

One year ago today (in the strictest possible sense), we bring you the sequel — this time from the Buckeye State, land of Cornhenge, the Wright brothers, and Bone Thugs-n-Harmony. #Ohio

Special thanks to the folks who let us record from their backyard — and to regular contributor Dr. April for capturing the sounds.