To paraphrase a man I once quoted in an obituary for a squirrel expert (what, squirrels shouldn’t have experts?), I’ve written lots of things about lots of things.
I’ve written travel pieces for the New York Times, the Boston Globe, and the Montreal Gazette; covered science and technology for the Economist, Discover, Wired, Technology Review, and the Loh Down on Science; scribbled about music, culture, and the arts for Nautilus, the Guardian, the Forward, the Village Voice, DownBeat, Jazziz, and Tablet; and penned pieces about education and home improvement for the Chronicle of Higher Education and the Chicago Tribune.
I’ve even written about drugs and music for the Walrus, the leading glossy in my native land (what, you didn’t notice the Canadian accent?)—though not, admittedly, in the same piece.
We all need something to shoot for, right?
Scroll and click for clips.
Rediscovering My Judaism—in Africa
How going to Ghana changed my perspective on the religion I’d abandoned back home.
Tablet
Real Enemies
A multimedia show uses an anxiety-inducing score and set to bring audience members face to face with some of America’s classic conspiracies.
The Guardian
Drums, Lies, and Audiotape
When I was invited to drum in Ghana, I gladly accepted. Then something went wrong.
Nautilus
Betting the House
Can better housing make you healthier?
The Loh Down on Science
Gene Editor
Is genetic engineering as easy as cutting and pasting?
The Loh Down on Science
Whale Watching from Land
If you want to see whales, you needn’t bother chasing after them in a boat. Just pitch a tent by the St. Lawrence River and wait for them to come to you. (Also see 5 Spots to Watch the Whales from Shore.)
The Montreal Gazette
Serious Fun
Want to help cure cancer? Play more video games!
The Loh Down on Science
Building a Full-Blown Human Body-on-a-Chip
Miniature plastic chips with cells embedded are a quick and effective way to test drugs. (Originally appeared in the June 2015 print issue as “Pieces of Me.”)
Discover Magazine
Reb Shlomo Meets Nigeria
The band Zion80 mashes up Afrobeat rhythms and Jewish melodies.
The Forward
Coming to Africa
A musical summit between an Israeli pop star and a master of the Malian desert blues works better than expected.
The Forward
Basya Schechter Sculpts World Music
The buzz-worthy singer’s latest album features poetry by the late Jewish theologian and civil rights activist Abraham Joshua Heschel—a man who was born in Warsaw and marched alongside Martin Luther King, Jr.
The Forward
Jews Try To Ban Offensive Music
It’s easy to laugh at reports of music-banning in China or by fundamentalist groups. But ultra-Orthodox Jewish rabbis have also sought to ban music they find distasteful.
The Forward
Lost Music of Istanbul’s Sephardic Jews
How a panoply of sounds scattered to a new diaspora.
The Forward
Barbadian Wonders Coax Kids Out of Their Shells
Calm waters, green monkeys, and giant caves: Barbados has something for everyone, no matter how young.
The Boston Globe
Voice of Peace
Elie Wiesel takes to the stage for an evening of Yiddish standards, childhood reminiscences, and Borscht Belt shtick.
Tablet
Metamorphoses: The Sources and Journeys of a Tune
Music moves in mysterious ways.
The Forward
Plucky Move
A picture of his Polish grandfather’s mandolin orchestra inspired Avner Yonai to start his own.
Tablet
H2Blow
Trombonist Rafi Malkiel finds inspiration in water.
Tablet
Sub-Saharan Fusions
How an American saxophonist came to cut a record with a group of Ugandan Jews.
Tablet
Ocean Pew
Though only a tiny fraction of what it was in the 18th century, Barbados’s Jewish community—and its 1750 synagogue—still stand proud.
Tablet
Food for Thought
There are more similarities between Jewish music and Jewish food than meets the ear.
Tablet
3-D Scanning: How to Put the Real World Into Your Computer
12 new scanning technologies bring amazing 3-D images into Hollywood, medical care—and home PCs.
Discover Magazine
Device Offers a Roadside Dope Test
Philips introduces a handheld drug tester that uses magnetic nanoparticles to detect traces of cocaine, heroin, cannabis, and methamphetamine.
Technology Review
Art Pop Indie Rock Meets Midrash
A tough room, lousy sound, and half a band.
The Forward
Inheritance
A pair of Swiss musicians brought their Jewishness back from the dead.
Tablet
Spinning a Good Tale
A quantum-mechanical effect used in hard disks may hold the key to the development of a hand-held biology laboratory. (Listen to a woman with a posh British accent reading the piece aloud in a Technology Quarterly podcast.)
The Economist
Folk Fusion
Israeli expats are bringing the sounds of their youth to new jazz projects.
Tablet
Treasure Trove
A new box set offers a taste of one of the world’s great Jewish music collections.
Tablet
Melancholy Melody
High Holiday music gets me every time.
Tablet
Jazzed Up (2)
New albums find inspiration in the Passover haggadah.
Tablet
Jazzed Up
Former poet laureate Robert Pinsky gets a rhythm section.
Tablet
In the Spirit
If you’ve never understood Kabbalah, music might be the way in.
Tablet
Fiddler on the Farm
An unusual kibbutz diversifies the movement with its music program.
Tablet
Hip Hip as Conflict Resolution
Bringing peace to the Middle East with rhymes and beats.
The Forward
Speaking in Tongues
A new technology to help the disabled use the tongue to control machinery.
The Economist
Bending Traditions in Ghana
I was once an African drummer.
The Forward
Ukelele Madness
“It turned into a horrible—well, not horrible … let’s call it a beautiful train wreck of sound.”
Jazziz
Long-Promised, Voice Commands Are Finally Going Mainstream
Advances in computing power make voice recognition the next big thing in electronic security and user-interface design.
Wired
Put a Lid on It!
Sound advice for making a home quieter.
The Chicago Tribune
Microsoft Promises Not to Hoard Crypto-Based ID Protection
Microsoft has picked up a powerful new online-privacy technology that it says it wants to share … eventually.
Wired
To Test or Not to Test? (PDF)
Navigating the minefield of prenatal testing.
Parent:Wise Austin
Listening In to the Field of Jewish Pop, High and Low
In music, as in life, there are cool kids and misfits.
The Forward
A Melody of Jewish Mediation
A recovering Zen monk with a yen for kabbalah makes cerebral music for the soul.
The Forward
Symposium Seeks To Save Yiddish Dance
Scholars take to the dance floor, emboldened by cold beer and hot pirogi.
The Forward
Startup Plans to Solve Online Identity Theft, But Does Anyone Care?
A Montreal startup has a plan to make online identity theft a thing of the past.
Wired
Israel’s Jazz Messengers
Israeli musicians invade the jazz capital of the world.
The Forward
Rising Rents Give Rise to Shrinking Audio Studios
Rising rents and new technology are cramming recording studios into ever-smaller spaces. Welcome to the vest-pocket studio.
Wired
Lenny Bruce’s Mild-Mannered Heirs
They’ve got the words, but not the music.
The Forward
The Jewish Gypsy
How a Jewish kid from the Midwest wound up dedicating his life to preserving Gypsy music and dance from southern Spain.
The Forward
Audio Forensics Experts Reveal (Some) Secrets
CSI for audiophiles at the 123rd Audio Engineering Society Convention.
Wired
Setting Celan To Music
A major European poet gets treated to a musical makeover with theremin and guitar.
The Forward
Visiting the Hamptons, but Not Paying the Price
For resort chic on a budget, pitch a tent and sort of rough it among otherwise outrageously expensive seasonal rentals.
The New York Times
How to Soundproof an Apartment to Muffle Your Wife’s Drumming
The headline pretty much says it all.
Wired
Jazz Is the Drug
The only thing jazz can’t sell is itself.
Jazziz
The Sounds of Science
Computer music moves out of the lab.
The Walrus
A Plan to Build a Giant Liquid Telescope on the Moon
Could a lunar liquid-mirror telescope be the next big thing in astronomy?
Wired
A Perfect Pairing Of Worker and Work
An American Jewish clarinetist tackles a work by an Argentine Jewish composer inspired by a 12th-century French rabbi.
The Forward
Your Face, Immortalized
Ever dreamed of being made into a statue? 3-D scanners may soon make your fantasy a cheap reality.
Wired
Toy Fair Resembles CES for Kids
The big trend at the 2007 American International Toy Fair? Mature technology for young users. (Listen to me discussing this topic on NPR’s Talk of the Nation, and see a handful of blog posts about particular toys here.)
Wired
Mattel Makes Physical Exercise Obsolete
Toy manufacturer uses technology to save children from the horrors of real physical exertion.
Wired
A Food Tour of Montreal’s Plateau
Bingeing on Jewish delicacies in my hometown.
The Forward
These Elves Are Computerized
Toy design is going exclusively digital thanks to advances in haptic sculpting tools.
Wired
The Sound of Hacked Dolls’ Heads
Dan Farkas subjects kids’ toys to Borg-like modifications, then makes music with them.
Wired
The Israel Lobby Debate
It’s either really bad, or it doesn’t exist.
The Jewish Chronicle
Alt-Klez With Oblique, Demented Class
Clarinetist David Krakauer’s latest foray into techno-klezmer has three things going for it that most alt-klez does not. The first is Krakauer himself.
The Village Voice
Musician Plucks Sound from Lasers
Musician Miya Masaoka replaces the strings on a 1,300-year-old Japanese zither with focused beams of light.
Wired
The Restless Opera Company
Portland’s Vagabond Opera is not your standard opera company. And Eric Stern is not your standard opera singer.
The Forward
The Sweet Sound of Lapsed Time
Composer and computer programmer R. Luke DuBois finds a way to traverse 42 years of pop music history in 37 minutes.
Wired
Life After the Death of Jazz
Is jazz dead? How can we tell?
The Walrus
From Crypto to Jazz
A new jazz album draws on cryptography and number theory for its riffs and rhythms.
Wired
Remembering How the Jewish Theater Turned Into Broadway
Mr. Spock remembers his career on the Yiddish stage.
The Forward
The New Crooners
Can Rod Stewart save jazz?
Jazziz
Sherry (PDF)
This Spanish import is a world of wine unto itself.
Bartender Magazine
West African Blues Eulogy Conjures Desert Lightning
Malian guitar master Ali Farka Toure recorded one last album before his death from bone cancer, and it was a doozy.
The Village Voice
It Takes a Village
A neighborhood profile of Greenwich Village, circa 2006.
The Cooperator
Interfaith Music Hits Disparate Notes
An English vocal group and a Middle Eastern band explore Renaissance-era music by Jewish, Christian, and Muslim composers.
The Forward
Exploring Latin Music, In and Out of the Ivory Tower
A guitarist with a PhD mixes jazz, Latin music, and Jewish music in ways that are anything but drily academic.
The Forward
Rashanim Offers a Series of Surprises
The composer John Zorn meets his match.
The Forward
This Pen for Hire
Trading academia for copywriting.
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Tango: Not Jewish, But Not 100% Not Jewish
Why the name “Jewish Tango Cabaret” isn’t quite as odd as it seems.
The Forward
Too Many Dissonant Notes
Prof. Gelfand gets an “F” in classroom management.
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Great New Bottle for Old Wine
Satellite radio hits the air.
Jazziz
Two Albums Offer Gems of Gypsy Melodies
Two bands with a new take on Old World music.
The Forward
A Few Good Men
Music that doesn’t fit the mold.
Jazziz
Folk or Not, Sephardic Music for the Ages
An Argentinian-American composer makes modern classical music out of Jewish melodies from Spain.
The Forward
A Gem Among Giants
Why you’ve never heard of composer Irving Fine.
The Forward
The Great White Hype?
She’s the queen of the jungle. But can Jane Monheit sing?
Jazziz