Personal

Improv Comedy

In late 2018, I joined Atlas Improv Co. I had no previous comedy experience – my wife and I took classes there to make friends when we first moved to Madison, and one thing led to another. We do shortform in a theater sports format, and we do a variety of longform stuff as well. It's a great, low-stakes way to be goofy in a supportive environment – you don't get hecklers like in stand-up, and it's funny whether you do it right or wrong.

That's me on the left. I think my stage partner had just crashed my car.

Urban planning

I'm an urban planning enthusiast. I'm fascinated by how much the principles of those disciplines shape our lived experience. My wife and I were car-less for nearly the first decade of our marriage (though we did recently give in and buy a car). I highly recommend the following books in this area:

• The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs

• Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time, Jeff Speck

• Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do and What It Says About Us, Tom Vanderbilt

• Street Smart: The Rise of Cities and the Fall of Cars, Sam Schwartz

• The Grid: The Fraying Wires Between Americans and Our Energy Future, Gretchen Bakke

Audiobooks

I love audiobooks. Maybe because I read so much for work, I find reading for pleasure unpleasant. The books above all have solid narrators. You should check out Audible to see if you can find one of your favorites with a narrator you like – it's usually a better transit activity than podcasts.

I don't know how to take a photo of that, so here's my Vonnegut shelf, arranged from my sense of best (left) to worst (right).