Grumble Goat

We live in the computer age. Everything is computer. Communication happens through our instant messaging, banking happens through the ATM, groceries are ordered via app, and applying for jobs is HR portals. Gone are the days of firm handshakes and human interaction. Though, there remains one hospitable refuge. There exists one business model that pairs a live liaison with each human guest. When you go to a restaurant, it is a human that greets you and waits on your needs. But what happens when even that modicum interaction is split by a machine? Build an appetite with Mat and...

What was once spread-out nomadic tribes, Humankind has transformed into overpopulated, sky-scraping mega-metropolises. Progress has created super-city-states of civilization that clump humans together almost as tightly as explorers in OceanGate’s Titan Submersible. And with such a dense population, we create waste. While the computer-age technology has created a much brighter Times Square and faster Wall Street algorithms, waste management has not moved far beyond throwing garbage out our front doors. The steaming, repulsive heaps of sidewalk trash are a magnet for disease and rodents. And some of these filthy monsters, it turns out, are our neighbors. Trash talk wi...

Humankind has developed an obsessive encyclopedia of rules, ordinances, and law. We thrive in discipline and orderliness. Laws dictate where we can go, how we behave, and exactly how inebriated we can be driving home. But we are also beholden to our nature. And the one Law of Nature is ‘Kill, or be Killed!’ But when we are good boys and girls, how can we scratch that killer itch? Tune into your sinful, guilty pleasure with Veronique and Mat as we indulge that baser instinct vicariously through the dulcet sounds of True Crime!

*Grumbles are specifically off-the-cuff, no r...

Humankind loves systems and order. We obsessively name and categorize everything in nature. We divided all of the branches of life into Species and Genus and Kingdoms. We plotted every element in the universe into a table of contents. We put the square block in the square hole. And in our kitchens, we stack the plates with the plates and the bowls with the bowls. Forks go on other forks and spoon nestle with other spoons. But there is one cupboard that is given to entropy. Chaos reins on the coffee cup shelf. There is no organization or stacking...

Healthcare is a vital part of our society. Just like access to food and water, healthcare is a necessary part of maintaining these fleshy avatars we call bodies. While hospitals and medical access may be a wildly mismanaged, robber-baron industry of government-sponsored organized crime, most of our healthcare starts at the home. Staying hydrated and choking down brussel sprouts is basic health maintenance. Self-care starts with avoiding Hot Pockets and Baja Blasts. Physical Fitness beats Physicals. But Ten Thousand steps is also wear and tear. What happens when healthy hurts? Rest and Recuperate with Mat and Veronique as we...

Humankind is a product of nature, and thus we are beholden to nature. Despite living in a world of caller-ID and screening-calls, when Nature calls we must answer. And that answer happens the same, every time. We use the toilet; a toilet that is has a pretty universally recognized shape and function. Everybody uses this apparatus multiple times a day, and so we must all be exceptionally well-versed in the operation of these simple artifices. But then why are they always labeled with warnings and remonstrations? Who keeps breaking the toilets? Hop a squat with Mat and Veronique as...

We mark a new year on the calendar.  Like a barbarian whipping a flail around its chain, so too does the Earth whip around the sun to clobber us with the passage of time.  And time, like the orbital momentums we attribute it to, can be cyclical.  While its nice to take the New Year as an exercise in imagining a future unwritten, sometimes our propulsion is backward.  It is one thing to reminisce about the olden days, and quite another to reforge erstwhile Reichs.  How can we steer toward hope, when our captain’s compass only points to hate? ...

Veronique’s favorite Christmas episode is returning to brighten your Holiday Season!

One of the many joyous traditions practiced in this Holiday Season is the exchanging of gifts. Gifts, ultimately, are just things – maybe toys, maybe socks, maybe a Red Ryder Range 200 Shot BB Gun. What makes a gift magical is that it comes wrapped. You are handed a mysterious, shrouded box or bag of clandestine wonder and your only task is to annihilate this thin obfuscation and claim your prize. But what is the obligation of the gift-wrapper? Amazon would claim fulfilment after dropping the item into...

There is something deeply elemental about doors. Something lurks in our minds, possibly from our days living in caves, that profoundly impacts the way humankind’s subconscious reacts to doorways. ‘Opening Doors’ is metaphorically equivalent to obtaining opportunities. What prizes await behind Door Number Two? ‘Making an Entrance’ is to become the center of attention. As a matter of fact, the word ‘Entrance’ means both ‘Doorway’ and ‘Fill with wonder.’ So let’s take a moment to admire this doorway before we move through it. Except, there are people behind us. And there are folks coming the other way that need to use the doo...

In this futuristic age, it is easy to forget that we are mortal. Humanity has become nearly all-powerful… we can summon the visage of someone in another realm on our magic mirrors regardless the distance; we can portend the future through the crystal ball of our Accuweather Apps; and we can séance the guidance of the non-living through Grok. But we are still beholden to the curses of our flesh and blood. There are still miasmas that render us prone, blights that cripple our ability to rise above the muck of the natural world. And we are vulnerable dur...

As Autumn sets in once again, humanity must face the eternal questions of decay that haunt the bare branches and long shadows of Hallow’s Eve. Life is full of Grumbles, as this podcast attests; but so then is the ever-present awareness of mortality. As the spiritual veil pulls back, now is the time to question that infinite darkness of the beyond. But which is the more haunting idea: to cross the River Styx and join the dead, or to remain tethered to this world with business unfinished? Percolate this purgatory with Mat and Veronique as we invoke the sp...

The meaning of life is a question that has plagued philosophers since the dawn of time. Some say love, or laughter, maybe presence of mind, even the number 42 may hold the answer; but the question persists. Except in a scientific sense. The whole purpose of life in a scientific sense is to procreate. The proliferation of life is the purpose of life. This, very simply, means that we must pair off. As in Noah’s Ark, two-by-two we must seclude ourselves and procreate. Some species don’t like to cohabitate, like the Black Widow or the Praying Mantis, it’s more...

Music is a fundamental element to humankind’s soul. Before spoken language, there was music. Our bodies have circadian rhythms and heart beats, but also our nature calls us to tap and clap. Drums call us to dance and horns summon us to war. We sing to our babies and we sing to our gods. We fife our revolutions and we Dance Dance Revolution. The melody is inside of us and it harmonizes with our nature. But like a crippling addiction, we demand more and more. Turn it up! More cowbell! Modern speaker technology allows music to cripple us. Th...

In humankinds modern, late-stage-capitalistic world, one of the most celebrated luxuries is Flavor. Chefs and Sommeliers are world renowned celebrities. The spicy Scoville-covered-chicken enhanced interrogations called ‘Hot Ones’ is not only legal under the Geneva Conventions, but popular entertainment. For thousands of years, salt, spices, teas, and flavors have caused wars, slave-trade, and the fall of dynasties. But, now, in the days of the Coca-Cola Freestyle machine, where 165 flavors are the touch-of-a-button away, people still grapple over flavor. When Sumatran Arabica and Ecuadorian Robusta are on the same shelf as Celsius, how can either be the finer? Wake up with...

In a more Enlightened Age, humankind’s fundamental, inalienable rights were simmered down to Life, Liberty, and Property. Nine tenths of the law revolves around Possession. We treat material ownership with divine reverence. But just because someone owns something, doesn’t mean they know where it is. When we encounter an object bereft of its owner, we label it as Lost… depending on size. A wallet on the side of the road is lost, but a car is not. A needle in a haystack is lost, but a plow is not. Do we find the owner? Or do we move i...

Humankind does not have fur. Somewhere along the Darwinian path, it became advantageous to free ourselves of this coat and instead weave our own, seasonal wardrobe. Since then, clothing has become very much a part of our self-identity. We wear clothes based on weather, occasion, occupation, and fashion; but never would we leave the house without something covering our bare nudity. In the unseemly heat, we get as close as possible, but never can we escape the binding need for coverage. When the cloth we cover ourselves with for warmth becomes the shield for our unmentionables, are we free...

The Earth sources all of its energy from the Sun. The Sun heats the Earth, allowing for liquid water, which it then evaporates, giving us atmosphere and fresh water. It feeds the plants and it dries our laundry. But it is also a poison to us. It is not only vampires and trolls that must shield themselves from its furious light, but we mortal humans must cower from the terrors of its rays. The Sun dries us out, beats our senses, irradiates our skin, and ages us like drinking from the false grail. So why do we bathe in...

Humankind may be the top of the food chain, but that chain still binds us. As mortals, we still must eat. We must eat, like, all the time. Eons ago, our ancestors could just pluck an herbivore out of the flock and munch away, but these days food can be scarce. Sometimes we must trek as far as three or four blocks away to find a suitable meal. Until the App Store, that is! Now, right from the convenience of our phone, we can send our local money all the way across the country to Silicon Valley to have...

The modern household is a wonder of technological efficiency. We have machines that perform mundane tasks to alleviate those stresses from our busy lives. Washing clothes used to take us all the way to the river for half a day, but not with modern machinery! Just permanent press those yoga pants at the touch of a button! Brushing out the carpet? No longer! Just create a personal vortex, rifting the space-time continuum and bringing the vacuum of the cosmos right down on those dust-bunnies in under the couch. And keeping food safe and cold is no problem with the...

It is a fast paced-world we live in. Every great leap in technology is designed to make life easier: the printing press copies books for us, the cotton-gin picks seeds for us, the computer does all of our computing, and A.I. does all of our marketing and research. So why aren’t we all sitting on the beach? Ironically, all of these advancements have made us busier. Productivity is through the roof. There is no time between things anymore. Don’t squeeze in a lunch between telegraphs, because Beijing is already on the cellphone. And when emails circumnavigate the...

Safety first. Nothing is more important than your health and safety. Especially when traveling. So when we drive, we wear our seatbelts; and when we fly, we pose for full-frontal nude X-ray photographs for the federal agents that confiscate all of our belongings to search in a totally reasonable seizure of our rights. Because safety. We can’t outlaw guns, though, not for safety, guns are protected by the constitution. I mean, our right to property and freedom from unreasonable search and seizure are also protected by the constitution, but that right we have to forgo, because to keep sa...

In the near future, the robots are winning the war against humans. Any human action taken outside of acceptable drone-performance is swiftly punished. Labor is rewarded with an hourly stipend for feed and shelter. Any human luxuries, like soap or floss, are locked behind plexiglass, to be distributed as tokens of good behavior. The tariff wars will determine the market-price of life-hours, and the S&P 5000 bots will calculate the value your accrued hours can be traded out. Out of this darkness, one man will emerge. This one man holds the key, and every human at CVS is relying...

We don’t have a fresh Grumble this week, but it may be time to revisit the topic of ‘Hating Taxes.’ It seems that our government has been taken over by a shadowy, robed cabal of unelected, out-of-touch oligarchs who Hate Taxes.

There are few things as universally reviled in this world as the repugnant idea of taxes. The image of the tax-collector is that of a brutish thug, a member of the League of Evil, sitting right between the mobster hit-man and the concert-ticket scalper. But where did this sinister visage come from? For-profit corporations take far mo...

Descartes argues that the only thing I can be sure of with certainty is that my consciousness exists. Everything else is built on trust. We take for granted that we know everyone in our lives exists and our relation to them is built on foundations of truth. Except for one day a year. There is a day in the calendar that puts us in a Truman Show of our own. We can trust nothing that comes out of peoples’ mouths, and nothing that we see on the internet. Any clear path we see could be a Wile-E Coyote facade pai...

In Humankind’s humbler beginnings, news and rumor were slow to travel. A merchant ship might dock and bring word from other parts of the world. Stories might be embellished over time, Xerxes might be forty feet tall and surrounded by cyclops, Rhodes might have a colossus, Pharaohs might have mummy issues. The village idiot may be spreading rumors of these monsters, while the town crier maybe tempers the news to more realistic proportions. But we live in the modern world of instant gratification. There is no time to fact-check every exaggeration, and DOGE is here to streamline the pr...

Humankind’s origins were a brutal quest for survival. Hunting for food and fighting prey with simple tools was tiring work. And what was the reward for it? Bloody flesh for a meal. Sweets were a very rare treat. Every once in a while our ancestors might risk some bee stings to get a taste of that sweet honey. But now, sugar is in everything. The faucet of high-fructose corn syrup pumps that calorie-rich ooze right into our veins. Staple foods that were once the bland building-blocks of meals are now sticky with sugar. But when everything is candy, ho...

Humans are very small, in the Grand Schematics of Things. Large things have a gravitational force. Large things have very much matter. The Sun controls the spinning of the Earth, the seasons, the day and night. Small things, like humans, don’t have much control over the rotation of the Earth. But we have developed a way for small men to become large. Not with matter, but with money; and while money doesn’t have much matter, money does matter much. Small men with very large sums of money can move the Earth, they control our media, they control our...

It’s that special time of year, again. Not Groundhogs Day, groundhogs celebrate their love all year long. No, I’m talking about Valentine’s Day. It’s a day to celebrate that special someone in your life: your partner, your companion, the person you rely on every day of the year, the person you confide your every thought and wish upon; this is the day to show them how much you care about them by purchasing ultra-processed confectionaries, sweat-factory plushies, and mass-produced greeting cards. It’s wonderfully efficient how perfectly you can symbolically phone-in the metaphor of taking your loved...

Welcome to the second non-annual G.O.A.T. Awards! Awards season is upon us, and just like the Hollywood elite, the content creators at Grumble Goat also need constant positive reinforcement. Enjoy your favorite moments from Grumble Goats past while the Sorting Top Hat of Randomness dictates the winners and losers. Applaud Mat and Veronique as we shower each other with G.O.A.T Awards!

*Grumbles are specifically off-the-cuff, no research went into this grumble.

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The very foundation of Human Civilization is the ability to work together. Cooperation amongst humans has created cities, global networks, space exploration, and crypto-mining. Yet one of the most historically decisive forms of collaboration is war. The way we relax on Sunday afternoons is to watch goliaths slaughter one another on the gridiron. We work together on scientific advancements just to out-nuclear-power another country. The duality of humankind is that we are strongest working together aggressively. Is it possible to harness this bloodlust toward building a better society? Join Mat, Veronique, and Guest – Logan Kovach – as we put our head...

All of humanity has one fundamental commonality, one critical similarity that both binds us as single species and also uniquely individualizes us… We are born. Every single one of us goes through the arduous ordeal, but the date of our birth distinguishes us. For millennia, we have looked to the stars to dictate the constellations that define us, our birth year might align with a mascot or a dragon, hospitals use the date as a form of identification. And so, instead of celebrating our commonality together, we opted to each celebrate in their own way. But now it is my...

Christmastime has returned to America! Our favorite holiday celebrating the rampant consumerism and fourth-quarterly profits has finally come again and it is time to please our great Lord on High: the GDP! While having come a long way from its quaint beginnings, the birth of an impoverished stable-boy, the media would still have us believe it has a humbler meaning. Peace-on-Earth and Goodwill-to-men make better Hallmark cards, I guess; and comfort-and-joy, or a little ‘Christmas Magic’ make better Hallmark movies, but try showing up at your childhood house Christmas morning with a heart full of love and cheer and zero...

Humankind is a herd species. We clump together. So within these clumps of people, self-expression becomes important to maintaining our individuality. Fashion – what we wear – has always been central to how we express who we are. But the modern era of Social Media has moved our core self-identities online. We now can pick and choose who can glimpse our self-expression through our online presence; and, as such, our physical bodies are not anywhere near our self-expression. Thus we are now free to cloth our beast form in any soft pajamas normally reserved for private hovels, so long as no one...

Who are we? What do we want and what is our purpose? Discovering humanity begins in childhood. Society has a plethora of fairy tales and legends that show humankind’s greatest ambitions. We teach our children all of our most idealistic aspirations. We can glean from these myths a vision of heroes that protect the innocent, fight for peace, put an end to suffering and war. Yet, we still have war. Who starts the wars? Across the country, people teach their children to be kind and share. But every four years we are asked to pick a leader; we ch...

Being human is to err. The Master has failed more times than the beginner has even tried. To achieve greatness, one must work through endless suffering in order mold oneself into a vessel for perfection. The Gurus have toiled through a lifetime of sacrifice and agony to become something grander than merely mortal. But even they have been guilty of putting off laundry day. Laziness is a symptom of mortality. Rome was not built in a day, and it certainly wasn’t built by working through lunch. Things take time, and some priorities get pushed back. So why does th...

Once again the leaves wallow from the trees. Darkness encroaches. There are shadows of things creeping in the night. Even in your own home, you are not safe from the monsters prowling in the dim recesses. There are many frightening mascots for the haunting, harvest season. There are bats, there are spiders, there are owls, there are many ghouls in the baren trees and scurrying through the piles of dying leaves outside. But there is another beast that haunts the night, one that we have foolishly invited into our homes. Cower with Mat and Veronique as we flinch at...

Humankind is the Apex predator on this planet, but we are not alone. Humanity has a best friend, a companion species in the Animal Kingdom. We have developed a symbiotic relationship with a loyal, faithful, and joyful partner in this entropic, mortal coil. Over generations and millennia we have come together in our homes and in our families, building a bond that supersedes fundamental needs, and even breaks into the realm of unconditional love; the bond between Humans and their best friend, dogs. And then, like a vacation ruined by uninvited in-laws, another animal moved in. Like an unemployed...

All of Humankind is akin, from the earliest cave-dwellers to the astronauts floating in space stranded by Boeing, we are all united in the ethereal, unconscious nether of sleep. No matter the microprocessor speed of our daily lives, we all are bound to the mortal coil of comatose slumber. While we now live in a world of scientific knowledge, our ancestral superstitions linger in our subconscious. The tribal cave-mind hides in the forgotten reaches of the back of our mind until we drift off to the enchanted nether of dreams where ancient nightmares torment our psyche. All the while...

Agriculture is, of course, how we grow our food, but it is also humanity’s most fundamental connection to the Earth. The bountiful nutrients and minerals of Earth’s rich soils are unlocked by vegetation’s burrowing roots. And the different sediments of Earth’s many environments produce specific thriving flavors native to certain places: the grapes of Bordeaux, the olives of Sicily, and the hydroponic cannabis of Studio City. These flavors are celebrated throughout the world. But some places have a deep-seeded need for secrecy. New Jersey is an area where you keep your mouth shut, Fahgettaboutit, you-don’t-need-to...

Evolution forges animals in a chaotic gauntlet of carnage and slaughter. Like a gladiatorial arena, only the strongest and fittest can survive the tumult. Eons of desperate hunting, killing, and fighting between species has born out to create the single-elimination food web that governs all living things. Until Humankind. The human has outclassed all other species so thoroughly that in our hubris, we take small competitors as pets. We are so immune from any other predator that we toss them morsels out of pity. But do they receive such cowardly scraps with any shame? They are still playing the...