A Part of Something

Daniel starts this solo episode with absolutely nothing to talk about—and somehow ends up in sixteenth-century England.

A passing use of the phrase “clutching at straws” leads to its possible origin in a book Thomas More wrote while imprisoned in the Tower of London. From there, the rabbit hole widens: Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, the break with Rome, the dissolution of the monasteries, and the very practical question of what actually happened to all the monks, nuns, and friars when their communities were shut down.

Along the way, Daniel encounters executions, exiles, pensions, convents surviv...

Daniel starts this solo episode with no particular plan and somehow winds up at radioactive waste, landfill fires, nuclear weapons, relativity, money, forgiveness, and the possibility that being kind to one person may matter more than we realize.

A detour into the West Lake and Bridgeton landfills leads to a larger question: what are we supposed to do when the world contains problems too enormous for any one of us to fix? Daniel considers the temptation to believe that only big actions matter—and the counterintuitive possibility that small acts of kindness, genuine forgiveness, and treating the pe...

Musician, writer, actor, and visual artist Sandra Lynn Sparks—who now works under the name Sana Sparks—joins Daniel for a wide-ranging conversation about creativity, consciousness, and a lifetime of unusual experiences.

Sandra reflects on the musical path that carried her from folk and classical music into Celtic performance, theater, and “free song,” her form of improvised singing without fixed words. She also discusses psychic perception, spirit guidance, reincarnation and past-life memory, dreams that appeared to anticipate later events, and several near-death experiences—including one in which she experienced multiple places and layers of reality at once.

After...

Sometimes the most extraordinary things are hiding in plain sight.

In this freewheeling solo episode of A Part of Something, I reflect on a little moment of wonder involving a ray of morning sunlight—and how easy it is to lose our sense of awe in the busyness of everyday life.

Then things get a little experimental. Inspired by composer John Cage, I attempt a performance of his famous composition 4′33″, which consists of four minutes and thirty-three seconds without intentionally played musical notes. What happens when we stop making noise and simply listen?

I also...

Daniel talks with his cousin Noah Smith about Noah’s father, Mayne Smith, a songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and longtime figure in the Northern California folk and roots-music community. Mayne co-founded the Redwood Canyon Ramblers in 1959, recognized as Northern California’s first bluegrass band, and his 1964 Indiana University master’s thesis is widely credited as the first scholarly study of bluegrass music.

Noah talks about Mayne as both a musician and a father: his songwriting and musicianship, his years of collaboration and mentoring, the songwriter circles at Sweets Mill, and his involvement with Berkeley’s Freight & Salvage. They also discuss...

Daniel hits record without knowing exactly what he wants to talk about—and eventually finds himself thinking about work, money, calling, identity, God, and what it means to be more than the thing you do for a living.

He reflects on the different pieces of his life that seem to be moving at once, his sense that they may be connected in ways he can’t yet see, and the tension between making a living and following work that feels meaningful. From there, things wander into souls, René Descartes, atheism, awe, science, mystical experience, and the simple but s...

Steve Perron once wanted to be a priest. He also wanted to be a Beatle.

The singer-songwriter and retired broadcast journalist joins Daniel to discuss his book, What’ll We Do with All the Churches?, which traces his changing beliefs through his songs. Steve reflects on seven years in seminary, the doubts that led him to leave, and the longer journey that eventually brought him to secular humanism. They explore his objections to original sin, the problem of animal suffering, and the peace he found in stepping away from his childhood faith.

Along the way, th...

In D. Scott Rogo’s books on otherworldly music, people describe music that seems to come out of nowhere—while sitting on a back porch, spending time in nature, or gathering at someone’s deathbed. They describe it as beyond anything the greatest human composers could create. Sometimes two people hear it together, but one describes a choir and the other an orchestra.

In this solo episode, Daniel shares what’s catching his attention as he makes his way through A Casebook of Otherworldly Music and A Psychic Study of the Music of the Spheres. He hasn’t finished...

Storyteller, humorist, and musician Andy Offutt Irwin joins Daniel to talk about making people laugh, paying attention, and remembering what it feels like to be a kid.

Andy’s album Banana Seat was recorded in Daniel’s childhood home, and its songs helped Daniel learn to play guitar. Revisiting that music leads to stories of Disney street theater, Renaissance festivals, a fire-eating apple puppet, and a bank gig that ended early. There’s also a song about a pen whose ending may still be going.

Between the stories, they explore the connection between wit and empath...

In this solo episode, Daniel considers three different ways people respond to near-death experiences: belief, skepticism, and the idea that an experience may be real while still being deceptive or misleading.

Along the way, he reflects on his own “parfait of beliefs,” the stranger claims that sometimes appear in NDE accounts, and the difficulty of knowing what to accept, reject, or simply leave unresolved. At the center is one of Daniel’s strongest convictions: that we are all connected, and that the work of eternity may have something to do with learning to love one another as comple...

At age 25, Vinney Tolman was found dead in a restaurant bathroom, placed in a body bag, and later resuscitated by a rookie paramedic. In this wide-ranging conversation, the author of The Light After Death recounts his journey beyond the body and the ten principles he says he learned on his way to heaven.

Vinney and Daniel discuss authenticity, unconditional love, intuition, technology, prejudice, A Course in Miracles, and music in the afterlife—including Vinney’s experience of every blade of grass communicating through music and love. The conversation then becomes unexpectedly personal as Vinney helps Daniel examine crea...

In this short solo episode, Daniel begins with the human voice—perhaps our oldest melodic instrument—and wonders where melody comes from. Is our response to melody simply a byproduct of the brain’s machinery for processing speech, a kind of “auditory cheesecake”? Or does music’s ability to feel meaningful, even without words, suggest that there is more to the story?

This isn’t an attempt to solve the mystery. It’s a prelude: an informal meditation on voice, rhythm, Beethoven, Vivaldi, evolutionary psychology, and the mystery of how a sequence of tones can communicate meaning beyond the reach...

In this warm, wide-ranging conversation, author, illustrator, and songwriter Warren Hanson shares the winding creative path that led from advertising art to a career making beloved books. Warren reads from A Cup of Christmas Tea, The Next Place, and Today’s Special and tells the stories behind these works.

Along the way, we explore grief, forgiveness, faith, creativity, the mystery of what comes after death, and Warren’s conviction that love is what matters most. Warren also reflects on his lifelong relationship with music—and the teacher who taught him to expect more from himself.

You ca...

In this solo episode, Daniel wanders through the differences between light and sound, the human voice, ancient bone flutes, hunting bows, the origins of music, mathematical proof, an overenthusiastic interpretation of Kurt Gödel, lucid dreaming, near-death experiences, intelligent design, predation, people who may or may not need to eat, heavenly landscapes full of music, singing as healing, and the possibility that music is somehow a transmission of love.

Somewhere in there, he wonders what music has to do with the ground of being—and with love.

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