Short Essays About Our Foibles and Successes As Communicators. Click a Topic to Open an Essay.

Core Principles

• The Necessity of Acknowledgement
• “Mere?” Not so Much
• The Conversational Fire of Curiosity
• Communication as Context
• Getting Clarity: The Usefulness of “Mirroring”
• Empathy: Finding Ourselves in Others
• The Myth of Personal Authenticity
• Turing, and the Bogus Rivalry with Machine-Based Intelligence
• Meaning is Less Transferable Than We Think
• Which Gettysburg Did He See?
• Seating: A Concern For More Than Brides
• Looking for Multiple Narratives
• The Park Solution
• Persuasion: The Myth of Easy Influence
• The Power of Rhetorical Transcendence
• The Myth of Successful Multitasking
• The Mistake of Communication as Chemistry
• Character and The Confidence to Not Know

  

• Getting to the Target First
• Attention Without Deficits 
• The Melioristic Bias 
• The Power to Name is the Power to See
• Feeling Put-Upon? Sharpen the Knives and Round Up the Goats
• We Hear What We Need to Hear
• Not to Despair, but we are Islands
• In Praise of the Linear Mind
• The Addressable Audience: The Decline of a Communication Model
• The Grammar of Hubris
• The Mistake of Assumed Agency
• The Small Pleasures of Finding the Right Word
• The Damaged Individual Who Cannot Self-Monitor
• Happily Misinformed 
• De-Stressing in the Woods
• The Deterministic Mind
• The Paradox of Our Multiple Selves
• Emotion as Logic

  

• Social Intelligence
• Parting Thoughts
• The Appeal to Fear
• Anchors
• The American Impulse for Light
• No Thanks.  I’ve Been Warned
• Rhetorical Exigencies
• The Keyboard Inventor
• Nonfluencies 
• Negative Models
• A Theory of the Depression Monsoon 
• What should I say?
• Sticking the Landing
• The Decline of the Dialogical Model
• The Uses of Ambiguity
• Name that Rhetorical Device!
• The Response of Compliance 
• I Must Have Missed it.
• Dualistic Thinking
• Don’t Count on Straight Line Effects
• The Bond of Eye Contact
• The Mistake of Multitasking
• Jeremiads 
• Burke’s Definition of all of Us, In Five Clauses
• Looking for Listeners
• Voicing Messages
• Figuring Out When the Lights are On
• The False Promise of the Ill-formed Question
• Easily the Most Common Communication Deficit 
• On the Make
• The Useful Idea of Social Intelligence
• Celebrating Division
• Brain or Mind?
• Simulated Versus Real Experience
• The Rough Ride of Identity Politics
• Why We Cling to Magical Thinking
• Do We Still Know Who We are?
• Our Brush With Authoritarianism
• We Need to Remember What an Argument Looks Like
• Writing or Typing: Does it Matter?
• The Face of Trumpism Comes into Focus
• The Appeal of Being Inside a Fence
• Curating Our Memories
• We Easily Miss the Big Stuff
• Overestimating What we Can Fix
• Communication Foibles
• The Pandemic Has Not Lessened the Value of Direct Eye Contact
• Making Sense of Truth Denial
• Mindful of the Bullseye on Our Backs
• The Unsung Virtues of Restraint
• The Missing Elasticity of Social Relations
• Plurality, Triangulation and the Truth
• Autocrats on Parade
• Regaining a Consciousness of Character
• Another High Theft Item to Protect
• Telling Our Origin Stories
• A Pronoun Test of A.I. Sentience
• Living with Our Contradictions
• What Makes Us Think We Are In Charge?
• Artificial Intelligence Reconsidered Eight Years Later
• The Fiction of Independence
• Our Fragmented Consciousness
• What Reasons-Based Dispute Looks Like
• Awash in Dubious Metrics
• Rethinking Our Frames
• The Eclipse of Character
• Naming our Mental States
• The Looming Calamity of Multitasking
• What if There Are No Dots to Connect?
• How Good Are Your ‘Soft Skills?’
• A.I. Are We Giving Up on the Idea of Authorship?
• When Words Do Not Matter
• Losing Reliable Channels to the Community
• The Self Reveal of Russian Meddling
• Fit For Service?
• It’s 1984 Again
• Federal Workers on the Firing Line
• The Recurring Ruptures of American Life
• Repairing a Damaged Brand

 

Face to Face

• Close Quarters
• Grace Under Pressure
• Very Verbal People
• The Self-Referential Bore
• Bombing
• Doing What Comes Unnaturally
• Is Mentoring Out of Fashion?
• Face to Face in the Classroom
• Invitations From Hollywood to Witness Conversational Trainwrecks
• The Fluency of Caffeine
• Are we Losing Our Children to Conversational Silence?
• An Emerging Norm of Low Affect?
• Witnessing
• Conversational Ping Pong
• The Listening Surcharge
• The Eyes Have It
• Faceless Giants
• Lunch Anyone?
• Broadcasters and Receivers
• Our Fragile Selves
• The Phone Test
• Finding Interiority
• Tics
• Malapropisms
• Where Are the Kids?
• Snap Judgments
• It Was Supposed to be Just a Thought Experiment 
• Do We Still Notice Neighborhoods?
• The Rise of Telehealth
• Giants the Struggle with the Idea of Personhood
• Symbols of Self-Reinvention
• The Front Porch Network

 

In Organizations

• Sometimes the Perfect Response is No Response
• Papering Ourselves to Death
• The Strange Business of Fronting For Others
• Where are the Conciliators?
• The PowerPoint Crutch
• What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
• What Counts as Genuine Persuasion?
• Backchannels
• Tracking Corporate Miscreants in Time Out Corner
• Finding the Sense of a Meeting
• Crummy First Drafts
• Sleepwalking Through a Conference Call
• The Johnson Treatment
• The Dissent Backchannel
• A Campus Idyll
• Teachers
• Things Will Get Worse Before They Get Worse
• The Agentic Personality
• The Tyranny of Rule Making
• The Illusive Soft Skill
• Organizational rot
• Show horses Versus Workhorses
• Can We Salvage the Humanities?
• College Clichés
• The Problem of “Complications”
• The Mandate for Compliance Over Initiative
• Media Companies That Expand to Incompetence 
• Thank you very much, but The Governor of Florida would prefer to tell your story his way.
• Academic Fiefdom
• Clueless at Governing
• The Impermanence of Our Best Efforts
• In Defense of “Context”
• Darkness in the Sunshine State
• The Sinkhole of Mission Statements
• In Praise of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

 

Personal Media

• Questioning Questionable Sources
• Tell Them You Like It
• In Praise of Some (Polite) Hell-Raising
• Attempting to Drive From the Backseat
• The Risks of Drinking from a Fire Hose
• The Sentimental Songs of Dis-Connectivity
• The Fraudulent Rhetoric of Anonymous Response
• The Disciplined Consumer
• Are We Done Collecting?
• The Pervasive Symbols of Personal Reinvention
• Hiding in the Bushes
• Is there a masculine style?
• The Diminished Returns of Managing “Smart” Things
• Words that Wound
• Coping with the Email Tide
• Putting the Squeeze on Tired Parents
• Internet Contagion and Communities of Outrage
• The Lure and False Authority of Click Bait
• Digital Doping
• The Canvassing Imperative
• Faceless Giants
• The Simplification Bonus
• Phrases Ready for Retirement
• Helpful Ready Responses
• Curating Our Lives
• Phone Culture is Making Us Stupid
• Photo Ops
• The Cloud Pollutes
• Social Media Just Aren’t That Interesting
• Out of Touch
• The Items We Inexplicably Cherish
• Our Attraction to Places
• Breaking the Cycle of Grievance
• Putting a Grand Theory to the Test

 

Public Media

• Resisting The Fabulist Impulse in Television News
• The Money Shot
• Debased Debates
• Muting the Dream
• The Oppositional Turn
• CNN’s ‘Tragedy Porn’
• Prayer as Performance
• What Mayors Can Teach Us About Public Discourse
• The Seductive Rhetoric of Conspiracy
• Writing History Without the Soundtrack
• A Case of Failed Journalism Ethics
• Six National Media Treasures
• The Challenge of Reframing Leisure Choices into Ethical Choices
• Four Words That Are Trouble
• The American Pitch
• Disaster a la Carte 
• PMQs: What Americans are Missing
• Who Gets to Tell Our Story?
• 2400 Times and Counting
• Are we Losing the Trope of American Optimism?
• News Inversions: Sound and Fury Signifying Nothing
• The High Voltage Language of Status Issues
• The Overstated Value of Rhetorical Consistency
• The High Costs of Living in an Ocular-Centric World
• The Problem of the Unintended Audience
• A Rebuke that Stuck
• Discuss and Repeat
• Looking for a Paper in Baltimore
• It Started With A Wire and a Key
• Media Matters
• The Conspiracy Mindset
• Our Iconoclastic Moment?
• Monuments to Uncertainty
• The Political Poison of Twitter
• Dusting Off an Old Problem for a New Age
• The Tacky Business of Affirmation by Denial
• What a Real Debate Looks Like
• What Are Campaigns For?
• The Disinformation Age
• Public Radio Thrives
• The End of the Rhetorical Presidency?
• Echoes From Forty Eight Years Ago
• Ad Hominem 
• The President’s Rhetorical Style
• The First Amendment
• The Limits of Forbearance 
• In the Bubble
• The Eclipse of Advocacy by Assertion: The Case of Cable News
• Presidential Theater on the Small Screen
• Presidential Theater and its Patrons
• The Worst
• Musical Bridges
• Hopeful Signs in Pessimistic Times
• The Tragedy Euphemism
• New Jersey News Media as Disappearing 
• Trump’s Strategy Mindset
• No Effects?
• From Citizens to Consumers
• The Observer
• You Can Say That Again
• Taking the Bait
• American Dislocations
• Paterson
• Perfect Titles
• Living Down Plato’s Scorn
• Fighting Social Media Storms
• The Queasy Rhetoric of Cultural Appropriation 
• Dancing Away the Doldrums
• The Frail Rules of Rhetorical Courtesy
• The Disappearing Agora
• We Were Warned
• The Divider 
• The Pleasures of Criticism
• The Rise in the Mental Health Lexicon
• The Nightmare of Presidential Incitement 
• Fake News
• What to Do If a Debate Breaks Out
• Can’t be Bothered with Democratic Norms?
• The All Purpose Advocate 
• Different Systems that Should yield Different Outcomes
• The Red Carpet of Uncertainty
• The Decline of Campaign Predictability
• Finding Common Touchstones
• The Nightmare of the Brexit Debate
• The Timeless Jokes of Annie Hall
• Subverted Experiences
• Nihilism Unbound
• In Praise of the Longform Documentary
• Plan B
• A few Lessons From a Congress that Can’t Govern
• Well Said
• American Hustler
• No Sports, No Problem
• Otherwise Engaged
• About that Slippery Ramp. . .
• Public Wealth and Private Squalor 
• Can We CGI the Outfield as Well?
• A Campaign of Mockery and Abuse
• The Feds Say It’s Safe**
• Help Them Turn it Off
• The End of the Rhetorical Presidency?
• The Vote was Accurate
• How Much Media Oxygen Will he Get?
• The Fiction of National Security
• Failed States
• Freedom Claims: The Seeds of a National Crack-Up
• A Theory of Flourishing Ignorance
• Grievances Arising from COVID and Beyond
• The Great Appreciators
• Fantasy and Denial: Our Public Health Challenges
• Lost in the Weeds
• Our Emerging Thought Police
• Plurality, Triangulation and the Truth
• The Sentimental Appeal of Live Rounds
• Films of Journalistic Discovery
• Notes From the Sound Stages
• When a Mechanical Mr. Bean Does the News
• Our National Crisis of Arts Compensation
• Is Our Storytelling Too Dystopian?
• Sora Will be A Game Changer
• Adrift
• Making Sense of it All
• When Recognition Counts More Than Integrity
• Finding Independent News Sources

 

Sight and Sound

• The Invitation of the Blank White Page
• Music as Memory
• Breaking the Sound Barrier
• Words and Music
• Through a Vale of Tears: the Story-Song
• Too Much Noise on the Line
• The Acoustic Sponge of White Noise
• The Rhetoric of Hubble’s Imagery
• What Counts as Funny?
• Might Their Hatreds be Tamed?
• Keeping Our Golden Ears
• The Signal to Noise Ratio
• Focused on the Rear View Mirror
• Track 18
• Noise Fests
• Turns Out, Americans love Opera
• Here’s to the Fools Who Dream
• Knowing by Seeing
• Restricted Revivals
• The Perfect Note
• Everyone Needs an Editor
• Dressing Ideas
• A Picture is Sometimes work very little
• Our Neglected Sense
• Where Does Music Mean?
• Paying for the Quiet
• The Primacy of Sound
• The Sound-Centric Individual
• Going Solo
• Connecting With Phones Rather Than Cameras
• Misophonia
• The Dominance of Light and Vision Imagery
• The Havana Syndrome Revisited
• Valuing the Source More than the Thing
• Save Those Compact Disks
• A Last Musical Wish
• Remarkable Features of Sound
• Hearing is our Newest Sense
• The Irony of Expansive War Music
• Sound is a Product of Where it is Heard
• Our Fragile Hearing
• A Different Kind of Seasonal Storm
• Notes on Viewing Art from Another Era
• Getting it Mostly Write
• Finding Our Music Melting Point
• Terror at the 32nd Bar
• Reconsidering the Havana Syndrome
• A.I. and the Mastery of Spoken Language
• Listening to the Wood
• They Don’t Sing Them Like They Used to
• Other Uses of the Pitch Clock
• Our National Crisis of Arts Compensation
• Too Many Performances are Locked up by Corporate Gatekeepers
• The Broken Prototype of “The Best”
• My Havana Moment
• The Changed Media Landscape for Public Radio

 

Additional Posts