The message that my father had passed away arrived as a text from my brother in Sri Lanka while I was pitching to an investor in a board room somewhere in Toronto, Canada. My brother had called, but the phone was on vibrate and I ignored it. The echoing text arrived a short minute later. I don’t know why I reached into my pocket and glanced while I kept motioning at my slides, but I did. I remember I paused in mid-sentence and with the mind of a deer in headlights, I just continued.

As I was leaving shaking hands with the investor, for whatever reason, he asked, “Is everything okay”. Matter-of-factly, I answered, “My father just passed away, that was my brother on the phone.” I left.

I don’t know what he thought of me. I do know they didn’t invest in my startup. It is possible he thought I was callous, cold, or possibly in shock. I can’t remember if I had explained that I had just left Sri Lanka a mere fortnight past. I had seen my father at 81 after the brain surgery to remove the tumor that killed him anyway. He was in the same well-dressed pants and shirt, silver pen tucked asleep at the breast. My last vision was him waving, crying, holding on to my mother who had fretted over him. This was the last of the dozen good byes since they had moved to Sri Lanka and I to Canada.

The text had merely stated a pre-announced fate.

It was not home that I went when I arrived in Kingston, Ontario that afternoon by train from Toronto. Instead the taxi driver dropped me mid-afternoon on a weekday at the Pilot House pub. The waiter, James, poured me a Guinness. I sat at the corner table, opposite an empty chair, sipped the foam, played Take Me Home, Country Roads by John Denver, and shared a toast to my father.

At that point if you had asked me what he left behind I would have said my many memories. Maybe the numerous friends, patients, and relatives who toast his health now going well past a decade. I even went to visit the small area of the university dedicated to him after having been instrumental in its construction. His study where he saw patients at the farm on weekends with the tidy red ceramic floor remains, though it now doubles as a small buddhist shrine my mother uses daily. On a rare occasion I can see the shadows of his fingerprints in some of the books still dusty and unmoved.

Some years after, I thought back to my own life and I thought that what my father had left behind was probably reflected in the way I told my stories. I thought maybe my almost-obsessive need to connect with dear friends was something he had left in me. Maybe it was the way I laughed, the way I was always curious about history, or maybe it was in ABBA or BoneyM. “Duleepa-chuti-putha”, he would say while opening a cold Guinness at the apartment in Hong Kong, “play some Fernando, or Brown Girl In The Ring!” And that day when he passed and I had had that Guinness, I thought that simple act was something he had left behind.

Just a few years ago, I came across all the letters my father had written me. In them I thought I had found something he had left behind. They always started the same “My dear Chuti Putha”, my dear young son. In November 1993, he writes “It is raining heavily”, weather was a big theme. Politics, dogs, economics, and somehow getting me married off covers the rest. Always, in every letter, there was my mother, “Amma”, the “busybody”, without whom he would be “lost.”

Last year, my hair greyed and thinned. My cheeks took a slightly older shape. One morning, lathering my face to shave, there, staring out at me was none other than my father.

I also feature a piece of writing titled “The things we leave behind” which is about the day I found out my father passed away.

Thanks to Dr. Warkentin for the conversation which unfortunately cuts short: the dangers of recording in a car in Lapland!

In this conversation with musician Johnny Nolan and I, Geoff relives some of the stories from his past and we discuss some of the lost greats of the Newfoundland music scene: Fred Gamberg and Johnny Fisher.

With permission we also have the following tracks:

• Employee of the Month, Fur Packed Action

• Silver Bullet, Jigger

• Gatekeeper, Darshiva

If you are interested in Geoff’s son Angus, you can check this track out and subscribe to his YouTube and heck check them out all on stage together at the end of the Summer in St. John’s, Newfoundland on August 28.

Thank you to Geoff Younghusband (Jigger and Fur Packed Action) and Natalie Noseworthy (Darshiva) for their respective permissions.

Check out the other episodes on Newfoundland alternative music and more music!

This episode serves as a memory to Fred Gamberg and to Johnny Fisher. The music and memories live on as long as we listen.

A few weeks ago, my former professor and friend Dr. Erwin Warkentin and I found ourselves on some long drives through Finnish Lapland. My conversation with Joe Teo for Canada Day sparked a conversation much of which I recorded. In that episode, Joe said home could be defined as where he was able to make the biggest impact. That led to Erwin and I discussing our specific concepts of what home means.

Today’s podcast features:

• Going Home, an original short story by Duleepa Wijayawardhana

• A conversation between Dr. Erwin Warkentin and Duleepa Wijayawardhana on the subject of “home” and the question “where are you from?”

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© 2026 Duleepa Wijayawardhana
All rights reserved. This is an original piece of fiction.

Featured in Episode 62 of Tales under the cat tree
Note: No AI was used in the creation of this story.

When my father was a teenager he would often ride a rusted bike along the dirt laneways through the cleared jungle to the village school. Like every other school boy at the time, he wore his hair slicked back with cream with his white school uniform. His entire journey on muggy days was spent making sure the clay mud stayed away from the legs of his trousers. More than once though, he would set his face, ring his bell, and ride on past the school gates, past the backs of the students filing in, past the grumpy eyes of the balding headmaster. One day he said good bye to his mother, grabbed the jam sandwich in the bag she offered, and cycled off to school, past the school, down to the main road and didn’t stop pedaling until he reached the colonial port city.

By the time I was born, we had all moved to a suburban house, complete with fenced yard and a shiny new car. My father had worked on the docks, run the docks, and soon enough had become a marine engineer. My mother had found a home in his arms and soon I would be the one delivered to that home in the trembling arms of my father from the hospital.

As I grew older, I ran our yard ragged, first laying tracks with my little feet, later stripping the grass riding my training bike as my father sat on the steps with whoops of encouragement. Every day he would kiss my mother, take his packed lunch, grin and wink at me before heading out the door. On weekends he would take me with him to the Automobile Association Club. Seated at a privileged spot at the Club bar he would clink pint glasses, tell bawdy stories, and wink at me as I played to the edge of the bar. In a time when driving home after some pints was not only ignored but encouraged, we would do so together with me keeping an eye out, a daring game somewhere between hide and seek and frogger.

One day he kissed my mother, took his packed lunch, hugged me close and pressed a letter into my hand. His letter was short, written in an old cursive form. He promised he would write, he would make sure that I didn’t want for anything, and he would bring the world home. He promised he would come back home.

While he never stepped through the door again, every month checks arrived dutifully in ragged envelopes endorsed by stamps of strange sights in foreign scripts. Every birthday came a letter, complete with toys, curios, and later on, extra money for me. The letters told of his adventures, his friends, and life lessons for me. I dreamt of my father as if he were a character in a Saturday morning cartoon: battling pirates off the shores of Madagascar and riding manta rays in the South Pacific.

I graduated at the top of my university class and the letters noticed, the cursive more excited, spilling happiness from somewhere out there in the world. I always read the letters only after I had rescued them from under my mother’s spattered wine glasses. She passed away shortly after my graduation on a winter day sooner than anyone of us wanted but probably should have expected. For a brief few months the letters ceased as if observing a moment of silence. A large amount of money arrived with a letter from over the sea the week I married; enough for a downpayment that I didn’t need for a childhood home that still surrounded me. Teddy-bear-shaped letters arrived to herald the birth of my son and subsequent birthdays. And still afterwards the letters came, though now there was a flowing river from the mailbox to the basement where they were stacked, crisp and unopened.

The final letter was not borne by a mailman but the professional knock of a nurse at the door to our home. I read the letter, written in a stumbling cursive, out loud to my wife, halting in several places, as saliva caught in my drying mouth. My father had suffered a stroke while being treated for cancer. He had been shipped back for terminal hospice care. He wished to come home, he said, and be with his grandchild before he passed.

When my father came through the door he was lying on a motorized hospital bed. His smile through the breathing mask the same as when I ran around the yard. His eyes as deep brown as my son’s, a forehead creased and passed from generations. Soon his breathing stabilized in the living room where we had installed the bed. There was a rhythmic quality to the deflation of the airbag and the measured beats of the pacemaker. After the initial excitement, my son went back to his toys, oblivious to the nose, eyes, forehead he shared with my father. My father fell asleep at the centre of my home as I watched the blips of a heart I wished we didn’t share.

You can read the original story:

• English: https://tales.dups.ca/p/the-cottage-on-yli-kitka

• Finnish: https://tales.dups.ca/p/mokki-yli-kitkan-rannalla

The sound of the Kuikka: Kuikka: Kuikka / Black-Throated Loon / Arctic Diver by YleArkisto -- https://freesound.org/s/242110/ -- License: Attribution 4.0

Thanks to Suvi Salmilampi (translation) and Kaj Makela (translation and reading)

Please note, the podcast will take a break and return July 13, 2026

Welcome to my Canada Day special episode. Canada Day 2026 is special for me because twenty-five years ago on 1 July 2001, surrounded by many dear friends, I became a proud Canadian. That story comes towards the end of the episode.

First, I want to celebrate a fellow Canadian and a fellow Newfoundlander. I’ve known Joe Teo for more than a decade. A long time ago, my alma mater, Memorial University called me up and asked me whether I could meet with two young entrepreneurs, Joe Teo and Sahand Seifi, who had just started a company in St. John’s called HeyOrca. Over the years I’ve watched Joe navigate life and entrepreneurship and I am incredibly proud to call him a friend. On the day I interviewed Joe, Joe had just received his Canadian citizenship and taken the oath.

This episode also contains the original audio created by my friend and then journalist Craig Welsh for CBC featuring my Canadian citizenship ceremony. Hearing my friends voices from twenty-five years ago is surreal and touching. I hope I have done you all proud.

I would like to thank the many Supermetrics colleagues who contributed to this episode: Dave, Bartosz, Kamal, Darius, Toli, Irina, Pavel, Anssi, Lee and Jaz. I’m sorry for those that I could not include.

The Canadian National Anthem, O Canada, is performed by Julie Nesrallah and Nathalie Paulin, accompanied by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Peter Oundjian.

Instrumental versions of O Canada are public domain recordings.

This is part two of my series on Canada.

Today, we will explore what it means to be Canadian in 2026 by looking back at the last 50 years of Canada through the eyes of two of my best friends. On a beautifully sunny day in a small tea garden in Berlin, Germany, I met up with Sylvia and Erwin Warkentin, fellow Canadians observing our country from afar. Together, we discuss the changes they have witnessed over the last half-century, the evolution of Canada’s cultural landscape, and what we can learn as we look to its future.

Episode Highlights

• The Cultural Mosaic: Sylvia discusses growing up on the prairies and how she appreciates Canada’s shift towards diversity and tolerance over the last 50 years. She highlights the value of maintaining one’s heritage as a hyphenated Canadian, celebrating a cultural mosaic rather than a melting pot.

• Borders and Identity: Erwin shares his unique upbringing in a Mennonite community in Manitoba, with the US border running right past his schoolyard. He notes how the once-fluid border has hardened since 9/11, but believes Canadians are now developing a stronger backbone to reaffirm their own values.

• First Nations and Systemic Struggles: We delve into the difficult history and ongoing challenges faced by First Nations and Métis communities, including the enduring legacy of colonisation. Erwin suggests creating physical memorials, akin to Germany’s Stolpersteine (tripping stones), to ensure those lost through violence are never forgotten.

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This is part 1 of four episodes celebrating Canada.

On July 1 is Canada Day, and this year in 2026, it will be my 25th anniversary as a Canadian citizen. It is the country I choose to call home. Canada has as many problems as any other country. As we speak, Alberta, a province I called home for near a decade, is preparing for a referendum on separating from the country.

Today’s episode is about something that brings any group of people together: Music, and about a specific band that you have never heard of unless you are Canadian, or know a Canadian of the generations between 1980 and 2015. That band is The Tragically Hip.

When it comes to The Hip, as we like to call them, I cannot think of a bigger fan than my friend Edgar (Eddie) Thomas from Newfoundland and Labrador. Over many drinks we have often philosophized and spoken about music and what it means to us.

We talk a lot about the band, so who are/were they? The band members were Rob Baker, Gord Downie, Johnny Fay, Paul Langlois, and Gord Sinclair. Gord Downie, the lead singer was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer in 2015.

At the end of the episode I have an essay that I wrote in 2017, shortly after Gord Downie had passed away from his cancer. The essay was written six months into my life here in Helsinki and after a short visit from Eddie.

Episode Highlights

• A Shared Canadian Experience: Eddie and I discuss how The Tragically Hip transcended provincial borders and musical genres to unite a massive, varied country.

• But he won’t travel alone: A multi-part essay covering my discovery of Canada and the Tragically Hip.
  

  Want more tales of Canada? Subscribe my friend (everything is free)!

Eddie’s Top Tragically Hip Tracks

If you are new to the band, here are links to Eddie’s top picks:

• 50 Mission Cap:

• Fireworks:

• Wheat Kings:

• Bobcaygeon:

Johnny Nolan returns as my co-host for another Newfoundland Alternative music deep dive, but this time we are honoured to be joined by author and journalist Rhea Rolman. We wanted to explore the influence of alternative music on alternative communities in St. John’s, Newfoundland and how music is important in creating safe spaces during the 1990s and even earlier.

• The 1990s Analogue Culture: Yup this was before the time of Social Media and we had to rely on concerts, gigs, and the radio of all things!
  

• Safe Spaces and Organising: Rhea explains how the music scene provided vital safe spaces during a time when minorities, especially sexual minorities, may have faced repression in Newfoundland.
  

• Festivals as Catalysts: We chat about how events like the Peace Accord and modern festivals like Lawnya Vawnya bring diverse groups together to exchange ideas.
  

• Saving CHMR: Rhea shares the story of the recent community fight to save the funding for the campus community radio station, preserving one of the last remaining creative spaces in the city.
  

About Rhea

Rhea Rollmann (she/her) is an award-winning journalist, writer and audio producer based in St. John’s, NL, and is the author of A Queer History of Newfoundland (Engen Books, 2023).​

She’s a founding editor of The Independent NL and her journalism has appeared in Briarpatch Magazine, CBC, Xtra Magazine, Chatelaine, PopMatters, Riddle Fence and more.

Special Thanks for their tracks with permission

• Bob Earle and Draize Eye Test

• Liz Pickard and the Lizband for One Song

• Phil Winters and the band Bung for Ramirez.

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Today on the podcast, I’m joined by my old friend and former BioWare colleague, Brent Knowles. We chat all about the art and magic of world-building, drawing from Brent’s several decades of experience as a game designer and writer. Brent shares his creative journey, from drawing fantasy maps on grocery shop paper bags as a child to working on iconic titles like Baldur’s Gate 2, Neverwinter Nights, and Dragon Age. We also dive into his recent tabletop work, discussing his Norse-inspired D&D campaign, Raiders of the Serpent Sea , and how a family holiday to Iceland heavily influenced its design.

Key Highlights & Takeaways

• The BioWare Days: We look back at Brent’s time working on the Neverwinter Nights expansions , especially the creative freedom his team had whilst developing Hordes of the Underdark.

• A Mapmaker’s Origins: Brent explains how spending time at off-season logging camps with his grandfather sparked his imagination , leading him to draw maps of the woods and invent fantasy creatures.

• Icelandic Inspiration: How the deep history, sagas, and natural landscapes of Iceland directly inspired his Viking-esque tabletop world.

• Embracing “Mistakes”: Why collaborating with artists and embracing their misinterpretations or mistakes often results in far cooler monsters and organic lore than originally planned.

• What Breaks Immersion: Brent discusses his biggest bugbears in game design, like when a video game’s narrative completely contradicts its gameplay mechanics —such as finding a +1 warhammer right next to characters who are complaining about being poor.

• Advice for Game Masters: Why it’s crucial for DMs to talk to their players to build a shared experience , ensuring it becomes our campaign rather than just the DM’s strict storyline.

Related Episodes:

In our previous episode we explored the idea of creating worlds for writing and especially table top roleplaying games such as Dungeons and Dragons. In that episode which is Episode 54 if you want to take a listen, I noted that because our entire lives are spent within the imagination of our own creations, there is a connection to manufacturing reality.

This week, I invited back to the show my friend, former professor and long time collaborator on this podcast, Dr. Erwin Warkentin to discuss the topic of creating worlds and the intersection with propaganda. Dr. Warkentin has not only led media and communications at Memorial University in Canada, he has written and studied extensively on the subject of propaganda.

Episode Highlights

• We explore the bizarre history of Enver Hoxha, the former First Secretary of the Communist Party in Albania (the picture in the episode is of Hoxha from Wikipedia)

• Hoxha completely isolated his country and forced his citizens to read his estimated 70 volumes of work just to build a specific world in their minds.

• We discuss the concept of “Ostalgie” and why some older generations still harbour nostalgia for the old East.

• Our everyday reality is heavily influenced by television programmes and pop culture, proven by the fact that Canadian PSAs had to remind citizens they don’t actually have American Miranda rights.

• We examine how celebrated historical narratives, like Canada’s Heritage Minutes, often act as pure fantasy by omitting dark truths, such as Nellie McClung’s ties to the eugenics movement.

• Dr. Warkentin shares a fascinating story about how post-WWII American forces completely dismantled and rebuilt the German media landscape to prevent dangerous monopolies.

• We wrap up by challenging the illusion of “social media,” questioning if platforms like TikTok are just one-way broadcasts feeding us untrustworthy narratives without us realising it.

For those not Canadian and curious about our “Heritage Minutes” here’s tghe Nellie McClung one we talk about:

Related Episodes

In this episode, we dive into an introduction on creating the fictional realities we love to get lost in. From the shores of Midkemia to the neon-lit streets of homegrown tabletop RPG campaigns, I explore how our imaginations construct and inhabit these spaces. Joining the discussion are my friends and fellow tabletop DMs, Andrés Díez de Castro and Nik Paro, who share the collaborative creative processes behind their own unique worlds.

Highlights

• The Foundation of Worlds: Reflections on my early introduction to fantasy through Raymond E. Feist’s Magician and then into other worlds. However, it’s not just about fantasy and science fiction
  

• The Secret to Relatability: Andrés argues that the best world-building balances relatable cultural elements with fresh magical or technological twists so the setting doesn’t feel too mundane or too alien.
  

• Finding the “Red Thread”: Nik emphasises the importance of having a core narrative thread that ties a fantastical world together, warning that introducing too many contrasting elements can cause a setting to clash.
  

• Hyperphantasia vs. Aphantasia: Dups discusses the fascinating spectrum of human imagination. He contrasts his own hyperphantasia—experiencing imagination like a vivid 4K film—with aphantasia.
  

• Finding Inspiration: The group discusses their creative influences, from the intricate, storm-ravaged ecology of Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive to the consciousness-transferring, gritty sci-fi of Altered Carbon.
  

• Words Over Visuals: Dups shares a personal anecdote about discovering the world of Star Wars through a novelisation before ever seeing the film, illustrating the raw power of descriptive storytelling.

  Subscribe so you can get the latest episodes, stories and articles from Tales under the cat tree!

Books & Media Mentioned in this Episode

• Magician by Raymond E. Feist

• The works of J.R.R. Tolkien, David Eddings, Ursula K. Le Guin, Isaac Asimov, and R.A. Salvatore

• Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive

• Altered Carbon

• Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and Doctor Who
  

Connect with the Show

What is your favourite fictional world? Dups would love to hear from you.

• Email: contact@dups.ca

• Website & Archives: tales.dups.ca

Related Episodes

If tomorrow your digital world disappeared through no fault of your own, would anyone know who you are?

We explore the fragile nature of memory and the misconception that our digital lives are permanent. From the ancient ruins of Sri Lanka to the disappearing “master servers” of early video games, this episode examines how the “ordinary person” remains at risk of being erased from history.

• The Missing Ordinary: Why history prioritises the powerful and why modern data hasn’t solved the “ruins” problem.
  

• The Shrinking Internet: A look at the 25% of the original web that has already vanished and the immense technical challenge of archiving 145 petabytes of data.
  

• Digital Fragility: The loss of personal history due to dead formats, forgotten passwords, and the shift from ownership to “cloud” reliance.
  

• The Gatekeepers: How corporate whims, server costs, and shifting online sources (like Wikipedia) can effectively rewrite the past.
  

• The Chain Letter: A reflection on the host’s story and the potential for our “sophisticated” era to become as silent as the “primitive” ancestors we study.

This episode features the following original short story:

Welcome to the first anniversary of Tales Under the Cat Tree. When I started this podcast, I did not think we would be here one year later. Over this past year, I’ve had so many of the amazing people I know, or who are in my extended circle, on air. From ex-colleagues talking about the past to folks talking about their hobbies and their creations today. We’ve explored so many different topics, and I hope you take some time to listen to the many voices that have joined me.

From the Holocaust to immigration, from investments to pop culture, from writing to role-playing games, from music to video games, from war photography to travelling as a tourist.

This brings us to a question a friend asked me recently. Have I found my niche?

This has not been a podcast about a specific topic where I do a variation every week. I don’t have celebrities; I’m neither spouting off angrily nor tilting at windmills most of the time. That just isn’t me, and therefore I choose to produce content that appeals to my own curiosity and creativity. Tales Under the Cat Tree is essentially an audio magazine. The current podcast platforms do not have a category for me. I am everything, but that means in the world of social media and AI, I am also “nothing.” I am likely not being promoted by the various algorithms.

That is completely okay by me.

To put it into perspective, I have supplied almost 24 hours of audio to the world, and over this past year, some four thousand plus unique listeners have come to download one or more of my podcast episodes from all around the world. Though obviously those in Canada, the USA, and Finland rank the highest in my listenership.

I am touched.

If you enjoyed even one episode, it means a lot to me.

The podcast has also given me a sense of grounding in a world that has changed so much in just one year. Since May 11, 2025, this past year has been a year of profound change, from geopolitical explosions and implosions to AI spreading with a speed many of us predicted but with consequences we are only now grappling with.

Every week, I sit down and contemplate what to bring on the air. Do I visit music, writing, or history? Do I tell you a story, or do I have a friend on to tell you a story? Do we scramble up the sides of mountains or plumb the depths of dungeons deep? In a world where our own footing seems precarious, and questioning our very reality becomes the norm, I’m happy to provide a weekly magazine of human exploration.

I’ve enjoyed this so much that I will continue for a while longer! Can I make it one more year? Let’s see. There are just so many more stories to tell, and there are so many of my incredibly talented friends you have yet to meet.

I will continue to keep this absolutely free. However, on my Substack, I will soon enable the ability to donate to the Internet Archive. There will be no difference whether you subscribe with money or not. I will not keep a single cent; any monies you pay will go directly to the Internet Archive. Over this past year, as I have plunged deep into my own content and seen the havoc caused by the unscrupulous use of AI content generation, I feel the work that the Internet Archive does to preserve this medium for generations to come is immeasurable.

Again, subscribe or not, you will get the same content! I’m still working my way through the subscription and charity details on my Substack, so that’s coming later this spring and summer.

Hitting one year reminded me that one of the primary reasons I started this podcast was to air some of my writing and to make fun of myself. So today, no interviews, just some of my writing.

Featured today:

• Escape from an arranged marriage

• Hold’em

Continuing the previous conversation, Dr. Erwin Warkentin and I explore the subjective experience of art, the impact of technological tools on creation, and global storytelling differences.

Key Topics:

• Nuance and Subtlety: Finding hidden details in art, comparing Beethoven’s “false cadences” and Rembrandt’s framing to the environmental storytelling in games like Myst and The Last of Us.
  

• The Definition of Art: The idea that art only exists in the moment it is experienced and interpreted by the audience.
  

• Effort vs. Value: A discussion on whether the physical effort of creation defines art, comparing modern game development to the assembly-line nature of Renaissance painting studios.
  

• Technology Driving Art: How the tools of the time dictate the art produced, comparing historical paint pigments (Lapis Lazuli, Prussian Blue) to the adoption of CD-ROMs and 3D graphics.
  

• Western vs. Eastern Narratives: Contrasting goal-oriented Western RPGs with journey-oriented Japanese RPGs (JRPGs).
  

• A Global Medium: The conclusion that video games represent the first truly globally shared art form, utilizing technology and narratives from across the world.

Listen to the first part of this series:

Dups and Dr. Warkentin discuss whether video games qualify as classical art. They examine the philosophy of play and compare traditional theater structures to modern game design.

Key Topics:

• The Philosophy of Play: A look at Schiller’s concept of the “drive to play” (Spieltrieb) and how playing games connects logical and emotional thinking.
  

• Aristotle vs. Brecht in Gaming: Comparing linear, fixed narratives (Aristotelian) like The Last of Us to interactive, choice-driven narratives (Brechtian) like Baldur’s Gate 3.
  

• Player as Co-Author: How a player’s individual gameplay style and decision-making process become part of the artwork itself.
  

• Digital Ephemerality: The challenge of preserving video games as technology becomes obsolete, and the role of archivists in saving early games.

  Thanks for listening to Tales under the cat tree! Please subscribe!

This is the second part of our series on 80s and 90s alternative music from St. John’s, Newfoundland with my friend Johnny Nolan. Today we feature music from Schizoid, Malpractice and The Reaction.

A special note: On April 1, 2026, and this is not an April Fool’s Joke. The student’s union at Memorial University voted to shut down CHMR.

In a day and age where voices are being muzzled around the world and avenues of expression being more and more controlled, I am saddened that a place that brought artists and journalists to Canada and the world will no longer exist.

I don’t however think the battle is over. Please reach out to CHMR and MUNSU before June 1. If you disagree with CHMR being shut down, let your voice be heard. I am not in St. John’s these days, make sure you don’t lose a valuable asset to the community. Once something like this is gone, you can never really recover it. Does radio need to change with the times? Of course it does, but don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Featured music:

• Death Deliverer by Schizoid, Album Total Mayhem

• $1.44 day by Malpractice, courtesy of John Nolan and Malpractice

• On The Beach by The Reaction, courtesy of Mike Fisher and The Reaction

Listen to Episode 1

From ancient times to today, gods and humans have hammered red-hot metal into shapes of weapons and crafts of beauty. In Ancient Greek mythology, Hephaestus and in fantasy, beings such as Sauron forge the ultimate weapons in the insane heat at the heart of volcanoes. Without human blacksmiths, who were the technologists of their day, we would not have the tooling and the world-building that have brought us to today. However, in our present day we take machined metalworking for granted. We don’t think twice about stainless steel knives in our kitchens. What were once luxury goods can now be bought for pennies in thrift stores.

But the art of true blacksmithing survives and is even experiencing a renaissance. I am reminded of this every year when Helsinki plays host to the world’s largest community produced roleplaying convention, ROPECON. Last year, a local blacksmith had his beautiful knives available, and I picked up a stunning, functional blade that has been my go-to cooking knife all year.

Watching a traditional blacksmith work is mesmerizing. The process is anything but simple: it is immensely physical. Heated metal is pounded, tweaked, and otherwise worked with any number of torturous-looking implements to produce something both practical and beautiful.

When I was watching a blacksmith work in his forge, it reminded me that I have a friend and former colleague whose hobby is this most ancient and practical of arts. If you know video games, then you certainly know some of the titles that he has worked on and helmed.

I am talking about none other than Trent Oster. Trent and I worked together at BioWare, where he was a founding member, as well as Project Director and Producer when I was helping with Neverwinter Nights. These days, he is the CEO of Beamdog. Aside from its own intellectual property such as Mythforce, Beamdog has been instrumental in bringing Dungeons & Dragons games such as Baldur’s Gate, Planescape: Torment, and even Neverwinter Nights back as enhanced editions that run on modern computers.

But today, Trent and I will not be talking about video games. Many of us in the tech industry have hobbies which we take to extremes of all kinds. Mine include writing and photography, but Trent’s is on a scale of power hammers, steel, and red-hot chemistry. This is a dense discussion on smithing, knifemaking, and the wonders of metallurgy.

I’ve added pictures of the knives he has produced that we talk about. I’ve also included a video of Trent’s power hammer, the machine that he affectionately calls “Thumpy”.

Watch “Thumpy” the power hammer at work in Trent’s shop

This is part 4 of my series on BioWare. In this episode, I’m lucky to have Dave Chan talking about sound design and more. Dave started working at BioWare before me on games such as MDK2, Baldur’s Gate and Baldur’s Gate 2. We overlapped on games such as Neverwinter Nights, Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic and Jade Empire.

Dave has had a long career in video games, for a full list please check out his profile on Moby Games .

Episode Highlights

• From IT to Audio Director: Dave shares how a chance encounter with BioWare co-founder Greg Zeschuk at a computer store led him from IT to doing placeholder sound effects for MDK2. Dave eventually became a full-time audio designer.

• Scrappy Studio Days: Listen in for a hilarious late-night outtake from MDK2 involving a monkey, a blow-dryer, and K-Y Jelly. Dave also reflects about the sheer passion of BioWare fans .

• Behind the Sounds:

  • Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic: Dave reveals that none of the sound effects were actually taken directly from the films; they were all meticulously reproduced in-house or by contractors like Paul Gorman.

  • Lost Outtakes: Dave laments losing unreleased, hilarious outtakes of the iconic character Minsc (and his giant miniature space hamster, Boo) from Baldur’s Gate.

  • Lost in Translation: A funny anecdote about how the French localization of Baldur’s Gate combat sounds ended up sounding a bit too much like a porn film.

• The Philosophy of Sound: Dave explains his approach to audio, such as crafting the desolate, isolated atmosphere for The Long Dark. He also breaks down why user interface (UI) sounds are actually the hardest to design: they must be noticeable, unique, and critically, not annoying after thousands of clicks.

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Mentions & Links

• Greg Zeschuk: BioWare co-CEO and founder.

• Trent Oster: Beamdog CEO and next week’s guest!

• Ben Burtt: Legendary film sound designer who crafted iconic Star Wars audio.