Tales under the cat tree: Conversations on Imagination, Tech & Human Adventure
Episodes
Ep48: Forging swords and knives with Trent Oster
06 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
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, Heph...
Ep47: BioWare Stories Part 4 - Sound design with Dave Chan
30 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
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 BioW...
Ep46: Sharpeville, Apartheid, Canada - a conversation about racism
23 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
March 21 is designated by the United Nations as the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. In South Africa, it is Human Right...
Ep45: The St. Patrick’s Day Drunk Dial Contest
16 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Between 2003 and 2009 my friends and I used to host something called the St. Patrick’s Day Drunk Dial Contest. What was the St. Patrick’s Day Drun...
Ep44: Mountaineering Misadventures with Keli and Mike
09 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Why do humans purposefully subject themselves to freezing winds, exhausting altitudes, and perilous drops? In the first of our mountaineering series, ...
Ep43: The lens of history with photojournalist Greg Locke
02 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
We walk through life as one among a multitude, but what happens when you are tasked with standing in the eye of historical storms? In this episode, we...
Ep42: Software Development Teams Must Evolve or Die!
23 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Nine months ago, I asked if engineers were really adopting AI in larger companies. Today, that question is irrelevant. We have moved past chatbots and...
Ep41: Punks on air with Johnny Nolan
16 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Grab a kettle of tea and dive into the isolated, vibrant, and "too radical" world of the St. John’s punk scene. In this episode, Dups and old-time p...
Ep40: The Sin of "I" - A Conversation with Erwin Warkentin
09 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Duleepa Wijayawardhana turns the tables on his former professor, Dr. Erwin Warkentin. What starts as a literary critique of a "raw" f...
Ep39: Making concrete green with Kurre Stålberg
02 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Every day we wake up and go about our business. Life changes—mostly imperceptibly, incrementally, crawling season after season. We accept new street...
Ep38: Cultural code switching - A conversation with Sylvia and Erwin Warkentin
26 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Have you noticed that you sometimes sound different or use different words when you talk to your parents? Or maybe you slip into specific expressions ...
Ep37: Forbidden Lands and Svavelvinter with Erik Granström
19 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
On this episode, I feature the works of Erik Granström, a Swedish author and roleplaying game writer. We delve into fantasy, fantasy writing and the ...
36. On humanity's greatest art form with Seamus Heffernan
12 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Sometimes the process of stringing words together starts to click and you find that you have written a story: Dragons fly off the pages burning hobbit...
35. The Couch Murder on Long's Hill
31 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
There’s been a mystery I’ve been trying to solve for thirty years. What happened on New Year’s Eve 1994 at the house on Long’s Hill? Did a cou...
34. Holiday Traditions from Canada to Finland
22 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Whether you are hiding frozen cherries in couch cushions or singing at the top of your lungs there’s so many ways we make ourselves comfortable. I l...
33. The Royal Anarcho-Geographic Society of Newfoundland
15 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When sun rays crown thy pine clad hills, And summer spreads her hand, When silvern voices tune thy rills, We love thee, smiling land. When spreads thy...
Ep. 32: The fragility of kingdoms and companies
09 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, ...
Ep. 31: 1980s Hong Kong through teenage eyes
01 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Recently, I was cleaning an attic full of memories, cards, and letters. Amongst the items were letters that my friends, and even one teacher, had writ...
Ep. 30: The magic of story editing
25 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
I’ve talked about my fabulous writing group, “The Chapter Chasers,” in previous episodes. Many of the stories I feature or am submitting to vari...
Ep. 29: BioWare Stories Part 3 - Dragons, Mako, Mounts and more
17 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This episode is part 3 of my short series on BioWare. In this episode we interview Georg Zoeller and Emmanuel Lusinchi who were designers and more on ...
Ep. 28: BioWare Stories Part 2 - The flood and shipping Jade Empire
10 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This is part two of my interview with my colleague Craig Miller about our days at BioWare together. I strongly suggest you listen to Part 1 before lis...
Ep. 27: BioWare Stories Part 1 - Releasing the BioWare Community and Neverwinter Nights
03 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode is part one of two where I talk to my good friend and colleague Craig Miller about BioWare. Craig and I have now worked together for...
Ep. 26: Sigiriya (5th Century AD)
27 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Sigiriya is a UNESCO World Heritage site from the 5th Century. Find out about King Kasyapa and this magnificent palace on top of a rock.Thanks to the ...
Ep. 25: Fighting the realities we create
20 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode is all about empathy and the realities we create and then live in. Listen to a voice-acted story that I wrote called “Watching the...
Ep. 24: The Bride Price and criticism
13 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In Episode 24, we wander around Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea in the early 1980s and drop into an unusual wedding in the highlands where modernity me...
Ep. 23: Role-playing games will change your life!
06 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This is a two-part episode about roleplaying games and Dungeons and Dragons. This episode is a backgrounder on roleplaying games and how they could po...
Ep. 22: (Update) The Shortcut and Enlightened Migration
29 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
An updated version of Episode 6 included an interview with Riikka Loisamo, CEO of The Shortcut.The interview is followed by my own immigrant story and...
Ep. 21: The "Cheater" Episode
22 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When I was growing up in the 1980s in Hong Kong, we only had four television channels. Of these, two were in English—ATV and TVB. My father refused ...
Ep. 20: Flash!
15 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode also features the flash fiction story “Sullivan’s Choice”My name is not DaveDave was born bawling. He didn't really like what ...
Ep. 19: Remembering Moishe
08 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
If you are looking for links to various sources, materials and sites cited in the show, please scroll to the end. The article that inspired this episo...
Ep. 18: My Parent Cafe / Pondering hyper-personalized software
01 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
One of my hopes for the rise of Generative AI is its ability to bring highly technical skills to a wider audience. I hope that it means the rise of ap...
Ep. 17: Project Frederika and the Finnish Archipelago
25 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Listen to Part 1 of this interview.Welcome to Part 2 of my wide-ranging conversation with my dear friend Kaj Arnö in Nagu, Finland, in the Finnish Ar...
Ep. 16: MySQL, MariaDB, and AI – A conversation with Kaj Arnö
19 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 2007, I joined an open-source database company called MySQL AB. While I was at BioWare, I was part of the team that built the BioWare Community, wh...
Ep. 15: From Russia without love
10 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
No Trial for PapaPlease read the original short story by Erwin J. Warkentin featured and discussed on this podcastInterview with Dr. Erwin J. Warkenti...
Ep. 14: Puff vs the purple dune buggy
03 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This episode also features an original poem “When hurricanes come to die”"You bought what?!" I spluttered into my beer, a little bit louder than t...
Ep. 13: Stories of Sri Lankan serendipity
28 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Please read Saving Mr. Mendis, an original short story set in colonial Sri Lanka. While I never really grew up in Sri Lanka, my late father was a born...
Ep. 12: The Case of the Disappearing Internet
21 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Please read the short story that accompanies this piece: The Chain LetterWhen I was a teen on a trip to Sri Lanka, we went to visit some of the ancien...
Ep. 11: On the emotions of autobiography
14 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Writing about experiences centered around specific pivotal moments in my life is not easy for me. I easily get wrapped up in my own emotions. I find t...
Ep. 10: Are you a manager or a leader? / To the lands of milk and honey
07 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Have you noticed that the market for self-help and how to succeed at business is so incredibly massive? According to a piece in the Washington Post fr...
Ep. 9: Happy Canada Day / To James Bay and the Arctic Ocean
30 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Welcome to episode 9 for the week of June 29th, or better known as the week of Canada Day.This is my 24th Canada Day as a Canadian citizen, 33rd since...
Ep. 8: Entrepreneurial advice or lack thereof
23 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
So far on Tales Under the Cat Tree, we've explored quite a number of diverse topics. In episodes two and three, we looked at the impact of AI in softw...
Ep. 7: Very Finnish midsummer tales
16 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
There are many things that were alien to me when I moved to Finland. One of those was the concept of Flag Days. For those in Finland who take these fo...
Ep. 6: Finland's "The Shortcut" and my enlightened migration
09 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
I feel that I have been a migrant, immigrant or foreigner most of my life. They are labels that get attached to me quite easily, I often haven't looke...
Ep. 5: Fiction in the age of AI / Time travel to 1989
02 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The whole reason for my podcast and my substack is to once more explore writing: both fiction and non-fiction. However, since I left high school, and ...
Ep. 4: The sounds, hazards, and culture of driving in Chile and Sri Lanka
26 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This podcast combines two pieces from Tales under the cat tree with some additional content. The "hazards" of driving in ChileEvery country has its d...
Ep. 3: After thirty years on the web, have I actually learned anything?
19 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Explore changes to web technology from the earliest days in the 90s through to the AI era through the lens of the changing realities for my personal w...
Ep. 2: How deeply are engineers adopting AI in larger software teams?
12 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When it comes to all things AI, it seems hype is running faster than reality. If you believe the hype, Google and co. say that 30% or more of their co...
Episode 1 - Introduction to Tales under the cat tree
11 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Find out what this is all about and what I hope to explore through Tales under the cat tree in both written and audio form. This is a public episode....