Heya folks,
Yeah, I know. It’s been a while.
Well — Not since my last written post — those have kept coming, staggering forward through grief, deadlines, book madness, and whatever the hell passes for stability these days.
I’ve been here, writing, reporting, ranting, surviving.
But I haven’t recorded a podcast episode since before Shilo died.
Not a real one.
Not one where I sat down behind a mic and talked to you in my own voice.
Not since the world cracked open under my feet.
So tonight…the Switchblade podcast comes back.
And for the first time in its long, strange evolution, it comes back in video.
God help us all.
The new episode is below, filmed from my little lair in the most haunted town in America, Estes Park, Colorado. If you hear strange thumps in the background, it might be ghosts or teenagers or a ghost teenager. Hard to tell around here.
Life got loud. And weird. And somehow beautiful.
Since my last podcast, I’ve:
Lost my wife, my partner, my co-conspirator, the editor who sharpened every sentence I cared about.
Got a cyborg ankle installed, so I can walk without a cane for the first time in years.
Returned to journalism, writing for Westword, because I can never quit telling stories even when I swear I’m done with politics.
Ended up back in Denver’s alt-weekly orbit, like a ghost drifting back to its old haunts.
Kept raising two daughters in a world that feels like it’s permanently one bad decision away from collapsing.
Wrote one hell of a book.
All of it—every messy, painful, hopeful thread—is in this episode.
A Night at the Denver Press Club (Or: How a Simple Gathering Became a Full-Blown Alt-Weekly Séance)
I talk about this in the episode, but here’s the short version:
I walked into the Denver Press Club for what was supposed to be a simple gathering of alt-weekly folks.
Instead, it turned into a cosmic joke: a spontaneous reunion of the founding crew of the Rocky Mountain Bullhorn, the scrappy underground beast that once challenged CSU’s Collegian.
A paper I helped birth, back when the world felt huge and impossible and full of ink-stained promise.
Vanessa was there — editor, immortal, suspiciously ageless.
Joe was there — older, wiser, still Joe.
We fell right back into the old rhythms: stories, ghosts, war crimes committed at long-forgotten newsroom Christmas parties.
Then someone dropped the topic of AI into the room like a live grenade.
Perfect chaos.
Perfect alt-weekly energy.
Vanessa and Joe will join me on a future episode. Trust me: you want to be here for that one.
The New Book: AI Ink
(writing, publishing, and misinformation at the dawn of AI)
I read the beginning of the book on the podcast, and talk about the grief and necessity that drove me to write it.
After Shiloh died — my partner, my editor, my other brain — I was left staring at pages I didn’t know how to finish alone.
But my daughters needed me.
Deadlines needed me.
Survival needed me.
So I turned to a collaborator I never expected: AI.
Not to replace her.
Not to ghostwrite for me.
But as scaffolding.
As a sounding board.
As something to lean on while I figured out how to exist again.
The book dives into:
How AI is reshaping writing, journalism, creativity
How to stay human on the page
How corporate media will absolutely try to use AI to screw writers
And the Colorado-Asimov Ethical Citation Standard, my framework for transparent, ethical AI use in creative work
Also — the book won’t magically appear on shelves in Colorado unless you walk into your local bookstore and ask them to order it.
That’s just the reality now.
If you want to support the Switchblade, that’s the single biggest way.
Now available in Hardcover and Kindle editions. Audible coming soon!
Music, the Stanley, and the Ghost Energy of the Front Range
The episode also covers:
Recent music writing
The Flock of Seagulls show at the Stanley
Why the Sundance Film Institute setting up shop in Colorado might be the beginning of something huge
How the state is reshaping itself in real time
And how wild it is to be on some new “threshold list” where talent agents and publishers suddenly want me at their shows again
It feels like my career just circled back to the 90s, but with a cyborg ankle and more trauma.
A Dark Winter and a Simple Rule
Toward the end of the episode, I talk about where we are right now:
shutdowns, rights stripped away, families struggling, food stamps cut, wild uncertainty closing in like early nightfall.
A cold, hard dark winter ahead.
And the only thing I know to offer — the thing I tell Lux all the time — is this:
Just be kind to people.
It goes farther than you think.
Colorado, we need that right now.
So I’m retiring the old sign-off.
No more stay classy, Colorado.
The new one is simple:
Be kind to one another.
It’s the only way through.
If you’ve stuck with me through the written posts these past two years — thank you.
If you’ve been waiting for my voice to come back — really come back — here it is.
More episodes soon. More ghosts. More stories. More truth.
Be kind out there.
~ JVT
Colorado Switchblade
