I’m at Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky, which is the world’s largest cave system, so I made a playlist of songs that sound like the caves episode of Planet Earth (its best episode). There are also some songs that just sound like Kentucky.

I'll be at Pitchfork Music Festival, here are my favorite songs from some of the artists I'll be seeing. Go out tonight, have fun, pet a dog, fall asleep outside, flirt your heart out.

We've started moving out of our apartment this week, so that nightmare is beginning all over again. That's just the way it is for the renter.

This is a playlist about stargazing, a suggestion courtesy of my friend Ariel, whom I've known for seven years now, which is about how long it took Cassini to get to Saturn.

Listen to my favorite songs of the past six months so you can enjoy them before the summer is over. I wrote about them below in classic backwards-list order, and the playlist mirrors it.

After work on a Friday (today, even!), head home, walk to your nearest beer, and open it. Go out to the porch, or to the balcony, or just to the biggest window in your apartment. The key is to be facing the light of the golden hour, in a relaxed and comfortable place. That's when you hit play.

You can think of it as a soundtrack to Gilead, but it's probably more apt to think of them as worship songs for non-believers. Not that you are all non-believers, but I find it's safer to assume a lack of faith than a preponderance of it. People get a little touchy about the subject.

Once again, I had a large diatribe written out, raging against the corporations of the world on behalf of me, the beleaguered laborer, and once again, the news of today knocked some sense into me. I decided to tone it down a bit.

The prompt, to paraphrase, was Songs to Play if I Owned a Diner. I'm sure you can picture it: I'm wearing the paper hat, the white apron, I'm serving well and wiping down tables, singing to customers in my rich baritone like the clerk at the candy shop from Willy Wonka.

Frequent readers will know that Western Africa is one of my favorite parts of the world, so my expectations were already high when I secured a lift to Bamako.

Picture this: It's too late to go out. It's one of those Friday nights where you had nothing, so you just rewatched Clueless. You're a little disappointed. Then, you hear a sputtering engine from the street, the waves of the past lapping our postmodern shores.

I built a train-car playlist to capture something that only gets worse as I get older: envy. Or, more specifically, the significant effort it takes to recognize envy and supplant it with love.

Shaky Knees is a music festival with lots of guitars in Atlanta, Georgia. The music is not cool anymore, but I'm going to it this weekend, so I made a playlist full of the bands that will be there.

I've been looking at my roles, and hating what I’ve done with them. I just wanted to choose one that exercises my humanity, by sending you playlists made from my organic experience, even if I'll ultimately lose the battle to the machines.

In honor of my body and my choices, here are eleven songs I put on to calm me down.  Because maybe you want to partake today, even if you're prone to freak-outs. Let's help each other!