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AUDIO & DESIGN When the Stereo Was Furniture: The Lost Art of Listening and the Quiet Rebellion Once, the stereo wasn’t just a device; it was a monument in the living room, a beautifully crafted piece of furniture. Today, our listening experience has been fragmented and diluted, but a quiet revolution is brewing. Read more → FIELD NOTES The Built-In Demise: From the Phoebus Cartel to Your Pocket's Planned Obsolescence Planned obsolescence isn't a modern phenomenon; its roots stretch back a century to cynical agreements designed to shorten product life for profit. Today, this insidious practice manifests in our everyday tech, from phone batteries to smart features. Read more → FIELD NOTES A Machine for Living In: The Modernist House and the Gadgets It Never Needed Le Corbusier coined the phrase 'a machine for living in' not to celebrate gadgetry, but the elegance of efficient design. Today, our homes are often burdened by smart features that promise convenience but deliver complexity and planned obsolescence. Read more → FIELD NOTES The Push-Button Kitchen of Tomorrow: What the 1950s Promised and What We Actually Got The mid-century dream of a fully automated kitchen, freed from all domestic drudgery, never quite arrived. Instead, we've gotten something far more complicated, and often, much worse. Read more → FIELD NOTES Enshittification, Explained: Why the Things We Love Get Worse on Purpose Ever notice how your favorite app or product starts out great, then slowly but surely, turns into a shadow of its former self? This deliberate degradation of quality is what we call enshittification, and it's a plague on our digital and physical lives. Read more →
AUDIO & DESIGN When the Stereo Was Furniture: The Lost Art of Listening and the Quiet Rebellion Read more → FIELD NOTES The Built-In Demise: From the Phoebus Cartel to Your Pocket's Planned Obsolescence Read more → FIELD NOTES A Machine for Living In: The Modernist House and the Gadgets It Never Needed Read more → FIELD NOTES The Push-Button Kitchen of Tomorrow: What the 1950s Promised and What We Actually Got Read more → FIELD NOTES Enshittification, Explained: Why the Things We Love Get Worse on Purpose Read more →
Pushbutton Chimp: a chimpanzee mid-scream in a crimson roundel

Past · Present · Future

Evolved enough to know better.

Humanity’s long, loud, occasionally embarrassing relationship with its tools, and the life we live with them and without them. From the first sharpened stone to the fridge that wants a firmware update: what to keep, what to fix, and what to throw at the wall.

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The premise

We made the tools. Then the tools started making the house rules.

Every tool we have ever built has rearranged the way we live. Fire pulled us around the hearth. Farming tied us to the land. Electric light stretched the evening; the radio, then the television, rearranged the living room; the screen in your pocket took a seat at the dinner table. Pushbutton Chimp follows that story forward and asks the rude question every time: is this actually better?

The answer is often yes, and we will say so. We like the basics done beautifully: a modern home with good light, a chair that will outlive us, records on a proper system, real food, a long table full of people we love, and a weekend somewhere with no signal. What we cannot stand is the thing that gets worse on purpose.

Keeps

  • Things you can open and repair
  • Buttons that do one job, perfectly
  • Furniture that outlives the warranty, and the owner
  • Music you have to get up and flip
  • Dinner with the phones face down

Throws at the wall

  • Subscriptions for things you already bought
  • Light switches that need Wi‑Fi
  • “Updates” that take features away
  • Ads where the quiet used to be
  • Anything sold as “frictionless”

Three tenses, one argument

Where we came from, how we live, where we are headed.

IPastThe Stone Age called. It wants its durability back.The stone hand axe stayed in use for more than a million years; your phone is middle-aged at three. We dig through the history of tools, homes and habits to find what worked, and why we stopped doing it.IIPresentEverything is a subscription. Nothing is yours.How we actually live with our machines now: the smart home, the endless feed, the printer that sulks. Honest notes on habits rather than gadgets, and what to do about them.IIIFutureNot everything needs a chip.Where living is going, and where it ought to go: the homes, kitchens, cities and weekends worth building, and the ones we should politely decline.
Push Back podcast cover

The podcast

Push Back

Every week the Chimp makes his case, and Marlowe, a cheerful early adopter who has never met a gadget she would not preorder, pushes back. Two friends, one argument, and about twelve minutes on how we live with our machines, and whether we should.

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