Mike Rugnetta is a writer, podcast host, producer, audio engineer, educator, musician, sound designer, and father. In short, the man wears a lot of hats. He’s the cocreator and host of the award-winning Never Post, an absolutely must-listen podcast about the internet, as well as Fun City, a TTRPG podcast where he’s the GM. He’s also hosted two different Crash Course series and PBS’s Idea Channel.
If you’re thinking that sounds like a lot, you’re not wrong. It made us want to know how Mike stays focused with so much on his plate, and what tools are most indispensable to him with his hectic schedule. But, what we got was so much more than that. Mike has a lot to say about the creative process, the value of reliable electricity, and how the loss of the headphone jack is evidence of our societal collapse.
What is your most indispensable tool?
At first, I wanted to say my audio interface. It’s the first piece of equipment I turn on every day and the last I turn off. It’s an RME Fireface UCX II and the second most reliable piece of gear I own. The first is my headphones.
I’ve had the same pair of Sony MDR-7506’s for about 20 years. I use them every day. I trust them more than some people I’ve known for as long. Only recently have they started showing the telltale signs of headphone age, but I think I’ll be able to make a repair and get another few years out of them.
There are some people who say you can’t mix on headphones. These people are cowards. I love mine, and I mix nearly everything on them. On this, Andrew Scheps and I agree (though Andrew says he replaces his pretty regularly; maybe I should, too.)
Which is the most underappreciated?
Let me tell you, it’s reliable power. The landlord of my studio building and I are currently involved in a protracted battle with Con Edison to get them to address the building’s low power service. New York City had a string of brawny snowstorms this winter, and the building lost power for over a week. When it came back, power remained in near-brownout conditions, with really low service voltage.
Normal service is around 122V. I’m looking at my power conditioner right now and it says 114V. It often goes as low as 107V. This causes all kinds of weird problems, many of which I have workarounds for except … the minisplit in my space can’t run on voltage this low. So I haven’t had ductless heat or AC for about a month. I brought in a window unit, but it’s loud and really inefficient and connects to the internet even when I tell it not to and turns on and off randomly for reasons I can’t determine. I’m reminded of the printer tweet; I really don’t want to have to buy a handgun.
Anyway, long story short: Kiss your reliable power outlets. (EDITORS’ NOTE: Please do not kiss your power outlets.)
What is the first app you install on a new phone or computer?
The answer for both of these is Firefox, Firefox Focus, specifically on my phone. If that’s boring, Signal and Bandcamp would be next on a new phone, since I use those constantly. On a new computer, once Firefox is installed, I’m downloading Alfred and Max simultaneously.
What is one thing you wish you could change about your phone?
If I had a “particular set of skills,” I would Taken someone close to whoever happens to be running Apple this week, and my ransom would be putting headphone jacks back in iPhones. The 3.5mm jack is one of humanity’s greatest accomplishments, and its deletion from some of my otherwise favorite devices makes me feel like society is crumbling around my feet. Some weirdos get on the internet and wax apocalyptical about birthrates and immigration, but their prejudices and personal failings blind them to the real, actual, rotten center of social collapse: ports.
What sites do you have pinned to your tab bar?
I have three email accounts for various work things. Then my personal calendar, followed by Never Post’s (a podcast I make about the internet) production Airtable. Up until recently, I had more exciting things pinned, like lines, or the Max forum or Beta list (disclosure: I do a little bit of work for Cycling ’74), or my OldReader account – but I found that keeping those things pinned meant I read them less.
How many tabs do you have open right now?
Eighteen, and really, it’s only that many because of stuff I’ve opened to answer these questions. I would say 10 is average for me, 20 is a lot. I am not a ton-of-tabs guy.
Which social media platform do you use the most (if any)?
I’m in my 40s, so you already know the answer is Bluesky.
What is your happy place online?
It is 1,000% and without a doubt, Bandcamp. A fun bit of lore: Many years ago, I got coffee with Joe Holt, my computer science instructor from college, and he said, “I’m involved in this fun new startup, where we’re going to sell digital music. Can I tell you the name? You have to promise not to laugh.” If I remember correctly, my Bandcamp fan account is #4 and the first belonging to someone who did not work at the company.
I want to love Bandcamp unconditionally for all these reasons and more, but alas, it does appear — through various business maneuvers — a string of its owners may have successfully busted a union. I’m genuinely unsure, but there have been no Bandcamp United updates since 2023, and the union’s FAQ states explicitly that “[current owner] Songtradr has not recognized the union” (emphasis original).
I used to call Bandcamp “the only good website,” but now I recognize the truth: There is no such thing as a “good website.”
What is your favorite gadget you’ve ever owned?
There are a few gadgets that, upon first holding, I’ve thought “Oh! Everything is different now!” The iPhone was one. The Switch was another. But each feels as though it’s chasing the pathbreaking significance of what, to me, is the original gadget, the ur-device: The first Gameboy. So much of how we conceive of what’s central to the design of devices today (absent, of course, a connection to the internet) feels like it was first prototyped in the original Gameboy design. Plus, I still have mine, and it still works; my wife does too. I cannot say the same for our first couple of iPhones.
Which was the most disappointing?
The happiest day of the last half-decade of my life was the day my daughter was born. The second was the day I was able to trade in my Touchbar MacBook Pro for an M1, upon which I am currently typing answers to these questions. The Touchbar MacBook Pro — like the subprime mortgage crisis, like the various grifts of the current American administration, like the endless revelations of the Epstein Files — is further illustration that the powerful will never be asked to answer for their crimes, no matter how heinous and antisocial.
What game do you have the fondest memories of?
The summer after Super Metroid came out, I was living on Cape Cod. I don’t think I went outside once.
Which tech trend do you wish would go away?
Generally not a fan of all the technofascism.
What creation are you most proud of?
I love all my children equally.
Which are you least proud of?
I hate all my children equally.
Ok, more earnestly: I’ve made hundreds, if not 1000+, “creations” (if you count individual episodes of ongoing shows). There are dozens of things I look back on fondly and an equal or greater number where I see all the ways I could have done better. I’m proud of it all. Making things is a lot of work before you even consider the difficulty of actually sharing those things with an audience, which is often joyful but also challenging in equal measure, and in ways which surprise me, even having now done it for as long as I have.
All this being said, I do think Float City (20 episodes, fully sound-designed superfuture ttrpg narrative with some bananas unplanned twists) is very good.
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
More than once, I’ve heard someone I respect say some version of “No one will take your life seriously for you.” Often, grand life advice assumes a kind of perfect agency, which we don’t all have. Student loans, caregiving responsibilities, differing levels of ability, or health mean that telling someone to “just get out there” or “drop everything, and make a bet on yourself” or whatever is a total nonstarter. Sometimes the most helpful thing is to be reminded that you do have agency within your own life, though it may be remote, forgotten, unused, underdeveloped.
I think of this advice as a reminder to look for the ways I have control over my life and use them in service of my goals. For me, that is what “taking life seriously” means; it is something no one else can do for me.
What is your current obsession?
Other than the standbys (synthesizers, post-structuralist theory), I’ve just finished a stretch of designing and building a few pieces of “problem-solution furniture” for my studio, which was hugely gratifying, not to mention cost-effective. The results are neither perfect, nor pretty, but they’re mine, and I’m guessing I’ll get at least a decade of use out of them. One is even a redesigned piece of problem-solution furniture I built in, like, 2010, to hold records. Now it holds synths!
But wait, okay, maybe that’s not current enough… I’m also about to put together a Never Post episode about Doom, so I’m playing through all the most beloved / discussed Doom and Quake mods / WADs / TCs, et cetera, and it’s a blast. The most recent Quake Brutalist Game Jam is maybe the coolest thing I’ve ever seen; it feels accurate to say I am obsessed with it.
What do you do when you need to focus?
Ninety percent of my job is sitting quietly, either writing or mixing / editing / scoring — so I’ve got a lot of practice focusing and have almost kind of designed my life around needing to be able to “Get In The Zone.” The only notifs on my phone are text, email, and work Slack; my studio is in the back of the building, off the street, under a big tree, and nearby but not in my apartment, which I think is really key. All my clients and coworkers are remote, so during business hours, it’s always just me (and sometimes my dog).
The biggest problem I run into is not necessarily focus, but motivation — usually around the clerical stuff: emails, invoices, your various papers-work (I am my own small business, which means I am also the unwilling bureaucrat of my own life). Normally, to get rolling on these sorts of tasks, all I need is some music; I’m listening to this comp of Italian electro-acoustic music right now. I’ve also been served well by the most recent release from the English kraut/post-rock outfit Gnod.
What do you do when you’re feeling stuck?
When I get stuck, it tends to be for two reasons:
- I am trying to force a project to be something it is not, or
- Insufficient input
Sometimes these are related.
One persists as long as I’m in denial about needing to do the work of fixing whatever is in front of me. This can take a lot of different shapes. Maybe a piece of writing isn’t leading to the conclusions I thought it would, but I keep trying to steer it back. Maybe a sound design task is producing only hideous results, but I stubbornly think it should be otherwise. Normally, addressing these issues means going back. But going back is not progress, so it can feel impossible (even irresponsible) to make that choice. The irony being: It would be quicker to start over than to hack through the overgrown wilderness where I’ve ended up.
I often think of it this way: Rach creative endeavor is defined by a kind of momentum. Ideas or sounds or images or shapes suggest one another in a kind of sequence, or arrangement, within each individual work. Imagining and then responding to this momentum and sequence is, I think, the center of the intuitive process most people follow to make things (be it an essay, painting, movie, song…).
Often, as artists, we negotiate with that imagined sequence, as well. We imagine something, we imagine what others may imagine, and we affirm or subvert those expectations to varying degrees, often multiple times within a work. While putting something together, a work may “suggest” something unexpected happens next; the momentum pushes us and our creative output into unfamiliar territory. This is how we may be surprised by our own creations. They seem to produce demands, almost. People often say the piece “wants” or “wants to be” some such thing. And sometimes what the piece “wants” is not what we want… so we enter a subversive relationship with our own work.
Being creatively stuck is often, I find, the result of a resistance to the next idea in the sequence or arrangement, so suggested by the piece’s momentum — working against that momentum, trying to subvert it, or simply refusing it, often slows work down. You end up struggling to find a coherent way forward with work that has ended up somewhere uninteresting, risky, scary, or maybe just manually difficult. It can take a while to acclimate to this new territory. Distance helps immeasurably, here. If you can, just walk away for a while. But barring that (it is a luxury to be able to do so, especially if you make things for a living), you may need to figure out some diverging path, a hidden exit. This brings us to the second type of stuck.
Most often, I get stuck because I can’t imagine what comes next. There is no momentum, I’ve lost it, or it’s brought me somewhere I trust just isn’t right for what I’m trying to accomplish. What then? Where to next? I find the fastest, easiest way to solve this issue is to go entertain myself. Doing this feels similar to going back -– sitting down to read a book, watch a movie, whatever, while I should be progressing on some project feels irresponsible. But in order to know what your options are, you must know what’s possible. The best way to appraise yourself of possibility is through the work of others.
When was the last time you went somewhere without your phone?
This morning, walking the dog.
What’s the last piece of physical media you bought?
I went to the Brooklyn Indie Comics Showcase this weekend with my daughter. We bought her stickers of cats and me a zine artbook from my pal Jeff Thompson. The more expected answer here may be: EMG & Battista, The Bridge EP, TTT034 (12”, 2015) — really great, distorted, skronky, leftfield techno from mysterious London label Trilogy Tapes. Grabbed this while I was in London visiting family earlier in the month.
What do you think is worth splurging on?
Anything you’re gonna use for a while! I am a huge believer in spending slightly more to think about objects slightly less. The classic example here is boots, but I think this way about furniture, studio equipment, kitchen implements, etc. If we’re talking about a truly unjustified cost, though, I can tolerate extremes for the perfect jacket and the perfect sandwich.
What would the tagline for your biopic be?
“Words, and sounds, and the sounds of words.”
What’s the last GIF or meme you used?
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