It just breaks down into smaller and smaller particles.

Microplastics are everywhere including, troublingly, inside us. And when it comes to medicine, biology, ecology—we’re far from understanding what the echoes and impact of that ubiquity will be.

That’s why a series of recent articles, tantalizingly referring to a microplastic-capturing miracle tree, caught my eye.

The articles describe new research that shows seed extract from the ancient Moringa tree filtering microplastics from water with shocking effectiveness.

As the study says:

Moringa offers a non‑toxic, renewable alternative that works across a wider pH range than conventional chemicals.

This is potentially amazing, and inspired me to create a piece of music that, to my ears, feels rich with depth and possibility. You may hear some melodies climbing like branches, others descending like roots. The piece also contains the darkness and noxious creep of a pollutant spreading everywhere—contrasted with the hopeful upward gaze of discovery, the promise of a natural elixir to synthetic disease.

Here’s Noise #208:

Wishing you peace,

Michael

(Noise #208 by Michael Gallant. Copyright 2026 Gallant Music LLC. All Rights Reserved.)

Local student artist Noah Burns painted the mural in 2022. He was commissioned by the anti-homelessness Friends Association, a nonprofit founded on the Quaker teaching that every human has holiness within them.

Lovely and organic, the mural has become a beloved fixture to members of the West Chester community. But it may soon vanish.

The Philadelphia Inquirer and other publication report that a new owner recently purchased the mural’s brick and mortar canvas, and that this new owner wants the artwork removed. Some community members describe feeling heartbroken at the prospect of losing a landmark that has become interwoven with their daily lives.

I know nothing about laws regarding public art on private property. And I don’t know what an honorable outcome for the artist, community, and property owner could look like. But I do know that I love this mural, and that interestingly, I fell for it in the same way I fell for late-career music by Thelonious Monk and Marian McPartland.

If you’re not familiar, Monk and McPartland are jazz piano icons from vastly different backgrounds. Particularly in their later years, both artists played with striking simplicity and sharp beauty. They said so much with so little. And they played as if they found joy within and between each note, with everything to explore and nothing to prove.

Noah Burns’ mural speaks to me in a similar voice, and I’m impressed by the preternatural maturity it displays. There’s nothing superfluous about the mural, nothing that shows off or distracts. Burns weaves together simple colors and geometric shapes into something organic that breathes and feels rich with spirit, something that gives the walls and street and sidewalk a pulse.

I wrote Noise #207 thinking about this mural as a simple gift of shining energy, and the Americana hymn “Simple Gifts” which plays through my head when I look at it. The music also channels my hope that, at the end of whatever discussions or legal wranglings happen next, the mural can somehow survive.

I hope you enjoy Noise #207:

Wishing you peace,

Michael

(Noise #207 by Michael Gallant. Copyright 2026 Gallant Music LLC. All Rights Reserved.)

The most brilliant zombie-themed movies, books, and comics look at what happens when extreme events pervert normal life into a state of unnatural chaos. They explore what grows in that tainted soil. Humanity’s resilience and genius, selfishness and depravity, come into stark and startling relief.

What does this have to do with the news?

Amidst countless events happening around the world, headlines today show Artemis II astronauts seeing things humans have never seen before—and a sitting American president threatening to terminate an entire civilization.

Humanity’s resilience and genius, selfishness and depravity, all on display in stark and startling relief.

I composed Noise #206 thinking about the gross differentials splattered across headlines today. Linkin Park’s “New Divide” kept popping into my head as I made this music; maybe you’ll hear references to that song’s simmering rage and defiant hope in my playing.

Here’s Noise #206:

Wishing you peace,

Michael

(Noise #206 by Michael Gallant. Copyright 2026 Gallant Music LLC. All Rights Reserved.)

Instead, they lean into creative euphemisms—mission, special operation, strategic strikes—that seem far too precious to reflect the realities at hand.

A war is a war is a war.

It’d serve all of us to call the thing what it is.

Or if not, we could at least go with Fluffy Bunny Dance Party, which vibes.

I wrote Noise #205 thinking about the ridiculousness of not calling a thing by its name, and the damage and disrespect caused when world leaders use clever language to disown the worst of the wars they author.

Here’s Noise #205:

Wishing you peace,

Michael

(Noise #205 by Michael Gallant. Copyright 2026 Gallant Music LLC. All Rights Reserved.)

This is revolting but not surprising; as Niall Ferguson wrote today in The Free Press, “the United States has a track record of coming to save the day and leaving a trail of devastation.”

I wrote this short piano piece as a musical wish for Iran’s people, its neighbors, and the world at large—that whatever comes next will be more humane and peaceful than what came before. I hope you enjoy Noise #204:

Wishing you peace,

Michael

(Noise #204 by Michael Gallant. Copyright 2026 Gallant Music LLC. All Rights Reserved.)

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Thanks so much for listening,

Michael

(Noise #203 by Michael Gallant. Copyright 2026 Gallant Music LLC. All Rights Reserved.)

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Thanks so much for listening,

Michael

(Noise #202 by Michael Gallant. Copyright 2025 Gallant Music LLC. All Rights Reserved.)

I recorded Noise #199 as a reaction to the murky storytelling around America’s bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities—specifically how obliterated (or not) the program has become.

Running through my head as I recorded the music was a recurring downward arc, like bombs dropping through cloud and air and earth—or like political mouths racing to the rhetorical bottom as they try to carve their chosen narrative into the face of public consciousness.

There’s a lot of swirling energy and dark dissonance in the music, but also glimmers of harmonic brightness—because the true aftermath remains undefined.

I’d love to hear your reactions; please don’t hesitate to leave a comment or hit reply to this email. And I’d be honored for you to share the music if it moves you:

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Wishing you peace,

Michael

(Noise #199 by Michael Gallant. Copyright 2025 Gallant Music LLC. All Rights Reserved.)

From a Politico analysis:

“I guess Signal is a few steps above leaving a copy of your war plan at the Chinese Embassy — but it’s far below the standards required for discussing any elements of a war plan,” said Mark Montgomery, senior director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Politico’s article says that Signal most often cannot be downloaded onto secure federal devices. This means that personal phones and computers were likely used to discuss operation-critical details. In the words of a former White House official:

“It’s so unbelievable. These guys all have traveling security details to set up secure comms for them, wherever they are. Their personal phones are all hackable, and it’s highly likely that foreign intelligence services are sitting on their phones watching them type the shit out.”

Data storage security and malware threats are concerns, too—and then there’s that whole "oops, we accidentally included the editor of the Atlantic” thing.

The group chat involved specific operational timeline information that could have endangered the mission, and the lives of American service members. From the New York Times:

Launch times are typically closely guarded to ensure that the targets cannot move into hiding or mount a counterattack at the very moment planes are taking off, when they are potentially vulnerable.

Politico's main interviewee poignantly sums up the situation:

“Forget Signal, just do it over a dating app, you might as well, that would be just as secure as what you’re doing,” the former White House official said.

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I recorded Noise #198 reflecting on this amateurish, destructive, and completely avoidable breach of America’s national security. The iconic lyric “Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am, stuck in the middle with you,” played on repeat in my head, and its melody influenced my playing.

Here’s Noise #198:

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Wishing you peace,

Michael

(Noise #198 by Michael Gallant. Copyright 2025 Gallant Music LLC. All Rights Reserved.)

The New York Times’ recent interview with Sen. Chuck Schumer illustrates one example of an approach that’s as toothless as it is anachronistic.

A different article in the Times looks at why opposition efforts have been so hapless. Written by Ben Rhodes, the piece includes an interview with Ece Temulkuram, a Turkish journalist who was fired from her newspaper for writing columns that were critical of President Recip Tayyip Erdogan. Rhodes writes:

She left Turkey and watched it descend into autocracy; every crisis offered a pretext for power grabs against a “deep state,” opponents were harassed, the leader exalted, corruption normalized.

Given Temulkuram’s experiences, her perspective on the current moment in the U.S is intriguing.

When I asked her about Mr. Trump’s return to power, she said that America was in the “shame stage” of losing democracy. Not only is Mr. Trump shameless, but his opposition feels a paralyzing shame watching a once-unthinkable reality take hold.

Temulkuram explains further:

“As a citizen, you feel like this country was a paper tiger,” she told me. “All those institutions that we believed would stop this sense of insanity didn’t even exist. There is shame that comes from the defeat of a system that you’ve been living in.”

Rhodes offers the following advice to help concerned Americans stop being paralyzed and start moving:

Spotlight harms that will come to everyday people, not bureaucracies or the prerogatives of a loathed institution like Congress. Protest at shuttered facilities in communities, not agencies in the capital. Make noise however you can.

(I highly recommend reading the full article here.)

Noise #197 is my reaction to Rhodes’ common-sense advice—to broadcast just how much real and unnecessary suffering is landing on real, normal people. The music is also my small tribute to peace-minded noisemakers everywhere.

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Wishing you peace,

Michael

(Noise #197 by Michael Gallant. Copyright 2025 Gallant Music LLC. All Rights Reserved.)

There’s no Keyser Söze involved, but the abrupt vanishing act metaphor resonates.

New York Magazine offers a nuanced and non-hysterical summary of the situation that’s well worth re…

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These were the watchdogs tasked with rooting out corruption and fraud in the government. In video interviews, several say that they eagerly reached out to DOGE to offer their …

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Governance and federal contracting are extremely complicated. And the Merry Band of Young Geniuses ostensibly tasked with streamlining the federal government appear to be blindly dismembering it instead.

From the Times:

“It’s obvious that they don’t understand,” said Eric Franklin, the chief executive of the firm Erimax, who advises the government on contracting procedures. His own firm was the subject of one of the errors on DOGE’s “wall of receipts.” Mr. Musk’s group claimed it had saved $14 million by canceling one of its contracts — which had ended in 2021.

Data errors happen, but DOGE’s cruel incompetence is on a different level. Real people are getting really hurt and, if this continues, more unnecessary suffering will follow.

When you listen to Noise #194, you’ll be hearing a sense of melancholy that reflects my feelings about people in power lacking the foresight, empathy, and will to truly see the human impact of what they’re doing.

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Here’s Noise #194:

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Wishing you peace,

Michael

(Noise #194 by Michael Gallant. Copyright 2025 Gallant Music LLC. All Rights Reserved.)

Now, with its geopolitical position rising like fizz in an over-shaken Diet Coke, Russia is eager for foreign brands to reoccupy empty storefronts and barren shopping malls.

Japan’s Asahi Shimbun reports that companies like Uniqlo, Coca-Cola, and Ikea top the list:

Russia's state media and netizens named clothing retail chain Uniqlo Co. among the businesses the country hopes will return if sanctions are lifted following government negotiations with the United States over ending its invasion of Ukraine.

One Russian commenter wrote that, if major foreign brands return, “lines will be to the moon.”

I’m fascinated by the often-bizarre interplay between big countries and bigger companies—how nations can act like the bitterest of enemies, yet remain inextricably entangled when it comes to commerce and consumerism.

I’m also fascinated by how money moves like water, flowing into any economic opening, filling any open space as a matter of nature and gravity.

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I recorded Noise #193 thinking about themes of geopolitical whiplash and unhinged economic change, the weirdly unifying power of big-brand commerce and the fractious nature of big-brand nationalism. The music also channels the brilliantly satirical chirpiness of “Money Makes The World Go ’Round” from the musical Cabaret.

I hope you enjoy listening to Noise #193:

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Wishing you peace,

Michael

(Noise #193 by Michael Gallant. Copyright 2025 Gallant Music LLC. All Rights Reserved.)

I could write pages arguing why such a move will do nothing to increase government efficiency. But that would be missing the point.

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The New York Times reports that a “first-of-its-kind assessment of nature across the United States” was abruptly canceled for no stated reason….

….despite over 150 experts and scientists investing thousands of hours in research, reviews, and writing…

….and despite the major report being within mere weeks of completion.

Rather than let it die, the report’s lead authors have a different idea: find a way to publish it anyway.

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For well over a decade, I’ve written international public diplomacy content for American embassies in Asia. My work focuses on cross-cultural collaborations, innovations that save lives, and ways that people find strength in discovering shared humanity despite myriad differences.

USAID has come up often in my work.

The USAID I know—the one I’ve written about more times than I can remember, and the one that (at least until recently) employed many inspiring folks I interviewed—has done the following:

• Supported efforts to educate rural women and end child and forced marriage (article removed from embassy website)

• Helped impoverished farmers develop new income streams while growing trees to soak up greenhouse gasses

• Developed drones that can transport specimens for tuberculosis testing from remote and economically depressed areas

• Empowered vulnerable populations to protect their health by actively monitoring hyper-local air pollution levels

I composed Noise #190 thinking about the harsh dissonance between two very different USAIDs: the innovative organization I’ve researched for dozens of hours and described in thousands of words—and the bogeyman anti-American agency some choose to see instead.

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Here’s the music:

Thanks so much for listening. If the music moves you, please share it:

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Wishing you peace,

Michael

(Noise #190 by Michael Gallant. Copyright 2025 Gallant Music LLC. All Rights Reserved.)

The list of global McFly’s already includes Denmark, Canada, Greenland, Mexico, Panama, and Colombia.

Will Thailand be the next target? Mozambique? Maybe Belgium, Bhutan, Mongolia, or Slovakia?

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