Gweek podcast 131: Huggable Atomic Mushrooms

Gweek - cool stuff we love

This time my guests were Michael Pusateri, a television technologist, inveterate tinkerer, cooking geek, and cycling enthusiast, and Rob Walker, a technology and culture columnist for Yahoo Tech, a regular contributor to Design Observer, and The Workologist columnist for the New York TimesSunday business section.

GET GWEEK: RSS | On iTunes | Download episode | Stitcher

Rob's picks:

The Prisoner on DVD -- weird/interesting British TV series from the 1960s, there weren’t many episodes but has a cult following and I finally decided to check it out, pretty enjoyable so far. (Actually, remember last time I was on I talked a little about “old” “unsocial” entertainment that we all consume but don’t “share”? I actually started a recurring Yahoo Tech feature called The New Old Thingwhere someone recommends something like that once a week, and this was recommended by Seth Godin, so that’s how I ended up buying it.)

Speculative Everything, a book by Anthony Dunne & Fiona Raby on “design, fiction, and social dreaming.” They are designers and profs at Royal College of Art, I just got this and am really excited about it. It’s their work but also a broader look at “design fiction.”

Holly Herndon’s new single is super cool: She sampled audio from random browsing/web interactions and sculpted the results into an impressive piece of electronic music. Videois really cool too.

The Obit Headline Poem!

Michael's picks

Golden Age of the Solar Clipper Series by Nathan Lowell - Science fiction series on space cargo haulers - mix of Horatio Hornblower and early Heinlein - started as an audio podcastand move into book form - no dramatic battles but a lot about the people behind the scenes and the intrigues of the workplace in space.

PCGen- open source software for RPG players

Eve Online - Internet spaceships MMORPG - recently celebrated 10 years in operation - Battle of B-R5RB over 3,000 players in one battle that lasted over 20 hours, thousands more in side battles.

Mark's pick:

The Martian -- realistic SF novel about a guy stuck on Mars.