Two Bit Geeks: Recent Episodes
Ped and Tom
A two-nerds-talking podcast exploring science, philosophy, education, art, literature, geek culture, technology, and other human endeavors. New episodes roughly twice monthly.
A cherished franchise returns for one final chapter. But was it worth the wait?
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- Tom’s scribblings
- Fainting Betelgeuse (Sky & Telescope)
- Star Trek: Picard Episode 1
- The Good Place
- Moral desert
- Live a good life (Marcus Aurelius)
- The Mandalorian
- Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
- Knives Out
- r/prequelmemes
Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)
It’s election season, and Ped has invested in maroon duct tape, Tom is withholding any endorsements, and they both discuss whether chess is a sport.
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- Hatha yoga
- Rāja yoga
- The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance
- Downton Abbey
- Duct tape
- Ranked-choice voting
- The grandmaster diet
- The Brattle Theatre
- Citizen Kane
- Color grading
- Orange and Teal
Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)
Ped & Tom continue their appreciation of nature with a discussion on the ethics of animal welfare and eating fish, observing wildlife through drawing, painting, and nature journaling, and a surprising foray onto Instagram.
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- The egg-laying turtle
- Hummingbird moths
- “Bee of the Bird of the Moth” (They Might Be Giants)
- Sandpipers
- American woodcock
- Library Extension
- What a Fish Knows by Jonathan Balcombe
- Do fish feel pain? One answer.
- Little Free Library
- Tom’s Instagram (Face spoilers)
- You Can Draw in 30 Days by Mark Kistler
- John Muir
- The Laws Guide to Nature Drawing and Journaling by John Muir Laws
- “Rocky Mountain High” (John Denver)
Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)
Ped & Tom take the meandering path through such subjects as dealing with hydrophobia, the automated safety features of modern cars, and a review of some favorite video and board games.
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- The Door in the Wall by H. G. Wells
- How To: Adjust Your Mirrors to Avoid Blind Spots (Car and Driver)
- Harry Tuttle, Heating Engineer (Brazil)
- Ask Ped & Tom
- Minesweeper
- Doom
- Slither.io
- Minecraft
- Portal
- Myst
- Pole Position
- Dragon’s Lair
- Ms. Pac-Man
- The Addams Family pinball
- KLASK
- Forbidden Island
- Settlers of Catan
- Power Grid
- Twilight Struggle
- Through the Ages
- Container
- Indonesia
- BoardGameGeek boardgame rankings
Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)
Ped got a new cat toy, Tom has some animal stories. Also, pondering cultured meat, inoculation with a fake news vaccine, and more listener questions.
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- PEBKAC
- Lap of Love
- Erethizon dorsatum
- Manticore
- Lynx rufus
- Ursus americanus
- Chrysemys picta
- Laying an egg
- Library Extension
- Octal
- Hexadecimal
- Sexagesimal
- Moxie
- Jägermeister
- Barry’s Tea
- Guinness
- Alignment
- Cultured meat
- Monty Hall problem
- Episode 05: The Conveyor Belt of Slop
- GetBadNews.com
- Usenet
Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)
Ped & Tom careen through a cavalcade of conversational categories, including competitions, carbon dioxide, Chernobyl, conservation, committee life, coaxial cable, communication constellations, and countless collections of warblers. Geek out!
This episode of the podcast is brought to you by Patreon supporter Alexander Nielsen. Thank you!
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- James Holzhauer
- 92nd Scripps National Spelling Bee
- Joe Biden Eating a Sandwich
- Who’s the Highest-Paid Public Employee in Every State?
- Atmospheric CO2 exceeds 415 ppm
- Keeling Curve
- Chernobyl
- TrashTag
- Game of Thrones season 8
- Newhart
- Ask Ped & Tom
- Starlink
- After SpaceX Starlink Launch, a Fear of Satellites That Outnumber All Visible Stars (New York Times)
- The Audubon Guide to Binoculars
- eBird
- Blackburnian Warbler
- Bald Eagle
Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)
In this special episode, Ped & Tom are joined by the elusive Brother X, a triathlete and professional translator, who calls in from Yokohama, Japan. He shares some of the differences he sees in Japanese and American language and culture after having spent over two decades living in Japan.
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- International Triathlon Union
- ね
- Perry Expedition
- Asymptote
- Chutzpah
Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)
In this episode, Tom has unwelcome visitors in the middle of the night, Ped has a new Star Wars theory, and they both geek out to the first image of a Black Hole before musing on the Ultimate Fate of the Universe.
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- Notre-Dame de Paris
- Our Nocturnal Visitors
- First trailer for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
- The Mandalorian
- Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge
- Event Horizon Telescope
- Event horizon
- Accretion disk
- “How to take a picture of a black hole” (Katie Bouman Ted Talk)
- Very-long-baseline interferometry
- “How to Understand the Image of a Black Hole” (Veritasium)
- The M87 Black Hole as seen by the Chandra X-ray Observatory
- Ultimate fate of the universe
- Heat death of the universe
Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)
The interminable New England Winter is almost over and it’s time for a Spring Clean for Ped & Tom as they start their Digital Declutter. With more time away from digital distractions, Tom finds a new hobby.
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- Sugar shack
- Tapping Maple Trees
- Episode 47: Our Fraught Relationship with Technology
- PBS
- The Deep Dish reviews of Digital Minimalism and Marie Kondo
- eBird
- Merlin Bird ID
- Black-capped Chickadee
- Tufted Titmouse
- Pileated Woodpecker
- Barred Owl
Black-capped Chickadee recorded by Jay McGowan/Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology (ML94959121)
Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)
Ped & Tom review the new book “Digital Minimalism” by Cal Newport and discuss the benefits of reducing your daily interactions with technology and social media.
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- Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World by Cal Newport
- Ped’s review of Deep Work in Episode 38
- Attention economy
- Freedom
Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)
Ped & Tom continue to stare into the existential void and search for the meaning of life, with the help of centenarian Okinawans and the Japanese concept of Ikigai, as well as the organizational methods of tidying expert Marie Kondo.
This episode is brought to you by our amazing Patreon supporter, Ekin Köker. Thank you, Ekin! You spark joy!
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- Episode 38: Blazar McBlazeface
- Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life by Héctor García and Francesc Miralles
- The Venn diagram of Ikigai
- Ikigai or Raison d’être
- Episode 33: Staring into the Void
- Okinawa Prefecture
- Victor Frankl and Logotherapy
- Marcus Aurelius and Stoicism
- Søren Kierkegaard and Existentialism
- Friedrich Nietzsche and Will to power
- Homer and the chili pepper
- Mindfulness
- Pomodoro Technique
- Interval training
- Two Bit Geeks in Bulgaria (Thanks Ivo!)
- The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo
Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)
A long-lost concert video sparks a stroll down memory lane for two old-school Phish-heads, sharing a “thank you” card full of gratitude for all the joy created by their favorite band, Phish. Tapers welcome!
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- Phish Amy’s Farm Multi-Cam Footage from 1991 Surfaces (JamBase)
- Gallery of photographs taken at Amy’s Farm by Tom
- yeP!
- How Phish sounds to people who don’t like Phish
- Phish vs the Audience Chess Match
- Junta (1989)
- Trey Anastasio shares his Drug Court experience
- Relisten (iOS)
- RoboPhish (Android)
Shows referenced:
- May 14, 1989 - University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts (Tom’s first show)
- Feb 15, 1990 - The Living Room, Providence, Rhode Island (Ped’s first show)
- Jun 16, 1990 - Townshend Family Park, Townshend, Vermont
- Nov 16, 1990 - Campus Club, Providence, Rhode Island
- Feb 15, 1991 - The Colonial Theatre, Keene, New Hampshire
- May 3, 1991 - Somerville Theatre, Somerville, Massachusetts (Tom’s favorite show)
- Jul 14, 1991 - Townshend Family Park, Townshend, Vermont
- Jul 19, 1991 - Somerville Theatre, Somerville, Massachusetts
- Aug 3, 1991 - Amy’s Farm, Auburn, Maine
- Dec 30, 1992 - Symphony Hall, Springfield, Massachusetts (Ped’s favorite show)
- Dec 2, 2003 - Fleetcenter, Boston, Massachusetts (20th Anniversary Show)
Audience recordings excerpted:
- Foam - Nov 3, 1990 - Boulder Theater, Boulder, Colorado (Mastered by Mike Grace)
- Harry Hood - Nov 4, 1990 - Fort Ram, Fort Collins, Colorado (Transferred by Caleb Epstein)
- Runaway Yim - Jul 19, 1991 - Somerville Theatre, Somerville, Massachusetts (Mastered by Marmar)
- I Didn’t Know - Aug 3, 1991 - Amy’s Farm, Auburn, Maine (Taper unknown)
- Timber (Jerry the Mule) - Dec 30, 1992 - Symphony Hall, Springfield, Massachusetts (Mastered by Marmar)
- Harpua - May 3, 1991 - Somerville Theatre, Somerville, Massachusetts (Taper unknown)
- Tweezer Reprise - May 3, 1991 - Somerville Theatre, Somerville, Massachusetts (Taper unknown)
- You Enjoy Myself - May 3, 1991 - Somerville Theatre, Somerville, Massachusetts (Taper unknown)
- Golgi Apparatus - Nov 16, 1990 - Campus Club, Providence, Rhode Island (Taped by John Redmond)
Special thanks to Matt Laurence and all the Phish tapers who shared their recordings with the fan community!
Ped & Tom welcome a new sunrise and a new year, they run through some followup on Github, Stax lids, and ladybird beetles, Tom welcomes some new arrivals to his household, and Ped attempts to experience history in Washington DC.
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- David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748), IV:21.
- Subtly improved “Janky Tic-Tac-Toe” (thanks to Noé)
- Octahedron
- Guess How Many Stax Lids
- Cause and Effect
- Saturnalia
- Roomba
- Robot or Not?
- Anything Goes
- National Portrait Gallery
- Ford’s Theatre
- Old North Bridge
- Vietnam Veterans Memorial
Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)
Ped has a doughnut-related crisis, Tom is visited by ladybird beetles, and they discuss the forthcoming Insect Apocalypse.
This episode is brought to you by Patreon supporter Ossama Al-Alali from Germany. We thank you for your support! You are awesome sauce!
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- The Insect Apocalypse is Here by Brooke Jarvis (The New York Times Magazine)
- The German Amateurs Who Discovered ‘Insect Armageddon’ (The New York Times)
- Trophic cascade
- Anthropocene
- Coccinellidae aka ladybird beetles, or ladybugs
- Tom’s winter visitors
- Hemiptera or true bugs
- How many Stax lids are there?
Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)
Don’t Panic! Tom is surrounded by hippies. Ped is on the lookout for interstellar visitors. And they both continue their search for the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything. Plus, Ped has a curious collection.
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- Lighting the beacons
- “Happy Valley”
- John “Grizzly” Adams
- Whole Foods Market
- Rationalism vs Magical thinking
- 12 Natural and Organic Brands Owned By Big Food (Mental Floss)
- False equivalence
- Light pollution
- Messier 31 - The Andromeda Galaxy
- The International Dark-Sky Association
- Outdoor Lighting Basics (darksky.org)
- Bobcat
- The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
- Zaphod Beeblebrox
- Galaxy Quest
- Infocom
- Play the Hitchhiker’s text adventure online
- Could Solar Radiation Pressure Explain ʻOumuamua’s Peculiar Acceleration (Shmuel Bialy and Abraham Loeb)
- ʻOumuamua
- The Unexpected Trajectory of Interstellar Asteroid ʻOumuamua (APOD)
- Radiation pressure
- Is ʻOumuamua an Interstellar Spaceship? I’m Still Going With ‘No’ (Phil Plait)
- Light sail
- Tabby’s Star
- The Planetary Society
- Breakthrough Starshot
- LightSail 2
- Rosa (Doctor Who S11E3)
- Lay’s Stax
- Ped’s collection
- How to Make a Tayto Sandwich
Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)
In this episode, Ped has a new drinking game, Tom reveals he was not a particularly good student, and your hosts welcome the new Doctor. They then return to the topic of Climate Change and why people believe what they believe…or not.
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- Take a drink, u/marzib!
- Chaos!
- The long tail of The Last Jedi followup
- Two-thirds of links on Twitter come from bots (Vox)
- Should You Take Early Morning Classes in College? (MTV)
- We welcome Jodie Whittaker as the Thirteenth Doctor
- Venusian Aikido as practiced by the Third Doctor and the Thirteenth Doctor
- Major Climate Report Describes a Strong Risk of Crisis as Early as 2040 (New York Times)
- Believe by The Oatmeal
- Amygdala
- Backfire Effect
- Scientific method
- Did George Washington’s false teeth come from his slaves? (The Washington Papers)
Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)
With apologies for the echoey room, albeit in a new home, Ped & Tom discuss the contrasting environ of Western Massachusetts, a perplexing but pleasing podcast review, and a followup on The Last Jedi that somehow made it through the edit. Then, Ped has a lot to say about CGP Grey and the fight for your attention and Tom makes an unexpected visit to the emergency room.
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- The geography of Massachusetts
- Jeff and Rick
- How The Last Jedi Defies Expectations About Male Heroes (Pop Culture Detective)
- Hello Internet - #108, #109
- Cortex - #74
- Thinking About Attention – Walk with Me (CGP Grey)
- Infinite Scrolling (Relevant XKCD)
- Free will vs Determinism
- The Attention Minefield at Newark Airport (CGP Grey)
- Attention economy
- Screen Time on iOS 12
- The painful diagnosis
Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)
Tom is on the move, Ped is excited about Star Trek, and they both warp through tangents related to genealogy, immigration, solar probes, and climate change. Engage!
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Does it sound like a cave in here? [00:00]
- Democracy Day
- Punching through the diamond wall (Doctor Who)
- Tiny houses
- Pioneer Valley
- Home staging
Coffee Followup [20:56]
- Should Coffee Come With Cancer Warnings? California Says No (NY Times)
- Eureka! California-Grown Coffee Is Becoming The State’s Next Gold Mine (NPR)
Infinity War Followup [25:28]
- Bucky Barnes
- Spider-Man: Homecoming
Jean-Luc Picard, Captain of the USS Enterprise [31:43]
- Patrick Stewart is bringing back Jean-Luc Picard for a new Star Trek series (AV Club)
- Ped’s Beginner’s Guide to the Star Trek Universe
- S3E15: Yesterday’s Enterprise
Andrew Sterett, Captain of the USS Enterprise [45:49]
- Andrew Sterett (1778–1807)
- USS Enterprise (1799)
- USS Sterett (DDG–104)
- History Detectives
- The New England Historic Genealogical Library
- FamilySearch (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints)
Flying Close to the Sun [1:02:04]
- Parker Solar Probe
- Climate Change Scenarios of the 21st Century (IPCC)
Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)
Ped and Tom followup on some recent developments in the world of science including the mysterious ʻOumuamua, a super-powerful blazar, and a neutrino detector buried deep in the ice. Then, Ped extolls the benefits of three recent self-improvement books while Tom prefers self-deprecation.
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Interstellar Interloper Revisited [01:32]
- Episode 22: Nostalgia Kilonova
- ʻOumuamua
- Non-gravitational acceleration in the trajectory of 1I/2017 U1 (‘Oumuamua) (Nature)
- Occam’s razor
Ice Cubes and Star Blazers [08:56]
- Multimessenger observations of a flaring blazar coincident with high-energy neutrino IceCube–170922A (Science)
- Neutrinos
- Cosmic rays
- Blazars
- It Came From a Black Hole, and Landed in Antarctica (New York Times)
- TXS 0506+056 aka “Blazar McBlazeface”
- Multi-messenger astronomy
- IceCube Neutrino Observatory
- There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom by Richard Feynman
- 30-Second Quantum Theory by Brian Clegg
- Newtonian physics vs Quantum mechanics
- The Double Slit Experiment
Ped’s Book Report x 3 [32:10]
- The Heartfulness Way: Heart-Based Meditations for Spiritual Transformation by Kamlesh Patel and Joshua Pollock
- Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport
- Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life by Héctor García and Francesc Miralles
Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)
Tom passes Ped’s code review with a particularly janky bit of programming, stickers are dispatched around the world, and we get some more complaining about Star Wars.
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Janky Programming [01:06]
- Janky Tic Tac Toe (source)
- Strong and weak typing
- JavaScript was written in 10 days
- Indentation style
- Two Bit Geeks on GitHub
- Station 13 on GitHub
Stickers Across the Globe [20:50]
- Two Bit Geeks stickers on Reddit
- They fit in a standard envelope.
Solo: A Star Wars Story [28:10]
- Episode 27: Grumpy Old Men
- Alden Ehrenreich
Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)
Ped is strangely primed this morning, Tom is strangely immune to poison ivy, and they both take a long, strange slog through software development and language immersion.
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Primed and Ready to Go! [01:53]
- The collected wisdom of Two Bit Geeks:
- “You never can tell with bees.”
- “It’s easy to succeed when you don’t know what you’re doing.”
- “At the end of the day, most people are just people.”
- “It only takes one fly to spoil the soup.”
Flies, Spiders, Mosquitoes, and Poison Ivy [09:20]
- Australia’s dangerous animals: the top 30
- Are some people immune to poison ivy?
Learn Coding with Grasshopper [22:22]
- grasshopper
- Scratch
- Low-code
Language Immersion [32:00]
- Dual Language Immersion programs
- Neuroplasticity
Getting in the Zone [36:17]
- Flow
- Pomodoro Technique
- Boomerang for Gmail
Getting Started with Coding [48:07]
- Github
- I are Programmer (and You Can Too)
- Should We Really Try to Teach Everyone to Code? (Wired)
- Codecademy
- Coding bootcamp
- Code review
- Pair programming
Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)
It’s time to play the music, it’s time to light the lights, it’s time for the A.I. Winter and more followup tonight. It’s time to put on makeup, it’s time to dress up right, it’s time to spoil Infinity War and … [Disk Space Error]
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Music and Memory [00:00]
- It’s The Muppet Show!
- Maria João Pires prepares for the wrong piano concerto
The A.I. Winter [6:40]
- hackernewsletter (Hacker News)
- A.I. Winter Is Well On Its Way (Filip Piekniewski)
- The Hype cycle
- FLOPS
- Self-driving car kills pedestrian (NY Times)
- A.I. is Harder Than You Think (NY Times)
Airplane Door Followup [23:28]
- Atmospheric pressure
- Aircraft Pressurization Beginner’s Guide (AeroSavvy.com)
Ad astra Alan Bean [28:09]
- Alan Bean (1932–2018)
- The paintings of Alan Bean
- The Overview effect
- Photograph of Earth taken by Alan Bean aboard Apollo 12
- Autographed photograph of Alan Bean
Ped needs a new laptop [32:14]
- ‘How to treat the symptom rather than the cause’ (Microsoft Support)
- 10 Best Linux Desktop Environments and Their Comparison (Fossbytes)
- LibreOffice
Avengers: Infinity War (includes spoilers!) [40:11]
- A-Town reviews Infinity War
- Golden Age of Comics Books
- Bucky Barnes
Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)
In this guaranteed 100% human-created podcast, Ped & Tom ponder whether humanity was Earth’s first civilization, whether Google chatbots will subsequently replace humanity, whether Irish drivers are the best in the world, and whether your own DNA will implicate your criminal cousin.
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Yanny and Laurel [00:00]
- Original “What do you guys hear ?” Reddit post
- Most people over 18 can’t hear these sounds
Air Travel [06:29]
- SSSS no more
- Square People Pipe
- Answer: Airplane doors cannot be opened during flight due to cabin pressure
- Twilight Zone: Nightmare at 20,000 Feet
Was Humanity the first civilization on Earth? [13:32]
- The Silurian Hypothesis: Would it be possible to detect an industrial civilization in the geological record?
- The Silurians (Doctor Who)
- How the domestic chicken rose to define the Anthropocene (The Guardian)
- Super-Earths can’t have space programs
Artificial Intelligence is calling [26:22]
- Google Assistant calls the hair salon
- Xiaoice
- Universal Basic Income
Irish Drivers [42:09]
- Pass Rates of Irish driver’s test centres (Overall average: 54%!!!)
- Reversing around a corner on the Irish Driving Test
- Reversing into parking spaces
- Conor Pass road above Dingle
- Definitive guide to Irish drivers’ hand gestures
- Continuously variable transmission
- Hill starts
DNA Privacy [55:33]
- The Golden State Killer
- GEDmatch, an open source DNA database
Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)
Pondering pure existence, a big reckoning for Big Coffee, coming to terms with archiving our past, possibly #tooMuchMeta on a flight through Ped’s neural landscape, keep those subvocals to yourself and always look up for the Happy Void.
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Recreational Void Staring [00:00]
- The Untempered Schism
- The Two Bit Geeks Official Guide to Void Staring!
Coffee, Cancer and Acrylamide [05:00]
- Is coffee carcinogenic? Some say maybe, some say no
- Caffeine Blues certainly sounds alarmed
- Either way, it’s good to understand the neuro-biology
Archiving the Past [14:11]
- What to look for in your Facebook data-and how to find it (Wired)
- A drop in the ocean: the timescale of a human life
Tip of the Tongue Syndrome [30:33]
- Presque Vu for you
- The jury’s still out on the eye-training benefits of speed-reading
Yet another Borg Implant [46:37]
- Gotcha, subovocalizations! MIT’s “Alter Ego” accidentally invents telepathy
Nifty Einstein Rings [54:57]
- NASA’s Hubble catches the fisheye lens effect
- Keep Looking Up! Jack Horkheimer (1938–2010) aka The Star Hustler is here for you
Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)
Ped & Tom ride their hobby horses through some of their favorite topics; such as speeding and safe driving, dumping Facebook and shadow profiles, fitness tracking and smart devices, supervolcanoes and asteroid impacts, and being kind to one another. Plus, a salute to Professor Hawking.
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Safe Driving Followup [00:00]
- The Need for (Safe) Speed
- Relevant Massachusetts Law concerning blocking intersections
- One Way Japanese Drivers Are Polite
Dumping Facebook [22:35]
- Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal
- How do I deactivate my account? (Facebook)
- Station 13 podcast
- Postcrossing.com
Smart Devices [45:03]
- Pomodoro Technique
- Fitbit Versa
End of the World Scenarios [52:05]
- Yellowstone Magma Plume
- Possible asteroid impactor 101955 Bennu
- Space probe OSIRIS-REx
- Gravitational keyhole
- The HAMMER
Egoisitic Altruism [1:03:36]
- A Selfish Argument for Making the World a Better Place (Kurzgesagt)
- Zero-sum world vs. Positive-sum world
Farewell to Stephen Hawking [1:16:30]
- Stephen Hawking (1942–2018)
- A Brief History of Time
Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)
Ped & Tom fidget their way through some followup, Ped delights in some unusual athleticism, and Tom makes a move at a board gaming tournament.
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Fidgeting into some Followup [00:00]
- ICYMI: Ped on Two Tims Talking
- LoonyLeader needs to go to Iceland
- March 20, 2015 Total Solar Eclipse in Spitsbergen, Norway
- A hotel at 78° North latitude
Faster, Higher, Stronger? [11:31]
- Pre-link: Best in the world ski halfpipe
- …and then there’s Elizabeth Swaney
- Eddie the Eagle
- Pita Taufatofua the Shirtless Tongan
- In-depth analysis of Swaney’s Olympic halfpipe run
Power Moves [28:11]
- Power Grid
- The Worst Board Games Ever Invented (FiveThirtyEight)
- Carcassonne
- (The Settlers of) Catan
Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)
Ped is moonlighting on Tom. If elected, Tom will not serve. They both explore the consequences of convenience, of speeding, of firearms, of bedtime eggs, of sleeping possums, and placebos.
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Moonlighting Pedcast [00:00]
- Ped on Two Tims Talking
- Hello Internet
Electoral Tomfoolery [09:29]
- chuckyc17 on the subreddit is up to some mischief
- Class Secretary
- Shermanesque statement
- Robert’s Rules of Order
The Wikipedia is amazing [15:28]
- Death of a salesman
- Ten Simple Rules for Editing Wikipedia
Reading and Libraries [21:22]
- Typesetting
- How Libraries Are Becoming Modern Makerspaces (The Atlantic)
Consequences of Convenience [29:44]
- “The Tyranny of Convenience” by Tim Wu (NY Times)
- Waiting in Line to See Star Wars: 1977–2000
- Humanity’s future according to Wall-E
On a Lighter Note: Speeding [41:56]
- Traffic Warnings
- How Engineering Decreases Car Crash Fatalities (MrEngineeringGuy)
Consequences of Firearms [49:38]
- The CDC Can’t Fund Gun Research (Wired)
- Dickey Amendment (1996)
- Embrace the Cognitive Dissonance - “Put that on a T-shirt”
On a Lighter Note: Bedtime Story Eggs [59:23]
- Peanut Butter Cookies
- Free-range eggs
Consequences of Wildlife [1:06:37]
- Possums
- Baby Skunks
- Baby Mice
- “This is the part of the job I hate.” (The Simpsons)
Consequences of Placebos [1:14:36]
- Homeopathy is junk science…
- …but the Placebo Effect is real
Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)
Pondering the Assistance Invasion, blasting off with maximum coolness with SpaceX, possible microscopic passengers, and this is not a place of honor for six percent of rats. Tick-tock!
Support the podcast on Patreon or by purchasing a T-shirt.
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Resistance is futile: you will be assisted [00:00]
- This is your brain on Virtual Assistance
Falcon Heavy launches away [04:03]
- Elon Musk is elated over the SpaceX success
- Set phasers to maximum coolness
- The Arch Mission Foundation ups the ante for offsite backup
Time And Relative Messaging In Space [12:38]
- DNA as alien message-in-a-bottle (so says TNG!)
- Nuclear semiotics and the problem of messaging across time
- The nuclear renaissance as the (climate change) clock ticks closer
- Practical fusion is getting closer
- Tardigrades, the ultimate package format of life
Wifi Follow-up [34:26]
- NIH: 6% of male rats should not make thousands of concurrent cell phone calls
- Epigenetics is waiting to activate your mostly-inert DNA
Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)
It’s déjà-vu all over again as Ped and Tom revisit a feast of follow-up, minimize their mobile and soak up the wifi on accident in an episode of time well spent (auditorily speaking). After-party in the Zoof Lot.
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Revisitation Station [00:00]
- Put this Möbius strip podcast on endless repeat (at least seven times)
- Welcome new listeners from Anonymous Proxy!
- Grammar Girl Mignon Fogarty reviews an excellent paper ‘on accident’
- Hometown Zoof archetype makes a pop culture appearance
- High school cliques and the social angst of adolescence (the definitive 80s take)
- Bitcoin mining by hand
Minimizing Mobile [21:08]
- Grayscale life-hack (with how-to links)
- “Time Well Spent” draws lines in the Great Tech Debate
Revisitation Station [27:19]
- A-Town FM reviews The Last Jedi
Wondrous WiFi: you’re soaking in it [31:37]
- Dealing with junk science hysteria
- Drinking from Russell’s teapot and the fallacy of argument from ignorance
- Harmful ionization requires high frequency, high power EM waves
- Scientifically literate news would help (thanks, HTG!)
Revisitation Station [52:28]
- A déjà-Who treat for the holidays
- Jodie Whittaker’s Yorkshire accent
Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)
The one where Ped & Tom argue about The Last Jedi for an hour. Spoilers abound. You have been warned!
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Star Wars: The Last Jedi [00:00]
- Hello Internet reviews The Last Jedi (They hated it.)
- A-Town FM reviews The Last Jedi (They loved it.)
- The “backlash” against Star Wars: The Last Jedi , explained (Vox)
- The Emperor’s appearance in The Empire Strikes Back (Original 1980 version)
- Rotten Tomatoes - Critic score vs Audience score
- The Very Best of Nien Nunb
- Palette cleanser - Antiques Roadshow (BBC)
Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)
Ped & Tom go around and around on roundabouts, BritComs, accents, dialects, and bubblers. They revisit the problem of social media dopamine hits, and then explore the promise of Bitcoin and the blockchain.
This episode is brought to you by Patreon supporter Chris!
Chris is awesome-sauce.
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Accents & Dialects [01:44]
- Received Pronunciation
- A tour of British accents
- How Y’all, Youse and You Guys Talk (New York Times)
- Bang a U-ey, Rotary, and Other Boston Slang (Boston University)
Rotaries & Roundabouts [10:32]
- Swindon’s ‘magic’ roundabout
- “Big Ben! Parliament!”
Remaking BritComs [15:16]
- The Office UK vs The Office USA
- The IT Crowd being remade for the US
- Graham Linehan
- Why the Geek Community Hates ‘The Big Bang Theory’
Antisocial Media & Feedback Loops [21:09]
- Former Facebook VP says social media is destroying society (Washington Post)
- Dopamine
- Facebook Messenger for Kids (New York Times)
- Child Online Protection Act (COPA)
- Wait Until 8th
- A deviously hairy online ad (The Verge)
Bitcoin & Blockchain [1:00:43]
- Net neutrality
- Bitcoin
- Blockchain
- Cryptographic hash function
- The Official PedCoin Ledger
Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)
Celebrating the luminous, quiet and noisy joys of the season, Quentin Tarantino has phasers set to kill for Captain Picard, and AlphaZero ushers in a new era of mostly fear for Ped and Tom as they ponder the perils of the new AI. Happy Holidays, humans!
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Yay, snow; nay, leaf blowers [00:27]
- Annual Average Snowfall for New England
- Your average American household at Christmas
- Cats in Christmas Trees
- It’s simple and quiet when it snows
- At least Jean-Luc is on board
- First world problems: noisy machines
Tarantino + Trek: A match made in … ? [14:00]
- Patrick Stewart is all-in
- Tarantino: Remix Artist
AlphaZero and the new AI [26:49]
- Long ago, Deep Blue beat Kasparov with brute force
- In Just 4 Hours, Google’s AI Mastered All the Chess Knowledge in History
- AI’s Hype cycle has now circled back, and this time it means business
- Quickly drawing neural networks back in Episode 04
- Machine Learning neatly explained by CGP Grey
- AlphaZero is AI’s Trinity Test moment
- Minority Report’s PreCogs
- Mutual assured destruction
- The Only Winning Move
- Universal Paperclips
- Final thought to ponder: Eponymous Link
Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)
Ped & Tom celebrate a year of podcasting with their first inductions into the Two Bit Geeks Hall of Fame.
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Too Many Cats! [00:00]
- How Many Cats is Too Many?
- (Stuffed) Cat Chucking in Belgium
ʻOumuamua Update [03:04]
- The first known interstellar object
- Light curve of ‘Oumuamua
- Relevant XKCD 1919 - Interstellar Asteroid
- Asteroid Capture
- Sagan standard
- Occam’s razor
- Cueball and Megan
Evidence Tangent [11:15]
- The Scientific method vs Anecdotal evidence
A Two Bit Anniversary [18:10]
- Two Bit Geeks Episode 1: Roll for Initiative!
- Don’t Start a Podcast (College Humor) h/t to Charlie
- Two Bit Geeks Episode 9: All Aboard from Silly Town!
- The Two Bit Geeks Subreddit h/t to /u/loonling
The Two Bit Geeks Hall of Fame [24:27]
- Adam Ruins Everything - Why Mount Rushmore is the Weirdest Monument
- Archimedes
- Randall Munroe
- Relevant XKCD 1732 - Earth Temperature Timeline
- Relevant XKCD 1262 - Unquote
- Martin Gardner
- The Top 10 Martin Gardner Scientific American Articles
- M. C. Escher
- Martin Gardner bibliography
- Conway’s Game of Life
- Benoit Mandelbrot
- Vi Hart
- Vi’s YouTube channel
- Numberphile by Dr. Brady Haran
- Standup Maths by Matt Parker
- Hexaflexagons by Vi Hart
- How to Make a Hexaflexagon: The Definitive Guide by Vi Hart
- Twelve Tones by Vi Hart
- Nikola Tesla
- Why Nikola Tesla Was the Greatest Geek Who Ever Lived - The Oatmeal
- Elon Musk
- “Weird Al” Yankovic
- White & Nerdy by “Weird Al”
- Gary Gygax
- Dave Arneson
- The great 1980s Dungeons & Dragons panic
- Zork
- Choose Your Own Adventure
- Deathtrap Dungeon
- Leonard Nimoy
- Tom Baker: the definitive Doctor Who?
- “You may be A doctor, but I am The Doctor. The definite article, you might say.”
- ”Fezzes are cool.”
Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)
Deconstructing Tom’s editing filter, briefly Brother X, Star Wars and LOTR news, questionable parenting trends of the modern age and debating the value of death. Plus, Two Bit Geeks t-shirts are here!
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Ode to the Cutting Room Floor [00:22]
- The Curse of Knowledge
- How to remember your dreams
Bits & Pieces [09:40]
- Dare to be Stupid, Weird Al’s sublime pastiche
- A green light for a new Star Wars trilogy (no spoilers, Brother X)
- Bezos pays a boatload for the Lord of the Rings TV rights
Where have all the children gone? [23:51]
- Helicopter parenting and the vanishing neighborhood
- The digital allure of indoors and the decline of play
- The many layers of free-range, boredom and the calibration of letting go
To die or not to die: that is the question [49:05]
- Why Die? by RIP Grey
- Why Age? by Kurzgesagt
- Senescence discussion on Hello Internet
Bonus Round: Two Bit Geeks t-shirts are here!
Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)
Wandering down the aisles of emergent 80s nostalgia, briefly Blade Runner and the satisfaction of reinvention, Dungeons & Dragons gets back on the scene, first light on the biggest bangs in the universe and interstellar greetings from the Vegans of Lyra.
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A special “Thank You” to Patreon supporter Xavier Lambein!
Meandering nostalgia, 80s style [03:20]
- The Banana Splits, mixed-reality early pioneers
- The Stranger Things font is intentionally awesome
- We loved the pace of Blade Runner 2049 (and Roger Deakins’s cinematography)
- Devo’s Satisfaction is the perfect cover
D&D: back and here to stay [17:51]
- Turn on, tune in, drop phone
- Rock Stars of the new platforms: The Adventure Zone and Critical Role
- Wizards of the Coast hit the structure/creative sweet spot with Dungeons and Dragons Fifth Edition
Big news from the sky x 2 [27:30]
- The first observed neutron star collision has astronomy geeks over the moon
- Time + stellar fusion = stuff: Tom, Bill Wurtz and NASA explain how everything got made
- Buzzed by an interstellar fly-by! All hail Vegan King 1I/ʻOumuamua
Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)
31:10!
The busy geeks are back from more travels and buzz through accumulated corrections and followup, followed by a deep dive into software development, a trip to the world of Ahch-To (also know as Ireland), and finally Tom finds himself on a ‘special’ list.
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To sleep, perchance to dream [01:27]
- The Art of Dreaming by Carlos Castaneda
- Lucid dreaming
- Sleep paralysis
- No Dumb Questions 015 - What the Heck is Sleep Paralysis?
Corrections and Followup [10:30]
- Listener correction on Viruses vs Bacteria
- Antibiotic / Antimicrobial Resistance (CDC)
- Mysterious Dimming of Tabby’s Star May Be Caused by Dust (NASA)
- The Search for Planet Nine
- Making Life Multiplanetary (SpaceX)
- The BFR
- Recent Elon Musk Reddit AMA
- Imposter syndrome
- A-Town
Software Development [30:17]
- AngularMix
- User Experience (UX)
- User Stories
- Is 30 too old to start in software engineering or CS? (Hacker News)
- Silicon Valley’s Dark Secret: It’s All About Age (Tech Crunch)
- GitHub
- jQuery
A Trip to Ahch-To [1:00:43]
- Star Wars sets in West Kerry (Episode VIII Spoilers!)
- The mediaeval monastery on Skellig Michael
- Star Wars: The Last Jedi Trailer
- Looper
Airport Security [1:08:06]
- SSSS (Secondary Security Screening Selection)
- What It Means When You Get ‘SSSS’ on Your Boarding Pass (Lifehacker)
- Security theater
- Relevant XKCD: Password Strength
Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)
Climate change, nuclear war, hostile AI, runaway nanotech, supervolcanoes, supermassive meteor strikes and unrelenting alien invasions: Ped and Tom shine a gamma ray burst on the biggest threats to our continued existence. Inspiration optional!
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Micro follow-ups [00:00]
- Todoist is working out great for Ped
- Blink: exceptional standalone sci-fi, and a great Who intro
- Andrew Mao clarifies Resilient Cooperators (more to come)
Handicapping the (Human) Race [15:22]
- Inevitably, we roll along
- Wikipedia at its best: Global Catastrophic Risk
- Nick Bostrom and the Future of Humanity Institute
- Carlin on the anthropocene (and the sixth extinction we’re soaking in)
- Thich Nhat Hanh: evolving intelligence and love
- Interlude: A brief stroll through the Fermi Paradox and the Great Filter
- It’s two and a half minutes to midnight: The Doomsday Clock advances
- Hostile AI: Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking and many others are sounding alarms
- Nanotech ecophagy, Grey Goo and see also Astrochicken
- Just a matter of time: supervolcano eruptions and magnetic pole reversal
- Gamma Ray Bursts - what fun!
Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)
A happy birthday to Curiosity, a stellar job opportunity, and a deep dive into Nicky Case’s game of trust, compassion and resilient cooperation—just don’t tailgate Tom.
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Warming up with Space [00:00]
- Curiosity sings like that
- NASA’s Planetary Protection wants you!
The main event: playing with Trust [05:45]
- The Evolution of Trust (Nicky Case)
- Game Theory 101: The Prisoner’s Dilemma explained
- The WWI Christmas Truce
- TBG Ep. 11: Creating trust in a campaign (13:16)
- The Adventure Zone’s Suffering Game arc
- Resilient Cooperation is where it’s at (Andrew Mao, Lili Dworkin, Siddharth Suri & Duncan J. Watts)
- TBG Ep. 7: Tom forgives the highway cheaters (38:03)
- The Simple Solution to Traffic (CGP Grey)
- Ped’s interpretation of Utilitarianism makes him not like it at all
- Forbidden Island: a pretty cool non-zero-sum board game
- 12.5 years of Diplomacy - nice!
Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)
Ped & Tom experience the August 21, 2017 Total Solar Eclipse within the magical Path of Totality, and survive the traffic nightmare afterwards.
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Eclipse Followup [00:51]
- Episode 1: Roll for Initiative!
- Solar Eclipse of August 11, 1999
- Solar Eclipse of August 21, 2017
- The Path of Totality
- NOAA National Weather Service Cloud Cover Forecast
- City of Sweetwater, Tennessee
- Baily’s Beads
- The 2017 Corona at Totality
- Total Solar Eclipse simulation (Mashable)
- Solar Saros 145
- The 1999 Corona at Totality
- Solar Eclipse of April 8, 2024
- Solar Saros 139
- Why are some total eclipses darker than others? (/r/solareclipse)
- International Space Station Transiting 2017 Eclipse (Smarter Every Day)
- No Dumb Questions podcast with Destin & Matt
- Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area
- Randall’s Eclipse Review (xkcd)
- What is an Annular Solar Eclipse?
- What is a Hybrid Solar Eclipse?
- Pinhole eclipses
- How does Google Maps predict traffic? (How Stuff Works)
- 4th Down: When to Go for It and Why (New York Times)
- List of solar eclipses in the 21st century
- Solar Eclipse of July 2, 2019
- Solar Eclipse of December 14, 2020
- Solar Eclipse of September 2, 2035
- Solar Eclipse of August 12, 2045
- Solar Eclipse of May 1, 2079
Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)
The dramatic conclusion of the The Great Pea Experiment; Ped across America with a road trip redux through five National Parks, seven natural wonders and The Argonath; and there’s good reason to celebrate our 13th Doctor.
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The Great Pea Experiment: riveting finale [00:19]
- The entirety of the pea harvest
Ped across America: road trip redux [04:37]
- The whole trip on a map
- Bison warning (as Tom predicted)
- Ped’s kayak soundtrack: The Argonath!
- A fantastic resource for scenic drives
- Plastic Crazy Straw World, geyser style
-
overthinkingIt: from whence comes “awe”?
Top seven highlights
- South Kaibab Trail, Grand Canyon National Park
- Mexican Hat > Monument Valley, southeast Utah
- East Entrance, Zion National Park
- “The Narrows”, Zion National Park
- Grand Prismatic Spring, Yellowstone National Park
- Blacktail Ponds Overlook, Grand Teton National Park
- Lower Falls Overlook, Yellowstone National Park
The New Doctor: it’s about “time”! [64:40]
- Just a wee bit of “controversy”, though
Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)
Ped invites Tom to try some vocal warmup, before moving on to fingers and hands, cursive redux, neuroplasticity and critical thinking, flora and pesky fauna, plus some brief Star Wars news.
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Vocal Warmup [00:37]
- Aerobics for your voice (NPR)
- Voice and Articulation by Kenneth Crannell – Tom’s college textbook
Fingers and Hands [11:48]
- Muscles of the Hand
- Neuroplasticity
What are today’s kids learning? [22:07]
- Teaching Controversial Topics
- Critical Thinking
Flora and Fauna [28:09]
- Mr. McGregor
- Procyon lotor on the porch
- Gift-giving crows
- That Cuddly Kitty Is Deadlier Than You Think
- Fact or Fiction?: People Swallow 8 Spiders a Year While They Sleep
- Why Do Cats Bring Home Dead Animals?
Han Solo [39:00]
- Ron Howard filmography
Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)
After a hello to our Imperial listeners, Ped & Tom discuss the decline of cursive writing, the Common Core Standards, learning cuneiform, and the purpose of purposeless pursuits. Also, squeaky cats and oatmeal.
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An Imperial listener [00:00]
- The Empire Did Nothing Wrong
- The Ridgeway National Trail
Should we still learn cursive writing? [06:55]
- What is cursive writing?
- Left-handed scissors
- The Common Core State Standards Initiative
- Sentence diagrams
- A math teacher answers the question: When Am I Ever Going to Use This? (Matt Kitchen)
- The Palmer Method
- Cuneiform script
- The Buried Book: The Loss and Rediscovery of the Great Epic of Gilgamesh
- Star Trek:TNG s5e02 “Darmok”
- The Royal Library of Ashurbanipal
Squeaky Cats and Oatmeal [35:35]
- “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” played on squeaking stuffed cats (Rare and Strange Instruments)
- Simple vs Complex Carbohydrates
Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)
Fitness tracking followup, setting goals and how to manage them, aspiring towards Inbox Zero, the benefits of side projects and time scheduling, the manager-self versus the worker-self, and the sensitive plant revisited.
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Fitbit Followup [00:41]
- Previous Fitbit discussion in Episode 06
- The health hazards of sitting
- What sleep tracking apps can and can’t tell you
Are you a goal setting kind of person? [04:38]
- Cortex podcast by CGP Grey and Myke Hurley
- Tom uses OmniFocus for daily task management
- Ped uses Todoist
- Getting Things Done
- Managing your email with Inbox Zero
- Big Rocks First metaphor for scheduling your time
- Time chunking with the Pomodoro Technique
- 7 Ways to Maximize Misery - video by CGP Grey
- And the Reddit discussion
- The Lazy Man’s Guide to Enlightenment by Thaddeus Golas
- Harry Potter’s Pensieve
Drop testing plant memory [35:17]
- Previous discussion of plant memory in Episode 13
- Mimosa pudica, the sensitive plant
- The Secret Life of Plants by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird
- Experience teaches plants to learn faster and forget slower in environments where it matters - Gagliano, M., Renton, M., Depczynski, M. et al. Oecologia (2014) 175: 63. doi:10.1007/s00442–013–2873–7
- What are mechanoreceptors?
- Clever Hans and the observer-expectancy effect
- Human memory versus computer memory
Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)
Alien megastructures on the move, Tom happily hopping across the pond, a lot of bleu at the Pompidou, replicating everything, Fluffernutters in Paris, matching voices with faces and Tom’s tendrils are seriously onto something.
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Tabby Star is Dipping! [00:00]
- “The most mysterious star in the universe” (Tabetha Boyajian TED talk)
- We should totally build a Dyson Sphere (or not)
- Just turn the cube, reveal the message?
An American (Geek) in Paris [10:42]
- Rhapsody in Blue (IKB #002EA7, that is)
- Reddit has spoken: Prado beats the Louvre (for Mona Lisas)
- The Ship of Theseus consumes us all
- Fine American cuisine on display
- The “Vomitorium” (not what Ped thought it was)
Voices and Faces [45:36]
- Great show, but I want to un-see this
- Exclusive reveal - it’s Brother X!
Tom’s Tendrils [54:54]
- In all their emergent glory
- Can this sensitive plant learn? To be continued…
Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)
Giving Tom another micro-hobby, celebrating the return of Doctor Who and MST3K, the first trailer for the The Last Jedi, a trip through the galaxy of the Goldberg Variations and throwing dirt and shade on Ender’s Game.
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Something earthy, something Who; something reboot, something new [00:00]
- Gardening means you put seeds in dirt!
- Nardole, Bill and the Doctor jump start S10
- A taste of MST3K
- The Last Jedi trailer (and some great fan breakdowns)
Bach’s Goldberg Variations [18:20]
- Open Goldberg Variations (free download)
- Bach is “annoyingly unimpeachable”
- Glenn Gould, all into “The Black Pearl”
- Cool viz: Bach showing off with canons (some more)
- The best orchestra gig, hands down
Ender’s Game [44:32]
- In the end… not of universal acclaim
- Well, Tom did like the Fantasy Game (a bit?)
- Existential Crisis Ped is returning to the Earth
Public Domain performance of the Goldberg Variations by Kimiko Ishizaka (CC0 1.0)
Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)
Mystery project part two (or, I Can’t Believe I Just Did That), some mildly interesting follow-up, all hail what we objectively know to be true, even more Who, the mathematical beauty of J.S. Bach and will Ped ever finish his homework.
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Check Ped’s Project (part 2) [00:29]
- And the winner is…
- The importance of trust
- No time for meta, persona
The greatest era of all-time [25:20]
- A mildly interesting subreddit
- Praising 1983 pop
- Waiting in line for Star Wars is awesome (and an upcoming movie)
- Decathlon tournament? You gotta want it…
Spotting-up: Big Finish and Bach [33:58]
- Big Finish on Spotify (thanks, Gallifrey)
- Free Bach Intro: Goldberg Variations
- Is there “mathematical beauty” in elegant logic?
- A blow-you-away Bach viz: Toccata and Fugue
Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)
Scandinavians have excellent taste in podcasts, floating away on uninteresting waves, occupying attention for sleep and creativity, Tom picks Ped’s brain on meditation, mystery project part one and a micro bit of barely audible follow-up.
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On Scandinavia, Sleep and Static [00:59]
- “Sleep With Me” podcast
- White noise for sleep
- White noise for focus
Check Ped’s Head: it’s meditating! [09:55]
- Ready, set: nothing
- The mind needs something to hang its hat on
- Ped is happy for the time to work on discipline
- This is Ped’s style, but there are many to choose from
- The back of Ped’s car has good advice
- A fun song and nice intro to cog sci’s take on the automated mind
Check Ped’s Project (part 1) [34:53]
- It’s a surprise! : )
Micro follow-up [55:41]
- Tom did his homework; Ped will try…
Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)
Crickets by caquet (CC by 3.0)
Wheeling and dealing on a weekday evening, sportsball gets a foot in the door, simulating simulations, tidally locked exoplanets and other cool space stuff that will take forever to get to, lunar tourism and this podcast train is bound for Silly Town.
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Coughing along, singing our song… [00:00]
- Entomology etymology: there’s two XKCDs for that
- A truly Hall Of Fame cereal, brought to you by the 80s
- Pretty much Tom’s crack-of-dawn routine
- Ira Glass and “the NPR voice” (not everyone likes it)
Following follow-up [09:19]
- Can you find Tom’s limerick in HI 77?
- A closed refutation, and an open discussion, of momentum in sport
- Living in a simulation? Don’t think too hard about it…
Space [21:59]
- The ultra-cool TRAPPIST–1
- Playing with the Drake equation
- Tom’s Star Destroyer mineral rights: 16 Psyche
- The Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance are pretty chill
“One of these days, Elon…” [45:18]
- “…pow - straight to the moon!”
- Can one enjoy reading Ender’s Game despite its author? We shall see…
Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)
Evolution and expansion of the greater tribe of geek, a farewell to John Hurt and a bon voyage to Peter Capaldi, pop-culturally informed (?) speculation on Who’s next, and looking forward to the next work from Denis what’s-his-name.
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Ped’s podcast recording studio
Are we not Geeks? [01:04]
- The evolution of Geek, visually and narratively
- Spot-on phase–1 geeks in Stranger Things
- Nichelle Nichols, pioneering role model of Star Trek
Deep Dive on Doctor Who [17:38]
- John Hurt’s finest hour
- Who saw this coming? Best cameo ever
- There’s a subreddit for that: audio drama
- Big Finish Doctor Who audio dramas and more
- Who’s next? Roll the dice (The Ancient One in the lead as of this writing)
A Few Follow-ups [39:08]
- Deep Dive with Denis V on Arrival -> Blade Runner -> Dune*
- Don’t diss the Quakers! (FTR, they’re cool with tech)
Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)
Thanking dear listeners (with apologies to the Dutch and Danes), why are we doing this again?, checking out this super happy milkmaid, purposeless beauty, patience and imperfection, regulating news and paying heed (or not) to speed limits.
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Reviewing the Reviews [01:45]
- Thank you, dear listeners!
- Why create at all? Lotsa different reasons
- Feeling the Norwegian Love
Art of the Intentional, Art of the Accidental [10:40]
- Behold! The Happy Milkmaid
- Thomassons: the short shrift to the frivolous no more
- Embracing imperfection with wabi-sabi and agile
- Desire Paths and usability
Surfing the News Tsunami [30:43]
- (submit your million-dollar solution here)
- Or step outside your comfort/country zone
Speed Limits: strict laws, or helpful suggestions? [38:03]
- Ped’s role model from the 80s
- UK has national speed limits; US, not so much
- Varying tendencies of (in)attentive drivers between countries
- Working with psychology through traffic calming
Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)
A brush with Brother-X, a penny for your data and the cloud for your consciousness, rolling into the theatre of the mind, abandoning Ped to assimilation in the collective and these aren’t the reviewers you’re looking for with Rogue One.
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The X-Factor and Risk Tolerance [0:57]
- Essential qualities of a 5-star movie (Brother-X style)
- Not our cup of tea (but to each his own)
One Fit Geek [11:10]
- Yay, roaming advertising IDs!
- The Faustian Cloud of our time
Rolling with D&D 5e [24:59]
- A taste of play-by-post
- Passionate creativity in fractal human subculture (Mike Shea)
- Free-wheeling narratives-for-fun: The Adventure Zone podcast
Hooking In, Wailing Away [36:22]
- Essential pic: Ped’s new smartphone
- Ped stands corrected! Quakers are totally fine with tech
Rogue One [44:36]
- For those about to hate (we salute you)
- But easter eggs are still really fun
- The fascinating Uncanny Valley
- The Citizen Kane of action films
Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)
Updated subscriber totals, exploring echo chambers, managing the meta-leash, the opt-in nature of truth and practicing good mental hygiene: Ped & Tom get into, under, and all up in the grill of everyone’s favorite internet sensation, Fake News.
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Meta Disclaimers, Before-we-Beginners [00:00]
- The President, the Pope and Mark Zuckerberg walk into a bar
- And the 2016 Oxford Word of the Year is…
- Tom will blow this bridge up if he has to
What is “Fake News?” [06:13]
- Try an echo chamber on for size
- Craig Silverman’s landmark analysis
- This Video Will Make you Angry
Why is it a problem for the modern human mind? [17:57]
- Be thankful Tom pulled on the meta-leash, dear listener
- Shakespeare distinguishes thing-value from human-value
- Not everyone is required to see Santa
-
theresAnXKCDForThat
How do we protect ourselves from it? [39:04]
- Your mind’s instruction manual (404: Page Not Found)
-
theresAnXCKDForThatToo
- A practical, psychology-based take on the science of karma
- …but unconditional love is better [citation needed]
Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)
Quickly drawing on machine learning, practicing good spoiler hygiene, taking a trip with Doctor Strange, the audacious Arrival and Ted Chiang, a language of pure logic, thinking without language and testing episode storage capacity.
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Quick, Draw! [00:39]
- Google doodles with machine learning
The nature and role of spoilers [03:25]
- Darth Vader does the hula dance
- J.J. Abrams’ Into Darkness mea culpa
Doctor Strange [13:00]
- Homer’s space coyote chili pepper vision quest
- A treasure trove of tropes
- “The most widely cited and influential thought experiment about consciousness”
- With great power comes great responsibility
Arrival [24:20]
- Remembering the Story of Your Life
- The wonderful Ted Chiang, in his own words
- Down the wikipedia rabbit-hole with Sapir-Whorf
Can we think without language? [42:20]
- A taste of logical “Lojban”
- Deciphering inscrutable Hegel
- Faulkner attempts to go beyond in As I Lay Dying
.i coi do mi tavla fo la .lojban. .i .e’u do terbejbi’o la’o gy.Two Bit Geeks.gy. poi cravi ku’o te zu’e tu’a lo nu casnu lo cinri .e lo plixau .e lo se xalbo gi’e rinka lo nu pensi
Lojban translation and recording by {suzil}
Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)
Ped flips the script on a telemarketer, Tom embraces his inner athlete, exploring the value of exploring space, assessing the relative worth of shrimp and Daleks and losing one’s composure with The Moral Machine.
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Consciously crafting positive human interactions [00:00]
- The problem with the Do-Not-Call List
Tom’s first 5K (with actual real people) [03:45]
- C25K
- Deep Cut: growing tomatoes in Plato’s Cave
- Tom’s preferred transport method
Should we explore Space? [16:50]
- NASA, The President and Stephen Hawking all seem to think so
- SpaceX: Elon Musk’s ambitious effort to colonize Mars by 2024
- Odds of an asteroid hitting you (and tips on avoiding it)
- Assessing the value of shrimp and Daleks
- Putting our best foot forward
Self-driving cars and The Moral Machine [30:47]
- The Moral Machine
- A novel solution to the trolley problem
- The effect of podcasts on young children
Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)
The pure joy of puttering and sneaky morning naps, attempting to drop the philosophy bomb with Carlos Santana and the nature of inspiration, google:defining the divine and the inexpressible experience of feeling and consciousness.
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Achieving a consistent, regular sleep-cycle [01:45]
- The pure joy of puttering (Sharon Kanner)
- Recreational sleeping
What’s the source of inspiration? [10:37]
- Top Shower Thoughts of all time
- Carlos Santana doing his doodle-oodle-ooo
- The “Flow” state of effortless, immersive creativity
- Where do thoughts come from? A Scientific answer (Dr. John Yohan)
- Where do thoughts come from? A Fluffy answer (Eckhart Tolle)
What defines the “divine?” [32:37]
- Google:define: the supernatural, the divine and God
- Taiji: one take on the “undifferentiated absolute”
What explains feeling and consciousness? [39:20]
- The “hard problem” of consciousness
- Or, the not-so-hard problem
Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)
Ped & Tom are agog with gravitas at the end of Force Awakens, the subjective experience of movies, the marvelous MCU, the 2017 total solar eclipse (featuring the fabulous Path of Totality), climate change XKCD-style, increasing global empathy and saving the species with podcasts in space.
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The end of Force Awakens [00:39]
- Hello Internet discusses the end of Force Awakens
- Comprehensive review of Force Awakens easter eggs (Filup Molina)
The Marvel Cinematic Universe [05:18]
- Which is Nerdier: Star Wars or Star Trek? (College Humor)
Total Solar Eclipse in the US, Aug 21 2017 [17:01]
- The August 21, 2017 Total Solar Eclipse in the US
- The Path of Totality, totally
- “Eclipse Chasers”
XKCD on Climate Change [27:57]
- XKCD 1732: A Timeline of Earth Temperature (the esteemed Randall Munroe)
- “The Hockey Stick Graph”
- NPR critique
- Saving The Planet (George Carlin)
- Foundation series (Isaac Asimov)
- Classic Doctor Who: The Ark in Space
Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)