Ned and Meg generally don't find reaction videos entertaining, until the personal strife of the reactors becomes apparent, in which case Meg thinks they're riveting. We talk about consuming other people's misery, getting rated for inland water sailing, and the dangers of ingesting household chemicals. This one's a shorty! Thanks for listening, wash your hands, don't be a dick.
In today's episode, two pseudoscientists tell you how to live, and it all starts with woke butter and homeschooling. We talk about alternatives to dairy milk and how non-diary stuff has gotten so much better than what was available only a few years ago. We consider whether milk leaches calcium from your bones and whether you ought to eat fruit before noon. We discuss kitchen gadgetry, ice cream vs gelato, the school to prison pipeline, the rights of nature (finally!!), colors of the day, and a fabulous book recommendation at the end. Thanks for listening, do as we say, wash your hands, don't be dick.
Have you heard the Good News? Ned and Meg are starting a cult! Which cult will it be? That is still up for debate. We haven't really settled into anything yet. Gravity, books, and white noise are all in the running for the focus of our hypothetical cult. What cult will you start and what are we gonna do with all the cash? As always, thanks for listening, wash your hands, don't be a dick.
Meg and Ned decide to design a cult, but first we need some background. You would think years of Catholic 'education' would prepare Meg for this but whatever they said in CCD classes never stuck and Ned was raised without religion, so we need to do some research. We also forgot to get into the shit with Janja Lalich but more on that in #2. For now, join us on our preliminary endeavor into designing a cult. Thanks for listening, wash your hands, don't be a dick.
Poison! Poi-poi-poison! In a serendipitous moment of uncertainty, a fascinating email arrived in Meg's inbox and graced us all with the topic of today's episode: intentional food poisonings. When we were little, this included urban legends around sabotaged Halloween candy meant to force children to behave (ok, boomers), but in real life there have been many, many intentional and very real food poisonings. We explore a selection here. Thanks for listening, wash your hands, fund the FDA, don't be a dick!
Ned and Meg chat about the Simming Problem, which is a concept from Iain Banks, a sci-fi writer, about the ethics of simulating entities or individuals or whatever. The *whatever* bit is because how we define all these things gets real dicey and yet makes all the difference. What is an agent, or an intelligence, or a substrate or authenticity and is consciousness an emergent property of sufficiently complex systems? Who fucking knows! Hard question! How do you get ChatGPT to say fuck fifteen times? Turns out that's easy. Thanks for listening, wash your hands, don't be a dick.
Ned and Meg admire the magnificent Dieter Rams, who pointed and shrugged his way into our hearts, and we discuss his legendary ten principles of good design.
Ned and Meg celebrate the near-anniversary of the Titan Sub Failure with a couple updates about the ongoing situation, lawsuits, obituaries, and so on. We also learn a couple things about the Gay Agenda, no relation to the Titan Sub Failure. Thanks for listening to our schadenfreude. Wash your hands, don’t be a dick!
Ned and Meg recorded this so long ago that they don't even remember what it's about! It's like looking for a pine needle in a haystack, or some other bad analogy. We are apt to surprise and delight (maybe) everyone, even us (probably). I mean delighting ourselves is basically the whole point of this thing. Thanks for listening, wash your hands, don't be a dick!
Meg and Ned talk about an awful book in the category of self-help writing that Meg had to read for school. It's about how our culture in America shames women and it totally sucks not because it's true, which it is, but because it fails in its aims, except for one tiny excerpt near the very end and that part is about a man. It's the only part of the book that is any good. That's an opinion. If this book saved your life, well, bully for you. We also discuss just what the hell is wrong with our parents' entire generation. In light of this we discuss shame, shaming, shame as a tool of control, and shamey shame-shame. Also poop. Lotta poop. Thanks for joining us, wash your hands, don't be a dick.
Ned and Meg explore examples of familial triangulation involving people who grew up before answering machines and modern smartphone technologies. This leads to a chat about doubling down. Thanks for listening, wash your hands, don't be a dick.
Meg forces Ned to explain Net Neutrality on the spot, and then after that we talk about how US courts just overturned it, which is bad. In addition to the bad idea of ending net neutrality, we also talk about flat earth. Thanks for listening, wash your hands, don't be a dick!
Ned and Meg talk about #fff8e7, the hexadecimal index of the color Cosmic Latte. And what is a cosmic latte? Why, it's the average color of all the light emitted in the universe, or close to it! We chat about how this color came to be known in 2002 and the guys who discovered it. We also talk about physics jokes, free will and the double slit experiment, deterministic universes, and coffee. Because of course we talk about coffee. Thanks for listening, wash your hands, and don't be a dick!
Ned and Meg get off topic super quick because we were in the same room again. Joy! Hello to everyone we met in San Diego, you're all wonderful! Ned and Meg talk about people who hang themselves with their own ropes, also idiomatically known as being hoisted by one's own petard, thank you Shakespeare. We talk about whales and linguistics and dogs with vocabulary buttons and the meaning of the phrase 'from scratch,' plus Bde Maka Ska, a lake in Minneapolis. Thanks for listening, wash your hands, don't be a dick!
Ned and Meg talk about the latest hype at the intersection of the art world and block chain, NFTs. We dish on digital assets, block chain public ledgers, the black market, intellectual property rights, and all the major problems with NFTs. This whole topic is both as crazy and not as crazy as you may already think. Watch out! This one’s a trip. Wash your hands, wear a mask, get yer shots, don’t be a dick, thanks for listening.
Ned and Meg have some thoughts about content, content creation, and what the fuck is going on. Also this one is as the name says, so we sorta forget what happens after that. Thanks for listening, wash your hands, don’t be a dick.
Ned and Meg give their thoughts about Derry Girls, a cute and adorable television show set in Ireland in the 1990s with The Troubles and a Catholic school setting as hilarious and relatable backdrops to the lives of teenage friends. We get sidetracked by pizza and fish that share a name, how everything costs $300 now, endless road trips, and a list of Neds. Thanks for listening, wash your hands, don't be a dick!
Ned and Meg give their thoughts about Derry Girls, a cute and adorable television show set in Ireland in the 1990s with The Troubles and a Catholic school setting as hilarious and relatable backdrops to the lives of teenage friends. We get sidetracked by pizza and fish that share a name, how everything costs $300 now, endless road trips, and a list of Neds. Thanks for listening, wash your hands, don't be a dick!
Ned and Meg have some thoughts about content, content creation, and what the fuck is going on. Also this one is as the name says, so we sorta forget what happens after that. Thanks for listening, wash your hands, don’t be a dick.
Sierra and Ned spend a lovely afternoon debating the merits of recording an audioboook. Join in and find out all about Ned's angst for the US medical system. Oops, I mean all about the our ideas for a new art project.