🎧 Entanglement | Invisibilia (NPR)

Listened to Entanglement from Invisibilia | NPR.org
In Entanglement, you'll meet a woman with Mirror Touch Synesthesia who can physically feel what she sees others feeling. And an exploration of the ways in which all of us are connected — more literally than you might realize. The hour will start with physics and end with a conversation with comedian Maria Bamford and her mother. They discuss what it's like to be entangled through impersonation.
I can think of a few specific quirks I’ve got that touch tangentially on mirror synethesia. This story and some of the research behind it is truly fascinating. Particularly interesting are the ideas of the contagion of emotion. It would be interesting to take some complexity and network theory and add some mathematical models to see how this might look. In particular the recent political protests in the U.S. might make great models. This also makes me wonder where Donald Trump sits on this emotional empathy spectrum, if at all.

One of the more interesting take-aways: the thoughts and emotions of those around you can affect you far more than you imagine.

Four episodes in and this podcast is still impossibly awesome. I don’t know if I’ve had so many thought changing ideas since I read David Christian’s book Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History[1] The sad problem is that I’m listening to them at a far faster pace than they could ever continue to produce them.

References

[1]
D. Christian, Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History. Univ of California Press, 2004.

Day 40 – Melancholy | Aaron Parecki

Listened to Melancholy from aaronparecki.com
Day 40. This is mostly me playing the piano live. In a few places I adjusted the timing, and I added a couple notes that I wouldn't have otherwise been able to reach. I doubled the piano with two slightly different piano sounds, and they are panned hard left and hard right. This adds a bit of depth to it. I added the drum track at a relatively low volume to kind of keep things moving a bit more than it would without the drums. This one came out a lot more melancholy than I thought it was going to despite it being in a major key.

🎧 How to Become Batman | Invisibilia (NPR)

Listened to How to Become Batman from Invisibilia | NPR.org
In "How to Become Batman," Alix and Lulu examine the surprising effect that our expectations can have on the people around us. You'll hear how people's expectations can influence how well a rat runs a maze. Plus, the story of a man who is blind and says expectations have helped him see. Yes. See. This journey is not without skeptics.
Expectations are much more important than we think.

Is it possible that this podcast is getting more interesting as it continues along?! In three episodes, I’ve gone from fan to fanboy.

🎧 Fearless | Invisibilia (NPR)

Listened to Fearless from Invisibilia | NPR.org
In "Fearless," co-hosts Alix Spiegel and Lulu Miller explore what would happen if you could disappear fear. A group of scientists believe that people no longer need fear — at least not the kind we live with — to navigate the modern world. We'll hear about the striking (and rare) case of a woman with no fear. The second half of the show explores how the rest of us might "turn off" fear.
Our evolution certainly hasn’t been keeping up with our level of fear in the modern world. Even simple things like kids playing around their own neighborhood like I did as a kid in the 70’s and 80’s has changed drastically. How can we keep ourselves from being held back unnecessarily?

This Week in Google 388: A Doctor in Industry

Listened to This Week in Google 388: A Doctor in Industry from twit.tv
Jeff Jarvis' report from the World Economic Forum in Davos. Artificial intelligences of the future. Google smartwatch with Android Wear 2.0 to launch February 9th. The most common passwords of 2016. Chelsea Manning's sentence commuted. Samsung Galaxy Note 7 battery fires caused by... the battery, details to follow January 23rd.

Jeff's Number: 2017 Edelman Trust Barometer
Stacey's Thing: Stringify
Kevin's Stuff: Homebrew Website Club, Webmention, Micro.blog
Leo's Tools: The Nicest Place on the Internet, Astronaut.io, The Internet Archive

Word of the day:

A piebald or pied animal is one that has a pattern of pigmented spots on an unpigmented (white) background of hair, feathers or scales.

🎧 The Secret History of Thoughts | Invisibilia (NPR)

Listened to The Secret History of Thoughts from Invisibilia | NPR.org
In "The Secret History of Thoughts," co-hosts Alix Spiegel and Lulu Miller ask the question, "Are my thoughts related to my inner wishes, do they reveal who I really am?" The answer can have profound consequences for your life. Hear the story of a man gripped by violent thoughts, and explore how various psychologists make sense of his experience. Also, meet a man trapped inside his head for 13 years with thoughts as his only companion.
What an awesome little podcast Invisibilia is! Can’t wait to catch the rest of the episodes. Interesting to hear the quick overview of the three schools of thought on thought.

I had been hearing commercials for this off and on from other podcasts for almost a year; glad I finally downloaded to listen.

This Week in Google 387: Mommy’s Special Shawl

Listened to This Week in Google 387: Mommy's Special Shawl from twit.tv
Stacey's LONG list of great IoT gadgets at CES. The Ara modular smartphone's rise and fall. The death of Google Hangouts API. WayMo makes LIDAR way cheaper. Marissa Mayer to leave Yahoo after sale. Bogus "inventor of e-mail" sues Techdirt. Aaron's Thing: The Onion Omega2 Stacey's Do Buy: truMedic Instashiatsu Plus Neck and Shoulder Massager Stacey's Don't Buy: GE Z-Wave Wireless Smart Door Sensor Leo's Thing: Project Fi - A World of Thanks

https://youtu.be/94RLrs5eJGk

🎧 A deep dive into cucurbit names | Eat This Podcast

Listened to A deep dive into cucurbit names from Eat This Podcast
Continuing the short season of bits and pieces that didn't quite fit in the year's episodes by getting to grips with the origin of "gherkin" and other names we give cucurbits.

🎧 Long live the Carolina African Runner | Eat This Podcast

Listened to Long live the Carolina African Runner from Eat This Podcast
Is the Carolina Runner No.4 peanut "the first peanut cultivated in North America" and does it matter anyway?

🎧 India’s bread landscape and my plans here | Eat This Podcast

Listened to India’s bread landscape and my plans here from Eat This Podcast
I’ve hinted before that I’d like to do more constructed shows here, where I speak to a few different people about a topic to try and get a broader sense of the subject. They’re harder to do, but more rewarding, and they consistently get more listeners. The problem is that as a one-man band, I don’t have the time I need to do that kind of show very often. As an experiment, I’m going to try chunking episodes into seasons, with a break between seasons when I’ll be working on those more complex shows. I’m not sure yet how long either the seasons or the breaks will be.

This Week in Google 386: You Got Something Jammed in There Good

Listened to This Week in Google 386: You Got Something Jammed in There Good from twit.tv
How targeted ads on Google and Facebook are affecting politics and destroying mass media. CES 2017: Alexa everywhere, Samsung's Chromebook Pro, Asus ZenFones, and Qualcomm's Snapdragon 835. Google Home's New Year Resolutions. Jeff's Number: Celebrity Telethon on Facebook Live vs. Trump inauguration Mathew's Stuff: From Tape Drives to Memory Orbs, the Data Formats of Star Wars Suck (Spoilers) Leo's Tool: Pre-register Super Mario Run for Android

https://youtu.be/NimNITf_Q9o

This Week in Google 384: Schmoopie

Listened to This Week in Google 384: Schmoopie from twit.tv
What the world searched for in 2016, Mark Zuckerberg's AI home assistant sounds like Morgan Freeman, fake news, Uber loses $3 billion, Tom Wheeler quits the FCC, Waymo minivans. Stacey's Thing: Canary Flex Jeff's Number: $250 million home for tech in NYC Leo's Tool: Netgear Orbi

https://youtu.be/A_xRNdvxrUc

This Week in Google 383: The Spectacles Spectacular

Listened to This Week in Google 383: The Spectacles Spectacular from twit.tv
Trump meets with tech leaders. Yahoo reveals a new hack of 1 billion accounts. Google's self-driving division is now a new Alphabet company called Waymo. Google Assistant will add Actions on Google. Android Things, Google's IoT platform, gets a developer preview. Is Magic Leap a hoax?

https://youtu.be/yhrgzgbgh8Y

🎧 Gillmor Gang: Unborn Child

Listened to Gillmor Gang: Unborn Child from TechCrunch
The Gillmor Gang — Robert Scoble, Keith Teare, Frank Radice, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor. Recorded live Friday, August 26, 2016. Oh no, Volumetrics meets the Beatles in a trip forward down memory lane. Eventually we even discover the chewy center.

Note from 12/20/16: Like others commented on the show, the concept of the Unborn Child and the Living Dead in analogizing new technologies (at least from the perspective of venture capital) is a very interesting and useful one.