February 24, 2015 at 6:45PM • 1 hour 40 minutes
TOPIC: Throwing Stars and Managers
This week, Dan and Merlin talk about working in a beehive and discuss whether they played D&D properly.
February 17, 2015 at 6:45PM • 1 hour 33 minutes
TOPIC: Illness, Late Night TV, AI in the home, and Talking Baby Dolls
This week, Merlin battles the flu to talk with Dan about late night television, binge watching, talking baby dolls, and the kind of artificial intelligence we really need.
February 10, 2015 at 1:45PM • 1 hour 40 minutes
TOPIC: Scoping the Minimally-Viable Me
This week, Dan and Merlin catch up on illness, Marvel comics, and what-have-you, but end up talking a lot about who we really are—who "I" actually am. Merlin eventually slips into an imbued and mildly-psychedelic fugue state that may strike the listener as alternately insightful and insane.
January 27, 2015 at 5:00PM • 1 hour 18 minutes
TOPIC: Work as Practice
This week Dan and Merlin chew on some of the numerous eternal imponderables of creative work—with a special focus on "work as practice."
January 21, 2015 at 10:30PM • 2 hours 8 minutes
With Merlin on sabbatical, Dan is joined by John Roderick to discuss his recent visit to Africa, the military, corporate friends, strategic thinking, the Internet, digital books and albums, echoes, playmobil figures, measuring your arms, the tribal world, selling coats on the internet, and more.
January 13, 2015 at 3:00PM • 1 hour 43 minutes
TOPIC: "I am NOT talking about bartending."
A kind of two-parter this week.
First up, a meditation on invasive thoughts, how they can take over our lives, and how we can maybe learn to deal with them.
Second (starting about 38 minutes in), a VERY SPOILER-HEAVY dissection of the amazing new time travel movie, Predestination.
January 6, 2015 at 2:00PM • 1 hour 31 minutes
TOPIC: The things you did or didn't say.
This week, Dan and Merlin sympathize with their pal Marco's recently becoming "way too popular for a day."
What happens when something we said or wrote gets quoted, misquoted, taken out of context, or amplified a thousand times more than we'd expected?
December 30, 2014 at 3:00PM • 1 hour 26 minutes
TOPIC: The Life You Actually Want.
This week, Dan and Merlin talk about organization, multitasking and new year's resolutions.
December 23, 2014 at 4:45PM • 1 hour 8 minutes
TOPIC: The Opacity of the Stack
In this depressing holiday episode, Dan and Merlin talk about how tenuous our modern infrastructures feel. How great it is when everything in the stack "just works"; how increasingly seldom all the pieces work; and how frustrating it can be to figure out exactly what's broken.
December 16, 2014 at 3:30PM • 1 hour 12 minutes
TOPIC: He'll only do three of these.
This week, Dan and Merlin mark their 200th episode by responding to listener feedback and talking about Led Zeppelin and lunch tables.
