Feature Creep: Built-in Microwave

Ned and Meg kick off their convo with a discussion of how to piss off men, technofeudalism, sports!!, and the Hum. We talk about the AOMC faltering, how much Ned appreciates espresso over other forms of coffee, and...

Ned and Meg talk about microgenres in art. We also discuss a new turn of phrase, aesthetic erosion, which Meg learned today. We follow the history of microgenres from the 1970s through to the contemporary digital world...

Ned introduces Meg to the mini-genre of music and visual art called Vaporwave. If you grew up in the 1980s and 90s, you will immediately get the aesthetic, because it's digitally repackaged nostalgia for things from our...

Ned and Meg discuss the long history of the concept of hedonism and how it gets sort of a bad rap. For four thousand years, give or take, people have been arguing, sometimes strenuously, over the concept of pleasure and...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...