Gweek 070: John Hodgman returns

Click here to play this episode. Gweek is Boing Boing’s podcast about comic books, science fiction and fantasy, video games, board games, tools, gadgets, apps, and other neat stuff.

My co-hosts for this episode:

Glenn Fleishman. Glenn is a long-time tech reporter, a hacky perl programmer, and one of the writers of the Economist’s Babbage blog on technology and culture.

Kevin Mack. Kevin is a visual effects supervisor, an artist, and the true son of Tinkerbell. (Here’s a video profile of Kevin and me.)

John Hodgman. Among other things, John’s the resident expert on The Daily Show and the judge on the Judge John Hodgman Podcast. The third and final installment in his trilogy of Complete World Knowledge — called That Is All — comes out in paperback and audiobook today. John and Jonathan Coulton are performing together Boston and Northampton on November 2nd and 3rd. Learn more about the events here.

In this episode, we talked about:

That is All. John Hodgman brings us the third and final installment in his trilogy of Complete World Knowledge. The paperback is loaded with new material!

Skype is owned by Microsoft now, and the latest version stinks. Glenn: “Microsoft reengineered its security infrastructure to make it easier to tap Skype calls. I maintain and others maintain, and that process caused worse phone connections.”

Postsingular, by Rudy Rucker.

Glenn: “Jo Walton’s Among Others just won Hugo. Terrific novel. Also recently read her Small Change trilogy (from 2006, 2007, and 2008)”

John recommends Reamde, by Neal Stephenson: “A thriller of international espionage but it puts the cliches of international espionage thrillers so far behind it.”

How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character, by Paul Tough

DenTek Slim Brush Cleaners: “Like tiny bottle brushes. Much better than dental floss.”

Samsara. A non-narrative documentary shot in 25 countries.

And much more!

Past episodes of Gweek: 001, 001, 002, 003, 004, 005, 006, 007, 008, 009, 010, 011, 012, 013, 014, 015, 016, 017, 018, 019, 020, 021, 022, 023, 024, 025, 026, 027, 028, 029, 030, 031, 032, 033, 034, 035, 036, 037, 038, 039, 040, 041, 042, 043, 044, 045, 046, 047, 048, 049, 050, 051, 052, 053, 054, 055, 056, 057, 058, 059, 060, 061, 062, 063, 064, 065, 066, 067, 068, 069, 070