Boing Boing » Audio

Cory's Sense About Science lecture

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 20 May 2013 15:20:01 +0000

I gave the annual Sense About Science lecture last week in London, and The Guardian recorded and podcasted it (MP3). It's based on the Waffle Iron Connected to a Fax Machine talk I gave at Re:publica in Berlin the week before.

Will robots take all the jobs?

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 17 May 2013 15:46:26 +0000

In a fascinating installment of the IEEE Techwise podcast [MP3], Rice University Computational Engineering prof Moshe Vardi discusses the possibility that robots will obviate human labor faster than new jobs are created, leaving us with no jobs. This needn't be a bad thing -- it might mean finally realizing the age of leisure we've been promised since the first glimmers of the industrial revolution -- but if market economies can't figure out how to equitably distribute the fruits of automation, it might end up with an even bigger, even more hopeless underclass.

I think the issue of machine intelligence and jobs deserves some serious discussion. I don’t know that we will reach a definite conclusion, and it’s not clear how easy it will be to agree on desired actions, but I think the topic is important enough that it deserves discussion. And right now I would say it’s mostly being discussed by economists, by labor economists. It has to also be discussed by the people that produce the technology, because one of the questions we could ask is, you know, there is a concept that, for example, that people have started talking about, which is that we are using, we are creating technology that has no friction, okay? Creating many things that are just too easy to do.

Many of these ideas came up in this Boing Boing post from January, which also touches on Race Against the Machine: How the Digital Revolution is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy, a book that Vardi mentions in his interview.

The Job Market of 2045 (via /.)

Back to the 60s with Star Trek sequel's sound designer

Rob Beschizza — Wed, 15 May 2013 11:57:43 +0000

Tami Katzoff interviews Ben Burtt for MTV News:

While researching the sounds from the classic series, Burtt discovered that they were created with a Hammond chord organ. "Going back and getting some organ recordings and playing with it, I was able to fashion some things very similar to the transporter, perhaps exactly the same way, so that's in there."

Tim Wu and Cory talk networks, policy and the future

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 07 May 2013 00:39:46 +0000

Slate's "Stranger Than Fiction" podcast has just aired its second episode: a discussion between Tim Wu (a cyberlawyer, Internet scholar and good egg) and me (MP3)! Future installments will include talks with Kim Stanley Robinson and Margaret Atwood (as well as others) -- the inaugural episode featured Tim in discussion with Neal Stephenson.

Future Tense: Neal Stephenson and Tim Wu talk future, sf and tech

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 13:58:07 +0000

Slate, the New America Foundation and Arizona State University have kicked off a new podcast called "Future Tense," hosted by Internet scholar Tim Wu. The inaugural episode is an interview with Neal Stephenson wherein Neal and Tim talk about where the future has gone -- why we no longer seem to dream of jetpacks and instead focus on fiddly mobile phones. Stephenson gets some very good points in on the lack of predictivity in science fiction, and what sf really contributes to the future.

There are six installments in all -- coming episodes include conversations with Margaret Atwood and me!

Stranger Than Fiction, Neal Stephenson Edition

MP3 link

(Thanks, Tim!)

(Image: Neal Stephenson Answers Questions, a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (2.0) image from jmpk's photostream)

How geeks can get involved in politics (and why they should)

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 01:31:40 +0000

Thomas Gideon, host of the Command Line podcast and technical director of the Open Technology Institute at New America Foundation gave a great speech at the Northeast Linux Fest. His talk, which is outlined in detail here, was about getting free software geeks involved in political activism, and was a thoughtful explanation of the differences between the way free software stuff gets done and the way that Congress gets stuff done. (MP3)

Podcast to mark centennial of Marc Davis, co-creator of Haunted Mansion, Pirates of the Caribbean

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 04:06:09 +0000

Jeff Baham from HauntedMansion.com sez, "March 30 marked the centennial of the birth of Marc Davis, one of Walt Disney's "Nine Old Men" who was responsible for both the creation of some of Disney's iconic characters (Tinker Bell, Maleficent) and iconic theme park attractions (Pirates of the Caribbean, the Haunted Mansion). The Mousetalgia podcast is noting the life and work of Davis with a special episode dedicated to his career, including a never-published interview with Davis himself and a recent conversation with his widow and fellow Disney Imagineer, Alice Davis. Of special note are Marc and Alice's recollections about Marc joining the Disney Studio in the '20s, where he worked on Snow White."

Mousetalgia Episode 230: Remembering Marc Davis with Alice Davis

MP3 link

(Thanks, Jeff!)

Autonomous sensory meridian response - self-diagnosed neurological condition/superpower that makes you really enjoy whispering

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 02:34:57 +0000

In Tribes, this week's This American Life podcast, a woman with "Autonomous sensory meridian response" describes her curious neurological condition. When she hears boring, whispering voices, she experiences pleasurable, relaxing "brain shivers" that are so nice, she finds herself watching the Home Shopping Network for hours (and hours!) at a time. There's a whole YouTube subculture of ASMR videos in which (mostly) women whisper quietly as they narrate their jewelry condition, or role-play giving you a shave.

There's not much science on ASMR (yet), but a Sheffield university prof doesn't discount the possibility that it is real.

ASMR subculture feels like something out of a very good recent William Gibson novel, and it's apparently real.

Songwriting podcast with Richard Sherman of Disney's Sherman Brothers

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 01:18:58 +0000

Sodajerker, a British podcast devoted to songwriting, produced a great one-hour episode with Disney songwriting legend Richard M Sherman, half of the Sherman Brothers team that gave us everything from "It's a Small World" to "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" (and lots more). Hearing Sherman talk about his work is fascinating.

As one half of The Sherman Brothers, along with his late brother Robert, Richard M. Sherman is responsible for co-writing the most memorable Disney songs of all time. From the Academy Award winning compositions for Mary Poppins such as ‘A Spoonful of Sugar’, ‘Feed the Birds’, ‘Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’, ‘Jolly Holiday’, ‘I Love to Laugh’ and ‘Let’s Go Fly a Kite’, to other landmark Disney works such as The Parent Trap, ‘It’s a Small World (After All)’, ‘I Wanna Be Like You’ (The Jungle Book), Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, The Aristocats, Bedknobs and Broomsticks and Winnie the Pooh, the Sherman Brothers have enchanted people of all ages for half a century. In this hour of conversation, Richard M. Sherman joins Simon and Brian to talk through the writing of many of these classics in his own inimitable style.

Episode 38 – Richard M. Sherman

MP3 link

(Image: "it's a small world" holiday, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from harshlight's photostream)

Frank Zappa reads the dirty bits of Naked Lunch

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 21:24:23 +0000

Here's a bit of audio of Frank Zappa reading some of the dirty parts of William S Burroughs's Naked Lunch, taken from a rare double LP called "The Nova Convention."

The occasion of this reading was the Nova Convention in 1978, three days and nights of readings, panel discussions, film screenings, and performances that, The New York Times wrote at the time, “sought to grapple with some of the implications of the writing” of Burroughs. In addition to Burroughs and Zappa, the convention featured such notable countercultural names as Terry Southern, Patti Smith, Philip Glass, Brion Gysin, John Cage, Timothy Leary, and Robert Anton Wilson. A good bit of the happening (including the audio above) was recorded for posterity and released as a double-LP by Giorno Poetry Systems.

Frank Zappa Reads NSFW Passage From William Burroughs’ Naked Lunch (1978) (via MeFi)

Bruce Sterling's closing SXSW keynote: disruption and destruction

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 02:50:11 +0000

In Bruce Sterling's barn-burning closing keynote for SXSW 2013, he confronts the realities of disruption -- that disruption leads to destruction. Our wonderful things destroy other wonderful things. The future composts the past. We roast the 20th century over our bonfire, let's not shamefully pretend that we did it by accident. Let's eat our kill.

Important stuff.

Bruce Sterling closing remarks at SXSW2013

Audio from my Homeland tour presentation

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 16:00:46 +0000

Thomas "Command Line" Gideon came out for the DC stop on my Homeland tour, at Busboys and Poets, and mic'ed me up for the event. He's mastered the audio and posted it. It's a 40 minute talk about the promise of technology to improve our lives, the risks from allowing technology to be used to surveil and control us, and the contributions Aaron Swartz made to this cause and to the book. There's also about 20 minutes of Q&A.

TCLP 2013-03-13 Cory Doctorow on the Themes of “Homeland”

MP3

Subscribe to Command Line podcast (RSS/XML)

Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere as a BBC radio play

Cory Doctorow — Sat, 09 Mar 2013 07:34:21 +0000

Dan sez, "The BBC have produced a radio play of Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere with a host of great British actors. Sounds exactly like you want it to sound."

Radio doc on albinism: the Invisible Albino

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 03:03:19 +0000

Garth sez, "There's only 1 in 20 000 of us, so most people have never met an 'albino' in real life. And yet, we are everywhere: The idea of 'the albino' has seized the popular imagination from the circus sideshow to the negative stereotypes of modern cinema to a gruesome East African black market in albino body parts. Popular culture attributes many qualities to "the albino;" an outsider; a magical being; a human embodiment of evil. In some cultures, albinism is associated with mystical or prophetic power or even ghosts. The albino body has long been an object of ridicule and fascination; of fear and fetishism. I'm a person with albinism who just made a radio documentary on ideas about albinism in pop culture and around the world, airing tonight on CBC Radio in Canada. It can be listened to at any time, and from anywhere, at the link. I thought the topic would be especially interesting to Boing Boing readers."

Interview with Rick Kleffel about Homeland

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 01:11:51 +0000

Last week I sat down for an interview with Rick Kleffel at KQED in San Francisco. He's put the whole interview -- a long one! -- up in his Trashotron podcast feed. We talked about Homeland and other things. Rick, as always, was a very astute interviewer.

MP3 link

Interview with creators of "Escape from Tomorrow"

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 21:09:49 +0000

Aaja sez, "The great Disney fan Podcast Wedway Radio has an interview with the cinematographer of the controversial film "Escape from Tomorrow". It's interesting to hear more about the film making experience and the relationship the film makers have towards the Disney parks."

On this episode we are lucky enough to be joined by someone who has seen the controversial film set at Walt Disney World, Escape From Tomorrow at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. We also got the opportunity to discuss the making of the film and some of the controversial elements of the film with the cinematographer of the film, Lucas Graham.

Escape From Tomorrow - show notes for NOW! #28

MP3 download

Reading from Homeland

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 17:30:37 +0000

This week on my podcast, I've posted a reading (MP3) from Homeland, the sequel to Little Brother, which will be published on February 5 -- that's one week from tomorrow!

Punk Voyager: when the punks launched their own space-probe

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 20:00:42 +0000

"Punk Voyager" is this week's story on the Escape Pod podcast, and it is fucking amazing. It's Shaenon Garrity story about punks at the twilight of the 1970s who are drunkenly outraged to discover that the Voyager probe has been launched with classical music records for aliens. They build their own Voyager probe out of garbage, razor-blades, beer cans and a surfboard some douchebag left on the beach, filled with all the most important human artifacts that they can find in their van. They forget about it as the 80s roar in, and then the aliens come to Earth and cockpunch Ronald Reagan.

Fuck yeah.

Punk Voyager was built by punks. They made it from beer cans, razors, safety pins, and a surfboard some D-bag had left on the beach. Also plutonium. Where did they get plutonium? Around. Fuck you.
The punks who built Punk Voyager were Johnny Bonesaw, Johnny Razor, Mexican Johnny D-bag, Red Viscera, and some other guys. No, asshole, nobody remembers what other guys. They were Fucking wasted, these punks. They’d been drinking on the San Diego beach all day and night, talking about making a run to Tijuana and then forgetting and punching each other. They’d built a fire on the beach, and all night the fire went up and went down while the punks threw beer cans at the seagulls.
Forget the shit I just said, it wasn’t the punks who did it. They were Fucking punks. The hell they know about astro-engineering? Truth is that Punk Voyager was the strung-out masterpiece of Mexican Johnny D-bag’s girlfriend, Lacuna, who had a doctorate in structural engineering. Before she burned out and ran for the coast, Lacuna was named Alice McGuire and built secret nuclear submarines for a government contractor in Ohio. It sucked. But that was where she got the skills to construct an unmanned deep-space probe. Same principle, right? Keep the radiation in and the water out. Or the vacuum of space, whatever, it’s all the same shit to an engineer.
Fuck that, it wasn’t really Lacuna’s baby. It wasn’t her idea. The idea was Red’s.
“Fucking space,” he said that fateful night. He was lying on his back looking up at space, is why he said it.
“Hell yeah,” said Johnny Bonesaw.

Punk Voyager

Great economics/storytelling podcast

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 23:40:39 +0000

Tim Harford (Undercover Economist, guest blogger, statistical superhero) has a new show on BBC Radio 4, called Pop Up Economics: well-told tales about the dismal science. The inaugural episode (MP3) is a beautiful parable about innovation and invention.

2600 radio tribute to Aaron Swartz

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 16:49:26 +0000

Emmanuel Goldstein from 2600 magazine sez, "We've gotten such a strong response to this and wanted to make sure anyone who knew Aaron - or who simply knew OF him - got a chance to hear the hour-long tribute from Wednesday's 'Off The Hook' radio program in New York, a show he was a guest on only a few months ago. We played an excerpt of that, along with part of an incredible interview with Aaron at age 14 that underlines what a remarkable person he was. We also delved into the issue of depression in our community with excerpts from the 'Geeks and Depression' panel at HOPE Number Nine, and we had a roundtable discussion on what we can do better and where people at risk can turn. It's part of a continuing conversation that we need to have in every conceivable forum.

Pesco on stereo tube amps of today

David Pescovitz — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 16:34:56 +0000

Over at our sponsor Intel's My Life Scoop site, I wrote about several modern tube amps to warm up your digital music.

In the ongoing analog vs. digital debate, there are myriad measurements involving frequency response, distortion levels, and dynamic range that both sides cite to “prove” that the other is misinformed, unscientific, or just plain wrong. One path to consider is playing your digital tunes through an analog stereo, ranging from a headphone-to-RCA cable to a high-end digital-to-analog converter. Some might say that’s the best of both worlds; others would say you’d be better off with an AM radio. Ultimately though, it’s all about personal perception. So with that in mind, here are several products for bridging the gap between your digital music and your analog ears. The irony of running lousy and lossy mp3s through high-quality tube amps isn’t lost on me. But at least the enchanting glow of the vacuum tubes will distract you.

"Digital Music Meet Analog Stereo"

Stefan Riepl’s vacuum tube photo from Wikimedia Commons

Paul Frees tries out narration for the Haunted Mansion

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 20:10:16 +0000

Check out this amazing reel of Paul Frees trying out different narration choices for the Disneyland Haunted Mansion. It comes from the excellent (and out of print) Haunted Mansion Original Soundtrack, which I am a proud owner of. Neener.

The Genius of Paul Frees

What's entropy?

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 23:27:10 +0000

I sat down with the fascinating crew at the Titanium Physicists podcast to serve as their special physics-ignoramus guest in an episode about entropy (MP3)

Lord Buckley recounts the life of Christ: The Nazz!

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 24 Dec 2012 16:40:21 +0000

Boing Boing is committed to bringing you your annual portion of Lord Buckley's inspirational beat poetry. Earlier this month, I posted his version of "A Christmas Carol". Now, here's "The Nazz," Lord Buckley's indispensible biography of Jesus Christ. This is all the Christmas cheer anyone needs. With this alone, we could rebuild civilization from rubble.

Lord Buckley - The Nazz (Thanks, Iain!)

See also: Dig Infinity!, a biography of Lord Buckley

HOWTO convert an MP3 to a playable, 3D printed record

Cory Doctorow — Sat, 22 Dec 2012 13:39:45 +0000

Instructables user Amandaghassaei has posted a HOWTO for making a 3D printed record that plays on a regular turntable. Her method converts any digital audio file to grooves ready to print. It's a bit fuzzy, but still rather exciting! I'm waiting for the way when taking a snapshot of a vinyl disc can be the first step toward deriving its audio content, converting that back to a shapefile, and printing out a high-fidelity duplicate.

In this Instructable, I'll demonstrate how I developed a workflow that can convert any audio file, of virtually any format, into a 3D model of a record. This is far too complex a task to perform with traditional drafting-style CAD techniques, so I wrote an program to do this conversion automatically. It works by importing raw audio data, performing some calculations to generate the geometry of a record, and eventually exporting this geometry straight to the STL file format (used by all 3D printers). Most of the heavy lifting is done by Processing, an open source environment that's often used for coding interactive graphics applications. To get Processing to export to STL, I used the ModelBuilder Library written by Marius Watz (if you are into Arduino/Processing and 3D printing I highly recommend checking this out, it works great).
I've uploaded some of my complete record models to the 123D gallery as well as the Pirate Bay. Check Step 6 for a complete listing of what's there and what I plan on posting. Alternatively, you can go to Step 7 to download my code and learn how to make your own printable records from any audio file you like.

3D Printed Record

Never work with animals or children

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 18:23:34 +0000

In which my daughter shows that she's a million times the podcaster her old man ever was.

Crypto and Bletchley Park podcast from BBC's Infinite Monkey Cage

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 20:01:24 +0000

BBC Radio 4's great math and science show "The Infinite Monkey Cage" did a great (and very funny) episode on crypto and Bletchley Park, with Robin Ince, Brian Cox, Dave Gorman, Simon Singh and Dr Sue Black.

Secret Science

MP3

(via Schneier)

Live, online Spider Robinson lecture on writing science fiction

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 19:48:54 +0000

Tony Smith from the StarShipSofa science fiction podcast sez, "Spider Robinson will share the sofa for a confidential live online talk full of anecdotes and insights about science fiction, the publishing industry, and his lifelong journey as a reader, writer, and voice of the genre. Don't think of this as a lecture; think of it as a cosy chat with an old friend, one who just happens to be a shining star of contemporary science fiction and who knows all the juicy, meaningful stories you can't find in 'how to' books. See the genre as you've never seen it before, through the eyes of a gifted and generous storyteller and professional. There's room on the sofa for you. Join StarShipSofa as it welcomes Spider Robinson for this one-time-only live event!"

How To Write Science Fiction with... Spider Robinson (Thanks, Tony!)

Kickstarter from the Relatively Prime folks

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 16:46:52 +0000

Samuel sez, "ACMEScience.com is the home of many math and science podcasts, including the mathematical story series Relatively Prime. It has been run for the past four years in the spare time between jobs, and with cheap or second-hand equipment. Now ACMEScience wants to change its lot and turn itself into a full-time operation for the next year, and it plans to do this through its new Kickstarter project. If the project is funded it would mean new episodes of Relatively Prime, as well as at least one episode a week of the interview shows ACMEScience News Now and Strongly Connected Components."

I'm a great fan of Relatively Prime -- they're the ones who did the great piece on Chinook, the champion checkers-playing computer.

Interview with Geek's Guide to the Galaxy

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 15:15:29 +0000

I did an interview with The Geek's Guide to the Galaxy, which they've published in both text and MP3 form. We talked about Pirate Cinema, Rapture of the Nerds, the Humble Ebook Bundle, the future of publishing, the Disney/Star Wars merger, and lots more:

Wired: Do you ever get letters from kids who have been inspired by your books to become hacker anarchists?
Doctorow: Yeah, all the time — at least to become hackers, and political activists. My first young-adult novel Little Brother had an afterword with a bibliography for kids who want to get involved in learning how security works, learning how computers work, learning how to program them, learning how to take them apart, learning how to solve their problems with technology as well as with politics. And the number of kids who have written to me and said that they became programmers after reading that, I couldn’t even count them. I’ve had similar responses to my second young-adult novel, For the Win, and I’ve also heard from kids who’ve read Pirate Cinema. In fact, we published an editorial by one of them on Boing Boing — an anonymous reader who makes her own movies out of Japanese anime, and who talked about what drives her and how the book resonated with her.

With Pirate Cinema, Cory Doctorow Grows His Young Hacker Army