When I first I saw Thomas’s project on-line, it seemed funny maybe even frivolous — and there are humorous moments in his telling, like when he calls British Petroleum and tries to get a barrel of oil from them to try and make plastic — but below his near-futile exercise, is a thought provoking experiment about design, sustainability, consumerism, technology, and the environment.

Thomas Thwaites is a design student from The Royal College of Art in London. There is more information about this project at his site: The Toaster Project.

He and I talk about smelting iron in a microwave oven, trying to make plastic, and rubber, and the moment when he presented his toaster and first plugged the thing in …

A few more photos:
The toaster in the foreground and the equipment that Thomas used to build it. Photo by Nick Ballon.

I think this is a later version of the toaster. Photo by Daniel Alexander.

The toaster and the equipment used to make it with Thomas in the background. Photo by Nick Ballon

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Rob Long is a TV writer and producer who wore and produced the hit show Cheers among others. He hosts a behind-the-scenes look at Hollywood life radio commentary: Martini Shot. (It’s also a podcast. – iTunes link). He is also a contributing editor for the National Review and Newsweek International and others.

Rob and I talked about writing, how to book yourself onto a container ship to get some actual work done in this modern world, the TV show Cheers, humor, drinking, and how he got his start in Hollywood.

Amazon links to Rob’s books: Conversations with My Agent and Set up, Joke, Set Up, Joke. And a link to his Twitter feed.

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Richard Kadrey is a novelist, freelance writer, and photographer based in San Francisco. Starting over 20 years ago as one of the first major writers of cyberpunk, with the classic Metrophage, his other novels include Kamikaze L’Amour, Butcher Bird and his latest, Sandman Slim.

Richard and I talk about his transition from cyberpunk to fantasy, George Bush, heavy drinking, and writing.

Sandman Slim: A Novel (Amazon)

The Youtube video that is quoted in the piece.

Download Richard’s Butcher Bird for free (scroll down just above the download for my novel!) at Nigh Shade Books.

Download Metrophage, Richard’s first novel.

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My guest this show is Jacob Fenston. He’s a freelance journalist in Oakland, California, whose work has appeared on NPR, KQED, and Public Radio Stations across America.

I heard Jacob’s excellent (and often hilarious) piece “My T-Shirt Says It All” and wanted to talk to him about it. This show features many cuts from that work, but if you’d like to hear the whole piece, please do so at Jacob Fenston’s website. This links to Jacob’s homepage.

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Paul Witcover is the author of three novels, several non-fiction books, many short stories and is the co-creator, with Elizabeth Hand, of the cult comic book series Anima. He has served as the curator of the New York Review of Science Fiction reading series. His new collection is titled Everland and Other Stories.

We talk about his writing, his writing career, publishing, an odd job writing about golf, and more.

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Jhane Barnes designs men’s sportswear, casual, and tailored clothes. Besides menswear, she also designs eyewear, textiles, furniture, carpets, and more. She was recently on NOVA to talk about how she uses fractals in her designs.

I recently visited Jhane’s design offices in New York, and we talked about being a fashionable nerd, fractals, secret Japanese factories, and Star Trek.

Show notes:
In the second half of the podcast, she shows me her top-of-the-line shirt, titled Dentrite. See it here.

Jhane’s website is JhaneBarnes.com. I also mentioned her slightly hidden outlet store, which is called JBXtras.com, where you can pick up extras and last-season’s items at a discount.

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James Enge’s fiction has appeared in Black Gate, Flashing Swords, and everydayfiction.com. He is an instructor of classical languages at a Midwestern university. His first novel, Blood of Ambrose, was just released by Pyr Books.

James and I talked about his pseudonym, sci-fi and fantasy, writing, unicorns, and talking squids.

His website is www.jamesenge.com. Pyr Book’s page for James Enge’s book has free sample chapters. Blood of Ambrose at Amazon.
(Author photo: ©J. M. Pfundstein)

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Rowenna Davis is freelance journalist from north London. As a features writer, she specializes in social and political affairs, and has written opinion pieces for the  The Independent, The Guardian, the New Internationalist, and many other publications.

She and I discuss several recent articles were she explored the murky world of “Gold Farming,” which is the illegal world of video game cheating – often for the very popular World of Warcraft.

Link to her article: Welcome to the new gold mines: Being paid to play games all day long sounds like a dream job – but for thousands of Chinese ‘gold farmers’, the virtual reality is sheer hard graft.

More Guardian.co.uk articles by Rowenna Davis.

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Lou Anders is the editorial director of Prometheus Books’ science fiction and fantasy imprint Pyr, as well as several anthologies. In 2000, he served as the Executive Editor of Bookface.com, and before that he worked as the Los Angeles Liaison for Titan Publishing Group. He is the author of The Making of Star Trek: First Contact (Titan Books, 1996), and has published over 500 articles in such magazines as The Believer, Publishers Weekly, Dreamwatch, DeathRay, free inquiry, Star Trek Monthly, Star Wars Monthly, Babylon 5 Magazine, Sci Fi Universe, Doctor Who Magazine, and Manga Max.

Lou and I talked about the iPhone, tricorders, the batmobile, writing, errings, and his wife’s cooking among other things.

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Professor Robert Beaulieu teaches textile science and development at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology. This is the second part of our talk.

This time he discusses wool, those labels in all our shirts and clothes, distressing leather jackets, and case of about a mouton collar.

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