Ned and Meg celebrate the return of Lauren as our guest-host-comrade. We chat like old times about whether you’re supposed to swim on an empty or a full stomach, exposure therapy, how a once-disgraced-but-not-really-disgraced germline-editing doctor is back on the science scene, Ned’s progress in Dungeon23, Camaro cars, and the merits of the movie Harold and Maude. As always, thanks for listening, don’t be a dick, wash your hands, do something nice for someone without expecting anything in return.

Ned and Meg discuss the fate of Pablo Escobar’s wayward Colombian hippopotamuses. Yeah that’s right, Colombian Hippos. What else is there to say? Thanks for listening, wash your hands, don’t be a dick!

Ned and Meg discuss the invention of the Asterbang, not to be confused with the Interrobang, which we have discussed at length in other episodes. Today we want to introduce a new concept in grammar and punctuation to you but first we talk about how much we hate advertising, and how bad our parents are at the internet. We round out with a revisit of Chesterton’s Fence and Meg’s comparison to colonial discourse. Plus, we publish a book, and, Balloonacy. Thanks for listening, wash your hands, don’t be a dick*!

Ned and Meg and Damon discuss the Oceangate submersible scandal, which we obviously dubbed OceanGategate, but first we discuss the sinking of a fishing vessel near Greece involving hundreds of people. Our discussion of OceanGategate centers around the many design flaws of the OceanGate Titan submersible, since this is ostensibly an art and design podcast. This one is pretty dense so strap in. Thanks for listening, wash your hands, don’t be a dick!

Ned tells Meg about the once-fabulous, then not fabulous, and now once-again-fabulous Mechanical Turk, a fraudy machine from the late 1700s that beat famous people at chess, sometimes. The best things about this machine are the weird number of insanely famous people who interacted with it. Meg applauds Edgar Allan Poe’s well-placed skepticism of it. This machine was created for marketing purposes back in the day and was never actually functional as described, but it nonetheless made a big splash and went on tour and everything. As Rubin Farr once said, you can be famous and a fraud; a famous fraud. Thanks for listening, wash your hands, don’t be a dick, maybe learn how to play chess for real!

Ned and Meg chat around ISO 216, the paper standard that dictates sizes and scaling for papers not used in the United States. Here we use letter size and other measurements that don’t scale and don’t work as great as the ISO 216 standards! Anyway, we will tell you all about it if’n you give it a listen, plus discussion of paper weights and US stationery sizes, plus aspect ratios and paper sizing. Oh, and Meg’s frequent dream-based panic attacks. OK super! Thanks for listening, wash your hands, don’t be a dick.

Ned and Meg wander through the landscape of lagniappes, describing what we see as we go. In this episode we discuss the etymology of the word “lagniappe” and where the whole idea of them originated. We chat about creole food too, and our seafood preferences before we discuss some of our favorite lagniappes like the ones that kids get at the dentist, in happy meals, at the Sanrio store, at grocery stores, Archie McPhee’s, and our favorite, the Hobonichi lagniappes. Thanks for listening, give someone in your life a lagniappe! Wash your hands, don't be a dick.

Wherein Ned and Meg vaguely debate the nature of the zombie genre. Spoilers on the HBO show The Last of Us. Thanks for listening, wash your hands, don’t be a dick.

Ned undertook a new hobby and tells Meg about his recent experiences with watercolors. Meg is a huge fan, so this was an easy podcast this time! We talk about how Dungeon23 was Ned’s gateway into watercolor painting and its incredible versatility and portability as an artistic medium. We discuss the difference between glutinous paints and glutenous foods. We explore binders, pigments, papers and paints! We chat about illuminated manuscripts and Chinese landscape painting. We also muse about Studio Ghibli and Top Craft whose use of watercolor paint for background artwork in films is really lovely. Thanks for listening, wash your hands, don’t be a dick.

Meg tells Ned all about the sleeping bees in her refrigerator. Join us for a discussion about the fascinating creatures known as Mason Bees! Solitary nesting bees are EVERYWHERE and they are the coolest little friends you’ll ever make. They’re dynamite pollinators, WAY better than honey bees! We talk about how to raise them, if you are so inclined, and lots of other stuff. Wash your hands, don’t be a dick, read about mason bees. Thanks for listening.