The New Disruptors

By Glenn Fleishman

What's The New Disruptors about?

The New Disruptors tells stories that provide practical inspiration about the way that creative people and producers connect with audiences to perform, cajole, convince, sell, and interact using new methods. Hosted by Glenn Fleishman, a freelance technology reporter and typographic historian. Produced by Aperiodical LLC.

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The New Disruptors episodes:

04.08.2020
Consumption in the Age of Pandemic with Dan Frommer
In this episode recorded in early April 2020, Dan Frommer (Twitter) of The New Consumer joins host Glenn Fleishman. Dan is a long-time journalist. He’s been the editor in chief of Recode at Vox Media, an editor and writer at...
08.13.2019
Picture Yourself on a Dress and Deliver with Jaimee Newberry
Jaimee Newberry is the co-founder of Picture This Clothing. Draw a picture or take a picture and get it put on a dress or a T-shirt. It’s that simple — well, it’s that simple for the maker, which is what...
05.28.2019
Race to Answer the Call of the Wild with Pat Race and Marian Call
Musician Marian Call appeared on New Disruptors back in October 2013. Her home was in Alaska, but she spent a lot of time away from it touring. With six more years under her belt, she’s trying to stick closer to...
05.22.2019
What’s Your Latest with CW&T: Chi-Wei Wang and Taylor Levy
CW&T is Che-Wei Wang and Taylor Levy. They combine art, technology, design, and manufacture into everyday objects that have nothing everyday about them, as well as unique expressions of industrial design that can’t be compared with anything else. In this...
05.13.2019
Grand Inventions: Weathering Time with Benn Bollay
Benn Bollay remembers that he knew as a kid that his grandfather was an early researcher into weather forecasting. But it turns out that Eugene Bollay was one of the founders of the field of meteorology and television weathercasting! He...
04.12.2019
Painting with Lasers with Dan, Shell, and Nick
This episode is recorded live at Glowforge, makers of a 2D laser cutter—but it’s not a sponsored episode and we don’t talk about the hardware much at all. Instead, it’s conversation about what people are trying to make and how...
02.06.2019
A Life in Letterpress: a Live Podcast
My love of letterpress printing is no secret, and in this episode, I speak to two designers who devote parts of their working lives to modern letterpress. This episode was taped live at Ada’s Technical Books and Café in Seattle...
01.21.2019
Grand Inventions: A Towering Monument with Dave Hamilton
Dave Hamilton’s grandfather invented the ubiquitous coin-operated binocular viewer you see at monuments and viewpoints worldwide, the Tower Optical Binoculars. Dave, an entrepreneur, writer, musician, and founder of The Mac Observer, joins host Glenn Fleishman to tell of days spent...
12.21.2018
What’s the Three One One in Two Oh One Eight, Walt Hickey?
Walt Hickey is a data journalist who launched a newsletter for numeric nerds several months ago. He’s worked for Business Insider, FiveThirtyEight, and, currently, Insider (a sister company to BI), often writing about the intersection of culture and data: How...
12.10.2018
Grand Inventions: Counting Gears with Chris Higgins
“Grand Inventions” is a new micro-series within The New Disruptors in which I talk to people whose grandparents or great-x-parents invented something that’s still current or in use today. Two things sparked this micro-series idea for me. First, my grandfather’s...
11.29.2018
What’s Your Latest? Dave Kellett’s Drive Act Two
Dave Kellett is the guest on my latest installment of the podcast-within-the-podcast, “What’s Your Latest?” I talk to experienced creators about their latest project. For Dave, that’s the second volume (“Act Two”) of his Drive webcomics series that will ultimately...
11.20.2018
Otherworldly Artistic Creation with Shing Yin Khor
Shing Yin Khor is a multi-dimensional artist, almost literally. She's a cartoonist, illustrator, sculptor, and installation and experimental artist. She works across many media, technology, and ideas. She says she's entered a new phase of her career over the last five...
10.09.2018
What’s Your Latest? Studio Neat’s Mark One Pen
Welcome to a mini episode of The New Disruptors, “What’s Your Latest,” in which I ask creators just about the most recent thing they made. Dan Provost and Tom Gerhardt are Studio Neat, independent industrial designers and app developers for...
09.27.2018
Shipping Is Violence with Jesse Genet and Stephan Ango of Lumi
Jesse Genet and Stephan Ango co-founded Lumi almost a decade ago. It first made wallets and prints and dyed material, then developed and distributed a light-sensitive fabric ink. Now it's a company that manages the production and ordering of packaging...
08.29.2018
Draw Outside the Lines with C. Spike Trotman
In this inaugural episode #100, the return of the podcast to regular production, I’m pleased as punch to have C. Spike Trotman as my guest. Spike founded Iron Circus Comics in 2007, and it’s risen through her hard work and...
06.12.2018
99a: Embrace Your Inner (Cute) Demon
We're still raising funds to restart The New Disruptors! At this writing, we're over 55% of the way there with a couple weeks to go! Visit our Kickstarter and back at any level. https://newdisrupt.org/kick In this special bonus pre-reboot Episode 99a...
05.30.2018
Re-New Disruptors
Welcome to the New Disruptors, the podcast that says the best ideas come when you're not looking straight at them You haven’t heard from The New Disruptors for a while, but I think the time is ripe to bring back the...
10.02.2014
Hugs and Kisses Goodbye: Live from XOXO 2014
Jen Bekman, Zoë Salditch, and Mike Merrill were our guests live on stage at the XOXO 2014 festival in Portland, Oregon, as part of the Story evening that also featured Hrishikesh Hirway's Song Exploder, featuring a song by The Thermals;...
09.25.2014
Fit to Print with Andy McMillan
Andy McMillan makes things that bring people together: the Build conference, the XOXO festival, and The Manual, a series of books with thoughtful essays about design. After producing three print volumes of The Manual, he's trying to take it to...
09.18.2014
Plug Me In with Mara Zepeda
Mara Zepeda is the co-founder and CEO of Switchboard, a site that lets you ask for what you need and offer what you have within a trusted community. It's a way to more efficiently interconnect generosity, and is sometimes described...
09.11.2014
Mi Casa Es Su Benincasa with Sara Benincasa
Sara Benincasa is an author, comedian, writer, and outspoken advocate of LGBTQ youth, among many other hats she's worn. She is an expert impressionist and parodist of Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann. Sara is the author of the novel Great...
09.04.2014
Nice and Neat with Dan Provost and Tom Gerhardt
Dan Provost and Tom Gerhardt are Studio Neat, a small design and software group that produces nifty products. They began with the Glif, and when I talked to them last over a year ago, they had launched their second software...
08.28.2014
Set Your Radio Dial to Maximum Fun with Jesse Thorn
Jesse Thorn is a polycast — a polymath of podcasts. He helped define the form by taking a show that he developed with others on a college radio station and making it into a podcast in 2004. That show, the...
08.21.2014
How to Feel Real App Appeal with Garrett Murray
Garrett Murray is the founder and creative director of Karbon, an app-development firm. But software isn't his whole life; he also happens to be an award-winning filmmaker. His firm developed the apps Scratch, a quick-input notepad for iPhone, and Ego,...
08.14.2014
Bakfiets to the Future with Phillip Ross
Phillip Ross is one of the fellows behind Metrofiets, a company that makes cargo bikes — a kind of transportation vehicle developed in the Netherlands, and known as bakfietsen there. He and his partner James Nichols build their bikes in...
08.07.2014
Welcome to the World of Tomorrow with Nicole Dieker
Nicole Dieker wears a lot of hats, as well as a brown coat. She's a freelance copywriter and ghostwriter, pens fiction, and writes essays. She's also a musician who bootstrapped herself out of a convention to which she returns every...
07.24.2014
Depth Takes a Holiday with Amanda Warner and Brianna Wu
Giant Spacekat, founded by Brianna Wu and Amanda Warner, released their first game today: Revolution 60. It's a cinematic-style, live-rendered game with rich dialog and interaction that employs strong female characters. Brianna is also a co-host of the Isometric podcast....
07.17.2014
Conjunction Junction with Oni Hartstein and James Harknell
Oni and Harknell founded Intervention (Internet + Convention) after constantly fielding questions from creators looking for advice; it's now in its fifth year. The partners created the event aimed at people trying to make their own opportunities to express creativity,...
07.10.2014
Into The Bellwoods With Lucy Bellwood
Lucy Bellwood is a Portland cartoonist who started her working life with a crowdfunding campaign. She's a member of Periscope Studio, a loosely affiliated working space and collective of which I've interviewed other members. True Believer was the outcome of...
06.26.2014
Be Kind Fast Forward With Jamie Wilkinson
Jamie Wilkinson is the co-founder and CEO of VHX, a service that delivers movies online to the customers of filmmakers. They exist in sharp contrast to many video sites — operated by the likes of Amazon, Apple, and others —...
06.19.2014
It's Like Money You Can't Hold with Chris Higgins and Adam Cornelius
Adam Cornelius and Chris Higgins are making the film Coined, about the rise of cryptocurrency. They previously worked together on Ecstasy of Order: The Tetris Masters. Adam is a documentary filmmaker; Chris, a journalist. They've just launched a Kickstarter to...
06.12.2014
T Minus Zero with Gary Chou
Gary Chou launched Orbital Boot Camp to accelerate people's product ideas into reality in a 12-week intensive session. He knows from startups from his work at Union Square Ventures and The Product Sessions, but his particular interest is making sure...
06.05.2014
I Never MetaFilter I Didn't Like with Matt Haughey
Matt Haughey founded MetaFilter, a well-moderated forum for discussions about interesting things that expanded to also answer questions. At just a few months over 15 years old, it's a veterans of many Internet lifecycles. In the last couple of years,...
05.29.2014
Wedding March to One's Own Offbeat Drummer with Ariel Meadow Stallings
Ariel Meadow Stallings is the proprietor of several "offbeat" sites about weddings, home and life, and families under the rubric Offbeat Empire. She started the wedding site in 2007 to promote a book on creative alternatives for brides, which built...
05.22.2014
Freelance To Be You and Me with Katie Lane
Katie Lane is an attorney who writes a blog called Work Made for Hire. She advises creative freelancers and artists on how to protect their rights and get paid fairly for their work. She recently took the plunge herself, going...
05.15.2014
Live in Portland: Book Reading and The Doubleclicks
Listen in as The Doubleclicks, a geeky two-sister band, perform four songs, and four authors read parts of their reported features from The Magazine: The Book at our last live book event in Portland, Oregon. The event was held at...
05.08.2014
Threes A Magic Number with Greg Wohlwend
Greg Wohlwend developed the popular game Threes with his colleague Asher Vollmer. Greg is a games illustrator and designer who was part of teams that made Hundreds, Gasketball, Solipskier, and Ridiculous Fishing. Threes is his breakout game — and has...
05.01.2014
Sailing in Brackish Waters with Maggie Vail and Jesse von Doom
Maggie Vail and Jesse von Doom are the co-excutive directors of CASH Music (Coalition of Artists and Stakeholders) a non-profit organization that brings an open-source approach to music distribution and production. CASH focuses on educating around those ideas through online...
04.24.2014
Community Supported Appliculture with Henry Smith
Henry Smith is a games app developer, and the evil genius behind the addictive multi-player app Spaceteam. Spaceteam won oodles of awards, and it has the added benefit (or problem) of being free. Henry has an active Kickstarter to fund...
04.17.2014
Wheels on Fire with Elly Blue
Elly Blue is a bike activist, writer, and publisher, and has run more Kickstarter campaigns than nearly any other person or group. She is fiercely in favor of using bikes as a necessary mode of transportation — though it is...
04.10.2014
Puzzling Evidence with Chris Yates
Chris Yates is a polymath. A sculptor, artist, woodworker, cartoonist, entrepreneur, dog-kennel assembler, musician, and more. He's best known now for his handmade jigsaw puzzles. He's on the show to talk about his zigzag path to making a niche for...
04.03.2014
What the Outfoxed Says with Dylan Meconis
Dylan Meconis is a prolific cartoonist who lives in Portland, Oregon. She constantly labors away at a mix between her solo work and projects in collaboration with others, including writing the script for Scott Kurtz's popular PvP webcomic. She is...
03.27.2014
See You in the Funny Webpages with Dave Kellett and Fred Schroeder
Dave Kellett and Fred Schroeder created the movie Stripped about the past, present, and future of comic strips and their creators. Dave is the creator and cartoonist of two webcomics titles, Sheldon and Drive, and the co-author of How To...
03.20.2014
Agile Was I Ere I Saw Ada with Danielle Hulton
Danielle Hulton of Ada's Technical Books not only opened a bookstore in Seattle in 2010, but recently dramatically expanded the size of the shop by moving to a new space. What led her to leap where others feared to tread,...
03.13.2014
Crowded House with Joshua Lifton
Joshua Lifton is one of the founders of Crowd Supply, a company that crowdfunds around products. They take a very different approach to preparation, funding, and follow-up than Kickstarter. Kickstarter just announced that it had crossed $1bn in pledges in...
03.06.2014
Made from Scratch with Jane Friedman and Manjula Martin
Jane Friedman and Manjula Martin founded Scratch Magazine, a born-digital publication that tells writers what they're worth and how the publishing industry sausage-making factory actually works. Jane has an extensive background as an editor, and may be best known for...
02.27.2014
Sisters Are Doin’ It for Themselves with The Doubleclicks
Angela and Aubrey Webber are the musical group The Doubleclicks, bringing geeky music to nerdy folk. The sisters never intended to form a band, but when Aubrey joined her sister Angela in Portland a few years ago, her cello coupled...
02.20.2014
Failing Upward with Greg Knauss
Greg Knauss is an independent software developer who created Romantimatic, a reminder program for absent-minded sweethearts. You may know him from the early 2000s: from Suck.com and Metababy and Rainy Day Fun and Games for Toddler and Total Bastard, a...
02.13.2014
Retooling Cool With Kevin Kelly
Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools re-imagines the Whole Earth Catalog, of which he was an editor and publisher, for the Internet era: crowdsourced, crowdmade, crowdmanaged. He's been on the Internet for as long as there's been an Internet for all us...
02.06.2014
Attention To Convention With Matt Conn
Matt Conn wanted to organize a safe event for gaymers — that's people who game and are part of the LGBTQ continuum. The GaymerX event is meant to be inclusive of all people, but especially those harassed, marginalized, or ridiculed...

What's The New Disruptors about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

The New Disruptors episodes:

Consumption in the Age of Pandemic with Dan Frommer

Picture Yourself on a Dress and Deliver with Jaimee Newberry

Race to Answer the Call of the Wild with Pat Race and Marian Call

What’s Your Latest with CW&T: Chi-Wei Wang and Taylor Levy

Grand Inventions: Weathering Time with Benn Bollay

Painting with Lasers with Dan, Shell, and Nick

A Life in Letterpress: a Live Podcast

Grand Inventions: A Towering Monument with Dave Hamilton

What’s the Three One One in Two Oh One Eight, Walt Hickey?

Grand Inventions: Counting Gears with Chris Higgins

What’s Your Latest? Dave Kellett’s Drive Act Two

Otherworldly Artistic Creation with Shing Yin Khor

What’s Your Latest? Studio Neat’s Mark One Pen

Shipping Is Violence with Jesse Genet and Stephan Ango of Lumi

Draw Outside the Lines with C. Spike Trotman

99a: Embrace Your Inner (Cute) Demon

Re-New Disruptors

Hugs and Kisses Goodbye: Live from XOXO 2014

Fit to Print with Andy McMillan

Plug Me In with Mara Zepeda

Mi Casa Es Su Benincasa with Sara Benincasa

Nice and Neat with Dan Provost and Tom Gerhardt

Set Your Radio Dial to Maximum Fun with Jesse Thorn

How to Feel Real App Appeal with Garrett Murray

Bakfiets to the Future with Phillip Ross

Welcome to the World of Tomorrow with Nicole Dieker

Depth Takes a Holiday with Amanda Warner and Brianna Wu

Conjunction Junction with Oni Hartstein and James Harknell

Into The Bellwoods With Lucy Bellwood

Be Kind Fast Forward With Jamie Wilkinson

It's Like Money You Can't Hold with Chris Higgins and Adam Cornelius

T Minus Zero with Gary Chou

I Never MetaFilter I Didn't Like with Matt Haughey

Wedding March to One's Own Offbeat Drummer with Ariel Meadow Stallings

Freelance To Be You and Me with Katie Lane

Live in Portland: Book Reading and The Doubleclicks

Threes A Magic Number with Greg Wohlwend

Sailing in Brackish Waters with Maggie Vail and Jesse von Doom

Community Supported Appliculture with Henry Smith

Wheels on Fire with Elly Blue

Puzzling Evidence with Chris Yates

What the Outfoxed Says with Dylan Meconis

See You in the Funny Webpages with Dave Kellett and Fred Schroeder

Agile Was I Ere I Saw Ada with Danielle Hulton

Crowded House with Joshua Lifton

Made from Scratch with Jane Friedman and Manjula Martin

Sisters Are Doin’ It for Themselves with The Doubleclicks

Failing Upward with Greg Knauss

Retooling Cool With Kevin Kelly

Attention To Convention With Matt Conn