For the main topic, your hosts address Money on the Internet. How have technological and cultural changes altered our idea about what's valuable and how much people are willing to pay for it?

This week, it doesn't take long to get deep in the stack on texting people in the same room, John's take on pound-sign hashtags, and the location of Merlin's missing meat.

The mini-topic this week is tattoos. Specifically, why Merlin has developed such strong feelings about tattoos, plus John's vision of a world free of theoretical tattoo discrimination.

What happens when VCs are mostly investing in other VCs? How come Lucky Smells Lumbermill pays its employees in coupons? And, is there a company out there that could provide us one-millionth of the web ads while getting paid to protect our data?

John takes pity on The Algorithm.

(Recorded on Monday, January 16, 2017)

Brady & Grey chat about: the world chess championship, Norwegian Bank notes, Brady does antiquing through twitter, behavior control and Santa, Brady’s level of fame, a bird comes back to grey, the new elements, ugly YouTube ads, and consumable synthetic muscle tissue.

“I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.”

Two days after her discharge from the hospital, she was in a car accident in Malibu, California, which left her with a fractured right hip and a shattered right upper arm. The injury to her arm required surgery, which left her with a 7-inch scar between her elbow and shoulder.