After Things Podcast

The episode opens with a long discussion of the Artemis launch. The hosts joke about the mission's cost, but also credit the engineers and acknowledge that the rocket successfully reached space. They criticize the program as a politically shaped, expensive system, while still treating the launch as an accomplishment for the people who built it. A major portion of the episode is devoted to Twitter and the current wave of people leaving the platform. The panel debates whether the departures are political or simply a reaction to the site becoming chaotic, and they compare Twitter with alternatives such as RSS, Reddit, and Discord. The conversation emphasizes Twitter's role as a unique real-time community and news source, even as the hosts discuss its flaws and the likelihood that other platforms will eventually fill some of its role. Key topics NASA bureaucracy versus engineering execution: The hosts separate the quality of the Artemis engineers from the political and bureaucratic decision-making that shaped the program. Andrew repeatedly says the technical work was impressive while the overall program was a costly bad idea. Artemis tracking and lunar loop: The panel checks NASA's tracking page, notes that Artemis has rounded the moon, and discusses the Orion capsule's eventual return to Earth. They also joke about the mission's animation and moon imagery. Twitter, migration, and platform politics: The speakers spend an extended segment debating whether Twitter departures are po

The Modern Rogue and Scam Nation short-form video experiment continues on and to rousing success. What lessons have we learned from over a month of making Tiktoks and YouTube Shorts? Alphabet basically owns the internet, but is it being a good steward? Send your project questions/ideas to [email protected], subject line “After Things.” Picks: Brian: Twitter Bryce: Things app

The episode opens with a long discussion of the FTX collapse and broader crypto trust issues. The hosts talk about insolvency, Alameda/FTX entanglements, money disappearing overnight, regulation, and whether crypto behaves like a frontier market where scams and boom-bust cycles are common. They also compare crypto to other speculative or trust-based ecosystems and note the difficulty of evaluating it with limited long-term data. The conversation then moves through several science-and-technology topics, including a speculative fusion propulsion startup tied to Alan Stern, a History Channel Bermuda Triangle special that found Space Shuttle Challenger debris, and a wider reflection on how new ideas and discoveries are often dismissed at first. Later segments cover lab-grown blood, Tesla as a market-subsidizing EV pioneer, risky early eye surgery and the path from RK to LASIK, and then end with media recommendations and fandom chatter about Dark Side of the Ring and Andor. Key topics FTX collapse and crypto trust: The hosts discuss the FTX failure, reported insolvency, customer funds, Alameda Research, and how crypto’s volatility and trust problems make losses feel abrupt and severe. Crypto as a frontier market: Brian explicitly frames crypto as a frontier with inefficiencies and scams, comparing it to gold rushes and other speculative spaces. Regulation and self-policing in crypto: The discussion turns to whether regulation could improve crypto or arrive too late because the ind

A (final?) update on Structured and the benefits of hitting the hay punctually. Send your project questions/ideas to [email protected], subject line “After Things.”

The episode opens with Halloween talk: Bryce asks why roads in Wyandotte, Michigan were closed for trick-or-treating, and the hosts riff on teenagers cleaning out the candy. Justin explains his neighborhood plan to give out full-size bars, both to get the candy out of the house and to build a good reputation where they live (L21-L23, L41-L45, L49-L53, L59-L69, L83-L85, L95-L97). From there the conversation moves through a Wyandotte cockroach-infested vacant house that led to three city blocks being closed, plus a long pest-comedy tangent about roaches, recycling jokes, and an improvised hypothetical about helping a friend who is being wrongfully evicted. That turns into a ghost/knight distraction bit and then into a real news item about a Massachusetts woman accused of using bees against deputies during an eviction, before the episode shifts to science stories about NASA's Lucy spacecraft photographing Earth and the Moon, an aye-aye lemur apparently picking its nose with its long finger, and a Mars impact crater detected by InSight and imaged by Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (L213-L217, L227-L245, L253-L265, L401-L405, L421-L457, L529-L537, L545-L565, L617-L625, L685-L705, L721-L749, L781-L793, L857-L877, L905-L913, L1021-L1029, L1081-L1089, L1105-L1138). Key topics Halloween candy strategy and teenagers: The hosts joke about giving out candy on Halloween, including full-size bars, fun-size candy, dinosaur sounds as a reward system, and the idea that teenagers arrive late and h

The binge watching trend: is it in danger becuse week-after-week is better? With Netflix relenting on offering an ad-supported plan, could binging be on the chopping block too? What do we like personally and creatively? What metrics do streamers and platforms consider for new programs? Do algorithms reflect viewer habits? Send your project questions/ideas to [email protected], subject line “After Things.” Picks: Andrew: Replit Justin, Brian, and Bryce: Modern Rogue on TikTok

The episode opens with a visual-guessing segment built around a close-up image that the hosts initially mistake for AI-generated art or a grotesque creature. Andrew reveals it is actually a real macro photograph of an ant, and Bryce adds that it was part of the Nikon Small World photo contest, which leads to a look at the winning gecko-foot image and a discussion of how macro photography can make ordinary subjects look surreal. The conversation then widens into a speculative discussion about edited childhood photos, using a story about Connor Nickerson inserting his present-day self into old family photos as a jumping-off point. From there the hosts talk about older selves, digital traces, AI reconstruction, and the possibility of talking to past or deceased versions of people through recorded material, before shifting into broader reflections on learning, college, imposter syndrome, message boards, and online behavior. Near the end, the episode turns to entertainment recommendations and TV reactions. Brian enthusiastically recommends Moonfall as a hilariously absurd disaster movie, Justin recommends The Thick of It as a political satire to watch alongside current U.K. politics, and Bryce recommends Truth in 24 as a strong Le Mans documentary. The group then discusses House of the Dragon's finale, saying it was solid but too predictable and less surprising than Game of Thrones. Key topics Macro photography and deceptive visual scale: A tiny subject photographed extremely clos

Bryce admits to a productivity solution that can’t be beat. Did you know your iPhone can do something an kinda expensive website can do? Send your project questions/ideas to [email protected], subject line “After Things.” Picks: Andrew: ScreenFlow and Google Colab Brian: Six Thinking Hats from Edward de Bono Bryce: Splice and Bryce on the Beyond the Playlist podcast

The episode opens with a long biology digression about what makes two animals similar or different, using turtles and tortoises as a lead-in to hyraxes and elephants. Andrew explains that hyraxes are the closest living relative to elephants, and the hosts discuss surprising shared traits such as elongated teeth, long gestation for a small animal, and social behavior. They also note that sea cows/manatees may be even closer genetically, though the hyrax is the more surprising example. The conversation then moves through speculative Jurassic Park prequel material, including John Hammond's early funding efforts and the tiny-elephant display from the novel, before turning to CubeSat advertising proposals and the backlash they could provoke. Later topics include Tom Cruise filming in space, the value of practical effects over pure CGI, personalized or interactive media experiments, Meta's Quest Pro and AR/VR tradeoffs, and a set of game/software picks. Key topics How evolutionary relatives can look radically different: The hosts use turtles/tortoises and then hyraxes/elephants to show that appearance can be misleading when judging relatedness. Andrew explicitly frames the point as two animals being very similar on some features while being very different in appearance, yet closely related genetically. Hyrax biology and elephant-like traits: They discuss hyrax gestation, internal testicles, social structure, warning sounds, and elongated teeth compared with elephant tusks. The epis

After a few weeks of trying out short-form video on YouTube, what seems to be the early indicators of how they’re received? What goes into making thoughtful short-form videos? Send your project questions/ideas to [email protected], subject line “After Things.” Picks: Brian: Ask from Ryan Levesque Bryce: Arcade Paradise