Cool Tools

Our guest this week is Simon Quellen Field. Simon is a chemist and former Google software engineer and is the author of over a dozen books, including Gonzo Gizmos, Return of Gonzo Gizmos, Culinary Reactions, Why is Milk White, Elements Vault, Why There’s Antifreeze In Your Toothpaste, Electronics for Artists and, most recently, Boom!: The Chemistry and History of Explosives. He’s the author of the science toy website SciToys.com and several novels.

Our guest this week is Nicole Harkin. Nicole lives in Washington, DC with her family. She recently published her first book, Tilting: A Memoir, and she’s currently working on a mystery set in Berlin. She also runs a small photography business focused on family portraiture. She is from Montana and before becoming a writer worked in government oversight.

Our guest this week is Rebecca Romney. Rebecca is a rare book dealer at Honey & Wax Booksellers in Brooklyn. She got her start with Bauman Rare Books, managing their Las Vegas gallery. She is known for her appearances on the HISTORY Channel’s show Pawn Stars, where she evaluates books as the show’s only female expert.

Our guest this week is Craig Mod. Craig is a writer and designer. He's worked extensively with Silicon Valley and Japanese start ups. He spends about two months each year walking the old pilgrimage paths and ancient highways in the mountains of Japan.

Our guest this week is Wendy Frauenfelder. Wendy likes to cook, fix things, pretend to be a bartender, and do therapy dog work. She also is fascinated with wild yeast and slow food.

Our guest this week is Greg Gage. Greg is the co-founder and CEO of Backyard Brains, a company started with Tim Marzullo as neuroscience graduate students at the University of Michigan. Greg is a published neuroscientist and engineer, and has helped develop tools, curriculum and experiments that allowed the general public to participate in neural discovery. Greg is a senior fellow at TED and the recipient of the White House Champion of Change from Barack Obama award for his commitment to citizen science.

Our guest this week is Ben “Gitty” Baker. Ben fell in love with the idea that anyone, anywhere can build their own musical instrument and make music on it. His company was founded to spread that message all around the world.

Our guest this week is Xeni Jardin. Xeni is my partner at Boing Boing. We've been friends for a really long time, and Xeni has been with me from the very beginning at Boing Boing. She is always coming up with really cool ideas for tools that she uses for cooking, for communicating, she does a lot of traveling. I'm really looking forward to what she has to present to us today.

Our guest this week is Louis Rossetto. Louis co-founded Wired with his life partner Jane Metcalfe. During his five years directing Wired, it won the National Magazine Awards for General Excellence twice and was Adweek's Hottest Magazine of the Year. Wired also pioneered commercial web media, launching HotWired the first website with original advertising and Fortune 500 advertising. Since Wired, he's pursued different obsessions from real estate to helping start and run the high end chocolate company TCHO, to writing his new novel Change is Good.

Our guest this week is Rob Reid. Rob is the New York Times bestselling author of novels including Year Zero and the freshly-released After On. A longtime entrepreneur, he founded Listen.com, which created the Rhapsody music service. Years ago he was a Fulbright scholar in Cairo, and he still speaks better Arabic than you'd think.