Nike shoe designer Tinker Hatfield wrestles with the form and function of his newest kitchen appliance, a can opener. Produced by Steve Nelson.

When Nintendo released Donkey Kong in 1981, it was one of the only arcade games in which you did more than just blast space invaders. It contained an entire world, with a damsel in distress and an unlikely hero: a little Italian plumber named Mario. Maybe no one is more excited than Tom Chatfield, the author of Fun, Inc.: Why Gaming Will Dominate the Twenty-First Century, who compares Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto to "Orson Welles, Steven Spielberg, and George Lucas wrapped up" in one person. Chatfield describes his three-decade-long love affair with the plumber in the hat. Produced by Mark Anderson.

In 1947 a wounded tank commander in the Soviet Army changed the face of gun design from his hospital bed. Writer Guy Martin looks at the AK-47 rifle. Produced by Gardner Allen.

In 1960, zip tops made opening aluminum cans more convenient — and dangerous. Those razor-sharp metal tags you ripped off and threw away were a hazard for the thirsty. That all changed in 1972, when a young engineer named Daniel Cudzik was hired by the Reynolds Metals Company to help them enter the fledgling aluminum can business. Since its invention, Cudzik's pop-tab has by one estimate conserved half a billion pounds of aluminum, and quite a few thumbs.

Last week, Apple's Steve Jobs made a design presentation — not to masses of swooning tech journalists, but to the Cupertino, California city council. What Jobs unveiled this time was Apple's future corporate headquarters. The design, by celebrated architect Norman Foster, is shaped like a giant glass doughnut with curved windows all around. Kurt Andersen spoke with design writer and curator Phil Patton about what this fantastic, futuristic building could mean for Apple and the design legacy of Steve Jobs.

Sand sculptor Kirk Rademaker makes architecture out of sand -- fantastical structures as high as ten feet, with arches and balconies, and sloping curves that stretch all over the beach. He showed off his skills at Ocean Beach in San Francisco. Produced by Jonathan Mitchell.

Last month, Studio 360 announced plans to redesign the board game Monopoly. Capitalism and real estate have changed a lot since Monopoly was first sold by Parker Brothers in the 1930s, and we decided the game was due for a major overhaul. We collected dozens of inspired suggestions from listeners, and delivered them to veteran game designer Brenda Brathwaite. This week she reveals an investment game she created with her partner Ian Schreiber. It lets players ride the economic roller coaster of the 21st century: Boom.

Since the board game Monopoly first came out in the 1930s, capitalism and tycooning have changed a lot. Someone who knows that better than most is former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, who now hosts a public affairs program on CNN. Spitzer told Kurt Andersen his first lesson in the laws of the free market occurred during family Monopoly games: his father, a titan of New York real estate, showed no mercy. Eliot Spitzer weighed in on our Monopoly redesign project. Tell us how you would change the game by May 3, and we'll share your ideas with our game designer, Brenda Brathwaite.

William McDonough is a grand old man in the young field of green architecture. In the 1970s, he built the first "green roof" in America — a corporate headquarters with a meadow on top — and is now working on a sustainable building for NASA. Kurt Andersen asks him about the opportunities and challenges of environmental design. (Originally aired: April 18, 2008)

Artist-programmer R. Luke DuBois has his own map of the U.S., and it's not colored with red states and blue. DuBois doesn't need the polls; he gathered his data from 19 million dating profiles. Politics, schmolitics – he wants to know what we really think about. Who's shy, who's bored, who's sexy. And who wants to be spanked. Produced by Studio 360's Eric Molinsky.