Our sincere apologies for the late release of this episode. Real life gave our finely tuned production schedule a small kick in the ankle. All is well now, and we think it'll have been worth the wait.

Two weeks ago we sat down to talk with a young man named Sam Piazza, who was introduced to us by Dave's eldest daughter. Sam is a person of strong Christian faith, whereas we pitched our tents well on the other side of that particular fence many, many years ago. So we thought it would make for some lively and engaging conversation if we were to explore each other's beliefs a little bit and hopefully bump up against some universal truths while doing so.

We hope you enjoy part one of the show and thank Sam for his time, his willingness to get into the weeds with us, and for enduring more than a few verbal U-turns with grace and good humour.

Music and image credits:
Man with a lantern by Evgeni Tcherkasski from Pixabay
Semi-Retired “flipz” theme by tubebackr from SoundCloud
Music promoted by free-stock-music.com
Maple Leaf by Vectoro Artworks from Vecteezy
Perforated steel by YuriyC from VectorStock

Is AI coming to recommend our next vegan lunch? Or eat it?

This week, Richard and Dave satisfy their simmering hunger for knowledge by cozying up to ChatGPT, the headline-dominating AI language model developed by a company called OpenAI and launched a mere three months ago.

In a wide-ranging interview with this flashy new bundle of code, the guys try to get the measure of just what a language model AI is, what it can do for us and what it can't, and wrap up with a Siskel & Ebert-style assessment of where all this might be going.

As a bonus, Dave opines on America's swift and glorious victory in the recent Balloon War with the People's Republic of China.

Special note: The thumbnail graphic for this episode was generated in DreamStudio by Stability AI, a new AI system powered by Stable Diffusion, which is a deep learning text-to-image model released in 2022. Stable Diffusion can create realistic images, art, and animation from a description in a natural language prompt. Richard supplied the natural language prompt 'AI chatbot conversing with two podcasters in the style of Ralph Steadman.'

Music and image credits:
Semi-Retired “flipz” theme by tubebackr from SoundCloud
Music promoted by free-stock-music.com
Maple Leaf by Vectoro Artworks from Vecteezy
Perforated steel by YuriyC from VectorStock

Our two-parter on the creative impulse behind photography concludes with a discussion that ranges from photographers who've influenced us, to favourite photographs we've taken, our thoughts on and approaches to post-processing, the thorny question of titling, equipment we currently use and equipment we'd rush out and buy if money was no object. Which it is.

Music and image credits:
Fuj and Friends by Dave
Semi-Retired “flipz” theme by tubebackr from SoundCloud
Music promoted by free-stock-music.com
Maple Leaf by Vectoro Artworks from Vecteezy
Perforated steel by YuriyC from VectorStock

These days almost everybody's packing a very capable high-resolution camera, and nearly two trillion photographs are taken every year. (Note: we still don't have a decent shot of a UFO.)

Join the guys as they get back to their photographic roots in the first half of a two-parter that tries to uncover the essence of creative photography. Starting with memories of their first cameras and earliest photographs, they dig into existential questions like: Is Instagram food photography actual photography? Is the ubiquitous smartphone camera truly worthy of that name? And is there a 'cult of sharpness'?

Find out why Richard took 14 lenses, 2 flashes, and a tripod on his beach vacation one year and came back without any photos. Find out why Dave felt it was necessary to pack a compass and hunting knife on suburban photo trips where he was never more than a few hundred yards from his parked car.

And much, much more...

Music and image credits:
Fuji X100s camera porn by Dave
Semi-Retired “flipz” theme by tubebackr from SoundCloud
Music promoted by free-stock-music.com
Maple Leaf by Vectoro Artworks from Vecteezy
Perforated steel by YuriyC from VectorStock

Someday something's coming
From way out beyond the stars
To kill us while we stand here
It'll store our brains in mason jars.
— The Mountain Goats | Lovecraft in Brooklyn 2008

No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own. Yet across the gulf of space, … intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. … (But) before we judge them (the Martians) too harshly, we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought. … Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit?
— H. G. Wells | The War of the Worlds 1898

“I'm frequently asked, ‘Do you believe there's extraterrestrial intelligence?’ I give the standard arguments; there are a lot of places out there, the molecules of life are everywhere, I use the word ‘billions’, and so on. Then I say it would be astonishing to me if there weren't extraterrestrial intelligence, but of course there is as yet no compelling evidence for it.”
— Carl Sagan | Scientist and Author 1934-1996

There's a whole lotta time and space out there:
- The universe is 13.7 billion years old
- There are between six and twenty trillion galaxies in the universe
- Our home galaxy, the Milky Way, contains 100 billion-400 billion stars
- Its diameter is 100,000-120,000 light years (1 light year = 10 trillion kilometres)
- The central bulge is 12,000 light years thick, the disk is 1,000 light years thick
- Our nearest neighbour galaxy, Andromeda, is 2.5 million light years from us
- Each sun-like star in the Milky Way likely harbours one half to one rocky planet in the range of orbital distances where liquid water could be stable on the surface
- Liquid water is necessary for life as we understand it

Music and image credits:
Lovecraft in Brooklyn by the Mountain Goats  from their 'Heretic Pride' album
Huge, really pissed off alien  by Pete Linforth from Pixabay
Semi-Retired “flipz” theme by tubebackr from SoundCloud
Music promoted by free-stock-music.com
Maple Leaf by Vectoro Artworks from Vecteezy
Perforated steel by YuriyC from VectorStock

“Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility.”
—Sigmund Freud | Founder of psychoanalysis and uncle of Edward Bernays

"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country (America)."
—Edward Bernays | “the father of public relations” from his book, Propaganda, 1928
Watch a summary of 'Propaganda' by Edward Bernays
Listen to a full audiobook of 'Propaganda' by Edward Bernays

“The public must be put in its place … so that each of us may live free of the trampling and … roar of a bewildered herd.”
—Walter Lippmann | American writer, reporter, and political commentator, writing in the 1920s
Watch a short video about Walter Lippmann and his book 'On Public Opinion'

The engineering of consent is the “use of an engineering approach—that is, action based only on thorough knowledge of the situation and on the application of scientific principles and tried practices to the task of getting people to support ideas and programs."
—Edward Bernays | The Engineering of Consent 1947

The Century of the Self is a British television documentary by filmmaker Adam Curtis. It focuses on the work of psychoanalysts Sigmund Freud, his nephew Edward Bernays, and daughter Anna Freud. Curtis says, "This series is about how those in power have used Freud's theories to try and control the dangerous crowd in an age of mass democracy."

Not to know the past is to be in bondage to it, while to remember, to know, is to be set free.
—Sigmund Freud 

Music and image credits:
Semi-Retired “flipz” theme by tubebackr from SoundCloud
Music promoted by free-stock-music.com
Maple Leaf by Vectoro Artworks from Vecteezy
Perforated steel by YuriyC from VectorStock

As they continue to access their collective read-only memory (ROM) at blazingly fast speeds, Richard and Dave unearth more fading snapshots of an old world since replaced by a shiny-binary new one. Re-live the early browser and email wars (which sound a lot more dangerous than they were), the ripping of MP3s (which sounds a lot more bad ass than it was), and the flying of combat flight sims (which definitely sounds a lot more manly than it was).

Experience one of the first really big Internet ‘memes’ as discussed in this episode

Richard admits to leaving ‘Leisure Suit Larry’, a lovelorn, polyester-clad cruisebot in a state of permanent unfulfilled mission-hood on a Radio Shack computer he sold off decades ago. After stumbling upon multiplayer gaming while dabbling in ‘Quake’, Dave teams up with a group of gentlemanly Finns to fly his fave flight sim in friendly formation high over virtual war-torn Europe.

In the realm of digital photography dear to the hearts of many of our first listeners, the guys talk about how they transitioned from film to digital, remember some of their favourite cameras and the discovery of Instagram before it became somewhat polluted by selfie-porn and photographs of food. (Our photographer friends will grok.)

This epic double-episode wraps up with a discussion of digital technology in podcasting, a look back at low-tech prank phone calls made in the 1970s, and a vow to explore Dave’s ‘bunker’ where, it is rumoured, those prank phone calls are preserved on analog magnetized tape thingies called cassettes…

Music and image credits:
Tiger budgie by Sarah Richter from Pixabay
Semi-Retired “flipz” theme by tubebackr from SoundCloud
Music promoted by free-stock-music.com
Maple Leaf by Vectoro Artworks from Vecteezy
Perforated steel by YuriyC from VectorStock

Realizing they are of a perfect vintage to have experienced the fall of analog and the rise of digital, Richard and Dave decided to swap stories about how the bit, the byte, and the pixel slowly took over their work in the graphic design and graphic arts fields, as well as photography and pretty much everything in-between.

If you can remember the days before there was a PC in every pot, you’ll enjoy this trip through the past few decades as someone who lived it, too. If you grew up with an optical mouse firmly in-hand, you may find these accounts of first contact with video games, email, the Internet, hardware, software, firmware, malware, ghostware, and tupperware an intriguing time capsule full of not-so-distant memories.

PS – It’s our 25th episode, so bottoms up everybody!

Music and image credits:
Classic TV image by sithuarkaryangon from Pixabay
Pong video game image by Perlinator from Pixabay
Semi-Retired “flipz” theme by tubebackr from SoundCloud
Music promoted by free-stock-music.com
Maple Leaf image by Vectoro Artworks from Vecteezy
Perforated steel image by YuriyC from VectorStock

On this week’s return to our popular rock music series, we welcome special guest, Katherine, a friend and colleague of Dave’s eldest daughter, Alexandra. Kat’s father introduced her to the artists of his (and our) era, many of which she loves. We asked Kat to expand our musical horizons by recommending artists from more recent times, artists we might not have heard of or, if we had, not heard their songs. We listened to her recommendations and the conversation you will hear, which ventured far and wide, blossomed from there...

Listen to Kat’s playlist on Spotify

Baby Was the Devil by Robert Francis
Black Smoke Rising by Greta Van Fleet
California by The Lagoons
Call Me by St. Paul & The Broken Bones
Cigarette Daydreams by Cage The Elephant
City Club by The Growlers
Confidence by Ocean Alley
Confirmation by Westerman
Fade Out by James Bay
Feeling Good by The Sheepdogs
Freakin' Out On the Interstate by Briston Maroney
Gap in the Clouds by Yellow Days
Hey Mama by Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats
Hold On by Alabama Shakes
The Kiss of Venus by Paul McCartney & Dominic Fike
Kiwi by Harry Styles
Left Hand Free by alt-J
The Less I Know The Better by Tame Impala
My Lady's On Fire by Ty Segall
ОСТ 33 by Black Pumas
Pain by The War On Drugs
Pool House by The Backseat Lovers
Rita Mae Young by The Record Company
Sacrilege by Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Sedona by Houndmouth
Soulfight by The Revivalists
Stick Season by Noah Kahan
Under the Pressure by The War On Drugs
Woman by Harry Styles

As a bonus, here are some current artists recommended by Richard’s son, Griffin:
Madvillain, JPEGMafia, Kendrick Lamar, Brockhampton, Stromae, Aesop Rock, and Run the Jewels.

We know, it's only Rock 'n' Roll... but we love it!

Music and image credits:
Illustration of Jimi Hendrix by Vicki Hamilton from Pixabay
Semi-Retired “flipz” theme by tubebackr from SoundCloud
Music promoted by free-stock-music.com
Maple Leaf image by Vectoro Artworks from Vecteezy
Perforated steel image by YuriyC from VectorStock

This week, we salute Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, founder of Gonzo Journalism 

In the February 15, 1973, issue of Rolling Stone, Thompson said: "If I'd written the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people—including me—would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism."

He also wrote: “Music has always been a matter of Energy to me, a question of Fuel. Sentimental people call it Inspiration, but what they really mean is Fuel. I have always needed Fuel. I am a serious consumer. On some nights I still believe that a car with the gas needle on empty can run about fifty more miles if you have the right music very loud on the radio.”

And this: “when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro .”

Selected works of Gonzo Journalism
Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs (1967)
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1971)
Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72 (1973)
The Great Shark Hunt (1979)

Selected movies and documentaries
Where the Buffalo Roam (1980)
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998)
Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride: Hunter S. Thompson on Film (2006)
Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson (2008)
Freak Power: The Ballot or the Bomb (2020)

Music and image credits:
Gonzo Fist by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay
Aspen lake image by Abhay Bharadwaj from Pixabay
Semi-Retired “flipz” theme by tubebackr from SoundCloud
Music promoted by free-stock-music.com
Maple Leaf image by Vectoro Artworks from Vecteezy
Perforated steel image by YuriyC from VectorStock