The Functional Nerds Podcast

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The Functional Nerds Podcast episodes

March 15, 2022Episode 530-With Gama Ray Martinez
This week, Patrick and Tracy welcome Gama Ray Martinez, author of GOD OF NEVERLAND.
About GOD OF NEVERLAND: Peter Pan is missing; Neverland is in trouble. For adults, that might not matter all that much, but for children—whose dreams and imagination draw strength from the wild god’s power—the magic we take for granted in the real world is in danger of being lost forever.
Such is the life of a now grown-up Michael Darling.
Michael returned from Neverland with the dream of continuing his adventuring ways by joining the Knights of the Round, an organization built to keep humanity safe from magical and mythological threats.. But after a mission gone terribly wrong, he vowed to leave the Knights behind and finally live as a “civilian,” finding order and simplicity as a train engineer, the tracks and schedule tables a far cry from the chaos of his youth.
He hasn’t entered the narrative in years. So what could the Knights need from him now?
Maponos—or how he’s better known, Peter Pan—has gone missing, and Neverland is now on the edge of oblivion. Michael realizes he has no choice and agrees to one last mission. Alongside the young Knight Vanessa and some old friends, Michael embarks on the ultimate adventure: a journey to a fantasy world to save a god. Determined to stop evil, fight for Neverland, and find Maponos, will Michael be able to save the magical and physical world? Or will his biggest fear come true?
The clock is ticking, and in Neverland, that’s never a good sign.
About Gama Ray Martinez: Gama is a runner, writer, and adventurer. He has run races on three continents, including a half marathon on the Great Wall of China. He’s scuba dived at the Great Barrier Reef, an underwater museum, and an abandoned lead mine. He swims with sharks at least once a month and enjoys hiking in the winter. If you’ve never seen a frozen waterfall, you’re missing out. He also loves to collect weapons in case he ever needs to supply a medieval battalion.
He’s written over a dozen books about characters going out and having adventures because he’s gone out and had adventures. He writes for children because they still dream about doing that. He loves to write so much he greatly resents when work or other real life things get in the way of writing. He reads and writes fantasy and his favorite authors are Brandon Sanderson, Kevin J. Anderson and David Farland.
This week’s picks:
Gama: Upload (Prime)
Tracy: Active Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation and Political by Thomas Rid
Patrick: Horizon: Zero Dawn (PS5)
Links:
Gama Ray Martinez on Twitter
Tracy Townsend on Twitter
Patrick Hester on Twitter
The Functional Nerds Patreon Page
© 2022 Patrick Hester
The post Episode 530-With Gama Ray Martinez appeared first on The Functional Nerds.
39 min
March 08, 2022Episode 529-With Max Gladstone
This week, Patrick and Tracy welcome Max Gladstone, author of LAST EXIT.
About LAST EXIT: When Zelda and her friends first met, in college, they believed they had all the answers. They had figured out a big secret about how the world worked and they thought that meant they could change things.
They failed. One of their own fell, to darkness and rot.
Ten years later, they’ve drifted apart, building lives for themselves, families, fortunes. All but Zelda. She’s still wandering the backroads of the nation. She’s still fighting monsters. She knows: the past isn’t over. It’s not even past.
The road’s still there. The rot’s still waiting. They can’t hide from it any more. Because, at long last, their friend is coming home. And hell is coming with her.
About Max Gladstone: Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Award winning author Max Gladstone’s works include Empress of Forever, the Craft Sequence of fantasy novels and games, and, with Amal El-Mohtar, the internationally bestselling This is How You Lose the Time War. His interactive projects include the XYZZY-nominated Choice of the Deathless and Deathless: The City’s Thirst, which take place in the world of the Craft Sequence. Gladstone created the Serial Box series Bookburners, and the interactive television series Wizard School Dropout
Gladstone studied Chinese literature at Yale, and lived and taught for two years in rural Anhui province. He is a martial artist, fencer, and fiddler. Before writing full-time, he also worked as a researcher for the Berkman Center for Internet and Policy Law, a Swiss Embassy tour guide, a go-between for a Chinese auto magazine, a translator, a philosophy TA, a tech industry analyst, and an editor. He has wrecked a bicycle in Angkor Wat, sung at Carnegie Hall, and been thrown from a horse in Mongolia.
This week’s picks:
Max: Chorus (PS4)
Tracy: LeVar Burton Reads (Podcast)
Patrick: The Legend of Vox Machina (Prime)
Links:
Max Gladstone on Twitter
Tracy Townsend on Twitter
Patrick Hester on Twitter
The Functional Nerds Patreon Page
© 2022 Patrick Hester
The post Episode 529-With Max Gladstone appeared first on The Functional Nerds.
47 min
March 01, 2022Episode 528-With James Rollins
This week, Patrick and Tracy welcome James Rollins, author of THE STARLESS CROWN.
About THE STARLESS CROWN: A gifted student foretells an apocalypse. Her reward is a sentence of death.
Fleeing into the unknown she is drawn into a team of outcasts:
A broken soldier, who once again takes up the weapons he’s forbidden to wield and carves a trail back home.
A drunken prince, who steps out from his beloved brother’s shadow and claims a purpose of his own.
An imprisoned thief, who escapes the crushing dark and discovers a gleaming artifact – one that will ignite a power struggle across the globe.
On the run, hunted by enemies old and new, they must learn to trust each other in order to survive in a world evolved in strange, beautiful, and deadly ways, and uncover ancient secrets that hold the key to their salvation.
But with each passing moment, doom draws closer.
About James Rollins: James Rollins is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of international thrillers. His writing has been translated into more than forty languages and has sold more than 20 million books. The New York Times says, “Rollins is what you might wind up with if you tossed Michael Crichton and Dan Brown into a particle accelerator together.” NPR calls his work, “Adventurous and enormously engrossing.” Rollins unveils unseen worlds, scientific breakthroughs, and historical secrets matched with stunning suspense. As a veterinarian, he had a practice in Sacramento for over a decade and still volunteers at local shelters. Nowadays, Rollins shares his home up in the Sierra Nevada Mountains with his two golden retrievers, Echo and Duncan. He also enjoys scuba diving, spelunking, kayaking, and hiking. Of course, he loves to travel and experience new places around the world, which often inspire his next globe-trotting adventure.
This week’s picks:
James: Hades (Video Game)
Tracy: Sheriff of Nottingham (Board Game)
Patrick: Peacemaker (HBOMax)
Links:
James Rollins on Twitter
Tracy Townsend on Twitter
Patrick Hester on Twitter
The Functional Nerds Patreon Page
© 2022 Patrick Hester
The post Episode 528-With James Rollins appeared first on The Functional Nerds.
53 min
February 22, 2022Episode 527-With Mark Sabalauskas
This week, Patrick and Tracy welcome Mark Sabalauskas, author/creator of the Return to the Stars RPG Game.
About Return to the Stars RPG Game: Return to the Stars is designed to allow the creation of characters that evoke the best elements of geek culture. In the far future hyperspace travel gave easy access to countless worlds, and humanity sorted itself into like-minded communities. One such society was the Convention Authority, founded to celebrate the now classical arts of science fiction, fantasy, and gaming.
One day, without warning, the stellar beacon that illuminated hyperspace went silent rendering galactic travel impossible. The systems of the Convention Authority stayed connected thanks to a replica fleet of early starships. Now, after more than a century of effort, a long-range exploration craft has been built. Its purpose: to return to the stars and reconnect with lost civilizations of humanity.
The players of Return to the Stars are a new generation of geeks — makers, genetically enhanced cosplayers, scientists, and pop culture enthusiasts setting out on an adventure of exploration and discovery.
If you enjoy tales filled with optimism and hope, where players can paint a better future in bold primary colors, then you should prepare to Return to the Stars!
About Mark Sabalauskas: Mark Sabalauskas is an indie tabletop roleplaying game designer and zine publisher.
This week’s picks:
Mark: Midwives (Documentary)
Tracy: Tico & the Man Frank Maglio (YouTube)
Patrick: Arcane: League of Legends (Netflix)
Links:
Mark Sabalauskas on Twitter
Tracy Townsend on Twitter
Patrick Hester on Twitter
The Functional Nerds Patreon Page
© 2022 Patrick Hester
The post Episode 527-With Mark Sabalauskas appeared first on The Functional Nerds.
50 min
February 15, 2022Episode 526-Live from Capricon 42 With Michi Trota, Gary K Wolfe, Megan Mackie and More
This week, Patrick and Tracy are live from Capricon 42 with a very special, super-sized show filled with great conversations from all of these amazing people:
Lauren Jankowski – author of The Shape Shifter Chronicles (Follow Lauren on Twitter)
Megan Mackie – author of The Finder of the Lucky Devil (Follow Megan on Twitter)
KM Herkes – author of Rough Passages (Follow KM on Twitter)
Michi Trota – a 5-time Hugo Award winning and British Award winning editor and writer (Follow Michi on Twitter)
The Original Cannoli Joe – enabler of cannoli habits (Follow Cannoli Joe on Twitter)
Todd French – an awesome human being and Extra Nerdy Patron (Follow Todd on Facebook)
Jason Youngberg – another awesome human being and Extra Nerdy Patron
Gary K Wolfe – an American science fiction podcaster, editor, critic and biographer, and an emeritus Professor of Humanities at Roosevelt University (Follow Gary on Twitter)
About Lauren Jankowski: Lauren Jankowski, an openly aromantic asexual, adoptee, feminist author from Illinois, has been an avid reader for most of her life. She holds a degree in Women and Genders Studies from Beloit College. In 2015, she founded “Asexual Artists,” a site dedicated to highlighting the contributions of asexual identifying individuals to the arts. To date, she has interviewed over 900 artists.
She has been writing fiction since high school, when she noticed a lack of strong women, particularly queer women and women from non-traditional families, in the popular genre books. When she’s not writing or researching, she enjoys reading (particularly anything relating to ancient myths), playing with her pets, watching ballets, or working on her next cosplay. She hopes to bring more strong heroines to literature, including badass asexual women. As an adoptee, she also hopes to bring more accurate and positive portrayals of non-traditional families to genre.
Her ongoing series, The Shape Shifter Chronicles, is published through Crimson Fox Publishing. Signed paperbacks of the series can be purchased via Lauren’s Square Marketplace or the Crimson Fox Online Store. The books can also be purchased in ebook or paperback format through all major retailers.
About Megan Mackie: Megan Mackie is a writer, actor, and playwright. She started her writing career as an indie author and had such smashing success in her first year with her inaugural book The Finder of the Lucky Devil, that she made the transition to traditional publishing. She has become a personality at many cons, recognizable by her iconic leather hat and engaging smile. She has recently joined Bard’s Tower, a mobile con bookstore, and has sold her books next to great authors such as Peter David, Melinda Snodgrass, Dan Wells, Claudia Gray, John Jackson Miller, and Jim Butcher, to name a few.
Outside of writing she likes to play games: board games, RPGs, and video games. She has a regular Pathfinder group who is working their way through Rapanthuk. She lives in Chicago with her husband and children, dog, three cats, and her mother in the apartment upstairs.
About KM Herkes: K. M. Herkes is mostly quiet with a thirty-percent chance of loud. The rest is subject to change without notice.
Creating imaginary worlds has been a passion since childhood, but bugs, plants, computers, and chemistry also rank high on her list of life interests. Professional development has included lab work, classroom teaching, animal training, aquaculture, horticulture, retail operations, and library work. Personal development is ongoing. Cats, cookies, and flowers are involved. Her favorite stories dance in the open spaces between genres, so her books play in the literary traffic, dodging between science fiction, fantasy, thrills, and realism.
About Michi Trota: Michi Trota is a five-time Hugo Award winner, British Fantasy Award winner, and the first Filipina to win a Hugo Award. Michi is Editor-in-Chief of Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) and Senior Editor of Prism. She is also co-editor of the WisCon Chronicles Vol. 12 with Isabel Schechter (Aqueduct Press), has written for Chicago Magazine, and was the exhibit text writer for Worlds Beyond Here: Expanding the Universe of APA Science Fiction at the Wing Luke Museum in Seattle, WA. She’s been featured in publications like the 2016 Chicago Reader People Issue, Chicago Tribune and The Guardian, and has spoken at the Adler Planetarium, the Chicago Humanities Festival, and on NPR. Michi is a firespinner with the Raks Geek Fire+Bellydance troupe, past president of the Chicago Nerd Social Club Board of Organizers, and lives with her spouse and their two cats in Chicago.
About The Original Cannoli Joe: Born in the distant future, Cannoli Joe traveled back in time to save the human race from annihilation. Unfortunately, he arrived just outside of a bowing alley and, mesmerized by the sound of balls crashing against bowling pins, wandered inside and instantly fell in love with the game. Completely forgetting about his mission, he joined a league and has been chasing a badger ever since. Which is why 2016 happened. And COVID. It can all basically be laid at the foot of bowling’s sweet, seductive call…
About Todd French: Like Cannoli Joe, Todd failed to provide Patrick with a bio, so, this one time, he was at the crossroads and buried a mojo bag. He wanted a publishing contract. Unfortunately, not even a crossroads demon has that kind of power, so, like the rest of us, Todd is toiling away on his writing while listening to The Functional Nerds and backing us as a patron. We heart him!
About Jason Youngberg: Jason is another patron of the Functional Nerds podcast. He’s an active gamer, and has a sweet fur-child who is totally Patrick’s best friend. We also heart Jason!
About Gary K Wolfe: GARY K. WOLFE, Contributing Editor for Locus Magazine, has received both the Eaton Award and the Science Fiction Research Association’s Pilgrim Award for his science fiction criticism and scholarship. His books include The Known and the Unknown: The Iconography of Science Fiction (1979), Science Fiction Dialogues (editor, 1982), Critical Terms for Science Fiction and Fantasy (1986), Harlan Ellison: The Edge of Forever (with Ellen Weil, 2002), and a collection of his Locus Magazine reviews, Soundings: Reviews 1992-1996 (2005), which was a Hugo Award nominee and won the British Science Fiction Association award. In 2007 he won a Special Award, Non-Professional from the World Fantasy Convention for his reviews and criticism. A Locus columnist since 1991, he is Professor of English and Humanities at Roosevelt University in Chicago. He is the co-host of The Coode Street Podcast, a bi-weekly hour-long podcast co-hosted by Jonathan Strahan, which won a Hugo Award for Best Fancast in 2021.
Links:
Capricon
Tracy Townsend on Twitter
Patrick Hester on Twitter
The Functional Nerds Patreon Page
© 2022 Patrick Hester
The post Episode 526-Live from Capricon 42 With Michi Trota, Gary K Wolfe, Megan Mackie and More appeared first on The Functional Nerds.
2 hr 7 min
February 01, 2022 Episode 525-With Elsa Sjunneson
This week, Patrick and Tracy welcome Elsa Sjunneson, author of Being Seen: One Deafblind Woman’s Fight to End Ableism.
About Being Seen: One Deafblind Woman’s Fight to End Ableism: A Deafblind writer and professor explores how the misrepresentation of disability in books, movies, and TV harms both the disabled community and everyone else.
As a Deafblind woman with partial vision in one eye and bilateral hearing aids, Elsa Sjunneson lives at the crossroads of blindness and sight, hearing and deafness—much to the confusion of the world around her. While she cannot see well enough to operate without a guide dog or cane, she can see enough to know when someone is reacting to the visible signs of her blindness and can hear when they’re whispering behind her back. And she certainly knows how wrong our one-size-fits-all definitions of disability can be.
As a media studies professor, she’s also seen the full range of blind and deaf portrayals on film, and here she deconstructs their impact, following common tropes through horror, romance, and everything in between. Part memoir, part cultural criticism, part history of the Deafblind experience, Being Seen explores how our cultural concept of disability is more myth than fact, and the damage it does to us all.
About Elsa Sjunneson: Hugo, Aurora and British Fantasy Award Award winner Elsa Sjunneson writes and edits speculative fiction and non-fiction. She has been a finalist for the Best Fan Writer and Best Semiprozine Hugo Awards, a winner of the D. Franklin Defying Doomsday Award, and a finalist for the Best Game Writing Nebula Award.
Her fiction work has appeared in magazines such as Uncanny and Fireside, and as part of the team behind Serial Box’s exclusive: Marvel’s Jessica Jones: Playing with Fire. She’s worked on game design products such as Changeling, Wraith, The Fate Accessibility Toolkit and Dead Scare. She is most well known for her non-fiction which has appeared at CNN, tor.com, The Boston Globe and other venues.
As an editor, she’s worked as assistant and then managing editor of Fireside Quarterly, the non-fiction editor for Uncanny Magazine, and in 2018 she was the Co-Guest Editor in Chief of Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction.
She founded and wrote the popular blog Feminist Sonar from 2011-2016, where she laid groundwork for many discussions on disability in popular discourse. As an activist for disability rights, she has worked with New Jersey 11th for Change and the New York Disability Pride Parade.
As an educator and public speaker she has presented work at the University of Chicago and The Henry Art Gallery, and taught workshops with Clarion West, Writing the Other, and various Science Fiction conventions.
Her debut memoir Being Seen: One Deafblind Woman’s Fight to End Ableism released from Tiller Press (an imprint of Simon & Schuster) October 5, 2021.
This week’s picks:

* Elsa: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Anniversary Edition (Xbox Series X)
* Tracy: Tales of the Arabian Nights (Board Game)
* Patrick: Capricon 42

Links:

* Elsa Sjunneson on Twitter
*
43 min
January 25, 2022 Episode 524-With Rebecca Ross
This week, Patrick and Tracy welcome Rebecca Ross, author of A River Enchanted.
About A River Enchanted: Jack Tamerlaine hasn’t stepped foot on Cadence in ten long years, content to study music at the mainland university. But when young girls start disappearing from the isle, Jack is summoned home to help find them. Enchantments run deep on Cadence: gossip is carried by the wind, plaid shawls can be as strong as armor, and the smallest cut of a knife can instill fathomless fear. The capricious spirits that rule the isle by fire, water, earth, and wind find mirth in the lives of the humans who call the land home. Adaira, heiress of the east and Jack’s childhood enemy, knows the spirits only answer to a bard’s music, and she hopes Jack can draw them forth by song, enticing them to return the missing girls.
As Jack and Adaira reluctantly work together, they find they make better allies than rivals as their partnership turns into something more. But with each passing song, it becomes apparent the trouble with the spirits is far more sinister than they first expected, and an older, darker secret about Cadence lurks beneath the surface, threatening to undo them all.
About Rebecca Ross: Rebecca Ross writes fantasy novels for teens and adults. She lives in the Appalachian foothills of Northeast Georgia with her husband, a lively Australian Shepherd, and an endless pile of books. The Queen’s Rising, The Queen’s Resistance, Sisters of Sword & Song, and Dreams Lie Beneath are her titles for young adult readers. A River Enchanted is her adult fantasy debut, publishing February 15, 2022 with a sequel to follow. When not writing, she can be found reading or in her garden, where she grows wildflowers and story ideas.
This week’s picks:

* Rebecca: eufy RoboVac
* Tracy: Azul (Board Game)
* Patrick: The Expanse: Season 6 (Prime)

Links:

* Rebecca Ross on Instagram
* Tracy Townsend on Twitter
* Patrick Hester on Twitter
* The Functional Nerds Patreon Page

© 2022 Patrick Hester
44 min
January 18, 2022 Episode 523-With Lorraine Wilson
This week, Patrick and Tracy welcome Lorraine Wilson, author of This Is Our Undoing and the forthcoming The Way The Light Bends.
About This Is Our Undoing: In a near-future Europe fracturing under climate change and far-right politics, biologist Lina Stephenson works in the remote Rila Mountains, safely away from London State. When an old enemy dies, Lina’s dangerous past resurfaces, putting her family’s lives at risk.
Trapped with her vulnerable sister alongside the dead man’s family, Lina is facing pressure from all sides: her enemy’s eldest son is determined to destroy her in his search for vengeance, whilst his youngest carries a sinister secret…
…But the forest is hiding its own threats and as a catastrophic storm closes in, Lina realises that if she is to save her family, she must become a monster.
About Lorraine Wilson: Lorraine Wilson writes stories that explore themes of family, belonging and trauma. The wilderness is never very far away from her characters, and folklore is always there whether hidden in the shadows or centre stage. She hopes to write in a way that resonates with those parts of ourselves we find hard to share with others, and that provides representation for people who do not get to see themselves in the majority of books.
Lorraine lives by the sea in Scotland. The east coast, so she gets no snow in winter and endless haar in summer. All of her Burmese genes vociferously object to Scottish winters, but she’s so far failed to drag her family away (and Scotland does have it’s up sides, to be fair). She has a PhD in animal behaviour and spent many years working in behavioural conservation in various parts of the world (most of them considerably warmer than Scotland). When ill health made her leave academia, Lorraine turned to writing and fell in love. She is still a spoonie, living with disabling illness; she’s still in love with writing. She also likes semi-colons.
More interestingly, she is inordinately fond of geckos and bats, and feel like one or (preferably) both ought to occur in every piece of writing. Lorraine once had a treefrog called Algernon who lived in her sink and another called Tobermory who preferred the bookshelf. She’s been stalked by wolves, caught the bubonic plague, and had a Madagascan python use her as a hot-water bottle.
This week’s picks:

* Lorraine: Mahjong (Game)
* Tracy: Cascadia (Game)
* Patrick: The Swordsman (Movie)

Links:

* Lorraine Wilson on Twitter
* Tracy Townsend on Twitter
* Patrick Hester on Twitter
* The Functional Nerds Patreon Page

© 2022 Patrick Hester
42 min
January 11, 2022 Episode 522-With Nicole Glover
This week, Patrick and Tracy welcome Nicole Glover, author of the Murder & Magic series – The Conductors and The Undertakers.
About The Conductors and The Undertakers – Hetty Rhodes and her husband, Benjy, were Conductors on the Underground Railroad, ferrying dozens of slaves to freedom with daring, cunning, and magic that draws its power from the constellations. With the war over, those skills find new purpose as they solve mysteries and murders that white authorities would otherwise ignore.
In the heart of Philadelphia’s Seventh Ward, everyone knows that when there’s a strange death or magical curses causing trouble, Hetty and Benjy are the only ones that can solve the case. But when an old friend is murdered, their investigation stirs up a wasp nest of intrigue, lies, and long-buried secrets- and a mystery unlike anything they handled before. With a clever, cold-blooded killer on the prowl testing their magic and placing their lives at risk, Hetty and Benjy will discover how little they really know about their neighbors . . . and themselves.
The Undertakers continues the adventures of murder and magic, where even the most powerful enchantments can’t always protect you from the ghosts of the past. Nothing bothers Hetty and Benjy Rhodes more than a case where the answers, motives, and the murder itself feel a bit too neat. Raimond Duval, a victim of one of the many fires that have erupted recently in Philadelphia, is officially declared dead after the accident, but Hetty and Benjy’s investigation points to a powerful Fire Company known to let homes in the Black community burn to the ground. Before long, another death breathes new life into the Duval investigation: Raimond’s son, Valentine, is also found dead.
Finding themselves with the dubious honor of taking on Valentine Duval as their first major funeral, it becomes clear that his passing was intentional. Valentine and his father’s deaths are connected, and the recent fires plaguing the city might be more linked to recent community events than Hetty and Benji originally thought.
About Nicole Glover: Nicole Glover is the author of the Murder and Magic series which includes The Conductors and The Undertakers. She works as a UX researcher in Virginia. She believes libraries are magical places and problems seem smaller with a cup of tea in hand. Her life outside of books include bicycles, video games, and baking the perfect banana bread. She can be found at nicole-glover.com.
This week’s picks:

* Nicole: Encanto (Disney+)
* Tracy: Loki (Disney+)
* Patrick: Hawkeye (Disney+)

Links:

* Nicole Glover on Twitter
* Tracy Townsend on Twitter
* Patrick Hester on Twitter
*
37 min
January 04, 2022 Episode 521-Just Us and 2021
This week, Patrick and Tracy are talking about 2021 with the obligatory year-end recap episode! We’re taking a look back at our favorite episodes from 2021, how things went and what challenges we had. The ups and the downs.
Links:

* Tracy Townsend on Twitter
* Patrick Hester on Twitter
* The Functional Nerds Patreon Page

© 2022 Patrick Hester
1 hr 1 min