The Functional Nerds Podcast

This week, Patrick and John welcome Travis Heermann, author of Legend of the Ronin and, under the name T. James Logan, Dawn of the Deadly Fang.

About Travis Herrman: Freelance writer, novelist, award-winning screenwriter, editor, poker player, poet, biker, roustabout, Travis Heermann is a graduate of the Odyssey Writing Workshop and the author of The Ronin Trilogy, Rogues of the Black Fury, and co-author of Death Wind, plus short fiction pieces in anthologies and magazines such as Apex Magazine, Alembical, the Fiction River anthology series, Historical Lovecraft, and Cemetery Dance’s Shivers VII. As a freelance writer, he has produced a metric ton of role-playing game work both in print and online, including the Firefly Roleplaying Game, Battletech, Legend of Five Rings, d20 System, and the MMORPG, EVE Online.

About Legend of the Ronin: In 13th Century Japan, Ken’ishi is a young ronin, a masterless samurai, orphaned as a baby by forces he does not understand. His only link to his past is his father’s sword, Silver Crane, an ancient blade that may well have a mind of its own. When he wanders into a strange village looking for food, he soon discovers he is decidedly unwelcome…

About Dawn of the Deadly Fang: A mysterious plague is spreading, a plague that grants the ability to shapeshift—but with an insatiable hunger for fresh meat.

Infected with the plague herself, sixteen-year-old Mia is a special case. Thanks to a strange mutation in her DNA, her blood might be the key to a vaccine.

For Mia and many of the Infected, it’s a curse, but others, the Bad Dogs, revel in their new powers. For them, humans no longer belong at the top of the food chain. The Bad Dogs don’t want any vaccine, and they have a plan to end human dominance forever.

Organized, powerful, and relentless, they’re willing to do anything for their cause—like abducting a busload of Mia’s classmates.

Mia must enlist the help of her teenage werewolf pack in a desperate gamble to rescue her friends. Maybe even save the world.

This week’s picks:

* Travis: Becoming Superman: My Journey From Poverty to Hollywood by J. Michael Straczynski

* John: The Last Wish: Introducing The Witcher by Andrzej Sapkowski

* Patrick: Locke & Key Trailer (Netflix)

* Patreon Pick: Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road by Neil Peart Picked by Stace Johnson

Links:

* Travis Heermann on Twitter

* John Anealio on Twitter

* Pat...

On this week’s Functional Nerds podcast, Patrick and John return from the holidays to ring in the New Year and the roaring ’20s chatting about: The Far Side, 1992, nostalgia, the ’90s, Family Guy, Disney+, Mad About You, The Transformers, The VW Bug, Panic at the Disco, The World According to Garp, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Witcher, Netflix, The Mandalorian, Prime, Iron Fists and Kjng Fu Kicks, and more…

Links:

* John Anealio on Twitter

* Patrick Hester on Twitter

* The Functional Nerds Patreon Page

* Patrick Hester on Instagram

* Patrick’s Book: Into the Fire (available everywhere)

© 2020 Patrick Hester and John Anealio

This podcast contains original music by John Anealio.

On this week’s Functional Nerds podcast, Patrick and John chat about music, including The Red Headed Stranger, the Nashville sound, Stevie Ray Vaughan, The Rolling Stones and The Grateful Dead. We also meander around several other topics, including: The Mandalorian, The Black Hole, Gina Carano, Haywire, Black Widow, Mulan, CBS randomly using the Star Trek logo, Austin City Limits, guitars, Marvel and, of course, The Rise of Skywalker.

Side note – this is our last episode of the year! We wish you all the best and a safe, happy holiday season! See you next year 😉

Links:

* John Anealio on Twitter

* Patrick Hester on Twitter

* The Functional Nerds Patreon Page

* Patrick Hester on Instagram

* Patrick’s Book: Into the Fire (available everywhere)

© 2019 Patrick Hester and John Anealio

This podcast contains original music by John Anealio.

This week, Patrick and John welcome NY Times Bestselling author, Tosca Lee, author of A Single Light, the sequel to her critically acclaimed dystopian thriller, The Line Between.

About Tosca Lee: Tosca Lee is the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of 11 novels including The Progeny, Firstborn, Iscariot, The Legend of Sheba, and The Books of Mortals series with New York Times bestselling author Ted Dekker. Her books have been translated into 17 languages and been optioned for TV and film.

Tosca received her B.A. in English from Smith College. A lifelong world adventure traveler, she lives in Nebraska with her husband and three of four children still at home. To learn more about Tosca, please visit ToscaLee.com.

About A Single Light: Six months after vanishing into an underground silo with sixty others, Wynter and Chase emerge to find the area abandoned. There is no sign of Noah and the rest of the group that was supposed to greet them when they emerged—the same people Wynter was counting on to help her locate the IV antibiotics her gravely ill friend, Julie, needs in order to live.

As the clock ticks down on Julie’s life, Wynter and Chase embark on a desperate search for medicine and answers. But what they find is not a nation on the cusp of recovery thanks to the promising new vaccine Wynter herself had a hand in creating, but one decimated by disease. What happened while they were underground?

With food and water in limited supply and their own survival in question, Chase and Wynter must venture further and further from the silo. Aided by an enigmatic mute named Otto, they come face-to-face with a society radically changed by global pandemic, where communities scrabble to survive under rogue leaders and cities are war zones. As hope fades by the hour and Wynter learns the terrible truth of the last six months, she is called upon once again to help save the nation she no longer recognizes—a place so dark she’s no longer sure it can even survive.

This week’s picks:

* Tosca: V Wars (Netflix)

* John: The Way of Zen by Alan Watts

* Patrick 1: Bose Solo3 Wireless Headphones

* Patrick 2: Crisis On Infinite Earths (CW)

* Patreon Pick 1: His Dark Matters (BBC/HBO) Picked by Paul Jackson

* Patreon Pick 2: Battletech – Picked by JT Evans

Links:

* Tosca Lee on Twitter

* John Anealio on Twitter

* Patrick Hester on Twitter...

On this week’s Functional Nerds podcast, Patrick and John share more Patron picks while talking about Robert Johnson, documentaries, Netflix, The Dragon Prince Season 3 (holy epic season!), Supernatural, Doctor Who, Spotify, Ken Burns County Music, Disney+, Jedi: Fallen Order, The Witcher, Crisis on Infinite Earths (CW), Kickstarter, The Blues, American mythology and some new show you might have heard about – Mando something… The Mandalorian…?

Patron Picks:

* V Wars (Netflix) Picked by J.T. Evans

* Devil At The Crossroads (Netflix) Picked by Stace Johnson

Links:

* John Anealio on Twitter

* Patrick Hester on Twitter

* The Functional Nerds Patreon Page

* Patrick Hester on Instagram

* Patrick’s Book: Into the Fire (available everywhere)

© 2019 Patrick Hester and John Anealio

This podcast contains original music by John Anealio.

This week, Patrick and John welcome back Paul Levinson, author of 19 books and – as long time listeners remember from way back in episode 40 – is also a musician. His new LP is out – Welcome Up: Songs of Space and Time will be released in early 2020!

About Paul Levinson: Paul Levinson, PhD, is Professor of Communication & Media Studies at Fordham University in NYC. His science fiction novels include The Silk Code (winner of Locus Award for Best First Science Fiction Novel of 1999), Borrowed Tides (2001), The Consciousness Plague (2002), The Pixel Eye (2003), The Plot To Save Socrates (2006), Unburning Alexandria (2013), and Chronica (2014) – the last three of which are also known as the Sierra Waters trilogy, and are historical fiction as well as science fiction. His stories and novels have been nominated for Hugo, Nebula, Sturgeon, Edgar, Prometheus, and Audie Awards. His nonfiction books, including The Soft Edge (1997), Digital McLuhan (1999), Realspace (2003), Cellphone (2004), New New Media (2009; 2nd edition, 2012), McLuhan in an Age of Social Media (2015), Fake News in Real Context (2016), and Cyber War and Peace (2017), have been translated into twelve languages. He co-edited Touching the Face of the Cosmos: On the Intersection of Space Travel and Religion in 2016. He appears on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, the Discovery Channel, National Geographic, the History Channel, NPR, and numerous TV and radio programs. His 1972 LP, Twice Upon a Rhyme, was re-issued in 2010. He was President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, 1998-2001. He reviews television in his InfiniteRegress.TV blog, and was listed in The Chronicle of Higher Education’s “Top 10 Academic Twitterers” in 2009.

This week’s picks:

* Paul 1: The Man In The High Castle: Final Season (Prime)

* Paul 2: Everybody Hates Elves – Kari Maaren (Album)

* John: Star Wars: Resistance Reborn by

* Patrick: The Mandalorian

* Patrick 2: Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order (PS4)

* Patreon Pick 1: Watchmen (HBO) – Picked by C david Dent

* Patreon Pick 2: The Outside by Ada Hoffmann – Picked by Stephen Geigen-Miller

Links:

* Paul Levinson on Twitter

* John Anealio on Twitter

* Patrick Hester on Twitter

* The Functional Nerds Patreon Page

On this week’s Functional Nerds podcast, Patrick and John discuss everything from Disney+ to Echo in the Canyon, and beyond. We start with an intense look at… MUSICAL GEAR! Specifically, guitars and amplifiers and software, which leads us into the Echo in the Canyon documentary, The Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, Rickenbackers, the Rolling Thunder Review, the Country Music docuseries on PBS, community building and, of course, a 100% spoiler free mention of The Mandalorian…

Links:

* John Anealio on Twitter

* Patrick Hester on Twitter

* The Functional Nerds Patreon Page

* Patrick Hester on Instagram

* Patrick’s Book: Into the Fire (available everywhere)

© 2019 Patrick Hester and John Anealio

This podcast contains original music by John Anealio.

This week, Patrick and John welcome Elle Katharine White, author of Flamebringer: A Heartstone Novel (Heartstone book 3), to the Functional Nerds podcast!

About Elle Katharine White: Elle was born and raised in Buffalo, NY, where she learned valuable life skills like how to clear a snowy driveway in under twenty minutes (a lot easier than you think) and how to cheer for the perennial underdog (a lot harder than you think).

When she’s not writing she spends her time reading, drinking absurd amounts of tea, having strong feelings about fictional characters, and doing her best to live with no regrets.

Connect with her on Facebook at @ellewhite.author, or witness the hilarious spectacle that is a writer contending with a character limit on Twitter at @elle_k_writes.

About Flamebringer: A Heartstone Novel (Heartstone book 3): Monsters, manners, and magic combine in this exciting final volume in the Heartstone Trilogy—an exhilarating blend of epic fantasy and Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice—in which a fearless healer and her dragon-riding husband must stop a reawakened evil from destroying their world.

This week’s picks:

* Elle: Vita Nostra: A Novel by Sergey and Marina Dyachenko

* John: Creative Quest by Questlove

* Patrick: Batwoman (CW)

* Patreon Pick 1: Primal (Animated) – Picked by Joseph Hoopman

* Patreon Pick 2: Stumptown (ABC) – Picked by Robert Junker

* Patreon Pick 3: Exhalation by Ted Chiang – Picked by Stace Johnson

Links:

* Elle Katharine White on Twitter

* John Anealio on Twitter

* Patrick Hester on Twitter

* The Functional Nerds Patreon Page

* Patrick Hester on Instagram

* Patrick’s Book: Into the Fire (available everywhere)

© 2019 Patrick Hester and John Anealio

This podcast contains original music by John Anealio.

On this week’s Functional Nerds podcast, Patrick and John discuss all manner of streaming things, including Disney+, Netflix, Prime and Hulu. Also discussed: Fox movies placed into the Disney vault, MileHiCon 2020, The Mandalorian, Goliath Season 3, SpiderMan: Far From Home, binging versus weekly episode drops, Carnival Row, Stranger Things Season 3, Parks N Rec, Letterkenny, Surviving R Kelly and much, much more…

Links:

* John Anealio on Twitter

* Patrick Hester on Twitter

* The Functional Nerds Patreon Page

* Patrick Hester on Instagram

* Patrick’s Book: Into the Fire (available everywhere)

© 2019 Patrick Hester and John Anealio

This podcast contains original music by John Anealio.

This week, Patrick and John welcome back Peter Orullian! Peter’s latest project – The Bell Ringer from Symphony North – is a mixture of his love of soaring vocals, anthemic orchestrations, powerful rhythms, and groups like Mannheim Steamroller and Trans-Siberian Orchestra. In fact, the album features several former recording and/or touring members of Trans-Siberian Orchestra, not to mention current members of the band Dream Theater.

About Peter Orullian: Peter Orullian was born in Salt Lake City, Utah. As a kid, he could be found making up stories, writing songs, or involved in a pick-up game of just about anything. In college, Peter joined a performing and recording rock band at the same time he finished his Honors thesis—a fictional work entitled SKINWALKER. That year, he graduated magna cum laude from the University of Utah with an Honors B.A. in English, with a writing emphasis, and was inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa and Phi Kappa Phi National Honor Societies.

Two years later, he moved to Seattle, Washington to begin serious, classical vocal study with famed maestro David Kyle–vocal trainer to Geoff Tate of Queensryche, Ann Wilson of Heart, and Layne Staley of Alice in Chains, just to name a few. Over the next four years, he continued his music study and began increasingly to spend his discretionary time writing. During those first years in Seattle, Peter worked for a small press as editor for a New York Times bestselling writer. He also worked as a journalist, authoring a column on voice for Progression Magazine in which he interviewed and profiled some of the great voices in rock and metal music.

In 2006, Peter sold his first short story to a Denise Little anthology, and has since sold numerous short stories. Then, in early 2009, Tor Books purchased the first three books in an epic fantasy series entitled The Vault of Heaven. About that same time, Peter began the first of several international tours, primarily to Europe, to front rock and metal bands like Heir Apparent and Fifth Angel as lead vocalist.

In 2016, Peter was selected to write the novel to progressive metal giant Dream Theater’s concept album The Astonishing. And the following year, he began work on The Bell Ringer–a project so far comprised of: a complete novel (currently on submission through his literary agent), and a complete rock opera comprised of 24 song songs, featuring former recording and/or touring members of Trans-Siberian Orchestra, and current members of Dream Theater.

Peter lives in the Pacific Northwest.

About The Bell Ringer from Symphony North: The Bell Ringer is a Holiday rock opera consisting of 24 songs and tells a Christmas story that hearkens back to the poignant kind of storytelling of tales like A Christmas Carol, It’s a Wonderful Life, and Miracle on 34th Street. The album features several amazing musicians:

From Trans-Siberian Orchestra:

* Tim Hockenberry

* Valerie Vigoda

* Jody Ashworth

* Michael Lanning

And From Dream Theater:

* James Labrie

* Jordan Rudess

This week’s picks:

* Peter: Distance Over Time – Dream Theater

* Peter’s 2nd Pick: Seriously Sinatra – Sirius XM Radio

* John: