The Sniffer

Listen to writer/broadcasters Nora Young and Cathi Bond as they freak over the future. They can't believe it. Neither will you.

In this podcast, Nora Young talks about research suggesting pretty much any of us can be a troll, or otherwise just plain nasty online, given the right circumstances (via Technology Review). And, Cathi Bond shares this video on the trend in Japan towards adult women being swaddled and rocked.

Listen to writer/broadcasters Nora Young and Cathi Bond as they freak over the future. They can't believe it. Neither will you.

In this podcast, Cathi Bond takes a look at the story coming out of the recent CES extravaganza, and the dominant role played by Amazon Echo in building a smart home hub (see, for example, CNET's writeup. Nora Young talks about cute home robots (via Technology Review). There's Kuri, which can control things in your house, but can also roam around and check on different parts of your home when you're not there. Or consider Lynx, which is integrated with Amazon Echo. It's starting to look like the smart home will increasingly be integrated with one of the big players' voice activated systems, like Echo, or Google's Home. Would you have one in your home? Do you? Let us know in the comments!

Listen to writer/broadcasters Nora Young and Cathi Bond as they freak over the future. They can't believe it. Neither will you.

In this podcast, Cathi Bond talks about architect Vincent Callebaut's cool, sustainable, luxury condo project. Will this be the way of the future for condos that aren't on the luxury end too? See more of Callebaut's projects here. Nora Young talks about new research suggesting just how good - and fast - humans are at visually distinguishing reality from unreal images. What does this mean for virtual reality design, as well as the design of robots?

Listen to writer/broadcasters Nora Young and Cathi Bond as they freak over the future. They can't believe it. Neither will you.

In this podcast, Nora Young talks about this Motherboard story on the environmental cost of "fast fashion".  Cathi Bond picks out some of her favourite Christmas gifts from Gizmodo's gift guide for the hermit on your list. Nora's favourite is one she also saw at Technology Review: Cozmo the cutie robot! Happy Holidays!

Listen to writer/broadcasters Nora Young and Cathi Bond as they freak over the future. They can't believe it. Neither will you.

On this podcast, Nora Young mentions research out of Carnegie Mellon into creating chatbots that can respond to humans with more emotional intelligence, picking up on our subtle social cues (via Technology Review). You might want to check out this interview with Jerry Kaplan on her show, Spark. Cathi Bond talks about Habit, a startup that aims to create custom meal plans based on your nutritional profile, including things like vitamin levels and blood sugar (via Fast Company)