We’re all standing on the shoulders of giants. And there are no more impressive shoulders to stand on than the great physicists of the 19th and 20th centuries.
This week, Mark is in conversation with author and teacher Katherine Benfante, to determine who wins physics.
Find Katherine via her website, buy her book Scattered on Amazon, or follow her on Twitter.
Hands up who overthinks stuff? Did you really put your hand up? Is anyone else putting theirs up? Did you put yours up too quickly? Maybe you were too slow? And what is a hand meant to do once it’s up in the air, anyway? I mean, we’re always being told to wave them like we just don’t care… how does a person do that?
And breathe.
Kim Witten helps people turn their overthinking into expert thinking, and she joins Mark to build a top-5 list of ways to tame the gremlins in our brain.
Find Kim via her website, and make sure to sign up for her newsletter to keep the journey of gremlin-taming going.
PS: Mark doesn’t usually have coaches or coachy-type conversations on this podcast. But Kim’s one of the good’ns, and what she has to say is sound.
Staple a jelly doughnut to your ear, set your spleen to channel 27 and ask your favourite albino squirrel to a dance. Lex Friedman joins Mark to discuss their top-5 songs by “Weird” Al Yankovic that aren’t parodies.
Lex is, among many things (musician, improviser, podcaster, game developer and consultant), a turbo Yankovic fan, and it’s quite possible that even Al himself might struggle to come up with a better list.
Find Lex online on his website, play one of his many word games, hang out with him on Mastodon, or buy one or all of Liam & Lex’s albums.
Rhythm is a dancer. The rhythm is gonna get ya. And you must not, under any circumstances, stop the beat.
This week, Stephanie Fuccio joins Mark to pick their top 5 songs that drag them to the dance floor. At the end of this, you’ll either leave with an earworm or the need to jump on a mini-trampoline for a bit.
If you have a podcast, you can work with Steph to make it better, or follow her AI and Podcasting newsletter to learn how to make ChatGPT do your bidding.
Whether they go “pew pew”, “what is this thing called ‘love’?” or “Give me your clothes, your boots, and your motorcycle”, androids have, it turns out, been a staple of sci-fi films for a century.
This week, Ayesha Khan joins Mark to rank androids from sci-fi films.
Ayesha is the host of the podcast Every Single Sci-Fi Film Ever*. You can follow her tireless work wherever you get podcasts, and on Youtube and Instagram.
Whether you like to bash away at them or tickle them gently, you can get a lot of beautiful noise out of 88 keys.
Jon Hickman rejoins Mark to discuss their top-5 piano pop ac.
Find Jon @jonhickman just about everywhere (but not on the hellsite), or visit his lovely website.
Nothing is ever quite as it seems in the world of spies. A watch isn’t just a watch – it’s a deadly weapon. That phonebooth? Also a weapon. Bag pipes? Weapon. This sandwich though, that’s just Q’s lunch. Don’t touch it.
Valerie Paris rejoins Mark to discuss their top-5 Bond gadgets. Like Valerie’s previous appearance, it’s funny and charming. Unlike Mark’s previous Bond episode, it’s accurate and researched.
Find Valerie’s interactive novel and video games on her itch.io page, and follow her on Twitter.
The world faces a host of very real and serious dangers. But if you believe there’s nothing little ol’ us can do, it’s probably because that’s what certain people want you to think.
No, this isn’t a conspiracy episode – just a collation of ways you can actually make a difference in your home, your street, your local area, and maybe a little further afield.
Rebecca Bratspies, environment expert and law professor joins Mark to discuss their top-5 ways we can actually make a difference.
Find Rebecca’s work via her website, and follow @RBratspies on Twitter.
What should you do, eat, drink, look for or avoid while traveling alone to a new city?
Arielle Nissenblatt, podcast maven and former List Envy guest, returns to decide on the top five ways to explore a new city while travelling solo.
You can find Arielle in podcast form via Daily Tips That May or May. Not Help You, and Trailer Park, the podcast trailer podcast.
Arielle does lots of other things too, so you can find them all on her website… which is best.
What do mechanical limbs, credit cards, and the atomic bomb have in common? They all had their roots in science fiction.
Ashley Hamer joins Mark to rank real-world inventions inspired by sci-fi, and Mark reveals that he apparently went to school in a gadget factory.
Ashley is the host of Taboo Science, which examines taboos through a scientific lens. She’s also the author of The Weekly Tweak, which seeks to help your podcasting game improve, one tweak at a time.
You can also find her pretty much everywhere online @smashleyhamer.
Just like every brand has a visual logo, every accomplished brand has an audio – or sonic – logo too. Everything from the Netflix “tudum” to the noise your computer makes when it starts up… even the cap on the bottle of soda; it’s all been designed to be memorable.
Professional voice actor Jodi Krangle joins Mark to discuss all things sonic branding, and to pick their combined top 5 list of sonic logos.
Listen to the Audio Branding podcast, and book Jodi for your next project.
Where can you go to get a goodnight kiss, see a big wienie, and drink your way around the world? Why, Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom of course!
This week, Mark is joined by Disney turbo-enthusiast James Smith, to create the definitive list of things you can do in the happiest place on earth.
If they don’t leave you humming to yourself during your midnight pee, then they don’t qualify.
Standup comic Luke Gallacher joins Mark to discuss films that give them the absolute ick, and put them in the correct order.
Find Luke at a comedy venue near you. If there’s an open mic or a competition, chances are he’ll be there.
“Let’s get away to this old European castle”, he said. “It’ll be romantic”, he said. Then you find your husband’s EVP meter in your carry-on luggage and you remember you married a writer of real-life ghost stories.
John Olson, author of the Stranger Bridgerland book series joins Mark to discuss places that will creep you the hell out.
Discover Stranger Bridgerland online and follow John on TikTok.
We’ve got some half-priced cracked ice, codpieces, yellow coats and goldfish shoals nibbling at toes. That can mean only one thing – your podcast app is on the blink again.
Jon Bounds rejoins Mark to discuss their top-5 80s sitcoms from the UK. There is a very long long-list.
Keep up with Jon via his website, and to know when his new podcast Trigger’s Broom drops.
Sequins, ethnic-sounding instruments, scantily-clad androgynous gimps, wolves in tailored suits. It’s here. It’s Eurovision. Get used to it.
Cat Turner joins Mark to sift through all 37 Eurovision 2024 semifinalists to discover which are objectively the best 5.
Those “You had to be there” moments; the jokes that made you cry but you can no longer remember; the savage putdown of the ambitious heckler. These are the moments that distinguish live comedy from what you can get on Netflix.
This week, new standup Dave Bond joins Mark to discuss their top-5 British standups you can currently see live… and simply must!
Everyone’s pretty, everyone eventually gets down to it, no-one throws up, and occasionally steam comes out of someone’s ears. Is there more to cute Korean dramas than this?
Turns out yes, yes there is, as positive psychologist and K-drama stan Anya Pearse explains.
If this episode has made you happy and you want to keep feeling happy, Anya’s Unlocking Happiness online summit is available to watch for free.
Whether you’re 🤩, 😡, or 🫤 about them, emoji are a useful way to express in one tiny image what would take reams of text to express.
So today, George Chachanidze rejoins Mark to pick their top 5 emoji reactions, and create a definitive list.
Also mentioned
Stuart Moore joins Mark to discuss their top-5 characters from America’s longest-running animated show.
Snowball II, Groundskeeper Willy, Frank Grimes. These are just some of the characters that get absolutely no mention in this week’s episode.