Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.
Episodes
Special Episode: FOSS NAS Solutions
20 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Building a NAS served as the gateway into free and open source software for both of us, so in this ep we're looping back around and checking in on the...
124: The Year of the Grid
13 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
That pleasantly floral scent you're detecting means it's time for another potpourri ep! This time we dive into the nitty gritty of our podcast workflo...
Special Episode: Enter the FOSS Pod
06 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Hey, we're launching a new spinoff podcast alongside the Tech Pod! It's a biweekly show about free and open source software called The FOSS Pod (which...
123: Not a Positive Outcome
30 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
You have questions, we have answers about what we thought was cool in 2021, a couple of our war stories working in media, repairing a classic flip clo...
122: Hashtag Octothorpe
23 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Microsoft's mind-boggling purchase of Activision this week prompted us to look back on other tech acquisitions large and small over the last two decad...
121: Notepad Dark Mode?!?
16 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Will just successfully shipped his first game, and Brad has spent years asking questions about shipping games, so this week we met in the middle with ...
120: What Comes After
09 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
This week we avoided traveling to Las Vegas for CES and instead tried to absorb all the news coming out of the show from the comfort of our desks. Lis...
119: The Sardine Warlord of the Wasteland
02 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
New year, new set of listener questions! This month's Q&A has us addressing CES survival strategies, how to lose 77 terabytes of data overnight, the w...
Holiday Special: Abit, Are You Listening?
26 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
This week we're reaching deep into the vault for the holidays and unlocking one of our favorite Patron-exclusive episodes, featuring dramatic readings...
118: #TidyDeskLife
20 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The weather is getting frigid (at least some places), and that means one thing: it's time for us to deliver another cube of cold opens. This time arou...
117: A Turnip Cures Elvis
12 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We had such a good time talking about Hackers a few weeks ago that we're back with that other seminal '90s computer crime movie, Sneakers! Join us for...
116: Nano on Both Sides
05 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The holidays are here again, and with them, the need to gift. This week we offer an informal not-a-gift-guide chat about gift giving and receiving, in...
115: Deals on Wheels
28 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
This week we're thankful for our listeners and the many questions they provided to this Q&A ep, which got us talking about topics including how we res...
114: That's One Spicy Pillow
21 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
This week Apple announced an effort to begin offering service manuals, replacement parts, and other self-repair services to its customers. Who better ...
113: Three Prongs Bad, Two Prongs Good
14 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We've been holding video game controllers for most of our natural lives, and now we're attempting to put them in a qualitative, ordered list; a sort o...
112: Here Comes Manhattanhenge!
07 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
By the time you hear this ep, Daylight Savings Time will have departed for another year, so DST is naturally what we're chatting about this week. We c...
111: Flanders Is Running in a Degraded State
31 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
It's the most horrifying Q&A episode we've ever recorded! This month we field Qs about such topics as: how to teach your kids to view Internet content...
110: The UPC of the Beast
24 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Will's daughter recently had her first encounter with a corded telephone, which got us thinking about other technologies that are on the way out or ha...
109: A House of Lies
17 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
It's been nine years since Will's last big house cleanup, and the time has come once again to discuss... THE PURGE (of all his stuff). In the interest...
108: Deez Network Servers
10 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Well, this was one heck of a week. On Monday, Facebook experienced a historic outage of its infrastructure that impacted services used by billions of ...
107: The Kick-Ass Stamp of Approval
03 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Will Smith, this is your life! Or at least one month of it, specifically November 2009, when you published an issue of Maximum PC that included a revi...
106: That's So USB!
26 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Our monthly Q&A episode is all over the place in September, addressing such wide-ranging subjects as the fastest Internet we've ever used, surviving b...
105: The Hardest Lift
19 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Health science writer and noted swole woman Casey Johnston joins us this week to talk about the convergence of exercise and strength training, food sc...
104: Get the Good out of It
12 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Bang for the buck! There's no greater feeling than finding that one product that's way, way better than it should be for the price--or modifying it yo...
103: A Watershed Moment in Copyright Litigation
05 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
This week we're joined by Google's director of open source, Chris DiBona, to talk all things software licensing. Topics include corporate sponsorship ...
102: My Little iPad Pillow
29 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
On this month's Q&A ep, we debut some wild new cold-open technology, and then get on with the business of addressing subjects like the future of movie...
101: Big-Dot-Little
22 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
This week we recorded a grab bag about some disruptive current events going on in various tech spaces. Intel is finally making a real push into the GP...
100: The Spiteful Fork
15 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Drama alert! Our long-promised scene drama episode (vol. 1) is here to explore community kerfuffles new and old, with conversations about Ubiquiti's n...
99: You Wanna Be Elite?
08 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We recently found a Hackers-sized hole in Brad's filmgoing history, so we're killing two birds with one stone this week by making him watch the movie,...
98: The Fox Knows What's Up
01 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Question time is here again, and this month our answers address topics like these: why anyone is still using big ol' ATX, our favorite flea market fin...
97: How to Survive the Chipocalypse
25 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Ever wonder what it's like to try your hand at small-batch manufacturing overseas? Keyboardio's Jesse Vincent joins us this week to address that very ...
96: National Ground Beef Day
18 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We enjoyed Will's birth-year episode so much a few weeks ago that we're back with a look at the notable events in tech, science, and culture of 1979 n...
95: The Pirate Radio of Podcasts
11 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
This week we're joined by Will's friend Ben Brown, longtime online software developer, to talk about the Internet old and new. Topics include Ben's gr...
94: "Naked Corporate Opportunism"
04 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
You knew we couldn't resist doing a Windows 11 episode, and indeed we're here to talk about the whole shebang: virtualized security and the controvers...
93: Missives From the Void
27 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
This month's Q&A episode features Qs (from both email and our Discord) that got us chatting about such topics as: the ARPANET, passive-aggressive emai...
92: Carmackology
20 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
id Software's Quake came out 25 years ago this week, and it also changed both of our lives. In this episode we wax nostalgic about the astonishing leg...
91: Professor Will’s Magical Sensorium
13 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
It's been a big week around these parts--Will helped reveal a new game at E3, and Brad helped launch a new online media property--so we did a potpourr...
90: CONTROL MY MONITOR
06 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Reinstalling Windows: no one enjoys it, but everyone has to do it eventually. This week, we spend some time chatting about the ways this timeless ritu...
89: Don't Mix the Soaps!
30 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
If you're looking for our monthly Q&A ep, you've found it! This time around we consider such listener-provided topics as questionable soap-on-soap int...
88: It Just Makes the Lithium Angrier
23 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Spurred by Will's first month with a Chevy Bolt, we present an episode on electric cars and attempt to answer questions such as: How weird is it to dr...
87: With a Name Like Deke...
16 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In honor of Will's birthday, this week we traveled back to the heady days of 1975 to see what was big in science and tech in the year of his birth. Ou...
86: 42U or Bust
09 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Very special guest Vinny Caravella joins us this week for a wide-ranging chat about his years of video production, juggling cameras in the early days ...
85: Hey, They've Got That Baseball
02 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Six-ish months since launch, the next-gen consoles are now officially current-gen, so we thought it was time for a check-in on the state of the PlaySt...
84: On a Cleaning Jag
25 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Email time! In this month's Q&A, we talk about Spring cleaning and strategies for organizing electronics with limited storage space, overusing ellipse...
83: The Best One Is the One You Can Get
18 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Kishore Hari--Tested.com correspondent, noted science communicator, and steak-product connoisseur--rejoins us for a check-in on the state of the COVID...
82: A Hundred Pounds and Razor Sharp
11 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Ultra-wideband support has been making its way into phones for a couple of years now, but... what the heck is it? This week we attempt to demystify th...
81: A Cube of Cold Opens
04 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
What is this week's episode about, you might ask? Why, it has a delightfully floral scent, almost like... a potpourri. You could say it's sort of a bu...
80: That's a Sewer Diamond!
28 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Like Spring, emails are upon us once again, and this month we talk about such listener-provided topics as the stagnation of flash memory, a Starlink t...
79: A Subsidiary of Starko Industries
21 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
What the heck is going on with modern video game controllers? That's the question we're trying to address this week, with Joy Con and DualSense analog...
78: The One With the Racing Stripes
14 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
This week our quest to find consensus on the best advancements in PC-building reaches its end. From the USB superposition to the class warfare of fanc...
77: Big Shoutout to Thumbscrews
07 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The urge to rank is upon us again, and this time we're looking to put together a list of the best advancements in hardware over our 25-year history of...
76: Hell or Palo Alto
28 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Listener emails return after a brief hiatus, and this time they bring chatter about the correct Windows taskbar positioning, the latest PlayStation VR...
75: The Right Right-Stuff Stuff
21 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
This week we're joined by Adam Rogers, Wired senior correspondent and author of Proof: The Science of Booze, to talk all things alcohol. Topics includ...
74: Mining for Computronium
14 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Google's "pivot" away from first-party Stadia development seemed like a good cue to spend an episode not only pondering the future of the company's ga...
73: Thirteen Issues a Year
07 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Will used to work for a tech magazine. Brad always wanted to. We both read more than our fair share back in the day. So let's talk about magazines! In...
72: The State of the (Virtual) Union
31 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
It's time for a check-in on the health of VR, including the latest in headsets and controllers, standout games and productivity software, the open-sou...
71: Curiosity and Perseverance
24 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Friend of the podcast Doug Ellison from NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab stops by to give us the lowdown on the newest Mars rover Perseverance, set to land o...
70: Executed By Google
17 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Time for some 2021 emails! This month we talked about dearly departed Google products, how to fix a broken USB port (or whether you should even try), ...
69: The Gravest Day
10 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We were unable to turn our attention to anything but the week's horrifying events in Washington, D.C., so for this episode we had a freewheeling chat ...
68: The Treacherous World of Magnetic Flux
03 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We're kicking off 2021 with a trip back to... 1985? Yes, we sat down with a vintage episode of the Computer Chronicles to reflect on the hard disk's m...
67: Nog Ambitions
27 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
With 2020 (finally) drawing to a close, we look back on a few of our favorite tech things, big or small, from this challenging year. From advances in ...
66: That Classic Chonk
20 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Our last email ep of 2020 addresses such topics as: how to trust Google search results (or not), bad tech habits we just can't shake, how to get and s...
65: Visionary or Villain
13 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Product design is on our minds this week, starting with the industry-redefining research that led to the production of modern, psychologically optimiz...
64: That Cheapskate Cumulonimbus
06 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The time has come to discuss 5G and the latest cellular data specs (largely because Will got an iPhone 12). We get into his hands-on experience with 5...
63: Brad and Will Build a Dream House
29 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
While we're nursing our meat hangovers, we took a cue from last week's email about future-proofing your home to chat about 21st-century home ownership...
62: PEMDAS for Monitors
22 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Our Fall cornucopia of emails contains such succulent questions as: How future-proof should your new smart home be? To prebuilt PC or not to prebuilt ...
61: The Bad Kind of Complexity
15 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
On this busy week we threw together a delightful potpourri of different topics, from gadget repair to drilling through PCBs, lust for 4k TVs (or not),...
60: Forgiveness, Not Permission
08 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Big AMD energy this week. PC World's Gordon Mah Ung has gotten his hands on the new Ryzen 5000 series chips, and now he's here to tell us all about AM...
59: How You Know You're Living in the Future
01 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
We've both tumbled down the Home Assistant rabbit hole, so this week we recorded an informal trip report on this sprawling open-source home automation...
58: Lil' Doppler Redshift
25 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
On this month's email show we talk about our love of astrophysics, a PC that could last you forever, bad interface design in consumer electronics, why...
57: Everything's Bigger in Texas
18 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
All these new PC hardware announcements have us feeling nostalgic again, so we took another trip down memory lane to talk in-depth about the '90s 3D a...
56: TressFX Vs. HairWorks
11 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
This week, we couldn't resist talking about the newly announced Zen 3 CPUs from AMD, along with the tease of their upcoming Big Navi-based graphics ca...
55: Five Altairian Dollars a Day
04 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Brad just read Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy for the first time (and Will reread it for the eleventy-thousandth), and now we're here to discuss the...
54: Lack Rack!
27 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The emails cometh, and bringeth with them questions and tips about why nobody can order a 3080 or PS5, the eyeball-saving properties of red nightlight...
53: The Mass-to-Volume Ratio
20 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Nvidia bought ARM. Nvidia bought ARM! It's one of the biggest semiconductor deals in history, so we dive deep into what it all means, from some basics...
52: It's an App Basket!
13 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Playing video games remotely has gotten surprisingly good lately, so this week we decided to sit down and figure out the what's what of home game stre...
51: The Man With the Spatula
06 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Last week Brad and Will got to attend a virtual deep dive on Nvidia's new 30-series GPUs, and in this ep we attempt to break down all the new ray-trac...
50: Two Is One, One Is None
30 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Our 50th episode doesn't quite have 50 emails, but it's close: tune in for listener mails about bugout bags, evacuation tips, data over HAM radio, the...
49: Proto-Prepping
23 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
With the latest round of California wildfires heavy on our minds, this week we ended up with a wide-ranging conversation about what to take with you w...
48: Grip Is Good
16 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Following up on our software unitasker ep from a few weeks ago, we're now moving into the physical realm. This week we run down a few of our favorite ...
47: Key-Hoarding
09 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
This week we very carefully lower ourselves into the unthinkably deep rabbit hole of mechanical keyboards. If you've ever wanted to know your MX reds ...
46: The Suborbitable Caterpillar
02 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeemails this month address questions like: Where the heck are the color e-ink readers? Can we imagine a world without DNS? What in the wo...
45: No-Tonsil-Stone Zone
26 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
PC Gamer's Wes Fenlon stops by to talk about turning an old PC into a new router. Why would you want to roll your own router in the first place? What ...
44: alt.barney.dinosaur.die.die.die
19 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In these trying times, we thought a nostalgic little walk down memory lane might be nice. Join us as we look back at the '90s Internet, from PPP conne...
43: Sigh Ops
12 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
This week we run down a few of the common and not-so-common software tools that make our lives a bit easier. From text-syncing to task-scheduling, aud...
42: It’s Only a Mistake if You Don’t Learn
05 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
This month's email episode contains some of your own tech horror stories, from melted carpet fibers and shutting down a whole town's Internet to causi...
41: The Great Simian Mathematician
28 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Another Apple episode already? Yeah, we didn't expect it either until WWDC brought such a bounty of new stuff to talk about. In addition to ARM-based ...
40: Gigantic Flaming Luminous Orb
21 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Oh, the horror! This week we recount some of the tech disasters from our past. From near-miss electrocutions to ruined prototype hardware, PC-building...
39: The Eternal Optimist
14 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Things are rough out there, so this week we recorded a free-wheeling episode about tech-ish self-care strategies for things like exercise, meditation,...
38: Embrace, Extend, Extinguish
07 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
It's time for infosec episode, the sequel! Will recounts the hackery he's dealt with since our initial podcast about online security a few weeks ago, ...
37: Mr. Reginald Edit
31 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and other great benefits! You can...
36: The Frankencoder Liiiiiiives
24 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
With everyone trapped indoors, streaming video on the Internet is an especially good way to connect with people right now. This week we did a broad su...
35: Every Polygon Is a Pixel
17 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
With the advent of another generational Unreal Engine tech demo, it's time to have a live watch party and then mull over what the UE5 tech means for a...
34: My Other Computer Is a Datacenter
10 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Friend of the pod Brian Fitzpatrick of Tock Inc. and ORD Camp stops by to talk about the early days of big data at Google, shipping 1500-pound rack se...
33: Prudiest Common Denominator
03 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
By all accounts, Apple is moving its laptops to ARM sooner than later. What's this transition going to mean for existing MacOS software? How many days...
32: Bless the Drive
26 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Time for another Q&A! This week we discuss listener-submitted emails about the ultra-sandboxed future of Windows 10X, a short mouse retrospective, wai...
31: Virtuals on Virtuals on Virtuals
19 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
This week we reach into our grab bag of homebound projects to chat about the tech stuff we're up to lately, from Will's ray-traced camera obscura and ...
30: The Neighborhood Software Pirate
12 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Special guest time! Digital Eclipse's Mike Mika joins us to talk about the early days of programming video games, how not to get murdered by your arca...
29: Have Laser, Will Cut
05 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In this grab bag of an episode, we cover topics ranging from ground loop isolators to the MiSTer, fixing holes in air mattresses, modern uses for 3D p...
28: Low Bidet-lability
29 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Serious Eats Food SafetyThe YouTube Food VideoSocial Distancing Strategies for Curbing COVID-19COVID Tracking Project As always, we couldn't make thi...