Episode 537 – Ferment Your Hot Sauce – 2/6/20

This week Kishore and Jeremy discuss new release dates for Marvel and Mandalorian seasons on Disney+, a Hamilton film announcement, Japan’s life size 60 foot animatronic Gundam, Sesame Street’s applications for artificial intelligence, a video call to Norm live from Walt Disney World, and spoiler talk for Picard Episode 2 [spoilers begin at 1:07:47]!

Adam Savage’s Favorite Tools: Handheld Sheet Metal Brake

For makers who use any kind of sheet metal, this is an important tool: the handheld sheet metal brake. It’s basically a pair of pliers purpose-built for bending thin sheet metals. Adam has three pairs of these at different angles, and use them more than you’d think. They’re fantastic for getting nice flat bends on small tabs of metal!

Adam Savage’s One Day Builds: A Fake Can of Beans!

Adam helps out his friend, writer Amber Ruffin, who recently tweeted a photo of her couch leg replaced with a can of kidney beans. To help give her couch some support, Adam replicates that can out of a piece of poplar wood, making use of some of his favorite woodworking tools in the shop. The replica looks pretty convincing!

Spot and Parasite SPOILERCAST – Still Untitled: The Adam Savage Project – 2/4/20

Now that the robot dog is out of the bag, we can talk about Spot, Boston Dynamics’ robot that’s living in Adam’s shop this year. We discuss how Spot operates, how people react to it, and tease some project ideas we have for it. Plus, it’s finally time to dive into a discussion about Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite! Spoilers toward the end of the episode!

Offworld: Moon (2009)

Once a hot topic of popular science, we check in on the science and state of human cloning in our discussion of the 2009 film Moon. Ariel and Norm are joined by Hank Greely, Director of the Center for Law and Biosciences at Stanford to talk biomedical ethics, cloning body parts, and artificial wombs as they relate to the future of human space travel.