Zengineering Podcast

Howdy Zengineers! Today we're talking about Music with industry expert, Scott Bauer. Not just any music, either. We're talking specifically about Pop Music. Cringe! What's that you're feeling right now? Are you upset that we're giving Katy Perry an entire episode? Are you embarrassed about your guilty pleasures playlist? Maybe you're stoked because pop music fires you up! Well, however you feel, you should know that you're not alone, and that's why we've brought our good friend Scott in to help. Music has inspired our species since the beginning of recorded history. Every culture has had it, and most every person has had a love affair with it. In today's world, music is the "beneficiary" of digitization and globalization. As a result, music is absolutely everywhere all of the time. This has had some interesting affects on the tunage you hear in everyday life. Why is it that one person can listen to the same song twenty five times in a row, and still dance, while another person immediately gives it a thumbs down? Why are some bands revered as earth shattering, and others, although wildly successful (by the books) are doomed to be the butt of all jokes? Why are the Beatles consistently ranked so highly in the history of rock and roll, when they started off as a boy band sensationalized by a global teen fanbase? These and other pressing questions about Popular Music are all discussed in this episode of Zengineering Podcast. Get ready for a little music theory, a little music business, and a whole lot of Adam, Brian, and Scott's anecdotal and objective opinions about what they like and why. We hope you enjoy this trip down the pop music road. Cheers!

Welcome home, Zengineers! This is the final episode in our three part series on Artificial Intelligence. This is the deep dive into the big questions. Will computers be smarter than us some day? What the heck does that mean anyway? Are terminators already coming for us through time and space? Who knows? The emergence of Artificial Intelligence forces humanity to face so many of life’s big questions in practical ways that have only been the job of philosophers and ministers in the past. What are good and evil? How do you program morals into a machine? Will we need to? Will the machines care? This episode is one of our favorites and this series is a fascinating exploration into the depths of the human mind and our wildest technological advancements. In part one we chased what intelligence is and recapped the history of AI. In part two we ran through the current state of Artificial Intelligence and where it is in the world.

Howdy, Zengineers. Welcome to our second episode on Virtual Reality. We start this episode by examining the five traditional senses (evolutionary technologies?) that our bodies have in the “Real World.” From there its a wild ride through perception and experience as we dive into the digital technologies behind modern VR that attempt to convince your mind that VR is not V at all! Our recent experiences with the HTC Vive have left us absolutely floored by the near fully immersive Virtual Reality space of today. This episode gets pretty deep by the end, swimming into the ether that surrounds whatever time and space actually are. Damn. VR is spicy. It captures many of the central themes of Zengineering Podcast. Enjoy it! BTW, this is a followup to Episode 34: On Virtual Reality (our first impressions with modern VR).

Hey Zengineers! Let me ask you a strange question. How would you feel if you knew that all your hard earned money was just going to be converted into a digital bit stream and saved on some centralized databases maintained by a handful of global businesses? Does this sound like a scary idea? Well, it’s already what’s happening when you deposit your money with any modern bank in the world. The gold standard no longer exists. Physical paper still has value, but exists only ephemerally during small transactions, and if the system makes a mistake, it’s not easy for the individual to do much about it. If this sounds dystopian to you, imagine something even weirder. How about we make every financial transaction public. What if we then distributed all that information to millions of personal computers all around the world? How about we do away entirely with the idea of a centralized authority? This roughly describes BitCoin, Ethereum, Ripple, Litecoin and other Cryptocurrencies. This week we dive just below the surface of a strange new process for tracking transactions. Based on an almost mythical technological concept called Blockchain, crypto currencies are already creating multi-billion dollar markets, and new ways to transact everything from purchases, to legal contracts, to secure computer communication are secretly upending how the world thinks about almost every physical and digital transaction on Earth. We discuss libraries and the rise of the internet, Napster and the demise of the music industry, and banking and the impact decentralization by cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin is going to have on the global financial systems. This digitization of major global systems is well under way and there’s absolutely no stopping any of it. This episode is deep and confusing and important. Hit us up with any questions, as we’ll definitely be covering this a lot deeper as part of a bigger series.

In this episode, we discuss “alternate” realities, aka virtual realities. To do so, I travelled to Los Angeles to visit Adam (this is Brian, btw). Why you may ask would I slug my 215 pound, 6 foot 8 inch body all the way there? Well, I needed to be physically in Adam’s living room so that my mind could enter into the virtual reality of an HTC Vive VR system that Adam has recently setup. It was mind blowing. The current generation of Virtual Reality Technology is “The jetpack we’ve been promised.” It’s flying cars. It’s travel to other planets. It’s fully immersive collaborative working environments. It is truly the Matrix. On Saturday night, May 21st, 2017, I caught a bullet out of the air with my bare hands, and I’ll never forget it. Because of a lifetime of VR technologies proving mostly comical, and rarely functional, I did not expect to even be particularly entertained by this system. But, after a weekend of exploring Virtual Reality of the early 21st century I can say with utmost confidence that the world is about to change … forever. I hope we captured some of this excitement / magic / shock / fear in this episode discussing my initial impressions of the modern VR experience. Look out for at least two more episodes in this series. One where we will discuss VR technology and how it plays with the technology we were born with, and another where we jump of the real and virtual cliff of implications for VR. Cheers! T. Brian Jones

Hey it's a shorty! This week we've got a quick convo on podcasting versus writing, how each is used to convey info, and where it's easier to be dishonest. Dig it! Share it! Let us know what you think. Enjoy!

Alan’s back, to help us bring you Procedurally Generated Content. What the hell is that? Well it might be our every day reality, but we’ll start simple where you may or may not be aware of it ... games! We’ll do a little on roleplaying like D&D, and then dive into video games like Minecraft and Grand Theft Auto. Then it gets weird ... small talk, genetic algorithms, music, DNA, jet engine design, and more. Nope, we didn’t leave out zombies, the Library of Babylon, or a deeper philosophical conversation on what genetic algorithms mean for the intrinsic nature of good and evil. Wow ... this went all over the place. We hope you enjoy!!

It's a shorty! Just a little something something to get you through the week. This one's about some of the problems and complications inherent in the idea that we're going to "bring manufacturing back" to the United States. Of course we can't talk about this stuff without a little Elon Musk and asteroid mining in there. Enjoy!

The March for Science happened this last weekend all over the world. Did you know about it? We almost didn't. How awkward. Did we attend? Nope. Why not? Urrrrr ... Ummm ... well, let's talk about it. In this episode we take a shallow dive into some of the most fundamental aspects of our Podcast. What is the March for Science? What impact is it attempting to produce? Will it be successful? How do Bill Nye and other science communicators (like us) play into that mission? WHAT IS THE FREAKIN' MISSION? We're not sure. Give a listen and help us figure it out. We know this stuff is important, but we certainly don't have the final answers!!

Hey Zengineers! We're taking this week to introduce a new format you'll be seeing/hearing on our feed more often. The SHORTY! We'll explain in the episode. This one's about all different kinds of sex. Yep, there are many. Enjoy this one. And keep exploring!

We've wanted to up our stoke recently, so after a lot of consideration, we decided to launch a three part series on PLANETS. We love em. We love em a lot!! Heck, we better, cuz we live on one!! In this first part of our series on planets, we talk about what we know, how we know it, why we care so much, the history of our motivation to explore, and what we know about Earth. We bump into a lot of interesting crossover between astronomy, the scientific method, and the history of humanity's scientific exploration. Expect to get a little choked up in this episode. Our history is amazing, our exploration is inspiring, and "the void" is physically, intellectually, and spiritually challenging. In parts II and III we'll venture off-world into our solar system, and eventually out into the cosmos.

Hey! It's a bonus 'cast! When we had Mike Rosolio on last week we failed to make it out of the intro for the episode we planned before time ran out. After that we ran through some actual logical trick plays you'll see everywhere once you know how they work (logical fallacies.)It didn't quite fit after the killer convo you heard last week. So, if you dug episode 30, and you want to listen to us get more technical, this one's for you. Enjoy, and let us know if you like it.

We missed the Rhetorical Theory and Semantics class in school, but our guest this week got his degree in it! What's that mean? He's really good at arguing, and persuading, and finding holes in your BS!! In this episode, the three of us set out to introduce logical fallacies, but ended up lost in a discussion about just, well ... how to have a reasonable discussion. Why is it that so many conversations these days end in a fight? What's up the state of discourse in modern society? We talk about logical structures, wander through some examples in the news, and then zoom out to talk about strategies for engaging in conversations that aren't just a waste of everyone's time. Think about your most recent conversation with that crazy relative, give this episode a listen, and then try that conversation again. See how it goes!

We're back, with our second conversation on Artificial Intelligence. Last time we mostly talked about the past, while we tried to dissect what AI actually is. We mused on older technologies we dubbed Artificial Memory, like books, calculators, and hard drives. In this episode we discuss how video games (during humanity's never-ending quest to recreate reality) got us to the computational capacity for natural language processing, machine learning, and neural networks. Where is this technology now, and where are they in your life? Do you like that the machines are starting to make decisions for you? Do you even know they are there? This is the second of at least three episodes in our quest to figure out the five Ws of AI. Enjoy!

Hey everybody! We’re back with more Zengineering goodness. This week we’ve got guest Ryan Zaffino hanging out. He’s a Crossfit coach, personal trainer, and studying to be a physical therapist. Crossfit has come up before but this week we’re diving in on what it really is and Ryan’s talking fitness, health, happiness and how he works mindfulness into types of training that you might not think of that way. Enjoy! As always, let us know what you think on the socials, or [email protected]

Howdy, Zengineers! A lot of season one danced around the topic of Artificial Intelligence, so we decided it was time to dive in for realz. This is part one of a three part series on Artificial Intelligence. What the hell is it? Where'd it come from? How does it play in our lives right now? Where are we headed? It's a crazy time and there's a lot to be aware of. We're really excited for this one. Enjoy, and, as always, hit us up with your thoughts and ideas!

Hello Zengineers! We're back with our second guest episode of Season 2. Have you ever been listening and thought, "These guys are really really good looking, but what they just said is total BS!" Well, our good friend Alan Gilbert has come on to help us kick off a new Error Correction Program here at Zengineering Podcast. We revisit quantum computing, historical number systems, and even touch on the Sacajawea One Dollar Coin ... what? Hope you enjoy, and have a great week!