Back to Work

TOPIC: First Meeting, Gifts, and Grifts

This week—after 122 episodes, plus almost a decade of internet pal-dom—Dan and Merlin finally meet and record in a room together for the first time.

With onl…

TOPIC: Loyalty, Altruism, Reality Check, or Extortion?

This week, Dan and Merlin talk about what we talk about when we talk about "loyalty."

Links for this episode:

• [SPONSOR] Shutterstock
  Stock Photo…

TOPIC: Dan's Recent Bathroom Incident, et al.

This week, Dan and Merlin exhale. Don't search for secret doors.

Links for this episode:

• [SPONSOR] TextExpander Touch 2 by Smile
  TextExpander Touch: Type…

TOPIC: What would you do differently if you had a "safety net?"

This week, Dan and Merlin congratulate their pal, Marco, on the acquisition of a company he helped co-found.

Which leads to the nomin…

TOPIC: Macintosh Nostalgia and Utter Apple ID Madness.

This week, after an entirely appropriate amount of very important follow-up, Dan and Merlin talk about Susan Kare's original Mac icons, why the…

TOPIC: Toward an (Admittedly Dubious) Unified Field Theory of Creativity

This week, Dan and Merlin consider a framework for understanding the basic modes and focal lengths involved in producing crea…

TOPIC: Offices, and when to get out of them.

This week—in what will surely be remembered as the greatest Back to Work episode of all time—Dan and Merlin eventually talk about working at a desk and w…

TOPIC: Quit & Analyze, and Marvel Character Speculation.

This week, Dan and Merlin talk about Dan's "Quit & Analyze" episode, then proceed into a very useful conversation about which characters from…

TOPIC: Fixing the Culture of Meetings

This week, Dan and Merlin address the problems with meetings, and how we can each choose to improve them.

Ten quick ideas?

1. Purpose
2. Agenda
3. Grazing Policy
4. Hard…

TOPIC: Quicksilver and the OS X App Launcher Landscape

This week, Dan triumphantly returns from two weeks of crippling illness. So, the boys ease their way back into the groove with a grab bag of gr…

TOPIC: Drafts for iOS, and Who You Want to Be

This week, Dan and Merlin cover two very different topics.

First, there's a detailed discussion of one of Merlin's favorite iOS apps, Drafts, including…

TOPIC: Choosing Your Forks.

This week, Dan and Merlin talk about some of the deeper and more slippery issues behind changes in our career and life.

In particular, how do we go from a vague tickle t…

TOPIC: Memory.

This week, Dan and Merlin try to tackle the complexities of memory.

Why do we remember things from childhood with unimpeachable detail, but then forget our own phone number or PIN co…

TOPIC: Stupidity.

This week, Dan and Merlin tackle stupidity. And, brother, there sure are a whole lot of flavors of stupid.

Are we really talking about being clueless, unaware, dumb, absent-minded…

TOPIC: Not So Much

This week, Dan and Merlin eschew ““topic”” to freely discuss razors, beef, They Might Be Giants, prolapse, Genesis, dogs, Spider-Man (and -Womyn), pretender marteenies, truck butt…

TOPIC: Shaving a Yak

This week, Dan and Merlin talk about The Hierarchy of Fiddling. When does self-improvement silently shade into navel-gazing, and how do we realize that it's happening?

Some fix…

TOPIC: Compression

This week, Dan and Merlin talk about compression. What happens when we don't account for how long something really takes to do? And, worse still, what if we don't think about wha…

TOPIC: Duplicates, duplicates, duplicates.

This week, Dan and Merlin conclude their discussion of media management by focusing on dealing with duplicates. Just so many duplicates.

Music, Photos, Co…

TOPIC: Cool stuff Merlin loves.

This week, Merlin is delirious and may be in a fugue state, so he and Dan talk about a bunch of cool apps and gadgets--stuff that Merlin likes and really recommends.

TOPIC: Modern Media Management: Metadata and Smart Playlists

This week Dan and Merlin continue their 3-part series on Modern Media Management: handling your iTunes Library, iOS Devices, and iTunes M…