Techs on Texts

Mar 31 2025 14 ep. 83 mins 4
Techs on Texts Podcast artwork

Techs on Texts is a podcast featuring conversations with technologists about the literature that has influenced them. Hosted and produced by Jed Sundwall. Learn more at https://techsontexts.net

  Arts  Technology  Society & Culture
RSS feed Share
Copy RSS


Subscribe on Podcast Addict


Episode #14: George Dyson on Childhood's End

Mar 31 2025 85 mins  
George Dyson is on again, this time to talk about *Childhood's End* and what it has to teach us about overlord technologies.

Episode #13: Keith Garrett on The Truth of Fact, The Truth of Fiction

Feb 28 2025 85 mins  
Keith Garrett, coy technologist, father, and former marine, comes on to discuss Ted Chiang's masterful "The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling."

Episode #12: Gina Trapani on Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

Jan 24 2025 81 mins  
Gina Trapani, exemplary human and champion of good things on the web, comes on to talk about *Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow* by Gabrielle Zevin. We talk about creating universes, friendship, parenthood, all kidns of relationships, play, vulnerability, loving the web, the beauty of being bad at doing things, blank white boards, and learning a lot. If you listen, you will know

Episode #11: Nathaniel Raymond on Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation

Dec 20 2024 71 mins  
Nathaniel Raymond, Executive Director of the Humanitarian Research Lab at the Yale School of Public Health, joins me to talk about Francis Ford Coppola's masterful 1974 film, *The Conversation*. Nathaniel makes a compelling argument that the movie was a history of the future – with Coppola accurately documenting the profound shift that surveillance technology would have on indivi

Episode #10: Mark Coatney on A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin

Nov 25 2024 91 mins  
Mark Coatney, long-suffering digital media pioneer, gets me to finally read a novel by Ursula K. Le Guin and I loved it. Topics include our changing world, what the world is for, preindustrial longing, why we should maybe recognize that media companies are ephemeral things, the pitfalls of power, lame AI, floating orbs of light, humans imitating machines, why humans like things, le

Episode #9: Esther Dyson on Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro and Spike Jonze’s Her

Oct 29 2024 80 mins  
Esther Dyson, whose bio defies summarization (and who happens to be sister of previous guest George Dyson), discusses *Never Let Me Go* by Kazuo Ishiguro and Spike Jonze's *Her*. We discuss the substance of life, bioethics, why our senses aren't always reliable, institutions and culture, predatory business models, child labor, mortality, building communities, and gardening versus c

Episode #8: Jordan Tigani on The Analytical Language of John Wilkins by Jorge Luis Borges

Sep 21 2024 85 mins  
Jordan Tigani, duck herder and renowned "database person," gives us the gift of "The Analytical Language of John Wilkins" by Jorge Luis Borges. We talk about about the potential of language, the limits of language, compression, sloppy ontologies, LLMs, what thing the universe is, simulated annealing, our vague comprehension of what embeddings are, and why it's unfortunate that ther

Episode #7: Max Lenormand on The Little Prince and Night Flight by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Aug 30 2024 126 mins  
Max Lenormand, geospatial data scientist, podcaster, and continually curious frenchman teaches us about the fascinating Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and the background behind his books *Night Flight* and *The Little Prince*. We talk about humans' strange ambition, personal sacrifice, mortality, immortality, aviation, communication networks, and why love is a choice.

Episode #6: Io Blair-Freese on Borges

Jul 30 2024 66 mins  
Io Blair-Freese – philosopher, international development pioneer, and lover of maps and computers – guides us through "The Zahir" and "An Examination of the Work of Herbert Quain" by Jorge Luis Borges. We talk about idealist philosophy, inevitable religions, identity, the power of attention, the limitations of attention, and the limitlessness of language.

Episode #5: George Dyson on The Voice of the Dolphins

Jun 29 2024 83 mins  
George Dyson, historian, boat maker, master human technologist, and friend of friends discusses the totally wild *The Voice of the Dolphins* by Leo Szilard who discovered the nuclear chain reaction. We talk about AI, geopolitics, alignment (lol), and humanity.