John Hodgman's comedy special is airing tonight (June 20th) on Netflix. It's called John Hodgman: Ragnarok. Carla and I were given early access to the special, which we watched last night and enjoyed very much. John kindly spent his lunch hour on the set of The Daily Show yesterday to talk with me about the special.

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This episode of Gweek is brought to you by 23andMe, the leading health and ancestry DNA service. Order your 23andMe DNA kit today for just $99.

This time, I talked to:

Hugh Howey, the author of the award-winning Molly Fyde Saga and the New York Times bestselling Wool series. The Wool Omnibus won Kindle Book Review's 2012 Indie Book of the Year Award.

Dean Putney, Boing Boing’s development wizard and everyone's favorite Manic Pixie Dream Coder.

Giveaway! Hugh kindly offered to give away a brand new Kindle Paperwhite with his signature on it! To be considered for the giveaway, subscribe to @GweekPodcast on Twitter. We'll pick the winner at random on June 25 at Noon PT.

Here's what we talked about:

Hugh discusses his unique independent publishing model and why he turned down a seven-figure book advance to retain ownership of e-book rights.

Oculus Rift

virtual reality goggles.

Exec, Lyft and the informal economy.

7 Minutes Workout Mark: "I checked out six different free iPhone apps based on research into High Intensity Interval Training. The best one is called 7 Minutes Workout."

Kingdom Rush Frontiers Mark: "I loved the the first Kingdom Rush, a tower defense game with nice cartoony graphics. This follow up is great fun, too."

Why Knot?: How to Tie More Than Sixty Ingenious, Useful, Beautiful, Lifesaving, and Secure Knots, by Philippe Petit. Mark: "The Man on Wire guy who illegally walked across the World Trade Center in 1974 has written and illustrated a great book about tying knots."

And a whole lot more!

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In this episode of Gweek, I talked to Ramez Naam and Jason Snell.

Ramez Naam is a computer scientist and the H.G. Wells Award-winning author of three books, including the sci-fi thriller Nexus.

Jason Snell is editorial director at IDG, the publishers of magazines and web sites about technology such as Macworld, PCWorld, and TechHive. He was the editor of Macworld for eight years. He's also the host of The Incomparable, an award-winning podcast about geeky cultural topics including movies, TV, books, and comics.

Here's what we talked about:

Real-life cyborg tech Ramez: "In the last couple years we’ve seen the approval of the first bionic eye, trials on implants that let paralyzed people move robot arms via their thoughts, and brain implants that make rats and monkeys smarter. What’s going on here? Are we headed towards The Matrix?"

Star Trek: Into Darkness Jason: "A lot of complaints I see about this movie (which I really liked) seem to involve fans who are offended by divergences from continuity, or because the movie dares to tread over (and rewrite or subvert) old ground." Ramez: "How much do we expect our sci-fi to be scientifically accurate? Or even self-consistent? I enjoyed Avengers despite it being very silly and at times illogical. But much more minor flaws in logic ruined Prometheus for me."

Feedly Mark: "A replacement for Google reader, which is going away."

Morning Glories Jason: "Just started reading this comic, which just began its second "season." As a big fan of Lost, I'm intrigued by this time-bending combination of Lost and Buffy or Runaways."

Mark: "I'm buying a $100 Samsung Galaxy Pocket and a local SIM card when traveling to Japan instead of buying AT&T's expensive international data plan."

And a whole lot more!

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In this episode of Gweek, I talked to Dave Finkel and Kevin Mack.

Kevin Mack is a pioneering digital artist and Academy Award winning visual effects designer. Kevin also uses science and technology to make psychoactive abstract art. His work is currently featured in the "Imagined Realities in New Media" exhibit at the PS Zask Gallery in Southern California.

Dave Finkel is a Los Angeles based TV comedy writer. He’s currently an Executive Producer on the Fox comedy, New Girl starring Zooey Deschanel. His past credits include 30 Rock, United States of Tara and Just Shoot Me!

Here's what we talked about:

Rayman Jungle Run: addictive game for iOS and Android

Inkodye: Amazing sunlight sensitive dyes

Foldify: Fun paper craft iPad app for kids

Melon: Kickstarter for an EEG neurofeedback transmitting headband

Nanoflowers: Beautiful microscopic flower sculptures

Deep Learning: The next stage of neural networks

Cloud Face: Computers seeing faces in clouds

Chris Bathgate: Sculptor

HUMN Wallet: Two flat metal plates with an elastic band around them. Your stuff gets sandwiched between.

Pxlbots: Aggressively grainy pixel art of monsters and robots. Excellent DIY vinyl stickers.

The New Disruptors podcast: Glenn Fleishman's fantastic interview podcast about the end of organizational advantage.

And more!

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In this episode of Gweek, I talked to Ruben Bolling and Nate DiMeo.

Ruben Bolling is the creator of “Tom the Dancing Bug,” the weekly comic strip that premieres every Wednesday on Boing Boing. “Tom the Dancing Bug” has won many awards and is a multiple Harvey Award nominee for Best Comic Strip. You can join the INNER HIVE, the comic strip’s subscription service.

Nate DiMeo is the creator of the Memory Palace, a podcast and public radio segment. He’s an on again off again journalist and has written for the TV show Parks and Recreation and was a finalist for the Thurber Prize in American Humor for co-writing a companion book for Parks and Rec called Pawnee: the Greatest Town in America.

Here's what we talked about:

Cinebook, a line of European comic books, including Lucky Luke, Yakari, Blue Coats

Marble Season, by Gilbert Hernandez

Waze, a traffic and GPS app

The Books of Beginning series, a middle-grade fantasy adventure trilogy by John Stephens

Super Flat Times, a kinda lost, unheralded, terrific collection of short stories about a bonkers dystopian world by Matthew Derby

The Hunter, by Richard Stark

Wikireader, $20 gadget contains "the entire English Wikipedia with 3 million topics"

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In this episode of Gweek, I talked to Ned Vizzini and Chris Columbus about their new book, House of Secrets. Harry Potter creator J. K. Rowling calls House of Secrets “a breakneck, jam-packed, roller-coaster of an adventure about the secret power of books.”

Ned Vizzini is an award-winning author and television writer. He’s the author of the novels Be More Chill and It's Kind of a Funny Story, and he was on Gweek 069 last year when his delightful young adult novel, The Other Normals was published. He’s also written for TV, including MTV’s Teen Wolf.

Chris Columbus is the writer, director, and producer of many award winning movies, including Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Mrs. Doubtfire, The Goonies, Gremlins, The Help, and Home Alone.

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In this episode of Gweek, I talked to the terrific crime writer Duane Swierczynski. Duane has a new book out today, called Point & Shoot. It's the third and final novel in his Charlie Hardie series (see my review here). Next week, Dark Horse is releasing X #1, written by Duane. We talked about his novels, non-fiction work, and comic book writing. We also geeked out on our favorite crime writers, and I added several authors to my list of books I want to read before I die.

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What we talked about in this episode:

Fun & Games

Hell & Gone

Point & Shoot

The Wheel Man

The Blonde

Frauds, Scams, and Cons

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Dean Putney and I interviewed Lucy Knisley, one of my favorite cartoonists. From her website:

Lucy is an illustrator, comic artist and author. Occasionally she is a puppeteer, ukulele player and food/travel writer. She likes books, sewing, bicycles, food you can eat with a spoon, ornery cats, art you can climb on, manatees, nice pens, costumes, baking, television, cheese and Oscar Wilde.

Her first published book, French Milk, is a drawn journal about living (and eating) in Paris with her mother. (From Touchstone Publishing from Simon and Schuster), August of 2008.

Her newest book, Relish, from First Second Books, is about growing up in the food industry. (First Second Books, April 2013.)

Beginning with a love for Archie comics, Tintin and Calvin and Hobbes, she has been making comics in some form or another since she could hold a pencil.

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What we talked about in this episode:

Mailbox

Primates

Pretty Girls Ugly Faces

Record!!

Moves

Candy Crush Saga

Jiro Dreams of Sushi

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<p>One day in 1990 I was scanning the racks of my local comic book store in Boulder Colorado, and I came across the first issue of a comic book called <em>Real Stuff</em>. The cover was drawn by <a href="http://www.google.com/cse?cx=partner-pub-2170174688585464%3Ad58nno-rqp8&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=peter+bagge&siteurl=#gsc.tab=0&gsc.q=peter%20bagge&gsc.page=1">Peter Bagge</a>, who was the creator of a comic book series called <em>Neat Stuff</em>. I assumed <em>Real Stuff</em> was a new comic written and illustrated by Bagge, so I pulled it off the shelf without scrutinizing it further, and added it to the other comics I’d selected to buy that day. </p>

<p>When I got home, I sat down to read it. It turned out not to be a new comic book by Peter Bagge, but a series of autobiographical short stories written by a man named Dennis Eichhorn.</p>

<p>From the very first story, I knew I was going to love <em>Real Stuff</em>. Dennis has had some of the strangest life experiences you can imagine, and he comes across as a person who is adventurous, compassionate, curious, and enjoys laughing at himself. Best of all, he is a terrific storyteller.</p>

<p><em>Real Stuff</em> is one of my favorite comics of all time, and I have some good news to share. Boing Boing is going to start running the amazing stories from the pages of Real Stuff, once a week. I’m immensely excited that a new audience is going to be able to read Real Stuff on Boing Boing, free of charge. I hope you’ll enjoy reading, or re-reading them.</p>

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I spoke with food blogger and Meatshare founder Melissa McEwen. Her blog, Hunt Gather Love is about "the intersection between evolutionary biology and food."

Melissa is profiled in today's Chicago Reader article about a supper club run by amateur chefs.

Thanks to Soundcloud for hosting Gweek!