Serial: The "This American Life" podcast spin-off

This American Life just launched a new podcast spin-off called Serial. Unlike TAL, it will cover one story across many episodes in a serialized manner. Two episodes are currently available. It is engrossing and leaves you wanting to know more as they investigate one case. Beyond the journalistic work that has gone into making the series possible, it may single-handedly introduce a lot of people, all the TAL listeners, to the idea of podcasting, via a page that explains how to download podcast with an adorable video. 

A Rare Look at Design Genius Jony Ive: The Man Behind the Apple Watch

The cultural shift at Apple continues. To the point they've allowed the publishing of a very rare profile of Jony Ive. But that's not even the most surprising thing, the profile was in Vogue, re-iterating how Apple is certainly moving towards fashion in their marketing of the Apple Watch, a device they allowed writer Robert Sullivan to know about and handle before the product announcement, which is unheard of for Apple. 

In 1985, the year Jobs was forced out of Apple, Jony Ive was in design school in England, struggling with computers, blaming himself. “Isn’t that curious?” he says now. “Because if you tasted some food that you didn’t think tasted right, you would assume that the food was wrong. But for some reason, it’s part of the human condition that if we struggle to use something, we assume that the problem resides with us.”

Marc Newson On Designing Watches

Despite the fact that almost everyone stopped wearing a watch more than a decade ago the introduction of the Apple Watch has awakened a conversation around horology. Here is the recently hired by Apple Marc Newson showing his portfolio. 

In this movie Marc Newson, in his London studio, tells us about the watches he's designed, including the first ones that he built himself in the late 1980s.

Flicking through a proof of his new book for publishers Taschen, Newson shows a 1:1 image of a model from 1986 that's as big as his fist, saying "I pre-dated the trend for large watches by about a decade."

Newson also talks about jewellery he's designed, the huge glass Atmos clocks powered by tiny changes in temperature and the hourglass full of ball-bearings that was his last product for the Ikepod watch brand he founded.

Is Technology Making Us Better Storytellers?

Technology has changed way we tell stories, but has it changed the quality of storytelling? At this year's Aspen Ideas Festival, a group of writers, artists, and producers weighed in. "We're revisiting the same explorations of the soul that have been going on for hundreds of generations," says House of Cards showrunner Beau Willimon. Other panelists include Michael Eisner, Catherine Burns, Jay Allison, Paula Kerger, Jon Lovett, Yoni Bloch, Pete McBride, and Hari Kondabolu.

How Digital Is Saving Vinyl Records and Pinball Machines

Harvard Business Review, The Daily Idea: 

What do Swiss watches, pinball machines, fountain pens, handmade goods and vinyl records have in common? They have all seen a resurgence in recent years after being disrupted by new and cheaper technologies. On the surface it may seem like a paradox that these products are finding new life in the face of the very thing that threatened their demise in the first place: the digital age. But it’s really not a paradox at all. The makers of these types of goods are actually finding success because of digital platforms such as Etsy, eBay, and Kickstarter, not despite them. In other words, the internet isn’t killing handmade, artisanal, or non-digital goods; it’s actually saving them.

Source: How the Internet Saved Handmade Goods by Larry Downes and Paul Nunes