This week’s podcast is all about the creative power that comes with being positive…and negative. This episode is about much more than attitude’s effect on productivity, though. We talk about the power of apathy as it can relate to happiness (or at least reducing stress from one’s life). There’s a bit about Pollyannas vs. Doomsayers, and how being extremely positive isn’t always a good thing. We ask if one’s attitude really is as simple as making a decision to be a certain way; also, how people use social media as a platform for their moods. Finally, the episode wraps up with a simple conclusion about life.

Disclaimer: We make a very clear distinction between negativity and depression in this episode. We know that negativity and depression are not synonymous, even though they sometimes move in each others’ shadows. When we speak of negativity in this episode, we are talking about learned behavior or making a choice to be a certain way — not the clinical reasons for some people’s moods beyond their control. At various points in our lives, we have both struggled with depression. At various points in our lives, we were simply negative. We know the difference and do our best to make that distinction in this episode.

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In Episode 5 of the podcast, we talked about democratizing content; that is, the ability for the average person to make and distribute their work at much more reasonable costs than in the past. In the podcast, we talked a bit about crowd-sourced content.

Actor Joseph Gordon Levitt has started a thing called Hit RECord, an open collaborative production company. (Okay, so Hit RECord has been around for several years, but it’s now opened up to YOU!!!) It’s a site where you can share your music, photos, written ideas and see if others want to jump in and do something together — or totally remix it all.  Things that rise up and pushed to some level of commercial success see a 50/50 split of profits among the site and the creators involved. A neat idea worth checking out…especially now that it’s going to a variety show on cable.

We’ve established that Shawn went to school wearing a Star Trek costume. “No problem,” you say, thinking he may have worn it on Halloween. But he just wore it on a normal school day because…why not? We’ve also established that Christopher did everything in his power to use the Force to convince the world to call him Luke. It was a Jedi mind trick that didn’t work.

These stories establish an early stroll into becoming fans of properties, which is what we’re talking about today. This week, it’s all about fandom!

We’re not talking about past attempts at living a geeky dream (well, not entirely); we’re talking about all kinds of fandom and how it’s either all silly or all okay. We make the argument that the guy in the Klingon costume is no more odd than the guy wearing his favorite sports team’s jersey. We talk a little bit about Rocketeer wannabe, Curtis Hart. (You may remember Curtis from an earlier entry.) All kinds of fans — whether deemed normal or labeled extremely weird — are the subject. About the only thing we don’t get into is what’s better: Star Trek or Star Wars.

We know better than that!

Warning: For those who listen to the podcast while driving…there’s a section in the podcast (when we talk about Jodi Foster) that gets very loud, very fast. It’s an accident Shawn had — not a wreck or something about to hit you in traffic!

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We’ve noticed a little run of people checking out the second episode of the podcast (the episode about building one’s own reality). It seemed like a good time to share a couple examples of people who find a certain sense of peace by creating rooms where they can be surrounded by the things that make them happy and productive.

Jason Eaton’s Cool Stuff!

The image above is the prop room of Jason Eaton. (Go here for more photos of this great space!) Jason is a ridiculously talented model maker with a great prop collection (his Maschinen Krieger Model builds are wonderful things). One of his old builds — a Ghostbusters proton pack — was featured on Gizmodo when he decided to sell it.

Jason’s space is a great example of displaying a large part of one’s collection without being cluttered and busy.

(The AT-AT head mounted on the wall is a nice touch to his room!)

Adam Savage

If you’re not listening to the Still Untitled: The Adam Savage Project podcast, you should definitely check it out. A couple episodes were shot in Adam’s home office, giving fans a glimpse of where Adam gets away from it all. Recently, Adam shared this tour of his office with fans:

We love how Adam totally skips over the Oscar on his shelf to talk about props and little things in his collection.

Time Bandits Map

Soon, Christopher (who hates writing about himself in third person!) will be the proud owner of a replica of the map from Time Bandits.

When Christopher was 12, Time Bandits made him want to be a writer…so it’s only fitting that a framed version of the map from the movie that made him think, “How does one go about writing a movie and then getting it on screen?” will hang above his writing desk. (He watched the movie 3 times that opening weekend.) The goal for Christopher’s office will be one day having what appears a normal space (no action figures or anything like that), but still being surrounded by the geeky things that inspire him.

The Time Bandits map will be a great start!

What About You?

Do you have your own space that inspires you to be creative? What would your dream space be like? Feel free to share links to your space or talk about what you’d love to have in the comments.

This week, it’s a full-blown episode all about writing; specifically, all about world building. What is world building? Simple: it’s a writer taking time to craft believable settings for their stories, even if their stories are set in places that don’t even exist. But it’s more than just creating a world — it’s the rules of that world and how everything affects the characters. Along the way, we talk about what ails literary fiction, Star Trek, Barry Eisler’s mistakes, and plenty of talk about the power of Dungeons and Dragons. It only took seven episodes to get two writers to actually spend an hour talking about writing! Thanks for listening.

The Andromeda Galaxy image used in this week’s graphic is courtesy of the King Kong of Geeks: Tom Wideman.

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In last week’s podcast, we ended up chatting quite a bit about copyright. Somewhere along the way, we mentioned it would be a good topic for a future episode.

The future is now!

This week, it’s all about copyright, trademarks, and patents. Do they help the little guy as intended, or have they now become a method of coercion used by large corporations? In a world where rulings against people downloading a handful of music files illegally amount to greater penalties than a negligent doctor killing a family member, it definitely seems like corporations have the upper hand. But is that truly the case? What would a world without copyright, trademarks, or patents look like? And how do Creative Commons licenses factor into all this? Oh yeah, and we talk about piracy. Quite a bit.

It’s a controversial topic, and we look forward to hearing what you think in the comments!

Note: Yes, Christopher knows he calls Disney’s Steamboat Willie “Boxcar Willie.” Twice! That’s because he’s never more than 7 minutes away from having hobos on his mind…

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Remember when there were only three TV networks (no cable) and not as many spots on the radio as there are now? Remember when bookstores were smaller, and underground bands were truly underground? All that changed with the Internet.

Today we’re talking about the democratization of content. What does that mean? Well…this podcast is all about the good, the bad, and many things in between that come with being able to do it yourself in ways we never dreamed of when Evel Knieval was falling into the Snake River and one of the bigger local syndicated TV shows was in the hands of a clown named Bozo!

The gatekeepers are gone; today — whether what you do is great or…not so great — you can get it out there and at least have a shot. And it’s not just traditional entertainment that’s available. Wanna see a group of guys make a living making 20,000+ calorie gut-busting culinary nightmares? It’s out there right alongside the angry guy who sits at his dining room table in the dark unboxing electronics and talking about them. There are also people making their own entertainment empires with reasonably-priced gear many of us can afford.

So have a seat and listen to two people who never dreamed of a day like this talk about the ups and downs of a world where everybody has a shot — and not even Jamie Farr’s Gong Show mallet can stop the madness!

A quick note: This episode is an hour and a half long. Yep, it ran much longer than intended. We considered breaking it up into two podcasts but figured, “Just run with it.” And in a way, that’s the very thing we’re talking about. There is still so much content forced into an allotted time or space, but now there are options to occasionally run longer than normal if necessary. We promise not to make long shows a habit.

A quick note…Part II: Check back tomorrow for a big list of links to many of the things discussed during this episode…and maybe even a bit more!

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