Harold McGee, a gastronomic guru and author of On Food and Cooking, discusses his background and inspiration for writing the book. He shares a cooking experiment which involved a copper bowl, his reason for not having a fancy kitchen, his favorite kitchen tool, and his connection to the molecular gastronomy field. He ends with a preview of his next two book projects.

Saul Griffith relates two intertwined energy stories, the impersonal story about climate change, global energy consumption, and fossil fuels, and the personal story about how every decision you make impacts the planet. Griffith lays out a logical approach to conversations about energy and presents a game plan for what we can do to make the difference in energy sources and personal energy consumption.

35 years ago, Carl Hewitt proposed a model for computation based on autonomous message-passing Actors. Now the demands of multi-core computers and cloud-based software are thrusting that model to the forefront. In this conversation with host Jon Udell, Carl Hewitt explores hardware-enforced privacy, paraconsistent logic, and scalable semantic integration.

Joel and Jeff sit down with Richard White of UserVoice.com to discuss software bug and feature tracking, Web 2.0 style.

In this session from the 2008 Where 2.0 conference, Sean Gorman discusses Finder!, the browser-based application for finding and sharing GeoData. Gorman gives a bit of history about GeoCommons, a product which brings geo-content to the web. He proposes a federation of the data of all the companies doing the same, with the goal of an ecosystem where users can combine GeoData with other web data to create semantic relationships and solve meaningful problems such as where to buy a house.

Much of the meaning behind what people say comes from the context, not just the words. Elephant 2000 is a computer programming language project designed to incorporate the meaning of language, not just its structure. In this talk at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, John McCarthy, creator of Elephant, describes the language and how it will move work from computer programmers to compilers.

Dr. Charles L. Harper, Jr. asks some "off the wall questions" to challenge readiness of the scientific community to recognize the potential risks and implications of rapid human technological development. Where should our concerns lie given the potential ofsuper intelligent machines that could far exceed human intellectual capabilities? Are we up to the task of proper stewardship of such powerful new advances in technology, or more significantly will that role even be ours?

Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with Dr. Gary Small, the director of the UCLA Memory & Aging Research Center, about gaining understanding of the technological alteration of the modern mind through FMRI.

Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with Dr. Lyle Armstrong, a stem cell researcher and senior lecturer at Newcastle University, who reminds us what stem cell scientists actually do.

Joel and Jeff discuss the productivity loss of being both a gamer and programmer, relying on Google as your primary site search provider, non-English programming languages, and hiring great programmers.

Eric Lindstrom, cofounder of VideoJuicer, believes that story telling in the television industry is going to change because of the Internet. He talks about what a hub site and an aggregator site is, and which one you'd need at which stage in building your brand. He also talks about the impact of time-shifting in daytime programming, and how the television industry perceives the Internet as a solution to their problem known as the DVR (digital video recording).

Dean Bubley addresses the challenges facing innovators looking to create openness and choice in the mobile communications market. Bubley, an analyst specializing in the field of mobile and wireless, reminds mobile communication innovators who hold a Utopian view of openness that they must consider the constraints posed by regulations, laws of physics, commercial practicalities, and especially the psychology of the Normob, the normal mobile user, who doesn't care about openness and will need to be convinced.

Most people don't think of liquid nitrogen or ink jet printers as kitchen utensils, but most cooks aren't like Homaro Cantu. In this special edition of IEEE Spectrum Radio, follow Chef Cantu from his family's fast food kitchen to his restaurant Moto, one of the most innovative in the world.

Have you ever asked yourself, "What's happening in my neighborhood?" If you think your local newspaper has the answers, think again. Adrian Holovaty, who created one of the earliest Web mashups, believes there is a better way to find the answers. In this presentation from the 2008 O'Reilly Where 2.0 Conference, Holovaty describes his new project, EveryBlock.com, which aims to collect hyper-local news and deliver it through a "news feed" for your neighborhood.

Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with Keith Devlin, author of "The Unfinished Game," who talks about the letters exchanged between two mathematicians -- Pascal and Fermat -- changed our lives.

Viruses are everywhere, so how do we identify the ones that are problematic? Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with Dr. Joseph DeRisi, professor in biochemistry and biophysics at the University of California, San Francisco, about the promise of an innovative new technology: the virus chip.

Twine is a new service that "helps people track their interests using the Semantic Web and collective intelligence." In this edition of Interviews with Innovators, host Jon Udell interviews Nova Spivack, CEO and founder of Radar Networks. They discuss how Twine works and where it's headed.

Joel and Jeff discuss Windows Azure, full text search in SQL Server 2008, Bayesian filtering, porn detection, and project management -- among other things.

Effective search engine optimization and search engine marketing is now crucial to the success of a modern business. Authors Mike Moran and Bill Hunt discuss their book Search Engine Marketing, Inc., giving the fundamentals of search engines as well as guidance on how organizations can better reach people through search engines.

While many recall Marshall McLuhan's prophetic pronouncement that the "medium is the message", few people and companies are actively involved in examining how this concept applies to today's Internet-centric world. In this session from the 2008 O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, Eric Rodenbeck, founder and creative director for Stamen Design, offers several examples of how computers, massively large databases, and visualization can be combined to create beautiful, yet scientifically valuable ways of exploring data.