Ryan and Johnny's Podcast

[Citation Needed]

2011-12-24T06:58:00.000-08:00

Click here to download the Citation Needed Firefox extension.

When we first came up with the idea for this podcast, a few names were tossed around, but by far my favorite was [Citation Needed] : The Wikipedia Podcast. Unfortunately this is already the name of a pretty cool blog (and now podcast) which makes light of articles in Wikipedia that are particularly poorly written.

Before I realized this however, I had already named the Firefox extension which Johnny and I use to generate the graphs we post with each podcast. Citation Needed has now been updated for compatibility with Firefox 9, and can be downloaded here.

To install, just click the link above, and authorize Firefox to install. It's cool, you can trust me. Once you restart firefox, you'll have to add the Citation Needed toolbar button in order to use it. Right click your firefox toolbar and click "Customize..." - There should be a Citation needed button, which you can drag to your toolbar:

To use citation needed, navigate to your starting page, and choose "start recording" from the citation needed menu. The extension will record your traversal of wikipedia only, for the current browser session. When you're done reading, choose "Save recorded data" from the citation needed menu. Remember, your session isn't saved automatically, so you have to save it manually. If you quit the browser, your session isn't saved either, so make sure you save before closing Firefox.

Episode 4

2011-10-26T10:37:00.000-07:00

In this episode, Ryan and I discuss knot theory, and a myriad of things (hopefully) more interesting than knot theory.

Episode 4 : Mutation (Disambiguation)

2011-10-19T18:49:00.001-07:00

Episode 4: Mutation (Disambiguation) by ryansturmer

The Johnny Side of Ep 3

2011-08-24T13:24:00.000-07:00

Greetings Terrans,

Episode 3: mtDNA also contains an excellent example of the Authoritative Voice (tm) and we find out what happens when I am given full control of the podcast.

Episode 3: Mitochondrial DNA

2011-08-23T21:14:00.000-07:00

Wikipedia Podcast Episode 3 : Mitochondrial DNA by ryansturmer

Johnny and Ryan explore mtDNA in this "more science and less sexytimes" episode. Also, we reflect on the Oslo tragedy, and how Johnny totally saw it coming.

Episode 3 Graphs!

2011-08-23T20:57:00.000-07:00

As promised, the graphs for episode 3! Ryan is in red. Johnny is in blue.


Johnny's Graph


Ryan's Graph

The Joint Graph

Episode 2: Graphs

2011-08-21T11:30:00.000-07:00

As promised, I'm providing a graph of each weeks episode. I'm not sure I love the format of them, but that can be adjusted, and old episodes can be regenerated from the data files if necessary. Each of our reading sessions is recorded individually, and they're merged for the colored graph. In the joint graph, Ryan is listed in red, and Johnny in blue.

Ryan's Reading Graph

Johnny's Reading Graph

The Ryan and Johnny Joint Reading Graph

Episode 2: Sacred Prostitution

2011-08-21T11:13:00.000-07:00

Wikipedia Podcast Episode 2: Sacred Prostitution by ryansturmer
In this episode, we get real explicit, starting with Sacred Prostitution.

I have to apologize for this episode. We're still getting the recording process down, and we inadvertently recorded it from the webcam microphone on my laptop, rather than our nicer USB microphone. The sound quality is terrible. I've filtered and normalized as much as possible.

Episode 1: Prohibition

2011-08-21T10:22:00.000-07:00

Wikipedia Podcast Episode 1 by ryansturmer

In this episode, we discuss prohibition, both in the United States and as a global phenomenon. We do this as we drink beer.

First!

2011-08-21T10:17:00.000-07:00

The first post is always so awkward! People typically get a hard time for jumping in a comment thread and shouting "First!" but there's something to it! It's hard to fill that vacuum. It's a lot of pressure.

Johnny and I are doing a podcast. My name is Ryan. We read Wikipedia for an hour each, starting with the same article, and we discuss it together, while drinking beer.

The first topic was Prohibition, which was chosen by Johnny when I first presented the idea for the podcast to him. After we record each episode, we choose the topic for the next episode, so technically, every article we read is connected directly to something we read previously, even across multiple episodes. We're still getting the recording process down, but the important thing is that it's a super good time, and a good excuse to hang out and drink beer with a good buddy.

Additionally, I think we're pretty interested in the mechanics of our traversal through Wikipedia. I've written a Firefox plugin called "Citation Needed" which can record detailed data on wikipedia reading habits, and render the results to a format that I can post-process to produce graphs. Each episode, I will post our individual reading graphs, as well as a specially colorized joint graph detailing what we read, and how we read it.

Generally, I think the graphs are pretty interesting. Starting from the same place, Johnny and I tend to follow fairly different paths, and when there is overlap, it's often unexpected, or brought about in an interesting way. I'll talk more about the graphs and how they work in a post dedicated to that topic.

In any case, welcome to our podcast blog! Look for more information here soon!