Studio: Dick DeBartolo & Chad Johnson
Category: Gadgets
What It Is
DeBartolo of MAD Magazine fame discusses the strange and unusual side of technology.
Technical Details
New show every week; episodes tend to run around an hour or so. The show has over 1500 episodes, so you can’t blame the iTunes page for only havingthe most recent forty-five. For more, try the show page, though I rather suspect the entire 1500 episode run is not available. The show has that insane number of episodes, by the way, not because it has been broadcasting weekly for twenty-eight years, but because it used to be a much shorter daily show.
What About It
I like this show a lot. It’s my favorite TWiT show that’s actually about technology (NSFW is defunct, so I’m not sure it still counts, but it’s my favorite if it does). Well, I don’t know if this one even counts as it’s currently divorced from TWiT and operating on its own. Still, it did originate with TWiT and was part of that network until earlier this year. The show is pretty crazy. DeBartolo and co-host Chad Johnson bring in strange gadgets, ancient pieces of technology and various other weird and surprising products. A real winner that I’ve never forgotten is the Beer Belly, a rubber bag that can be filled with beer and strapped to your stomach so that you can sneak it into stadiums. Handy straw can be casually extended up through the collar of your shirt. I suppose this could be used for something besides beer, but really if you’re going to try this, your beverage of choice is almost certainly beer. People send in videos as well with really old-school devices, like a vinyl record player from the pre-CD days that could be installed into a car for instance. Back in the old-school days, Leo LaPorte himself was co-host and I preferred those shows as Johnson can be a bit too self-consciously rowdy for my tastes. Still, always a fun listen. Always.
3 stars.
Essential If
You really don’t know why all these technology shows refuse to talk about the abacus.
Avoid Like the Plague If
You are currently in line at an Apple store somewhere for something.
Best Entry Point
It’s hard to go through an archive this extensive and, well, I’m confident enough in the quality of the show to just tell you to get the most recent one.