BoingBoing’s latest podcast is chuck full of goodness.

Download it now, or just listen to it here.

• The first 10 mins is an ace discussion of predicting the future.
• At 18 mins in they’re actually talking to their guest, Jane McGonigal about ARGs and what designing games means in 21C.
• At 29 mins in they’re talking about simulating a post-human future via a super-hero ARG.. and then about A World Without Oil.

The big takeaway for me though was their raving about the book Stumbling on Happiness. Amazon has Malcolm Gladwell reviewing it thusly:

Stumbling on Happiness is a book about a very simple but powerful idea. What distinguishes us as human beings from other animals is our ability to predict the future–or rather, our interest in predicting the future. We spend a great deal of our waking life imagining what it would be like to be this way or that way, or to do this or that, or taste or buy or experience some state or feeling or thing. We do that for good reasons: it is what allows us to shape our life. And it is by trying to exert some control over our futures that we attempt to be happy. But by any objective measure, we are really bad at that predictive function. We’re terrible at knowing how we will feel a day or a month or year from now, and even worse at knowing what will and will not bring us that cherished happiness. Gilbert sets out to figure what that’s so: why we are so terrible at something that would seem to be so extraordinarily important?

I’ve been meaning to re-jig my current Amazon order – having pre-ordered the new William Gibson, and Warren Ellis’ debut.
This will go in there nicely I think.