Agent Palmer

When one third of the Nerdist Podcast meets the “M” in SModCast you get FEaB; Four Eyes and Beard.

When Matt Mira (Four Eyes) from Nerdist and Scott Mosier (Beard) from SModcast get together to talk about whatever they want, hilarity ensues.

The New York Times called it “A remarkable collection of characters…courageously exploring mindspace, an innerworld where nobody had ever been before,” and they’re right. The book, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution by Steven Levy is as great a story as the real-life characters and their accomplishments that adorn the book.

Names you’ve heard like Wozniak and Gates, and those you haven’t like Felsenstein, Greenblatt, and Gosper are among the many mentioned.

We can all use a little help. Sometimes from our friends, sometimes from ourselves. Whether or not we admit to needing help, to others or to ourselves, will make it all the more apparent that we need it.

For nerds, self-help books are everywhere, because learning comes from everywhere – from video games, from that tabletop dungeon crawl from eight years ago, or from the many experiences in between. A good self-help book for nerds is a bit like the Highlander: “There can be only one.” That one is The Nerdist Way: How to Reach the Next Level (In Real Life) by the Nerdist himself, Chris Hardwick.

There are those among us who still maintain that The Rat Pack – sometimes called “the Summit” or “the Clan” of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., Peter Lawford, and Joey Bishop – are the epitome of cool. Consider me among them.

My mother, of all people, picked up The Rat Pack: Neon Nights with the Kings of Cool by Lawrence J. Quirk and William Schoell, for me at a used book store. This look into the Kings of Cool was written and published in 1998, just before the death of Frank Sinatra on May 14, 1998.

I literally couldn’t put it down.