Aspirin, zipper, thermos, yo-yo -- even heroin was once a registered trademark. Today, they're generic product categories. Could the same happen to Google? It's already a recognized verb. Bob speaks with University of Michigan Law Professor Jessica Litman who says that though Google is unlikely to lose its trademark soon, there's a long history of 'genericide.'

New Country Rehab - Ramblin' Man

China is increasing its number of movie theatres and the number of American films that can be shown in them.  And China is already the second largest market for American films in the world.  So Hollywood is anxious to take full advantage of China’s potential and is busy making, and changing, its fare to appease the notoriously sensitive Chinese government.  Bob talks to USC professor Stanley Rosen about what Hollywood's appeasement of China looks like at the movies.

This year has seen a wave of independent video game developers competing for attention and money on crowdfunding websites like Kickstarter. John Walker, one of the editors of the gaming criticism website Rock Paper Shotgun, talks to Bob about how he and his colleagues have opted to decide the fate of this field of hopefuls. 

Live sports broadcasts account for a big part of your cable bill. Why? Because cable providers know they can count on sports to draw large audiences even as audiences shrink for other types of programming. Peter Kafka of the website All Things Digital returns to talk with Bob about the remarkable rise of ESPN and the importance of live sports to the cable ecosystem. 

Web TV services, DVRs, and on-demand TV encourage us to ignore the broadcast schedule and watch at our convenience. So what will become of the experience of watching the same show at the same time as your friends? Bob sits down with David Carr, media critic at the New York Times and Matt Zoller Seitz, New York magazine's TV critic, to see if the water cooler will evolve or perish.

This year the Upfronts - the model that was once used by television channels to sell advertising and show off their slate of shows - was passed to a new platform – online.  Digital programmers held the first ever event to show off their online programming, called the Newfronts.  Bob talks to Sahil Patel, reporter for the online trade publication Cynopsis, about what the brave new world of online-only TV holds in store.

On a Sunday evening in the late 1980's, two or more unknown men hijacked the signal for two Chicago area TV stations. They broadcast a spooky, subversive, disturbing message -- twice. Brooke talks to Bohus Blahut, a Chicago broadcaster, who saw the broadcast and was unable to forget it. 

Doctor Who Theme - Delia Derbyshire/Ron Grainer

Back in 2005, Bob explained his Chaos Scenario about the future of media--including TV.  Now, he reflects back on predictions he made and the status of television viewing today.

Baba O'Riley - The Who

On January 1, 2016 one of the most infamous books of the 20^th century, Mein Kampf, will go into the public domain and will be published in Germany for the first time in 70 years. German media professor Nikolaus Peifer explains to Bob how Germans are trying to manage and contextualize the book’s release in order to minimalize its impact.

With the first Libyan elections in 40 years just a month away, the shadow of the Gaddafi regime looms large. The National Transitional Council (which holds power in Libya until those elections) recently passed a law that criminalizes glorifying Gaddafi as well as offending the revolution. Bob speaks with Libya Herald editor Sami Zaptia about the implications of the law for speech in Libya.

In 1951, Grove Press was a tiny, almost-defunct publisher with just three titles in its catalog. But then Barney Rosset took over and, with a few choice books, helped push America past its Puritanical roots and into the sexual revolution. His memorial was held this week – he died a few months ago at the age of 89. In an interview from 2008, Brooke talks to Rosset about fighting charges of obscenity over books like Naked Lunch and Tropic of Cancer.

Miles Davis - Chez le Photographe Du Motel 

There's a surplus of statistics about how tough the economy is on kids currently graduating from college. But one statistic says that 85% of graduates - "the Boomerang Generation" - return to live at home with their parents. That figure is wrong, says Louis Jacobson, who tracked down its source for Politifact.com. He talks to Bob about where it came from, and why it circulated for two years. 

Beastie Boys - Multilateral Nuclear Disarmament 

This week Tom Curley, the president and CEO of the Associated Press, apologized on behalf of the AP for the way the organization handled the firing of a reporter named Edward Kennedy. In 1945, Kennedy broke a US government embargo and filed a story about the German surrender in Europe. Bob speaks with Curley about why he decided to apologize now, 67 years after Kennedy was dismissed.

Early this week, the Associated Press broke the story that the US government had stymied an attempt by a Yemini Al-Qaeda group to blow-up a US bound plane. It was a huge scoop, but at the government’s request the AP sat on the story for several days. Bob speaks with AP reporter Matt Apuzzo about the decision to hold the story, and the decision to publish it.

An avid political junkie and a thoroughly scarred presidential campaign watcher, Jason Pargin set out to save his fellow man.  He wrote ‘5 Ways to Spot a B.S. Political Story in Under 10 Seconds’ and he explains to Bob how he came by his expertise the hard way. 

Errors - Tusk

The big political story this week was an argument between the Obama and Romney campaigns about whether or not Romney would have killed Osama Bin Laden, were he president. As the New Yorker's John Cassidy observed, the argument was actually beside the point -- it was a piece of calculated political distraction by the White House. He explains to Bob how it worked, and what news we missed as a result.

Nick Merrill is building an internet service provider called Calyx. Calyx will be designed to encrypt user's data in such a way that it'll be inaccessible to anyone but that user. Which means that if the government asks for your browser history or emails, Calyx will be technologically unable to hand them over. Bob talks to Merrill about his plan.

Much of the hardware and software used by oppressive regimes to monitor foreign dissidents is manufactured in the west. Margaret Coker, Middle East Correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, talks to Bob about President Obama's recent Executive Order banning the sale of this technology to Iran and Syria.

In the cat and mouse game between the prying eyes of oppressive states and anti surveillance technology designers, there’s a new paradigm.  But it’s not the technology itself, it’s the way it’s being designed - everything from the funding to the code is available for everyone to see.  Sascha Meinrath, founder of Commotion Wireless, explains to Bob the paradox that the more information they reveal about their privacy software, the more secret it is. 

JD Samson and MEN - Life's Half Price

Statistician Gareth Sundem has devised an equation that predicts, with pretty fair accuracy, the shelf life of a celebrity marriage. He explains to Bob how it works.