The New Disruptors

Mark Frauenfelder likes to celebrate and encourage creativity in every form. He's the founder of BoingBoing, a directory of wonderful things that's encouraged "happy mutants" for over 15 years (and was a zine created with his wife, Carla Sinclair, before that), and the editor of Make Magazine, one of the inspirations of and driving forces behind the maker movement. Mark's book Made by Hand documents how he turned to raising chickens, growing food, and pulling espresso as a counterpart to his increasingly digitally focused life. We talk about the revival of people's interest in making things and collaborating with others in communities, as well as his book and Make magazine.

Evan Ratliff is cofounder, CEO, and editor of The Atavist, a monthly magazine of long-form, non-fiction journalism, and, more recently, a platform (called just "Atavist") for other publications and organizations to use to publish stories to many destinations: the Web, mobile apps, EPUB for e-readers, and beyond. We talk about both aspects of the operation and what led the magazine to build its own content-management and publishing system, and then to turn around and resell that as a product. (We spoke just before the magazine part of The Atavist added a subscription option to its iOS app.)

Tony Konecny, better known as Tonx, has been sourcing and roasting beans for a numbers of years, and recently founded Tonx Coffee, a subscription service that delivers whole beans from small batch roasting every two weeks. It's not a bean of the month club. It's a way to bypass the overchoice that one can face in specialty coffee shops, and get the assurance that the beans are fresh and good every time. In this episode, listen to Tonx and his ecommerce guru Nik Bauman talk about the joys of coffee and the joys of starting a business in which you can talk directly to your customers without anyone else getting in the way. There's a brief interlude in which the host and a friend have a little Tonx tasting, too. (Note: Although Tonx Coffee has sponsored other Mule Radio shows, this show is editorially independent and Tonx Coffee didn't sponsor this episode.)

Chris Anderson was the editor in chief of Wired Magazine for over a decade, during which time he wrote an "accidental" trilogy of three books: The Long Tail, Free, and Makers. His latest book details how a mild obsession with do-it-yourself drones (pilotless planes) sucked him into the maker community, and to co-found a business now producing millions in sales. We talk about the maker movement, the revolution of atoms that's underway, and his drones. (He left Wired just after we recorded this podcast to work full-time as chief of his business, 3D Robotics.)

Filmmakers Lisanne Pajot and James Swirsky discovered the rich stories behind independently produced videogames, and turned some preliminary interviews into first one Kickstarter campaign, and then another. The resulting film, "Indie Game: The Movie," won an award at the Sundance Film Festival in early 2012. But then, rather than accept deals for conventional film distribution, the two organized their own tour, renting theatres and meeting Kickstarter backers around North America. They ultimately controlled their own digital distribution as well. We discuss their journey of the last two years, which remains underway as they ready special features.

Welcome to a podcast that dives into how new ways creative people to fund, manufacture and produce, and distribute digital and physical goods to audiences they previously couldn't reach. The New Disruptors is about profound changes in the economy for making things. Listen to a brief introduction.