Top Five Tech

Welcome to Top 5 Tech, my weekly show about what to watch, listen to, download, read and

something deep every week.

I'm going to be honest, last weekend I saw The Odyssey, it is still affecting me and

I've just been seeing it everywhere online.

So a number of the links are about The Odyssey but not everything.

Great podcast about World War II hosted by Tom Hanks, a great new smart home app and

a ton more.

But yeah, first up is The Odyssey.

On what to watch, I absolutely love the soundtrack.

Christopher Nolan and Ludwig Göransson who composed the score, they really wanted it

to sound of the time, so there's not big swelling orchestra in the movie sound.

They actually created instruments, looked at paintings and artwork from the time to see what instruments were paired with others.

And this video explains that entire process, really fascinating.

Even if you haven't seen the movie, you can listen to the soundtrack and just see the awesome work that went into creating that soundscape.

And one other what to watch, there's been a lot of talk about Christopher Nolan using CGI and visual effects in his movies.

And this is a great video from the Movie Rabbit Hole channel.

But he goes through a lot of behind the scenes of Christopher Nolan's movies, talking about the practical effects paired with visual effects.

It is a great explanation of what it means to actually use CGI, quote unquote.

On what to listen to, we'll depart from the Odyssey for a moment because I actually found this from just browsing the Apple Podcasts app.

World War II with Tom Hanks.

This is a History Channel podcast.

Right now there's 18 episodes talking all about the history of World War II.

There's lots of soundbites and interviews from historians and people who are experts on World War II.

The production value is amazing.

It's really just fun to listen to.

Tom Hanks is great. I really enjoy hearing him talk about and narrating something like

World War Two history. So if you're into that kind of thing, I highly recommend this podcast.

And two more picks of what to listen to this week. Nilay Patel on Decoder interviewed Dr.

Jill Lepore. They talked about the reception of AI, how to interpret the backlash we heard from

college students at commencement speeches booing AI. Dr. Jill Lepore is really interesting to

listen to and I think she has an interesting perspective on AI and culture right now.

And one more self-serving what to listen to, we released a new episode of Movies on the Side.

That's my podcast with my friend Nate. I think the episode turned out really fun. Spoiler,

We both love the movie.

But I'll link that down in the show notes as well on what to read this week.

This is the last Odyssey link I promise, but I highly recommend reading this piece from

Sean Fennessey.

Again, if you haven't seen the movie less applicable, but really interesting breakdown

of what the Odyssey really means, what it means against the Avengers trailer that came

out the day after opening weekend for the Odyssey.

I don't know if you've seen that trailer.

It's linked in his piece, but I don't know.

I'm not as excited for Avengers Doomsday as I was for past Avengers movies.

And he talks about kind of that juxtaposition of the spectacle of movies like Marvel movies

and the kind of filmmaking that Christopher Nolan did with the Odyssey.

It's a great read.

It is on Substack and you have to download the app, but you can read it for free if you

do that.

I want to download this week.

This is a new smart home app.

It's completely for free.

It's called HomeSnap and it can do some things that I use other apps for like HomePass.

But HomeSnap can do things like save the QR codes for your devices.

So I always do that with things like shades, blinds, anything that I might lose the code

or might have to reset in the future.

I really recommend saving those QR codes so it makes it easy to pair them later.

HomeSnap does that, but it has one feature that I'll be using regularly.

And that one feature is it will show you the current battery level for all of your Apple

home devices.

So you can go into one page, see the percentages for your contact sensors, your smart shades,

anything that is battery powered and charged.

You can get an at a glance look of what needs to be charged right now.

I have a lot of smart shades and I have to get the stepladder out, get some power banks

or get really long USB-C cables.

So if I'm going to go charge one, I like knowing what are all the shades I should be charging

right now, and I'm 100% going to go to this app.

to check those battery levels every time. Again, completely free. HomeSnap. Highly

recommend. Oh, and I made a shortcut that sets Odyssey wallpapers for your iPhone.

I know I said no more Odyssey links, but this is a shortcut, so I'm gonna let it

slip in. And finally, on Something Deep, I've linked two videos of Jack Conte

before, but he has a new talk from South by Southwest. It is the future of

creativity on the internet in a world with AI. It is an incredible presentation.

One, he compares the history of filmmaking to what is happening with AI

right now, and it is not a doomsday or take. I feel like he is

both optimistic, but also giving a warning where this is what AI is doing right now,

just like early filmmaking was just mimicking what came before it like live theater. And this

is not what AI is going to be used for 10 years from now. But during this time, especially for

the creator economy, and just those making art of any kind, that this can be kind of a painful,

struggling time as the world figures out what to do with this. He talks about his story and

Pomplamoose. That's his band. If you didn't know, Jack Conte is both the co-founder of

and he and his wife are also in Pomplamoose the band, which is pretty wild. It is an incredible

talk just to be entertained if you're interested in this whole creator versus AI world, and I cried

at least twice watching this video. It is incredible. Highly, highly recommend. The future

of creativity on the internet in a world with AI. And that's Top 5 Tech for this week. Don't forget

you can get this as a newsletter every Friday, so all the links are easy to find in one place.

And if you haven't yet, I would really appreciate a 5-star rating and review in Apple Podcasts.

That helps the show get discovered by more people, and I hope you enjoy it.

links every week. Thanks for watching and thanks for listening. I'll catch you next