The extended Gang dives deep into podcasting this week with Dave Winer, Adam Curry and three of the four members of the Firesign Theatre: David Ossman, Philip Proctor and Peter Bergman. Adam and Dave give the history (all eight weeks of it) and the raison d'etre of podcasting, and Steve suggests it's similar to the early days of pirate radio. Is podcasting just a flash in the pan, or a major challenge to big-business radio? Will the impact be similar to that of blogs or something altogether different? What are the implications of Howard Stern moving to satellite, and will legislation like the INDUCE Act inhibit freedom of speech in the exploding podcasting phenomenon? By the end of the show, the Firesign guests not only get it, they're guzzling the Cool-Aid.

IT Conversations host Doug Kaye interviews Dave Winer, one of the most influential personalities on the Internet. Throughout his career, Dave has focused on making computers easier and more powerful for users, and many of his creations are direct descendants of his early work with outliners that began a the University of Wisconsin. Dave took outliners to Personal Software, created a dual-view BBS in 1982, founded Living Videotext in 1983, released the MORE outliner for the Mac in 1986, merged with Symantec in 1987, then left a half year later to found Userland Software. He has lent his hand to technologies and standards that have touched the lives of almost everyone online. They include OPML, XML-RPC, SOAP, RSS and podcasting in addition to his widely read blog, ScriptingNews.