Patent attorneys ask builders how their inventions work.
Colin Fowler and Michael Glenn, patent attorneys at Perkins Coie, ask the people behind new products how those products work, from game items that move between games to cement substitutes made from industrial waste. Some episodes come from TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 and Austin Tech Week 2025, and a holiday special sorts through wacky real patent applications.
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Perpetual Motion® Podcast is hosted by Colin Fowler and Michael Glenn, patent attorneys at Perkins Coie who, in their own words, work to secure protection for clients' inventions. On the show they talk with people who have ideas, and a disclaimer makes clear that none of it is legal advice. What results is an interview show that keeps asking how things work. In one conversation the hosts say their subject is creativity and creative people. They start by asking two guests when they first knew they were creative and whether they took things apart as kids. Those guests, Ben Burris and Kevin Turpin of Weebix, go on to describe a safety workflow in which a photo becomes an automatic ticket and AI sorts the tickets by risk. They are just as direct about the limits. Everything depends on network connectivity, and even once AI models are small enough to run on a device, battery power will still be a problem. Janice Ta, whom Michael introduces as his partner from Austin, sits in on that episode. The Genies episode, with CEO and founder Akash Nagam, starts from a big idea: games, movies and shows personalized around data gathered by a person's own AI companion. The clearest example is a small one. A Ferrari brought over from a racing game should not be able to make a skiing game boring, so the team built what it calls smart assets, which carry their own attributes and logic. The episode ends on talk of a gold rush and the value of pivoting quickly. The event episodes cover a lot of ground. At TechCrunch Disrupt 2025, one guest presents concrete samples that replace cement with recycled steel slag, incinerated household trash and brine from desalination plants, and a separate conversation turns to a US law that keeps government agencies from buying drones not made in the US. At Austin Tech Week 2025, with Bryce also asking questions, the hosts hear how broadband light devices differ from narrow-band lasers. That episode closes on a product whose parts patients can change out at home. The guest list is not limited to hardware. Amber Dawn Bear Robe, a Native fashion curator from Siksika Nation, talks about her name, Many Butterfly Woman, and about seeing Indigena, a contemporary Native art exhibition curated by Native curators, as a college student. She credits it with changing the direction of her life. The holiday special swaps interviews for fun, with the two hosts trading real patent applications that have silly premises. They start with a claimed perpetual motion machine, then judge a landing idea by weighing cheap tires against an expensive worn-down fuselage. It ends in a comic bit about focusing vortexes. For a mix of subjects in one sitting, start with 'PMP @ TechCrunch Disrupt 2025'. To see how far the show strays from engineering, try 'A Fashion Statement'.
Made for: Suits a listener who likes inventors and company builders pushed on specifics, such as what a material is made of, whether a wavelength can be tuned or how a game item stays fair, and who enjoys an occasional lighthearted look at strange patent filings.
What sets it apart: The interviewers are patent attorneys at Perkins Coie, so the questions stay on how an invention works. The show moves between founder interviews, recordings at tech events and a playful read-through of wacky patents, and a Native fashion curator fits in alongside the hardware makers.
Patent attorneys at Perkins Coie LLP have a passion for talking tech. In this series, they take off their attorney hats to interview inventors and technology pioneers on exciting innovations and inventorship-related topics.
Water-fueled spacecraft meet Colin Fowler and Michael Glenn; your inner skeptic gets a seat.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Akash Nagam makes personalized media tangible through smart assets, then turns to building through the AI gold rush.
Perpetual Motion's conversation with Akash Nagam, CEO and founder of Genies, centers on a future where AI companions shape games, movies, and shows around a person's identity.
A grounded safety-tech discussion about AI, connected devices, and the limits that shape edge computing.
Perpetual Motion Podcast uses its conversation with Ben Burris and Kevin Turpin of Weebix to frame a practical view of how devices, network connectivity, and AI can make safety work more responsive.
A holiday patent tour where strange machines run into practical objections and one clumsy dream of walking through walls.
Perpetual Motion turns the gift-giving season into a brisk tour of strange patent thinking, with Michael Glenn and Colin Fowler using odd inventions as stress tests for everyday logic.
A convention-floor tour of waste-based concrete materials and a US-built firefighting drone.
Perpetual Motion's TechCrunch Disrupt dispatch approaches the startup floor as a survey of invention under practical pressure. Colin Fowler, joined by associate Ben Brokish, moves through a crowded San Francisco-area convention where young companies are chasing hires, funding,…
A practical booth-by-booth tour of spacecraft refueling, smarter machinery, optical devices, and modular hands.
Perpetual Motion turns an Austin Tech Week booth crawl into a clear look at invention reaching the point of use. Spacecraft refueling, AI-assisted construction machinery, broadband optical devices, and modular robotic or prosthetic hands all come through in brisk conversations,…
Specialists walking through software's tradeoffs, one system at a time.
Founders and engineers on AI coding agents like Claude Code, and supply chain security.
Perpetual Motion Podcast interviews Akash Nagam, CEO and founder of Genies, around a thesis that every game, movie, and show should be personalized through a user's AI companion.
Perpetual Motion Podcast centers on Weavix, the workplace-communications platform Kevin Turpin and Ben Burris say is built for frontline workers, not consumer phones.
Michael Glenn and Colin Fowler examine real patent applications for an overbalanced wheel, a toilet-based breathing tube, roller runways, face-dropping alarm clocks, animal-shaped vacuums, internet pet communicators, banana containers, and wall-walking.
Colin Fowler and Michael Klem take Perpetual Motion's TechCrunch Disrupt walk-through to climate-tech booths instead of the usual AI-heavy floor.
["OrbitFab's Daniel Faber says the company is building \"gas stations in space\" because satellites burn propellant to dodge debris, stay coordinated, and keep serving customers.", "Paul Gulotta, representing Day Photonics through RPMC Lasers, says superluminescent diode sources reduce speckle in semiconductor inspection and widen bandwidth beyond a standard laser.", "Jonas Koivuniemi of Spogan AI says OEMs spend about 1% to 1.5% of revenue on technical support, and his system could automate 50% to 70% of those queries.", "Andrew Vandekop of Well Water Finders and the Alt Bionics team both show concrete hardware: groundwater mapping and leak detection on one side, a modular bionic hand with 80 fingertip taxels and a 40-pound lifting target on the other."]
Amber Dawn Bear Robe, a Siksika curator from Alberta, explains how contemporary Indigenous art redirected her career from aspiring fashion designer to runway and exhibition curator.
Perpetual Motion® Podcast interviews Luke Neese, CTO of Los Angeles space-tech startup General Galactic, about using water for spacecraft propulsion.
John Chadwell explains how sitting in the Guadalupe River in 2020 led him to design Pack-A-Pit, a fire pit supported by three points of contact.
Perpetual Motion hosts Colin Fowler and Michael Glenn interview Lieutenant Commander Mitchell Kapisky about a patented backing that keeps naval uniform name patches straight, flexible, and fire-retardant.
Perpetual Motion hosts Colin Fowler and Michael Glenn interview entrepreneur Keith Schacht about building products from science, technology, and unexpected materials.
Perpetual Motion hosts Colin Fowler and Michael Glenn report from the 2025 Rice Business Plan Competition, where student teams pitched companies to investor-judges.
Lon Cunningham, a quadriplegic veteran and inventor, explains how a chair-mounted device called the quad cast lets him cast a fishing line about 75 feet.
John Hetling, an associate professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and CTO of RetMap, explains how he moved from biology and electrophysiology into retinal-electrode design.
Audrey Rumsby explains to patent attorneys Michael Glenn and Colin Fowler how artists can replace grant-dependent fundraising with a “values web” that connects projects to people with relevant resources.
Perpetual Motion® Podcast marks its 50th episode by revisiting Lisa Wallace, Bob Cousins, Craig Grossman, Danny Hillis, Lisa Myers, Eric Bartsch, Monica Plath, and Stephen Thaler.
Perpetual Motion® Podcast visits Austin Tech Week’s Startup Crawl with hosts Colin Fowler and Michael Glenn, who interview founders from Everleum Bio, Imperium Technologies, Arovia, AIPL, Applied Bioplastics, and Quantum Photonics.
Perpetual Motion® Podcast hosts Colin Fowler and Michael Glenn present Colin Fowler and John Fuller’s walk through TechCrunch Disrupt 2024, where they examine physical inventions across energy, tires, near-space platforms, satellite motors, and large-scale 3D printing.
Perpetual Motion hosts Colin Fowler and Michael Glenn interview Nathan Schilhoff, whose ventures included Silicon Valley Systems, Test Drive Corporation, Audio Highway, and Z-View.
Perpetual Motion hosts Colin Fowler and Michael Glenn interview Lima Charlie founder and CEO Max Lamont-Bressard about building a SecOps cloud platform for cybersecurity professionals.
Perpetual Motion hosts Colin Fowler and Michael Glenn interview John Dalmayan about music, comics, collectibles, and inventions.
Perpetual Motion® Podcast hosts Colin Fowler and Michael Klem interview solar engineers Frank Ottusen and Chris Needham of Azimuth Advisory Services about solar-system design, tracking, storage, and reliability.
Lisa Myers, founder and CEO of Ceres Chill, describes returning to work after childbirth and finding no practical way to transport breast milk safely.
Perpetual Motion hosts Colin Fowler and Michael Glenn interview Dr.
Perpetual Motion® Podcast reports from the Capital Factory Startup Crawl during South by Southwest 2024, featuring startup demonstrations in social media analytics, public safety drones, cybersecurity, space debris removal, underwater robotics, and startup software.
Perpetual Motion hosts Colin Fowler and Michael Klem interview Brelyan CEO Barmak Keshmat and senior scientist Christopher Barsi about cavity-based virtual displays.
Perpetual Motion® Podcast hosts Colin Fowler and Michael Glenn interview Clint Grauman, CEO of NuView, about satellite-based LIDAR and large-scale Earth observation.
Perpetual Motion® Podcast hosts Colin Fowler and Michael Glenn interview Kumar Gaurav about Herald, an internal Perkins Coie chatbot that began as a finance data-access project.
Perpetual Motion® Podcast records at Austin Startup Week 2023 with interviews about emergency drones, radar cardiac monitoring, healthcare data, global software payments, outsourced product development, pharmacy automation, and cryptographic data security.
Perpetual Motion® Podcast visits TechCrunch Disrupt 2023 to interview founders building health, sports, pet-identification, sales-analysis, and autonomous-driving technologies.
Perpetual Motion® Podcast interviews Hope Shimabuku, the first regional director of the Texas Regional USPTO, about expanding patent and trademark access in Texas.
Patent attorneys Colin Fowler and Michael Klem discuss their experience at TechCrunch Disrupt 2022, highlighting a startup called Nubility that uses a robot for delivery services.
Patent attorneys interview Steve Cervini about his entry into Web3 development and blockchain technology.
Patent attorneys interview the founders of G-Man Biotech about how they met and started working together.
Patent attorneys Colin Fowler and Michael Glenn discuss their visit to South by Southwest, where they met with exhibitors including Zozo Next, the R&D arm of Japan's largest fashion e-commerce platform.