I actually watched that podcast last week! Are you going to be making more? I think my dump-truck would have been robotics, it was something I liked reading about and I would come up with all sorts of ideas for stuff I could make if I could just have had a Lego Mindstorms kit. I subscribed to Real Robots magazine which came with parts to build a small (and very stupid) robot. There was some problems with the company and they mucked everything up, eventually we just cancelled it -- I am actually surprised there was so much more released after we stopped, and am very sad that we stopped before the programming phase as that was what I was interested in. I have since left robotics behind, it's always been that path I'd have liked to take and I hope to be able to work some of it into teaching.
"Is America trying to win a culture victory?" In the civilization games, one of the options to win is to assimilate other nations into submission through overwhelming cultural export. The game lampshades that it's primarily american culture, with one of the AI leaders taunts being "Our people are buying your blue jeans and listening to your pop music... I worry the rest of the world will fall under the influence of your culture." I think it could be interesting to look at how pervasive American culture has become globally, touching upon cargo cults and the pervasiveness of big brands, then ask whether that has diminished in recent years as peoples sensibilities have changed and the global perception of America has shifted post war -- or is it still growing better than ever? Finally, what would be the end state of all this, has the internet made it more difficult for America to win a complete takeover or has it made it easier for other cultures to fight back, what would a victory or a defeat look like? I recently read Larry Niven's Ringworld and one of the things that struck me was how instant global teleportation had blended cultures together into one mono-culture, leaving there to be little variation with each hub city across the world having the exact same stores and selling the exact same products. With how fast shipping, travel and communication are now I think he was pretty spot on, though it still feels like America is dominating other cultures contributions to this.