Update: Complete and unedited transcript of our interview here.

In today's episode of Boing Boing tv: One year ago, a 19-year-old MIT engineering student named Star Simpson got dressed to go pick up a friend at Boston's Logan airport. She pulled a hoodie out of her closet, a wearable tech design she'd made with a light-up LED-circuit on the chest. In her hand was a small pink rose she'd crafted from hardened clay, a gift for her friend.

A few hours later at the airport, after an airport employee mistook her sweatshirt for a bomb and the rose for an explosive implement, Star found herself surrounded by 40 armed police who believed she was a suicide bomber. She was arrested for "possessing a hoax device," and an unprecedented media frenzy ensued. Here was the Boing Boing post from that day.

A year later, after a long series of court dates, a Boston judge ruled that Star must perform community service and make a public apology. Star says she intended no harm. She believes the authorities were unfairly harsh with her long after it was obvious she posed no threat, and that legal proceedings were unduly influenced by a prevailing atmosphere of anxiety over terrorism (this just months after a similar case in Boston).

She has since dropped out of MIT, and says the school's reaction felt like "being disowned." She moved out of Boston in part because of recurring threats and attacks from strangers.

Star has finally come forward to tell her side of the story publicly, and she does so on Boing Boing tv today.

If you'd like to make your very own LED breadboard hoodie, the folks at Instructables have just published Star's plans here. They're too graceful to say this, but I will: do not wear this to airports. Make a Breadboard Sweatshirt (Instant Wearable Electronics!)

MAKE will soon be publishing a related article.

Previous Boing Boing tv episodes :
* Star Simpson's fuzzy logic, MacGyver, MIT lasers, and trippy glasses: Maker Faire with Phil Torrone

Related Boing Boing blog posts:
* MIT student arrested for entering Boston airport with "fake bomb"
* Improvising electronic devices is not a crime
* OK Go's LED Jackets
* ATHF LEDs all over Boston today

Xeni and Pesco visit TCHO, a homebrew chocolate technology startup hacked together by a space shuttle technologist, Timothy Childs, and the founder of Wired, Louis Rosetto.

In part one of BBtv's multi-part exploration of Tcho, we begin in the lab, and learn about the origins of chocolate: it's a weird looking fruit with biological roots in faraway tropical lands. How this fruit is cultivated, harvested, and cured determines the flavor of the final product, and we learn about the hedonics -- the sensual nuances -- of this exotic and temperamental element.

Related: read a feature about TCHO by David Pescovitz in the current issue of MAKE Magazine, Timothy and the Chocolate Factory.

Here are some iPhone snapshots from Xeni on Flickr: TCHO, Boing Boing tv.

(Special thanks to Amy Critchett, and Wayne & Breanna)

Xeni checks in with the authors of the forthcoming O'Reilly HOWTO book "iPhone Hacks" (David Jurick, Adam and Damien Stolarz) for a demonstration of how to unlock and jailbreak your iPhone or iPod Touch. The authors promise to teach you how to coax more out of these devices: little-known features, performance tweaks, and tips on great web-based apps to install -- video game emulators, IM and VoIP apps, and media players that can handle a wider range of filetypes.

Boing Boing tv passes the 150th episode mark today, and we're celebrating by cooking up some delicious takenoko (竹の子), young bamboo shoots, with Joi Ito -- and original music by Ryuichi Sakamoto.

You may know Joi as a serial entrepreneur, a twittering globetrotter VC, a World of Warcraft junkie, or the CEO of Creative Commons, but he has a more traditional side, too.

In this video, Ito welcomes us into his back yard in Japan, where he and his partner Mizuka teach us how to hunt for and prepare this traditional seasonal delicacy from a lush bamboo forest.

The episode is accompanied by an original score composed by Grammy, Academy Award, and Golden Globe-winning composer, Ryuichi Sakamoto. The legendary electronic music pioneer is also an outspoken environmental advocate. His recent reforestation initiative, “More Trees,” supports the planting of trees around the world to help offset carbon emissions. To-date, 2 billion trees have been planted mostly through work with country governments including Turkey, Ethiopia and Mexico. Link to English-language PDF with more info on the project.

Sakamoto co-founded the seminal synthpop trio Yellow Magic Orchestra, and has scored or contributed to movie soundtracks including The Last Emperor, Merry Christmas Mister Lawrence, Babel, and the work of director Pedro Almodóvar. Boing Boing tv thanks him for generously contributing this beautiful, evocative score.

After the jump -- Joi Ito's family recipe for yummy takenoko just like mom used to make. Special thanks to the Ito family for sharing their traditions with us.

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Update 2: Here's Joi's blog post about his background with Ryuichi, and here's Joi's post from today about how this video came together.

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Today on Boing Boing tv, Cory Doctorow invites you to create and share HOWTO videos based on an ongoing series of Instructables posts that draw from his latest book, Little Brother.

Here's how Andrew “bunnie” Huang, author of Hacking the Xbox, describes the book:

[A] scarily realistic adventure about how homeland security technology could be abused to wrongfully imprison innocent Americans. A teenage hacker-turned-hero pits himself against the government to fight for his basic freedoms. This book is action-packed with tales of courage, technology, and demonstrations of digital disobedience as the technophile’s civil protest.

Here's how to submit your Little Brother HOWTO video to Boing Boing tv:

(1) Shoot it!
(2) Upload it to YouTube or another video hosting site!
(3) Tell us where to find it! Submit the url here.
(4) Selected videos will be featured on BBtv!

Also in today's episode (which, by the way, is Cory's BBtv debut): Legendary dumpster-diver Darren Atkinson was the subject of Cory's first-ever WIRED magazine feature in 1994. Cory returns to the trash-heap for BBtv with the "modern industrialist philosopher of garbage," who also performs in multiple WHO cover bands.

In related news, here's a Little Brother library/school donation project update, and if you're in Chicago, come on out to one of the Little Brother events taking place in your area over the next two days!

In today's episode of Boing Boing tv, Xeni visits with John Gaeta, the Academy Award-winning Visual Effects supervisor of the Matrix trilogy, to learn more about his digital craft in the new film Speed Racer. This latest Wachowski brothers project reinterprets the classic 1960s Japanese anime series of the same name, and opens in theaters nationwide on May 9.

Gaeta explains how he used VR "bubbles" and a mysterious team known as the "world unit" to create the film's "poptimistic photo-anime" feel. The live action Speed Racer is saturated in a candy-colored palette so rich, audiences may just leave the theater with a contact sugar high.

View interactive samples of the digital building blocks behind the movie in a related online feature in VRMAG, "Speed Racer Uncovered."

And Gaeta adds a special message for Boing Boing tv viewers, who are already well accustomed to all things digital -- "For optimal viewing experience, see Speed Racer at a digital cinema or IMAX theater." He's not kidding, with a feature like this, analog projection just doesn't do the work justice.

(Special thanks: John Gaeta; Andy and Larry Wachowski; and David Pescovitz)

Today on Boing Boing tv, Xeni visits TechShop, an open-access public workshop that's kind of like a health club with heavy machinery and sparks instead of treadmills. Tinkerers, inventors, and hackers pay a membership fee, and in turn receive access to professionally-maintained gear, workshops, mentors, and a community of like-minded makers.

Currently there is only one site in Silicon Valley, and it opened in 2006. But founder Jim Newton (a lifetime maker, veteran BattleBots builder and former MythBuster) plans to open a number of locations around the US -- and eventually, the rest of the world.

John Todd, who you'll meet in this episode, wrote this article about the membership-based machine and fabrication shop in a recent edition of Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools zine. Snip:

I've been a member since before TechShop really even started, back when it was just some guys passing out flyers trying to gauge interest. For $100 a month, members can use any tool in the shop on which they've received training. MUCH cheaper than buying your own gear. The list of equipment is pretty extensive, too, and new items are arriving frequently (like a new hot-wire foam cutter).

John shares an additional note with BBtv about the company's business model:

TechShop is unusual in the way it's funded - community members are the financial backers. To date, TechShop has been funded by taking loans from members and repaying them at a nominal rate. Typically backers contribute $25k and up, and are then paid back over several years. There is an "A" round being raised now to fund the nationwide expansion, and the first funding source again is going to be the community instead of focusing on traditional VC sources. It's an unusual way to keep members excited about what they do at TechShop, and to keep them focused on making the whole experience better. Jim Newton (CEO) and Mark Hatch (COO) are looking for additional interested people who want to become members and funders - contact TechShop for details.

In part two of today's episode, we take a joyride in a three-wheeled electric car.

On the final day of Boing Boing tv's week-long "best of" retrospective, celebrating our first six months of mutant internetelevision...

No one ever envisioned this kind of hands free roaming... Today on BBtv, we explore the age old question of which cell phone brand is the most compatible with your stomach. This phone fricassee takes place at Machine Project, host of the Fry-B-Que social. So, turn your gullet on vibrate, and sharpen your bluetooth. It's time to taste test some telecommunications.

See also this related episode:
* Meat Cloning at Machine Project.

Today on Boing Boing tv, we explore the work of award-winning, self-taught animator Tyson Ibele, who is based in New Zealand. In this episode, the 21-year-old artist explains that he taught himself animation during high school using free software freeware. He says:

I was originally introduced to 3d animation by a great freeware program call Anim8or way back in 2000. Soon after, I discovered a program called 3d Studio Max and I have been working with it up to this point. I now work for a company called MAKE.

So, I have several years experience with 3d Studio Max, and am familiar with everything from modelling to texturing to animation.

Tyson offers advice for would-be animators among the BBtv audience, and shares tips and tricks for anyone interested in this digital craft. (Ed. Note: the "MAKE" in question is not the DIY craft publication, but a visual effects and animation studio, "Make Visual.")

A number of credit card companies now issue credit cards with embedded RFIDs (radio frequency ID tags), with promises of enhanced security and speedy transactions.

But on today's episode of Boing Boing tv, hacker and inventor Pablos Holman shows Xeni how you can use about $8 worth of gear bought on eBay to read personal data from those credit cards -- cardholder name, credit card number, and whatever else your bank embeds in this manner.

Fears over data leaks from RFID-enabled cards aren't new, and some argue they're overblown -- but this demo shows just how cheap and easy the "sniffing" can be.

This episode is part of our ongoing series of interviews with some of the thinkers, hackers, and tinkerers at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology conference this year.

Today on BBtv, a vlog from Boing Boing Gadgets editor Joel Johnson:

Here are several evenings of my life condensed into 3:38 of time lapse footage as I assemble the "Ultimate Collectors Millennium Falcon" LEGO set, the largest yet sold, with over five thousand individual elements.

My thanks to Matt Goodell for cutting me a great deal on this set. It was even better than new, since he even sorted out all the pieces for me. Thanks also to Judson "Cicada" Cowan for letting me use the track "Earth's Assault on the Enemy A.I.," one of my favorite tracks of 2007. Finally, thanks to Brian Lam and Jesus Diaz of Gizmodo who had the idea first but were kind enough to give me permission to run my version before theirs to celebrate the 50th anniversary. Thanks, everyone!

I captured one frame out of every 150. It's a great set; much more fun to put together than the giant Star Destroyer. Far fewer repetitive sections. Now the ultimate question: keep it on my shelf to scare potential dates, sell it, or press its parts into service to build more ships of my own design?

(Don't miss: My snazzy sweatpants with the hole in the knee, then my realization that I have a hole in the knee after, like, a day of filming.)

Mark shows us how to make an explosive miniature cannon out of some Binaca and an empty film canister (don't try this at an airport, folks). Then, good foods gone bad -- an excerpt from "Snack Mansion," a claymation film by Lauren Adolfsen. When the pizza makes out with the cookie, and the banana barfs, you know it's a party.

Mad professor Mark Frauenfelder shows us how to make a Curie Effect Magnetic Heat Engine from common household items. Then, Austrian art-pranksters Monochrom sing a song of love for Stanford law prof and famed copyright reform advocate Lawrence Lessig.

The military industrial complex can be fun! Tanks-A-Lot in England rents tanks for corporate events, and sexy time events, too. And Mark built a robot that violates none of Asimov's laws of robotics.