I was buoyed to see several Fun Kids podcasts nominated at the British Podcast Awards earlier this month. The Santa Daily, presented by Father Christmas in the countdown to December 25th is up in two categories:

• Best Daily, against the likes of Monocle 24’s The Globalist, which has been waking me up every morning in lockdown, and even Today in Focus from The Guardian.
• Best Radio Podcast against Chris Moyles’ Radio X and two picks from BBC Radio 4.

I’m most proud of The Week Junior Show, the news podcast for children, fully punching its weight in the Best Current Affairs Podcast category with players like the Economist, LBC’s James O’Brien from Global, and the Guardian.

The results are to be announced in a livestream on July 11th.

Gunning for next years’ nominations, I’m still producing and editing Fun Kids’ lockdown podcast, Stuck at Home. We also launched a brand new podcast, Sean and Robot’s Comedy Circuit, which I did the artwork for, and re-launched an older channel with a newer concept, Story Quest.

Here’s what else I’ve been up to in May:

• My local, independent coffee shop re-opened ahead of schedule. It felt good to have a barista-prepared coffee for the first time in two months! The barbers better be next.
• Fresh bouquets from Bloom & Wild elevate any at-home office. These flowers come through letterboxes and last an impressive amount of time considering they’ve trundled around the postal system.

I’ve been reading:

If you read a lot, I’ve found a great Amazon alternative: Hive. Buy online, have your book delivered, and an independent bookshop of your choosing gets a percentage of your sale.

• I read hilarious Q&A between ‘You and Coronavirus’ from the New York Times at the start of May.
• I’ve been digging into sneak-peaks from Love People, Use Things, a book from Joshua Fields Milburn and Ryan Nicodemus, publishing in 2021.
• Edward Snowden’s autobiography, Permanent Record, about his life and the process behind the 2013 NSA revelations is as eye-opening as the information he blew the whistle on.
• The Hunger Games’ prequel, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, is pretty good. I was worried at first about its length and subject matter but like the original books, which were an allegory for the Iraq War, there’s lessons to be learned in this one too.
• Common Sense For The 21st Century: Only Nonviolent Rebellion Can Now Stop Climate Breakdown And Social Collapse by Extinction Rebellion co-founder Roger Hallam is worth picking up and a lot of the lessons can be applied to other social crises too.
• Paul Jarvis, founder of privacy-friendly analytics group Fathom, has a good archive of email newsletters on his website covering an array of subjects including digital rights and creativity. His delivers weekly on a Sunday.

I’ve been writing about:

All of my blog posts – including this one! – are available as podcast episodes. Just search for my name, Adam Ayrton Stoner, in your podcast app of choice, or just tap here.

• On Tuesday, I wrote about how the problems we experienced pre-coronavirus will continue to exist after it. Climate change and social justice, but this post paid particular attention to the Black Lives Matter movement.
• On Wednesday 10th June, and written before the reigniting of the Black Lives Matter movement in the US, I put down some radical ideas for a future post-coronavirus. It mainly focuses on governance but the ideas are definitely geared towards creating more equal and just societies. Subscribe in your podcast app of choice to hear me read it when it’s released.
• Earlier in the month, I wrote about how one might use blockchain technology to build uncensorable social media platforms. I don’t have the technical know-how to do that but I have been working on ways to mirror tweets to the Ethereum chain; a bit like an immutable version of Politwoops, which tracks tweets politicians delete.

I’ve been enjoying:

• As a longterm holder of the granddaddy of cryptocurrency, celebs like JK Rowling talking about it fills me with a sense of pride. I’ve been lax with the security around my crypto holdings for quite some time so purchased a Trezor hardware wallet to store Bitcoin and Ethereum.
• Battling with poor upload and download speeds, I purchased Little Snitch, a programme for your Mac that reveals all the connections other programmes on it are making and lets you block them at at will. If you use Adobe Creative Cloud, your jaw will hit the floor at just how many times your computer pings their servers. Weirdly, blocking those connections doesn’t even affect the functionality of the programmes.

That’s all for now.

Until next time.

Your friend,
Adam.