Today for my podcast, I read Capitalists Hate Capitalism, my latest column from Locus Magazine. It’s a meditation on the difference between feudalism and capitalism, and how to know which one you’re living under. I recorded this on a day when I

Subprime gadgets

19 days ago

Today for my podcast, I read Subprime gadgets, originally published in my Pluralistic blog: I recorded this on a day when I was home between book-tour stops (I’m out with my new techno crime-thriller, The Bezzle). Catch me on April 11 in Boston

The Majority of Censorship is Self-Censorship

Feb 25th, 2024

Today for my podcast, I read The majority of censorship is self-censorship, originally published in my Pluralistic blog. It’s a breakdown of Ada Palmer’s excellent Reactor essay about the modern and historical context of censorship. I recorded

How I Got Scammed

Feb 18th, 2024

Today for my podcast, I read How I Got Scammed, originally published in my Pluralistic blog. It’s a story of how the attacker has to get lucky once, while the defender has to never make a single mistake. This is my last podcast before I take of

My Marshall McLuhan Lecture on enshittification from Berlin’s transmediale conference

Feb 5th, 2024

Last week, I traveled to Berlin to give the annual Marshall McLuhan lecture to open the Transmediale festival. I gave the talk to a full house at the Canadian embassy, and the embassy was kind enough to upload their video of the speech. This po

What kind of bubble is AI?

Jan 21st, 2024

This week on my podcast, I read my latest Locus Magazine column. “What kind of bubble is AI?” In it, I ask what will be left behind after the AI bubble bursts: You’ve got one week left to back the Kickstarter for my next novel, The Bezzle, the

The Bezzle, read by Wil Wheaton (excerpt)

Jan 15th, 2024

This week on my podcast, a preview of Wil Wheaton’s reading on the audiobook of The Bezzle, which I’m preselling through a Kickstarter campaign that I hope you’ll consider backing! MP3

The Internet’s Original Sin

Dec 17th, 2023

This week on my podcast, I read my final Medium column The internet’s original sin, about the failure of trying to stretch copyright to cover every problem on the internet. Copyright is a regulation. It regulates the supply-chain of the enterta

Daddy-Daughter Podcast, 2023 edition

Dec 10th, 2023

12 years ago, my four-year-old daughter’s nursery school let us know they’d be shutting down for Christmas a day before my wife’s office closed down, so I took the kid into my office in London to do some coloring, play with toys, and, eventuall

Don’t Be Evil

Dec 3rd, 2023

This week on my podcast, I read my Locus Magazine column “Don’t Be Evil,” about the microeconomics and moral injury of enshittification. It’s tempting to think of the Great Enshittening – in which all the internet services we enjoyed and came

Moral Hazard (from Communications Breakdown)

Nov 12th, 2023

This week on my podcast, I read my short story “Moral Hazard,” published last month in MIT Press’s Communications Breakdown, a science fiction anthology edited by Jonathan Strahan. “Moral Hazard” is a story about inequality, fintech, and the pr

The Canadian Miracle, Part 2

Nov 6th, 2023

This week on my podcast, I read the second and final part of my short story, “The Canadian Miracle,” a story set in the world of my forthcoming pre-apocalyptic Green New Deal novel, The Lost Cause, which comes out on November 14. Look for the h

The Canadian Miracle, Part 1

Nov 1st, 2023

This week on my podcast, I read part one of my short story, “The Canadian Miracle,” a story set in the world of my forthcoming pre-apocalyptic Green New Deal novel, The Lost Cause, which comes out on November 14. Look for the helpers. You will

Microincentives and Enshittification

Oct 23rd, 2023

This week on my podcast, I read a recent Medium column, “Microincentives and Enshittification” (open access link), about how Google went from being a company whose products were eerily good and whose corporate might was more often on the side o

The Lost Cause (excerpt)

Oct 12th, 2023

This week on my podcast, I present the prologue and first chapter of The Lost Cause, my forthcoming solarpunk novel of Green New Deal world threatened by seagoing anarcho-capitalist billionaire wreckers and their white nationalist militia shock

How To Think About Scraping

Sep 24th, 2023

This week on my podcast, I read a recent Medium column. “How To Think About Scraping: In privacy and labor fights, copyright is a clumsy tool at best,” about the real risks (and benefits) of web-scraping, and how to formulate policy responses t

Plausible Sentence Generators

Sep 17th, 2023

This week on my podcast, I read my latest Locus column. “Plausible Sentence Generators,” about my surprising, accidental encounter with a chatbot, and what it says about the future of the bullshit wars. When I came back to the tab a couple minu

Enshitternet: The old, good internet deserves a new, good internet

Aug 21st, 2023

This week on my podcast, I read a recent Medium column. “Enshitternet: The old, good internet deserves a new, good internet,” clarifying that our aspiration shouldn’t be to restore the internet’s former glory, but to make a new and glorious int

The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation (audiobook outtake)

Aug 1st, 2023

This week’s podcast is a special one: the introduction and chapter one of the audio edition of The Internet Con: How To Seize the Means of Computation, which Verso will publish on September 5, 2023. I made my own DRM-free audiobook for this, re

Let the Platforms Burn: The Opposite of Good Fires is Wildfires

Jul 17th, 2023

This week on my podcast, I read a recent Medium column. “Let the Platforms Burn: The Opposite of Good Fires is Wildfires,” making the case that we should focus more on making it easier for people to leave platforms, rather than making the platf

Ideas Lying Around

Jun 11th, 2023

This week on my podcast, I read a recent Medium column. “Ideas Lying Around,” about archivillain Milton Friedman’s surprisingly good theory of change, and how to apply it to progressive politics. Enter Friedman: to people reeling in crisis, Fri

The Swivel-Eyed Loons Have a Point

May 14th, 2023

This week on my podcast, I read my lastest Locus column. “The Swivel-Eyed Loons Have a Point,” about the unlikely – but undeniable – common ground I share with the most unhinged far-right conspiracists. The swivel-eyed loons at the anti-15-minu

How To Make a Child-Safe TikTok

Apr 17th, 2023

Red Team Blues: Behind the Scenes with Wil Wheaton

Apr 2nd, 2023

This week on my podcast, I bring you some clips of Wil Wheaton’s recording sessions for the audiobook of Red Team Blues, my next novel, an anti-finance finance thriller starring the 67 year old forensic accountant Martin Hench, who specializes

Red Team Blues

Mar 27th, 2023

This week on my podcast, I read a selection from my next novel, Red Team Blues, an anti-finance finance thriller about Marty Hench, a 67 year old hard-charging forensic accountant who’s seen every finance scam that Silicon Valley has come up wi