Podcast – Cory Doctorow's craphound.com
187 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 11 hours ago - ★★★★★ - 74 ratingsCory Doctorow's Literary Works
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Episodes
The Masque of the Red Death and Punch Brothers Punch
March 16, 2020 16:21As a followup to my last podcast, which featured the Macmillan audiobook of my novella “The Masque of the Red Death”, this week’s podcast starts with a reading of Poe’s original 1842 story, “The Masque of the Red Death. It’s some next-level gothic stuff. As a chaser, I close this week’s podcast with a reading... more
The Masque of the Red Death
March 14, 2020 00:57Edgar Allen Poe wrote “The Masque of the Red Death” in 1842. It’s about a plutocrat who throws a masked ball in his walled abbey during a plague with the intention of cheating death. My novella “The Masque of the Red Death” is a tribute to Poe; it’s from my book Radicalized. It’s the story... more
When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth
March 13, 2020 20:55In this special Covid-19 edition of my podcast, I revisit my end-of-the-world short story When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth, originally published in Baen’s Universe in 2005. Hundreds of people have emailed and tweeted me about this story this week, so I thought it was long overdue that I revisited it (I last read it into... more
A Lever Without a Fulcrum Is Just a Stick
March 11, 2020 15:29For my latest podcast, I read my latest Locus op-ed, A Lever Without a Fulcrum Is Just a Stick, which analyzes why giving creators more copyright hasn’t made them richer, and proposes other kinds of authors’ rights that would translate into real money for real creators. The fact that the company can’t reproduce your book... more
Audio from the Kelowna Canada Reads event with Sarah Penton
March 06, 2020 20:42Last night I sat down for an interview and lively Q&A at the Kelowna Public Library with the CBC’s Sarah Penton as part of the Canada Reads national book prize, for which my book Radicalized is a finalist. Courtney Dickson was kind enough to send me raw audio from the board and to give me... more
Interview with the Firewalls Don’t Stop Dragons podcast (Part II)
March 02, 2020 18:46A couple of weeks ago, I posted Part I of my interview with the Firewalls Don’t Stop Dragons podcast, a podcast that covers computer security in a way that is accessible to nontechnical people. Carey Parker has posted part II (MP3) of the interview, where we dig into Right to Repair, Adversarial Interoperability, and monopoly... more
Disasters Don’t Have to End in Dystopias
March 01, 2020 20:43For my latest podcast, I read my 2017 Wired op-ed, Disasters Don’t Have to End in Dystopias, a discussion of the themes in my novel Walkaway. The thesis is that our estimations of probability of danger are unduly influenced by our ability to vividly imagine that danger (this is called the “availability heuristic”), so stories... more
Talking Radicalized with CBC’s Shelagh Rogers on The Next Chapter
February 26, 2020 15:57My book Radicalized is a finalist for Canada Reads, the CBC’s national book prize. I sat down with Sheelagh Rogers, host of The Next Chapter, for a wide-ranging interview (MP3) about the book and the Trump-era anxiety that drove me to write it.
Gopher: When Adversarial Interoperability Burrowed Under the Gatekeepers’ Fortresses
February 25, 2020 00:25For my latest podcast, I read my latest EFF Deeplinks post, Gopher: When Adversarial Interoperability Burrowed Under the Gatekeepers’ Fortresses. It’s the latest installment in my case histories of “adversarial interoperability” — once the main force that kept tech competitive. Today, I tell the story of Gopher, the web’s immediate predecessor, which burrowed under the... more
Talking Adversarial Interoperability with the Firewalls Don’t Stop Dragons podcast (Part I)
February 18, 2020 14:04It’s been a few years since I last sat down with Carey Parker and his Firewalls Don’t Stop Dragons podcast, and last week I corrected that oversight, recording a long interview about the Right to Repair, Adversarial Interoperability, and Sonos’s e-waste gambit. Part I is up now (MP3), and part II will be up in... more
Persuasion, Adaptation, and the Arms Race for Your Attention
February 10, 2020 21:07For my latest podcast, I read my January 2018 Locus column, Persuasion, Adaptation, and the Arms Race for Your Attention. The essay proposes that we are be too worried about the seemingly unstoppable power of opinion-manipulators and their new social media superweapons. Not because these techniques don’t work (though when someone who wants to sell... more
Podcast: In Serving Big Company Interests, Copyright Is in Crisis
February 06, 2020 02:46For my latest podcast, I read my Copyright Week post for EFF’s Deeplinks blog, , In Serving Big Company Interests, Copyright Is in Crisis. The essay discusses how the “author’s monopoly” of copyright is of less and less use in serving as leverage for dealing with publishers and other parts of the entertainment supply chain.... more
The case for … cities that aren’t dystopian surveillance states
January 27, 2020 23:18For my latest podcast, I read my Guardian Cities column, “The case for … cities that aren’t dystopian surveillance states,” which was the last piece ever commissioned for the section. The Guardian commissioned the piece after reading my Toronto Life blurb about how a “smart city” could be focused on enabling its residents, rather than... more
Radicalized is a Canada Reads finalist, will be a graphic novel, and is eligible for the Hugo Award!
January 22, 2020 14:29My 2019 book Radicalized has been named one of the five finalists for Canada Reads, the CBC’s annual book prize — Canada’s leading national book award, alongside of the Governor General’s award! My book was nominated by Akil Augustine, a beloved Canadian sportscaster and storyteller, and he’ll be championing the book through the Canada Reads... more
Inaction is a form of action
January 14, 2020 00:20In my latest podcast (MP3), I read my latest Locus column, Inaction is a Form of Action,, where I I discuss how the US government’s unwillingness to enforce its own anti-monopoly laws has resulted in the dominance of a handful of giant tech companies who get to decide what kind of speech is and isn’t... more
Jeannette Ng Was Right: John W. Campbell Was a Fascist
November 18, 2019 23:38In my latest podcast (MP3), I read my new Locus column, “Jeannette Ng Was Right: John W. Campbell Was a Fascist,“which revisits Jeannette Ng’s Campbell Awards speech from this summer’s World Science Fiction convention. As far as I know, I’m the only person to have won both awards named for Campbell, which, I think, gives... more
Talking with The Storyteller’s Thread about YA literature, activism, and technological rebellion
November 03, 2019 08:02Séan Connors is a young adult literature researcher at the University of Arkansas, whose podcast, The Storyteller’s Thread, features long-form interviews with young adult writers “on their writing process; on social and political topics that influence their work; on their motivation for writing for young readers: and on other writers and artists whose work challenges... more
Affordances: a new science fiction story that climbs the terrible technology adoption curve
October 29, 2019 01:31In my latest podcast (MP3), I read my short story “Affordances,” which was commissioned for Slate/ASU’s Future Tense Fiction. it’s a tale exploring my theory of “the shitty technology adoption curve,” in which terrible technological ideas are first imposed on poor and powerless people, and then refined and normalized until they are spread over all... more
Can we change our politics with science fiction? A conversation with the How Do You Like It So Far podcast
October 26, 2019 16:41Henry Jenkins (previously) is the preeminent scholar of fandom and culture; Colin Maclay is a communications researcher with a background in tech policy; on the latest episode of their “How Do You Like It So Far” podcast (MP3), we had a long discussion about a theory of change based on political work and science fictional... more
Talking science fiction, technological self-determination, inequality and competition with physicist Sean Carroll
October 22, 2019 20:50Talking science fiction, technological self-determination, inequality and competition with physicist Sean Carroll Sean Carroll is a physicist at JPL and the author of many popular, smart books about physics for a lay audience; his weekly Mindscape podcast is a treasure-trove of incredibly smart, fascinating discussions with people from a wide variety of backgrounds. The latest... more
Materiality: a new science fiction story for the Oslo Architecture Triennale about sustainable, green abundance
October 22, 2019 00:20In my latest podcast (MP3), I read my short story “Materiality,” which was commissioned for Gross Ideas: Tales of Tomorrow’s Architecture, a book edited by Edwina Attlee, Phineas Harper and Maria Smith that is part of the Oslo Architecture Triennale. The editors pitched me on writing a story about sustainability and de-financialization in architecture, and... more
False Flag
October 14, 2019 23:50In my latest podcast (MP3), I read my Green European Journal short story about the terrible European Copyright Directive which passed last March, False Flag. Published in December 2018, the story highlights the ways in which this badly considered law creates unlimited opportunities for abuse, especially censorship by corporations who’ve been embarassed by whistleblowers and... more
Part two of my novella “Martian Chronicles” on Escape Pod: who cleans the toilets in libertopia?
October 11, 2019 13:35Last week, the Escape Pod podcast published part one of a reading of my YA novella “Martian Chronicles,” which I wrote for Jonathan Strahan’s Life on Mars anthology: it’s a story about libertarian spacesteaders who move to Mars to escape “whiners” and other undesirables, only to discover that the colonists that preceded them expect them... more
Why do people believe the Earth is flat?
October 08, 2019 02:38In my latest podcast (MP3), I read my Globe and Mail column, Why do people believe the Earth is flat?, which connects the rise of conspiratorial thinking to the rise in actual conspiracies, in which increasingly concentrated industries are able to come up with collective lobbying positions that result in everything from crashing 737s to... more
“Martian Chronicles”: Escape Pod releases a reading of my YA story about rich sociopaths colonizing Mars
October 04, 2019 18:45Back in 2011, I wrote a young adult novella called “Martian Chronicles,” which I podcasted as it was in progress; it’s a story about the second wave of wealthy colonists lifting off from climate-wracked, inequality-riven Earth to live in a libertarian utopia on Mars. The story (part of a series of stories that use titles... more
Podcast: DRM Broke Its Promise
September 10, 2019 01:05In my latest podcast (MP3), I read my new Locus column, DRM Broke Its Promise, which recalls the days when digital rights management was pitched to us as a way to enable exciting new markets where we’d all save big by only buying the rights we needed (like the low-cost right to read a book... more
Podcast: Barlow’s Legacy
September 04, 2019 03:46Even though I’m at Burning Man, I’ve snuck out an extra scheduled podcast episode (MP3): Barlow’s Legacy is my contribution to the Duke Law and Tech Review’s special edition, THE PAST AND FUTURE OF THE INTERNET: Symposium for John Perry Barlow: “Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.”1... more
Podcast: Barlow’s Legacy
September 04, 2019 03:01Even though I’m at Burning Man, I’ve snuck out an extra scheduled podcast episode (MP3): Barlow’s Legacy is my contribution to the Duke Law and Tech Review’s special edition, THE PAST AND FUTURE OF THE INTERNET: Symposium for John Perry Barlow: “Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.”1... more
My MMT Podcast appearance, part 2: monopoly, money, and the power of narrative
August 21, 2019 17:04Last week, the Modern Monetary Theory Podcast ran part 1 of my interview with co-host Christian Reilly; they’ve just published the second and final half of our chat (MP3), where we talk about the link between corruption and monopoly, how to pitch monetary theory to people who want to abolish money altogether, and how stories... more
Podcast: A cycle of renewal, broken: How Big Tech and Big Media abuse copyright law to slay competition
August 19, 2019 22:52In my latest podcast (MP3), I read my essay “A Cycle of Renewal, Broken: How Big Tech and Big Media Abuse Copyright Law to Slay Competition”, published today on EFF’s Deeplinks; it’s the latest in my ongoing series of case-studies of “adversarial interoperability,” where new services unseated the dominant companies by finding ways to plug... more
My appearance on the MMT podcast
August 14, 2019 14:07I’ve been following the Modern Monetary Theory debate for about 18 months, and I’m largely a convert: governments spend money into existence and tax it out of existence, and government deficit spending is only inflationary if it’s bidding against the private sector for goods or services, which means that the government could guarantee every unemployed... more
Podcast: Interoperability and Privacy: Squaring the Circle
August 13, 2019 12:33In my latest podcast (MP3), I read my essay “Interoperability and Privacy: Squaring the Circle, published today on EFF’s Deeplinks; it’s another in the series of “adversarial interoperability” explainers, this one focused on how privacy and adversarial interoperability relate to each other. Even if we do manage to impose interoperability on Facebook in ways that... more
Podcast: “IBM PC Compatible”: how adversarial interoperability saved PCs from monopolization
August 05, 2019 22:54In my latest podcast (MP3), I read my essay “IBM PC Compatible”: how adversarial interoperability saved PCs from monopolization, published today on EFF’s Deeplinks; it’s another installment in my series about “adversarial interoperability,” and the role it has historically played in keeping tech open and competitive. This time, I relate the origin story of the... more
Podcast: Adblocking: How About Nah?
July 29, 2019 18:54In my latest podcast (MP3), I read my essay Adblocking: How About Nah?, published last week on EFF’s Deeplinks; it’s the latest installment in my series about “adversarial interoperability,” and the role it has historically played in keeping tech open and competitive, and how that role is changing now that yesterday’s scrappy startups have become... more
Podcast: Adversarial Interoperability is Judo for Network Effects
July 22, 2019 22:47In my latest podcast (MP3), I read my essay SAMBA versus SMB: Adversarial Interoperability is Judo for Network Effects, published last week on EFF’s Deeplinks; it’s a furhter exploration of the idea of “adversarial interoperability” and the role it has played in fighting monopolies and preserving competition, and how we could use it to restore... more
Appearance on the Jim Rutt Podcast
July 19, 2019 13:47Jim Rutt — former chairman of the Santa Fe Institute and ex-Network Solutions CEO — just launched his new podcast, and included me in the first season! (MP3) It was a characteristically wide-ranging, interdisciplinary kind of interview, covering competition and adversarial interoperability, technological self-determination and human rights, conspiracy theories and corruption. There’s a full transcript... more
Podcast: Occupy Gotham
July 16, 2019 01:44In my latest podcast (MP3), I read my essay Occupy Gotham, published in Detective Comics: 80 Years of Batman, commemorating the 1000th issue of Batman comics. It’s an essay about the serious hard problem of trusting billionaires to solve your problems, given the likelihood that billionaires are the cause of your problems. A thousand issues... more