Podcasts about Doctorow

Gilbert Doctorow : Trump Through Russian EyesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on my podcast, I read “Code is a liability (not an asset),” a recent post from my Pluralistic.net blog, about the bad ideas behind the drive to replace programmers with chatbots. Code is a liability. Code’s capabilities are assets. The goal of a tech shop is to have code whose capabilities generate more... more

Dr. Gilbert Doctorow : The Cold War Is Back — Trump, Putin, CubaSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on my podcast, I play the audio from (Digital) Elbows Up: How Canada Can Become a Nation of Jailbreakers, Reclaim Our Digital Sovereignty, Win the Trade-War, and Disenshittify Our Technology, a speech I delivered on November 27, 2025 at OCADU in Toronto, Canada (video here, transcript here). I recognize that this is all... more

There's a bizarre thing happening online right now where everything is getting worse.Your Google results have become so bad that you've likely typed what you're looking for, plus the word “Reddit,” so you can find discussion from actual humans. If you didn't take this route, you might get served AI results from Google Gemini, which once recommended that every person should eat “at least one small rock per day.” Your Amazon results are a slog, filled with products that have surreptitiously paid reviews. Your Facebook feed could be entirely irrelevant because the company decided years ago that you didn't want to see what your friends posted, you wanted to see what brands posted, because brands pay Facebook, and you don't, so brands are more important than your friends.But, according to digital rights activist and award-winning author Cory Doctorow, this wave of online deterioration isn't an accident—it's a business strategy, and it can be summed up in a word he coined a couple of years ago: Enshittification.Enshittification is the process by which an online platform—like Facebook, Google, or Amazon—harms its own services and products for short-term gain while managing to avoid any meaningful consequences, like the loss of customers or the impact of meaningful government regulation. It begins with an online platform treating new users with care, offering services, products, or connectivity that they may not find elsewhere. Then, the platform invites businesses on board that want to sell things to those users. This means businesses become the priority and the everyday user experience is hindered. But then, in the final stage, the platform also makes things worse for its business customers, making things better only for itself.This is how a company like Amazon went from helping you find nearly anything you wanted to buy online to helping businesses sell you anything you wanted to buy online to making those businesses pay increasingly high fees to even be discovered online. Everyone, from buyers to sellers, is pretty much entrenched in the platform, so Amazon gets to dictate the terms.Today, on the Lock and Code podcast with host David Ruiz, we speak with Doctorow about enshittification's fast damage across the internet, how to fight back, and where we can lay blame for where it all started.”Once these laws were established, the tech companies were able to take advantage of them. And today we have a bunch of companies that aren't tech companies that are nevertheless using technology to rig the game in ways that the tech companies pioneered.”Tune in today.

Gilbert Doctorow Explodes: Trump's Maduro “Kidnapping” Is an Impeachable CrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this episode, Tony sits down with award‑winning author, activist, and digital rights advocate Cory Doctorow to explore his acclaimed story collection Radicalized — four near‑future novellas that channel our deepest cultural anxieties into sharp, human‑centered speculative fiction. Doctorow's work has always lived at the crossroads of technology, power, and personal agency, and Radicalized distills those themes into four unforgettable narratives: “Unauthorized Bread” — a tale of immigrant resilience in a world where even your toaster is locked behind DRM. “Model Minority” — a superhero story that interrogates complicity, policing, and the myth of the “good immigrant.” “Radicalized” — a darkly empathetic look at healthcare injustice and the online communities that form around desperation. “The Masque of the Red Death” — a survivalist fantasy turned moral reckoning. #corydoctorow

This week on my podcast, I play the audio from A post-American, enshittification-resistant internet, a speech I delivered on December 28, 2025 at 39C3, the Chaos Communications Congress in Hamburg, Germany (video here, transcript here). Trump has staged an unscheduled, midair rapid disassembly of the global system of trade. Ironically, it is this system that... more

We discuss two very sad yet important contemporary ideas about how enormous companies like Apple, Google, Meta, and Amazon rule over us today. The first is Technofeudalism, a word coined by Yanis Varifoukas, which argues that capitalism has been replaced by a landscape of digital fiefdoms. The second is Enshittification, a word coined by Cory Doctorow, which explains why the apps we can never get enough of (Instagram, X, Amazon, and Facebook) continue to deteriorate while their parent companies make more and more money. Sagi insists throughout that whether or not we have transitioned from capitalism to a digital fiefdom, a Protestant ideology, one of labor and manifest destiny, continues to function and serve the hearts of all our beloved CEOs. Jack offers us an important history of the creation of Silicon Valley, tying a certain entrepreneurial optimism to a strange conflation of academia and the industrial military complex.Andy reads technofeudalism as a kind of vampiric disease, where everyone is either becoming their own Dracula, holed up in their castle, or the rats and peons that will soon be devoured.Jake gives as many examples as he can from Doctorow's book Enshittification, which he highly recommends.

Dr. Gilbert Doctorow : The Totalitarian EU.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

A theme that's dominated 2025 for me (and for many) has been price rises across many subscription-based platforms and services. My correspondence with companies has made clear that loyalty stands for very little. In fact, rather than being rewarded, longevity is increasingly exploited and monetised. In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, I share a year-in-review through the lens of price rises. The tipping point was an email from my podcast hosting company, Libsyn, announcing a 71 percent increase effective from January. It was the straw that broke this camel's back after a year of similar moves elsewhere. In the episode, I share exchanges with three companies that reveal how loyalty is no longer valued in itself, but engineered to extract profit from those of us who've become reliant on these platforms. https://youtu.be/qrmUSdGwcMs A Symptom of Enshittification Cory Doctorow describes the underlying trend as “Enshittification”, a form of platform decay visible in companies like Facebook, Amazon, Google, Apple, and Adobe. It's not a glitch, but a feature. Doctorow traces a familiar arc: platforms start by serving users well in order to grow. Once established, they pivot toward business customers, monetisation, and scale. Eventually, when users and businesses are sufficiently locked in, services are degraded for everyone so maximum value can be pulled out as quickly as possible. Disproportionate price rises are one symptom of this process, particularly in how companies treat long-standing customers. Lock-in is maintained through network effects (it's hard to leave when everyone else is still there), non-transferable data (your work can't easily be exported), and digital restrictions where purchases only function inside a single ecosystem. Music, books, films, and software are “owned” only as long as the platform allows it. In the name of convenience, we give ourselves over to these systems and become dependent on them. As the digital and physical worlds converge, this logic extends beyond apps and websites into cars, home devices, utilities, and infrastructure. At that point, this stops being a simple matter of consumer choice. Extraction is baked into the products themselves. We are quietly acclimatising to this new normal. It has crept in through corporate consolidation, weak enforcement of anti-trust legislation, and business models that no longer need to meaningfully consider customer relationships once a certain scale is reached. Abusing Trust, Need, and Loyalty Charlie Brooker has cited Enshittification as an influence on Common People, the opening episode of Black Mirror series seven. A couple sign up to a subscription-based medical intervention that escalates in cost, complexity, and dependency. Features are removed. Adverts are inserted. The stakes become existential. One particularly chilling moment sees Mike literally mutilating his own body for money via an OnlyFans-style platform, a stark symbolic image of how value is extracted from people once dependency is established. Price Rises for a “Valued Customer” Libsyn informed me they were raising the price of hosting A Quiet Night Inside No 9 by 71 percent. The justification was a familiar list of added features and growth opportunities, none of which were relevant to how we use the service. We don't want adverts or growth tools. We want reliable hosting and delivery. This exchange highlighted how much podcasting has changed since I joined Libsyn in 2009. Hosting platforms have increasingly positioned themselves as intermediaries between advertisers and podcasters. That relationship now takes precedence. Advertising is framed as a benefit to creators, while enabling hosts to raise prices and skim revenue from both usage fees and ad sales. Listeners, meanwhile, absorb longer ad breaks as the new normal. Is this stage two of Enshittification in the podcasting world? Note, I pledge never to put adverts on my audio podcasts. YouTube is the only exception, because Google inserts them regardless. ConvertKit and Paying for Features I Don't Want A similar logic played out with Kit, formerly ConvertKit. I chose it in 2016 because it was simple and reliable and have been a loyal user ever since. A price increase from $49 to $59 a month was justified by new automations and tools I didn't ask for or use. There is no way to opt out and pay less. The only concession offered was annual billing, which I pointed out mirrors poverty-tax logic: those without upfront capital pay more. Symptoms of a Failing Service Vimeo was the clearest example of platform decay from the inside. Storage rules changed midstream. Long-held assumptions were invalidated. Downgrading meant losing access to years of work. Retention efforts amounted to one-off discounts rather than meaningful alternatives. What stood out wasn't hostility, but indifference. Once a service reaches a certain size, individual relationships no longer seem to matter. Their response felt so extreme that I suspected deeper problems, which seemed to be confirmed when Bending Spoons acquired Vimeo in November. I'm glad I left when I did, though it's still inconvenient clearing up broken links and legacy embeds after fifteen years of use. WishList Member and a Different Choice Not all companies operate this way. WishList Member has honoured the price and feature set I signed up for over a decade ago. While new tiers exist, functionality hasn't been removed to force upgrades. This appears to be a deliberate choice, and it communicates something simple: long-term trust and loyalty matters more than short-term extraction. I’ll let you know if this situation changes… Growth Logic and the Limits of Choice It's tempting to frame all this as a moral failure, but it's structural. Growth-at-all-costs logic makes price rises, feature bloat, and lock-in almost inevitable. These companies aren't malfunctioning; they're functioning exactly as the system encourages them to. This also makes it risky to romanticise alternatives. Newer companies may simply be at an earlier stage of the same cycle. Google once promised “don't be evil”. Facebook positioned itself as a less invasive alternative to MySpace. Scale changes incentives. Meaningful change won’t come from individual consumer choices alone. Competition has been hollowed out, and escape routes are increasingly narrow. Doctorow provides a section of existing and potential solutions that can give us reasons for active hope. Have you felt the pinch of price hikes this year? Feel free to get in touch and share your experiences.

Dr. Gilbert Doctorow : Will the EU Steal Russian Bank Deposits?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on my podcast, I sit down with my daughter Poesy, for our annual Daddy-Daughter Podcast, a tradition we’ve had since she was three (she’s 17 now!). This year, Poe recaps her graduation, her triumphs with her dance team, and her life at college! She offers us a tutorial on playing Egyptian War, and... more

There's a word that's gained a lot of popularity in the last year: “ensh*ttification”. It refers to a trajectory many see with digital platforms: they initially offer immense value to users, only to systematically degrade that quality over time in order to extract maximum surplus for shareholders. We invited the coiner of this term, science fiction author and activist Cory Doctorow, on the podcast to discuss whether he thinks this decline is an inevitable feature of digital markets or a consequence of specific policy failures. And, most importantly, how he thinks it could be reversed.For Doctorow, "ensh*ttification" is not simply a result of "revealed preferences", where users tolerate worse service because they value the platform, but rather the outcome of a regulatory environment that has permitted the creation of high switching costs and the elimination of competitors. Doctorow also argues that historically, interoperability acted as an engine of dynamism, allowing new entrants to lower the barriers to entry. But current IP frameworks, such as anti-circumvention laws, have been "weaponized" to prevent this, effectively allowing firms to enforce cartels and engage in rent-seeking behavior.Finally, Doctorow offers a critical assessment of the current AI boom, arguing that the sector is creating "reverse centaurs", where human labor is conscripted to correct algorithmic errors, and warns of a potential asset bubble driven by inflated revenue attribution. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Gilbert Doctorow : Trump Embraces RealismSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The new revival of the musical Ragtime, by Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens (book by Terrence McNally, based on the novel by E.L. Doctorow), is one of the big hits of the new Broadway season. Lincoln Center Theater has produced the latest rendition, and times have certainly changed since the musical's original Broadway production in 1998. The new revival makes the show's characters and issues even more relevant for our present day. Along with the fictional character Coalhouse Walker Jr. and the archetypal characters Father, Mother, and Younger Brother, the show features several celebrities and power players from turn-of-the-century New York. Anna Grace Barlow, who plays Broadway star Evelyn Nesbit, and Rodd Cyrus, who stars as iconic illusionist Harry Houdini, join The Gilded Gentleman for a behind-the-scenes talk about their characters and their experiences performing in the show. This episode was produced and edited by Kieran Gannon. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This week's episode takes Cory Doctorow's term “enshittification” and uses it as a diagnostic for late-capitalist life, not just for tech platforms but for democracy, higher education, and work more broadly. Our co-hosts unpack Doctorow's three-stage model—platforms start out good to users, then pivot to serving business customers, and finally squeeze both users and customers to extract maximum value for shareholders—and argue about whether this is really a new “platform logic” or just old-school Marxist exploitation and alienation under a punchier name.We connect this logic to the attention economy and datafication (“we are the product”), then extend it to U.S. democracy, where voters are treated as performers in a hollowed-out system, and to universities, where administrative bloat, metrics, and “students as customers” have produced an enshittified version of higher education, while students are locked-in by massive student debt. What is left for us in terms of  resistance?We look at some real options: exiting platforms, Labor organizing and union drives, “quiet quitting” and malicious compliance (“Bartleby”-esque moves), creative sabotage, and maybe even  “enshittification from below.”Our co-hosts ultimately advocate for insisting on higher standards, rather than accepting the slow boil of lowered expectations. Join us for the shit-show! Full episode notes available at this link:https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/the-enshittification-of-everything/---------------------SUBSCRIBE to the podcast now to automatically download new episodes!SUPPORT Hotel Bar Sessions podcast on Patreon here! (Or by contributing one-time donations here!)BOOKMARK the Hotel Bar Sessions website here for detailed show notes and reading lists, and contact any of our co-hosts here.Hotel Bar Sessions is also on Facebook, YouTube, BlueSky, and TikTok. Like, follow, share, duet, whatever... just make sure your friends know about us! ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Dr. Gilbert Doctorow : Are US/Russian Negotiations a Waste of Time?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Biopunk før biopunk var cool “Where small things make big changes.” Sådan præsenterer biotech virksomheden Genetron sig på bogens første side. Genetron forsker i chips baseret på biologi. Hos Genetron møder vi Vergil Ulam, en forsker med genialt talent og mildt sagt elendig dømmekraft. Og da hans chefer opdager, at han bryder alle sikkerhedsprotokoller, og fyringen hænger over hovedet, tager han en drastisk beslutning. Hans forsøg med noocytter – intelligente, lymfocyt-baserede mikromaskiner har skabt helt nye utrolige resultater. Og for at redde sin forskning injicerer han dem i sig selv. Det indre univers: Noocytternes stemmer “A mother should name her offspring, shouldn't she?” Noget af det, der virkelig fangede os, er øjeblikket hvor noocytterne begynder at tale. Det er både dybt creepy og fascinerende. Der er noget sært poetisk over de små væsner, som på én gang er logiske, naive og filosofiske. De spørger ind til kroppen, til verden, til Vergil, og til hvad det betyder at være noget. Om forfatteren: Greg Bear Bear slog igennem i 80'erne og 90'erne, hvor han var med til at definere en særlig gren af sci-fi, der mikser videnskabelig nørderi med eksistentiel undren. Blood Music fra 1985 er det klareste eksempel: en historie, der starter med en enkelt forskers dårlige idéer og ender med en slags kosmisk metamorfose. Han stod også bag Darwin's Radio og Darwin's Children, der begge undersøger menneskelig evolution gennem bioteknologiske briller, samt klassikere som The Forge of God, Eon og The Way-serien. Og som om det ikke var nok, var han også med til at grundlægge San Diego Comic-Con. USA som biologisk superorganisme Efter at Noocytterne har hygget til i Vergil i en periode er de klar til at bryde ud som en virus, der spreder sig over hele Midtvejs i romanen vælter det hele over i stor-skala biomassevisdom. Her fornemmer man at Blood Music har været inspirationen for værker som Annihilation, The Expanse og alt det organiske weird, der kom mange år senere. Særligt en flyveturen over USA er skrevet som en mareridtsdokumentar, hvor vi med reporteren oplever et USA, forvandlet til en kontinentstørrelse organisme, der pulserer i sin egen rytme. Suzy's Choice: mellem individ og kollektiv Romanens følelsesmæssige centrum ligger hos Suzy, en ung overlevende, der stadig er uinficeret, men fanget midt i den omformede verden. På toppen af World Trade Center konfronteres hun med valget mellem at forblive et selvstændigt individ – sårbar, alene – eller lade sig absorbere af det enorme, kollektive sind, som noocytterne har skabt, hvor hendes transformerede mor og brødre nu inviterer hende . Scenen er både tragisk og smuk: en konfrontation med spørgsmålet om, hvorvidt bevidsthedens fremtid ligger i individet eller fællesskabet. Blood Music leger ikke bare med sci-fi-idéer – den rammer også de store spørgsmål om hvad individualitet egentlig betyder. Vurdering Blood Music er idérig og til tider helt fantastisk, men også med en tendens til at henfalde i tung biotech-babble med for mange bipersoner, der forsvinder igen. Vildt original, biopunket og undertiden decideret visionær. Læs for at få en tidlig oplevelse af transhuman scifi med biologisk body horror i ascendanten. Jens og Anders har SCIFI SNAKKET Blood Music. Jens: ⭐⭐⭐Anders: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Shownotes Siden sidst Anders har læst og set: Chuck Tingle – Lucky Day Ian McEwan – What We Can Know : Smuk, næsten kirurgisk præcis clifi om erkendelse og klima. Ken Liu – All That We See or Seem: En cyberpunket sag i Doctorow-stilen. PLURIBUS (Apple TV) : Er lige startet den virker lovende! Jens' læse- og se-sidst-runde: PLURIBUS : Samme reaktion som Anders: fascination blandet med udbredt frygt for menneskehedens fremtid. Jane Mondrup – Zoi : Zoi af Jane Mondrup. Sådan en helt Stanislav Lemsk fortælling, hvor vi er med astronauter ombord på en interstellart rejsende biologisk entitet. Faktisk superfed. Jeg gav den en firer. Fuld af gode ideer! Lytterfeedback Det vælter som altid ind med kærlige skub, anbefalinger og lettere genrebashing. Kåre gav os endnu en lille opsang for vores “snævre” genrekonventioner, fordi vi sagde nej til The Libraries of Mount Char. Til gengæld anbefalede han Christopher Priest – Henning fremhævede især Inverted World, som han mente var obligatorisk almendannelse. Majbrit opfordrede: Hold nu fast i de nyere titler! Så hun kan opdage nyere forfatterskaber sammen med os. Christian bragte gode nyheder fra Bogforum, hvor hans paneldebat om dystopier tiltrak hele 200 publikummer. Diskussionen tog udgangspunkt i Sort Storm, Det døde land og hans egen Pandora-serie – hvilket beviser, at dansk sci-fi har det temmelig glimrende. Næste gang læser vi Olaf Stapledon – Star MakerEn af de helt store, kosmiske klassikere. Universets historie, guddommelig evolution og filosofisk sci-fi på højeste blus. Vi glæder os allerede til at gå i kredsløb om den.

Dr. Gilbert Doctorow : Can Putin Tolerate More War?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

From flying to online shopping to using social media, everything seems to be getting worse. It's all — pardon our language here — shittier. According to today's Lever Time guest, that's no accident. Cory Doctorow is the author of Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It. In this episode, Doctorow explains how enshittification works, how it's infected our online spaces, and what we can do to stop it. Plus, as an exclusive bonus to our paid subscribers, click here for the rest of David's conversation with Cory Doctorow. They talk about why Americans are trapped on Facebook or Microsoft Office and how Donald Trump is using tech companies as weapons in his trade war. Doctorow also offers a few simple solutions to stop our world from going to shit. Not yet a paid subscriber? Click here for a special membership offer exclusive to Lever Time listeners. To leave a tip for The Lever, ⁠click here⁠. It helps us do this kind of independent journalism. ⁠Click here⁠⁠ for a transcript of this episode. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week on my podcast, I read my latest Locus Magazine column, “Show Me the Incentive, I'll Show You the Outcome,” about the process by which we ended up with an enshittogenic policy environment: The whole point of the conservative project is to take away choices, and corral us into “preferences” that we disprefer. Eliminate... more

Gilbert Doctorow : Why Russia Needs to Win Its WarSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this special livestream edition of Peoples & Things, host Lee Vinsel and very special guest host, danah boyd, formerly of Microsoft Research, presently Geri Gay Professor of Communication at Cornell University, chat with writer and activist, Cory Doctorow, about his new book, Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It. The book tracks how and why companies degrade their digital platforms and products and argues especially for the role that monopoly power plays in this phenomenon. Vinsel, boyd, and Doctorow talk about many different dimensions of these processes and go down various joyful rabbitholes, too, including our present AI bubble. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

In this special livestream edition of Peoples & Things, host Lee Vinsel and very special guest host, danah boyd, formerly of Microsoft Research, presently Geri Gay Professor of Communication at Cornell University, chat with writer and activist, Cory Doctorow, about his new book, Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It. The book tracks how and why companies degrade their digital platforms and products and argues especially for the role that monopoly power plays in this phenomenon. Vinsel, boyd, and Doctorow talk about many different dimensions of these processes and go down various joyful rabbitholes, too, including our present AI bubble. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

In this special livestream edition of Peoples & Things, host Lee Vinsel and very special guest host, danah boyd, formerly of Microsoft Research, presently Geri Gay Professor of Communication at Cornell University, chat with writer and activist, Cory Doctorow, about his new book, Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It. The book tracks how and why companies degrade their digital platforms and products and argues especially for the role that monopoly power plays in this phenomenon. Vinsel, boyd, and Doctorow talk about many different dimensions of these processes and go down various joyful rabbitholes, too, including our present AI bubble. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

In this special livestream edition of Peoples & Things, host Lee Vinsel and very special guest host, danah boyd, formerly of Microsoft Research, presently Geri Gay Professor of Communication at Cornell University, chat with writer and activist, Cory Doctorow, about his new book, Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It. The book tracks how and why companies degrade their digital platforms and products and argues especially for the role that monopoly power plays in this phenomenon. Vinsel, boyd, and Doctorow talk about many different dimensions of these processes and go down various joyful rabbitholes, too, including our present AI bubble. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Dr. Gilbert Doctorow : The Russians and Their War.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

DR. Gilbert Doctorow : Are Russians Losing Patience Over the War?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Is Trump's crazy train an existential threat to Canada or an existential opportunity?Cory Doctorow gave the world the concept of “ensh*ttification”. Doctorow's doctrine says there is a gradual but inevitable process by which tech platforms go from marvelous and novel and exciting to, well, they go to sh*t. They get less useful and more spammy. Your Netflix library gets smaller while your monthly fee gets bigger. It gets harder to find the Google link you were looking for underneath all the sponsored links. Uber rates seem to always be set to surge pricing. The idea can be applied to Canada itself. For a long time we enjoyed bundled access to the U.S. cable package. We got access to their markets. We got military protection. We were along for the ride of globalization. All we had to do was play by their trade rules, their foreign policy expectations. We had to subscribe to their vision of the world.But the beta test is over. Now that we are locked into their platform, introductory rates are no longer available. If we want to trade with them, it'll cost us. If we want a golden dome protecting us, it'll cost us. Even if we just want off the crazy train, it'll cost us.Can we unsh*ttify Canada?Host: Jesse BrownCredits: Tristan Capacchione (Audio Editor & Technical Producer), Bruce Thorson (Senior Producer), max collins (Director of Audio), Jesse Brown (Editor and Publisher)Featured guest: Cory DoctorowFact checking by Julian AbrahamMore information:https://craphound.com/Sponsors: oxio: Head over to https://canadaland.oxio.ca and use code CANADALAND for your first month free! Squarespace: Check out https://squarespace.com/canadaland for a free trial, and when you're ready to launch use code canadaland to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.BetterHelp: Visit https://BetterHelp.com/canadaland today to get 10% off your first month.Can't get enough Canadaland? Follow @Canadaland_Podcasts on Instagram for clips, announcements, explainers and more.It's crowdfunding month here at Canadaland! The next 10 people to sign up today will receive a FREE hand-printed t-shirt from My Moving Parts. Eligible supporters can choose between one of the following two designs: https://shorturl.at/MT520 Become a supporter at canadaland.com/join today. You'll get premium access to all our shows ad free, including early releases and bonus content. You'll also get our exclusive newsletter, discounts on merch at our store, tickets to our live and virtual events, and more than anything, you'll be a part of the solution to Canada's journalism crisis, you'll be keeping our work free and accessible to everybody. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dr. Gilbert Doctorow : Putin's Next MovesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

“Sometimes a term is so apt, its meaning so clear and so relevant to our circumstances, that it becomes more than just a useful buzzword and grows to define an entire moment,” the columnist Kyle Chayka writes, in a review of Cory Doctorow's book “Enshittification.” Doctorow, a prolific tech writer, is a co-founder of the tech blog Boing Boing, and an activist for online civil liberties with the Electronic Frontier Foundation—so he knows whereof he speaks. He argues that the phenomenon of tech platforms seemingly getting worse for users is not a matter of perception but a business strategy. For example, “the Google-D.O.J. antitrust trial last year surfaced all these memos about a fight about making Google Search worse,” Doctorow explains, in a conversation with Chayka. A Google executive had suggested that, instead of displaying perfectly prioritized results on the first search attempt, “what if we make it so that you got to search two or three times, and then, every time, we got to show you ads?” But, Doctorow argues, there is hope for a better future, if we can resist complacency; big internet platforms all depend on forms of “surveillance” of their users. “The coalition [against this] is so big, and it crosses so many political lines,” Doctorow says, “that if we could just make it illegal to spy on people, we could solve so many problems.”New episodes of The New Yorker Radio Hour drop every Tuesday and Friday. Join host David Remnick as he discusses the latest in politics, news, and current events in conversation with political leaders, newsmakers, innovators, New Yorker staff writers, authors, actors, and musicians.

This week on my podcast, I’ve got the audio from last week’s Enshittification book-tour event with Ed Zitron and Whitney Betran at the Seattle Public Library (you can watch the video here). I’ve got many more cities to go on the tour – I hope to see you at one (or more) of them! MP3

Dr. Gilbert Doctorow : Will Putin Change Tactics?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

How can we reverse the enshittification of digital platforms? With Cory Doctorow Why does every online platform seem to start out great - then slowly turn to garbage? Why do our digital public squares now feel more like corporate malls... or burning trash heaps?  ‘Enshittification' has been word of the year in the UK, USA and Australia. It's been printed in the pages of the FT and declaimed from podiums at the EU. As a word, it captures the feeling of a world that is ever worsening.  Cory Doctorow, the tech and ethics writer who coined the term, argues that enshittification is not a technical glitch, but a technique that every platform - from X to TikTok, Amazon to Apple, has adopted on purpose to maximise profit at the expense of user experience.  In this episode, Doctorow joins Carl Miller to break down what this relentless downward spiral means for democracy, privacy, creativity, and trust, and what can be done to reverse it. Doctorow offers a roadmap for reclaiming a better digital future. From breaking monopolies and restoring interoperability to empowering tech workers and enforcing real regulation, this is a conversation about what's broken, and how we can fix it. If you'd like to become a Member and get access to all our full conversations, plus all of our Members-only content, just visit intelligencesquared.com/membership to find out more. For £4.99 per month you'll also receive: - Full-length and ad-free Intelligence Squared episodes, wherever you get your podcasts - Bonus Intelligence Squared podcasts, curated feeds and members exclusive series - 15% discount on livestreams and in-person tickets for all Intelligence Squared events  ...  Or Subscribe on Apple for £4.99: - Full-length and ad-free Intelligence Squared podcasts - Bonus Intelligence Squared podcasts, curated feeds and members exclusive series … Already a subscriber? Thank you for supporting our mission to foster honest debate and compelling conversations! Visit intelligencesquared.com to explore all your benefits including ad-free podcasts, exclusive bonus content and early access. … Subscribe to our newsletter here to hear about our latest events, discounts and much more. https://www.intelligencesquared.com/newsletter-signup/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Doctorow lays out his "enshittification" playbook—how tech platforms lure users, trap businesses, then extract value from both—tying it to interoperability, right-to-repair, and DMCA lock-ins, with Facebook as Exhibit A. He explains why incremental state laws can break Big Tech's coalitions better than sweeping federal reforms. Meanwhile, Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro warns, "If the gringos threaten, we work harder; if they attack, we respond," after Trump-ordered strikes sink another Caribbean vessel, this time with proof the public can't see. Also: the Spiel contends that hostages were freed not by moral suasion but by sustained force—and that human-rights maximalism, however sincere, often misunderstands how wars actually end. Produced by Corey Wara Production Coordinator Ashley Khan Email us at ⁠⁠⁠⁠thegist@mikepesca.com⁠⁠⁠⁠ To advertise on the show, contact ⁠⁠⁠⁠ad-sales@libsyn.com⁠⁠⁠⁠ or visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://advertising.libsyn.com/TheGist⁠⁠⁠⁠ Subscribe to The Gist: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://subscribe.mikepesca.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠ Subscribe to The Gist Youtube Page: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4_bh0wHgk2YfpKf4rg40_g⁠⁠⁠⁠ Subscribe to The Gist Instagram Page: ⁠⁠⁠⁠GIST INSTAGRAM⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow The Gist List at: ⁠⁠⁠⁠Pesca⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠Profundities | Mike Pesca | Substack

This week on my podcast, I’ve got the audio from last week’s Enshittification book-tour event with former FTC Chair Lina Khan at the Brooklyn Public Library (you can watch the video here). lI’ve got 24 more cities to go on the tour – I hope to see you at one (or more) of them! MP3

Prof. Gilbert Doctorow : Is Putin Stable?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Cory Doctorow, author and digital rights advocate, argues that big tech companies from Facebook to Google and beyond have evolved - or devolved - in a disappointing way. He says that many large tech companies begin with a good product, but that over time they prioritize first business customers, and then ultimately shareholders and profits over end users. That creates a decline in service quality, and Doctorow explains why that's bad for customers, companies, and the broader economy and society. Doctorow wrote the new book Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It.

The real (economic) AI apocalypse is nigh This week on my podcast, I read “The real (economic) AI apocalypse is nigh,” a recent column from my Pluralistic newsletter; about the looming economic crisis threatened by the AI investment bubble: A week ago, I turned that book into a speech, which I delivered as the annual... more

Prof. Gilbert Doctorow : Are Russians Losing Patience?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Interview recorded - 29th of September, 2025On this episode of the WTFinance podcast I had the pleasure of welcoming back Gilbert Doctorow. Gilbert is a author and geopolitical analyst with decades of experience.During our conversation we spoke about the geopolitical sphere, war parties shifting, trump impact, Ukraine vs Russia conflict, US pivoting to China, return of the Monroe doctrine and more. I hope you enjoy!0:00 - Introduction1:17 - Geopolitical sphere3:51 - War parties shifting?9:48 - Trump impact14:43 - Common enemy16:19 - Ukraine - Russia conflict27:13 - Peace deal?31:24 - US pivoting to China?36:07 - Return to Monroe doctrine37:11 - Multiple spheres39:11 - One message to takeaway?Gilbert Doctorow is a professional Russia watcher and actor in Russian affairs going back to 1965. He is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College (1967), a past Fulbright scholar, and holder of a Ph.D. with honors in history from Columbia University (1975).After completing his studies, Mr. Doctorow pursued a business career focused on the USSR and Eastern Europe. For twenty-five years he worked for US and European multinationals in marketing and general management with regional responsibility.From 1998-2002, Doctorow served as the Chairman of the Russian Booker Literary Prize in Moscow. During the 2010-2011 academic year, he was a Visiting scholar of the Harriman Institute, Columbia University.Mr. Doctorow is a long-time resident of Brussels.Gilbert Doctorow:Substack - https://gilbertdoctorow.substack.com/Books - https://www.amazon.co.uk/stores/author/B0048RTGTMWTFinance - Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/wtfinancee/Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/67rpmjG92PNBW0doLyPvfniTunes - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/wtfinance/id1554934665?uo=4Twitter - https://twitter.com/AnthonyFatseasThumbnail image from - https://crescent.icit-digital.org/articles/will-trump-become-the-gorbachev-of-us-imperialism

Prof. Gilbert Doctorow : Trump Embraces Ukraine!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Episode: 2488 Revision: An Essential Component of the Creative Process.  Today, creator vs. revisor.

Prof. Gilbert Doctorow : Is Europe Collapsing?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

[SPECIAL] Prof. Gilbert Doctorow : Nearing the End in Ukraine.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Prof. Gilbert Doctorow : Russia Spreads Its Wings; Thumbs Its Nose.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Prof. Gilbert Doctorow : The Kremlin's View of Trump.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Prof. Gilbert Doctorow : Alaska PreviewSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Prof. Gilbert Doctorow : Is Moscow Optimistic?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.