Dystopian By Default: The Architecture of Surveillance

Public-interest technologist Bruce Schneier explains how corporate power, data extraction, and state surveillance have fused into a single system of…

May 3 • Mike Freedman

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April 2026

Iran’s Global Intimidation Machine: Journalism, Exile, and Keeping Dissent Alive

Investigative journalist Fariba Nawa on the human cost of transnational repression and documenting power when power wants you silent

Apr 19 • Mike Freedman

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Survival Is Resistance: Prison, Protest, and The Price of Freedom

Author and activist Nasrin Parvaz on being imprisoned and tortured in Iranian prisons, and dealing with trauma through creativity

Apr 5 • Mike Freedman

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The March Weird

That's AI, Alibaba and the Forty GPUs, suspicious mines, the Lego propaganda movie, hot dog search poison, CCPeeping, the coldest of emails, definitely…

Apr 3 • Mike Freedman

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March 2026

Lawyering Against the Machine: The Human Cost of AI and the Fight for Tech Justice

Melodi Dinçer of Tech Justice Law on AI-induced delusions, wrongful-death lawsuits, and the dangers of chatbots rewriting our reality

Mar 22 • Mike Freedman

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February 2026

The February Weird

#77: Ind-AI, regulators mount up, (Department of) War of Words, "you" is more than just you, the trailer trail, Internet-e-Tabaqati (Iran's "class-based…

Feb 27 • Mike Freedman

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Slowly, Then Suddenly: Surveillance, Social Rupture and Citizens’ Consent

War scholar Professor David Betz on why he thinks civil war is inevitable and how failing governments resort to tyranny

Feb 15 • Mike Freedman

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Making The Machine That Makes Us: AI, Consciousness, and Human Creativity

Philosopher and engineer Nell Watson on how AI may shape us more than we shape it, and why that might be a good thing

Feb 1 • Mike Freedman and Nell Watson

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January 2026

The January Weird

#76: Britannia waives the rules, eye on Iran, Lovejoy comes for VPNs, the edifice complex, Grok-blocked, don't believe (all) the shite, Big Apple…

Jan 28 • Mike Freedman

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Democracy In An Age Of Permanent Crisis

Professor Richard Youngs discusses rising authoritarianism, "in-between" regimes, our crisis of governance, and the danger of limiting democracy to save…

Jan 18 • Mike Freedman

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The World Turned Upside Down: England's Puritan Dystopia

In our first-ever Christmas Special, Dr. Fiona McCall discusses what happens when a society tears down its institutions in the name of moral purity and…

Jan 4 • Mike Freedman

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December 2025

2025: The Year In Weird

O Come Alaa Ye Faithful, digital unfreedom, AI & FIMI, surveillance gets up in your face, the global war on dissent, Iran takes the cake, my two cents

Dec 30, 2025 • Mike Freedman

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