Podcast – Cory Doctorow's craphound.com

A contrarian take on how Trump-era policies unexpectedly accelerated global solar and clean-tech adoption. Tales of tariffs redirecting Chinese panels to Pakistan and Australia’s solar glut. Energy shortages and geopolitics pushing rapid shifts to EVs, induction cooking, and new battery chemistries. A look at how tech decoupling and political realignments are reshaping power and policy.

This week on my podcast, I read Not Normal, my latest Locus Magazine column, about the surreal and terrible world we’ve been eased into thanks to anti-circumvention laws. If you were paying attention in 1998, you could see what was coming. Computers were getting much cheaper, and much smaller. From cars to toast­ers, from speakers to TVs, we were shoveling them into our devices. and an it doesn’t take a lot of expense or engineering to add an “access control” to any of those computers. That meant that DMCA 1201 was about to metastasize. Once you put a computer into a thermostat or a bassinet or a stovetop or a hearing aid, you can add an access control and make it a felony to use it in ways the manufac­turer disprefers. You can make it illegal to use cheap batteries, or a different app store. You can add little chips to parts – everything from a fuel pump to a touchscreen – and make it illegal to manufacture a working generic part, because the generic part has to bypass the “access control” in the device that checks to see whether it’s the manufacturer’s own part. MP3

A reading about how long‑standing norms often turn out to be recent inventions. Stories range from primogeniture and colonialism to shifts in energy and fossil fuel power. Cultural and legal institutions are shown as mutable rather than eternal. Personal resilience and changing political dynamics illustrate how fast what feels fixed can change.

A look at how apps copied Facebook’s old playbook to steal social graphs and why that matters now. Tales of OG App’s Insta-scraping and the history of platform bridging. The rise of the Eurostack and European moves toward digital sovereignty. How Threads’ technical and legal choices create an opening for privacy-respecting alternatives.

The discussion reveals why code is seen as a liability rather than an asset. Maintainers face the misconception that code doesn't require ongoing maintenance. As technology evolves, software ages and breaks, leading to continual fixes. The podcast critiques AI's role in coding, emphasizing its inability to replace nuanced software engineering. Legacy systems are also highlighted, showing how technical debt leads to vulnerabilities. Ultimately, there's a warning about the future workforce needed to tackle the 'digital asbestos' of AI-generated code.

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 very abstract, so let me make it concrete. When you buy a printer from HP, it becomes your property. What’s property? Well, let’s use the standard definition that every law student learns in first year property law, from Sir William Blackstone’s 1753 treatise: “Property: that sole and despotic dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in total exclusion of the right of any other individual in the universe.” The printer is yours. It’s your property. You have sole and despotic dominion over it in exclusion of any other individual in the universe. But HP printers ship with a program that checks to see whether you’re using HP ink, and if it suspects that you’ve bought generic ink, the printer refuses to use it. Now, Congress never passed a law saying “If you buy an HP printer, you have to buy HP ink, too.” That would be a weird law, given the whole sole-and-despotic dominion thing. But because HP puts an “access control” in the ink-checking code, they can conjure up a brand new law: a law that effectively requires you to use HP ink. Anticircumvention is a way for legislatures to outsource law-making to corporations. Once a corporation adds an access control to its product, they can create a new felony for using it in ways that benefit you at the expense of the company’s shareholders. MP3

A dynamic speech explores the concept of a post-American internet, highlighting how Trump's tariffs inadvertently opened doors for global digital liberation. It addresses the historical roots of tech monopolies and the critical need for anti-circumvention laws to be lifted. By promoting jailbreak markets, new economic opportunities could arise, challenging the dominance of tech giants. The importance of collaborative action among activists and entrepreneurs is emphasized, alongside the call for open software as essential public infrastructure.

This week, 17-year-old Poesy Taylor Doctorow shares her journey from high school graduation to starting college at UC Santa Cruz, highlighting her dance triumphs and upcoming adventures. She offers a fun tutorial on Egyptian War, revealing gameplay strategies and the social atmosphere of card games. Poesy discusses the impact of her mother's career shift to the BBC and the family’s holiday traditions, all while reminiscing through a lively rendition of Jingle Bells. This charming exchange showcases their unique bond and Poesy's exciting new chapter.

Explore the concept of 'inshittification' and discover how choice is systematically stripped away in modern society. Learn how policies limit personal freedom, from no-fault divorce to digital rights management. Delve into the dubious economics of 'revealed preference' and why it's not the consumers at fault. Examine the role of tech giants and policymakers in perpetuating these issues. Ultimately, find out why genuine change requires profound policy reform, not just a shift in leadership.

Ed Zitron, a technology commentator and host of the Better Offline podcast, dives into the concept of 'enshittification'—the decline of tech quality driven by profit motives. He and Cory Doctorow discuss how Google’s decline is linked to ad-driven incentives and what creates a 'rot economy.' They explore whether this degradation is inevitable, emphasizing that systemic issues require collective political action rather than just consumer choices. Zitron warns of an impending AI bubble, while urging practical skills for future resilience.