This week, guest host Michael Magoulias takes the reins to conduct a lighthearted interview of your intrepid authors, partly to take the sting out of this being tax day in the US.

Michael has worked in scholarly publishing at the University of Chicago Press and is currently at Elsevier. He’s a trenchant observer of the scene and mutual friend.

We tackle some introductory questions and then . . . the Colbert Questionert!

• What is the best sandwich? The scariest animal? So many topics.

Enjoy this lighthearted episode, including three “Discoveries of the Week.” We’ll be back with more interviews and serious topics next week.

• Subscribe on Apple Podcasts
• Subscribe on Spotify
• Subscribe on Amazon Music/Audible
• Subscribe on YouTube

Music provided by Provoke the Truth — https://provokethetruth.net/

Susan Wise Bauer is a historian and author of The Great Shadow: A History of How Sickness Shapes What We Do, Think, Believe, and Buy. I reviewed her book a few weeks ago, and Joy attended a talk she gave William & Mary. Her engaging book seems to come from an era when the history of science existed outside of politics, restoring a calm sense of historical perspective much needed in these troubled times.

In addition teaching for 18 years at William and Mary and writing books, Bauer is a farmer and a publisher.

We discuss a grab-bag of topics, including:

• Kleenex
• How physicians evolved out of acolytes at temples
• The English sweat
• The library book panic
• Copernicus and corpses

We also share our “Discoveries of the Week:”

• Susan’s: https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/brian-merchant/blood-in-the-machine/9780316487740/?lens=little-brown
• Kent’s: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/242976013-how-the-internet-disrupted-science
• Joy’s: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=slow+vacuuming

• Subscribe on Apple Podcasts
• Subscribe on Spotify
• Subscribe on Amazon Music/Audible
• Subscribe on YouTube

Technology and media have become entangled and confused, so much so that the free speech of “no, thanks, not for us” is now called “censorship” and discussing public officials or people on the public payroll in accountable roles is being equated to “doxxing.” Meanwhile, it’s becoming clearer AI isn’t about knowledge, it’s about power.

Media manipulation is what tech has become all about — from social media to AI.

President Trump has been a media manipulator since the beginning:

• John Barron, John Miller, David Dennison as his fake personas to plant stories
• National Enquirer “catch and kill” stories (Stormy Daniels)
• Ghost-authored Art of the Deal
• The Apprentice
• First Twitter President
• First TikTok President
• Truth Social

Which brings us to the new President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), which is mostly a who’s who of media manipulators masquerading as technologists:

• Marc Andreessen — VC, on Meta board
• Sergey Brin — Alphabet, in the Epstein files (island, Ghislaine)
• Safra Catz — Oracle
• Larry Ellison — Oracle
• Michael Dell — Dell
• Jacob DeWitte — Oklo Investors (nuclear power)
• Fred Ehrsam — Coinbase
• David Friedberg — Investor (sold business to Monsanto)
• Jensen Huang — NVIDIA
• John Martinis — quantum physicist, UCSB, 2025 Nobel Prize
• Bob Mumgaard — fusion energy
• Lisa Su — AMD (on Biden’s PCAST before)
• Mark Zuckerberg — Meta

These CEOs have a combined wealth in excess of US$900 billion.

Overall, it looks like a group formed to deliver the Singularity and realize Adam Becker’s worst nightmare — nuclear power, fusion, compute, AI, and techno-authoritarianism.

How are these people being propped up?

• “CEO Said a Thing!” journalism: https://karlbode.com/ceo-said-a-thing-journalism/
• Attention economy conceits: https://www.altmetric.com/solutions/altmetric-attention-digest/

We discuss where science fits or doesn’t, and share our zero-gravity “Discoveries of the Week.”

• Subscribe on Apple Podcasts
• Subscribe on Spotify
• Subscribe on Amazon Music/Audible
• Subscribe on YouTube

Music provided by Provoke the Truth — https://provokethetruth.net/