E Squared Podcast
Spencer Prather
Andrew Johnstone is the creator and weekly host of the show. In 2011 the cast expanded to include former host of the podcast Sciencetastic, Joe Vilwock, and current creator of Movies On Up Dave Biscella. Since early 2013 the format of the show changed to include a rotating guest co-host every week that is usually the host of another podcast or contributor to podcasting in general.
Each weekly episode would include between one and three reviews of other podcasts using a rating scale of Delete (bad) Hit or Miss (mediocre) and Subscribe (good). The second half of each episode would then feature a half-hour interview with the host of another podcast with questions that mostly focus on how they got started podcasting and more specific questions about their show and where it fits in with other podcasts.[1]
The show shifted to a twice weekly format from late 2012 until June 2013. Episodes were released on Monday and Thursday. Monday's episodes would continue to feature the reviews of new podcasts and would also feature Johnstone and co-host Dave Biscella discussing the most recent events in podcast news. Thursday's episode would continue to feature interviews with podcasters, podcast business professionals, producers, and journalists of podcasting[2] but the format expanded beyond half-hour episodes into 45-minute and hour long discussions.
This is a regular feature on the show where Johnstone asks three off the wall questions of his guests in order to extract a humorous or potentially revealing answer. Common themes in these questions include acts of cannibalism, super powers, and the official mascot of Podcast Squared, a hippo, entering into gladiatorial combat with a random opponent with the victor chosen by the guest.
David is Nash Squared's Group Technology Evangelist. He crafts podcasts, hosts video debates, speaks, moderates conferences, and chairs keynote stages. He's a passionate advocate for technology, dissecting its challenges and opportunities.
David has worked at Nash Squared since 2007, where he has developed a deep understanding of the technology and talent markets. Recognised as Computing's Digital Ambassador of the Year (2018), he brings a wealth of experience and knowledge to every conversation.
Coach Your Brains Out, by Gold Medal Squared has been releasing weekly podcasts going on five years now! Founded by professional beach volleyball players John Mayer and Billy Allen, the primary goal is practical, useful education that will help you become a better coach. Our podcasts are released every Thursday afternoon, so set your notifications accordingly!
MathsJam is an annual conference in the UK, and a monthly night in pubs around the world, organised respectively by mathematician and juggler Colin Wright, and stand-up mathematician Matt Parker. We cornered Matt and Colin at the MathsJam conference last November, and talked to them for just over half an hour about the conference, the pub nights, and a disturbing amount about cake.
Evelyn Lamb is a professional mathematician who has taken up journalism on the side. She received the AAAS Mass Media Fellowship last year, and spent the summer writing for the magazine Scientific American. We talked to her about maths journalism, the challenges involved in making advances accessible to a wider audience, and the differences between blogging and print journalism.
This is the second and final part of our interview with Colm Mulcahy. Last week we talked about card magic; in this part we moved on to the subject of Martin Gardner and the gatherings of interesting people associated with his name.
This number of the All Squared podcast contains the final third of our interview with the inestimable David Singmaster, and then a bit from CP about his favourite book, A treatise on practical arithmetic, with book-keeping by single entry, by William Tinwell.
CINDY COHN
That's U.S. Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon. He is a political internet pioneer. Since he was first elected to the Senate in 1996, he has fought for personal digital rights, and against corporate and company censorship, and for sensible limits on government secrecy.
CINDY COHN
Our conversation takes a look back at some of the major milestones of his career, decisions that have directly impacted all of our online lives. And we talk about the challenges of getting Section 230 passed into law in the first place. But more recently, Senator Wyden also talks about why he was strongly opposed to laws like FOSTA-SESTA, which undermined the space that Section 230 creates for some online speakers, using the cover of trying to stop sex trafficking on the internet.
SENATOR RON WYDEN
Well, it's one that empowers the individual. You know, consistently, the battles around here are between big interest groups. And what I want to do is see the individual have more power and big corporations and big government have less as it relates to communications.
SENATOR RON WYDEN
What we'd have, for example, is faster adoption of new products and services for people showing greater trust in emergency technologies. We'd build on the motivations that have been behind my privacy bills, the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale, for example, Section 230, the Algorithm Accountability Act. Cindy, in each one of these, it's been all about two things: individuals and innovation.
JASON KELLEY
I'm wondering if you're surprised by the way that things have turned out in any specific instance, you know, you had a lot of responsibility for some really important legislation for CDA 230, scaling back some NSA spying issues, helping to stop SOPA-PIPA, which are all, you know, really important to EFF and to a lot of our listeners and supporters. But I'm wondering if, you know, despite that, you've seen surprises in where we are that you didn't expect.
SENATOR RON WYDEN
I didn't expect to have so many opponents across the political spectrum for Section 230. I knew we would have some, but nothing has been the subject of more misinformation than 230. You had Donald Trump, the President of the United States, lying about Section 230 over and over again. I don't think Donald Trump would know what Section 230 was if it hit him in the head, but he was always lying about vote by mail and all those kinds of things.
And huge corporate interests like Big Cable and legacy media have bankrolled massive lobbying and PR campaigns against 230. Since they saw user-created content and the ability of regular people to be heard as a threat to their top-down model, all those big guys have been trying to invent reasons to oppose 230 that I could not have dreamed of.
So I'm not saying, I don't think Chris Cox would say it either, that the law is perfect. But when I think about it, it's really a tool for individuals, people without power, without clout, without lobbies, without big checkbooks. And, uh, you know, a lot of people come up to me and say, "Oh, if you're not in public life, 230 will finally disappear" and all this kind of thing. And I said, I think you're underestimating the power of people to really see what this was all about, which was something very new, a very great opportunity, but still based on a fundamental principle that the individual would be responsible for what they posted in this whole new medium and in the United States individual responsibility carries a lot of weight.
CINDY COHN
What drives you towards building a better internet? So many people in Congress in your town don't really take the time to figure out what's going on, much less propose real solutions. They kind of, you know, we've been in this swing where they, they treated the technologies like heroes and now we're in a time when they're treating them like villains. But what drives you to, to kind of figure out what's actually going on and propose real solutions?
JASON KELLEY
It sounds like you're, you know, you're already thinking about this new thing, AI, and in 20 or more years ago, you were thinking about the new thing, which is posting online. How do we get more of your colleagues to sort of have that same impulse to be interested in tackling those hard questions that you mentioned? I think we always wonder what's missing from their views, and we just don't really know how to make them sort of wake up to the things that you get.
SENATOR RON WYDEN
What we do is particularly focus on getting experienced and knowledgeable and effective staff. I tell people I went to school on a basketball scholarship. I remember recruiting, we kind of recruit our technologists like they were all LeBron James, and kind of talking about, you know, why there were going to be opportunities here. And we have just a terrific staff now, really led by Chris Segoyan and Keith Chu.
And it's paid huge dividends, for example, when we look at some of these shady data broker issues, government surveillance. Now, with the passing of my, my friend Dianne Feinstein, one of the most senior members in the intelligence field and, uh, these incredibly good staff allow me to get into these issues right now I'm with Senator Moran, Jerry Moran of Kansas trying to upend the declassification system because it basically doesn't declassify anything and I'm not sure they could catch bad guys, and they certainly are hanging on to stuff that is irresponsible, uh, information collection about innocent people.
CINDY COHN
These are all problems that, of course, we're very deep in and, we do appreciate that you, you know, our friend, Chris Segoyan, who EFF's known for a long time and other people you've brought in really good technologists and people who understand technology to advise you. How do we get more senators to do that too? Are there things that we could help build that would make that easier?