Interviews

On his podcast (subscription feed), Cory Doctorow publishes talks, interviews, readings of his books and general thoughts.

On this page we transcribe his interviews, many of which are published on his podcast, to make them searchable and readable. There is also a page for his talks and one for all of his podcast episodes.

LIVE from the NYPL: Cory Doctorow with Edward Snowden: Dystopia, Apocalypse, and other Sunny Futures
(Not exactly an interview, but a conversation between Doctorow and Snowden)

In Walkaway, Cory Doctorow imagines a world in which people are no longer needed by the super-rich and the clever machines that can print all of life's basic necessities -- food, clothing, shelter. The 99% might be obsolete, but they're not going to take it lying down. They walk away, living on the exhaust stream and stolen code of the default world, surviving threats, and, ultimately, war. Doctorow, co-owner of Boing Boing, Activist in Residence at the MIT Media Lab and special consultant for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, will be joined virtually by Edward Snowden to discuss dystopian futures and the struggle between the haves and the have-nots in this special LIVE event.

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Talking about contestable futures on the Imaginary Worlds podcast
We were promised flying cars and we got Twitter instead. That’s the common complaint against sci-fi authors. But some writers did imagine the telecommunications that changed our world for better or worse. Cory Doctorow, Ada Palmer, Jo Walton and Arizona State University professor Ed Finn look at the cyberpunks and their predecessors. And artist Paul St George talks about why he’s fascinated by a Skype-like machine from the Victorian era.

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Interview with IEEE-USA Insight Podcast
I was interviewed for the IEEE-USA Insight Podcast last summer in New Orleans, during their Future Leaders Summit, where I was privileged to give the keynote.

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How free software stayed free
I did an interview with the Changelog podcast about my upcoming talk at the O’Reilly Open Source conference in London, explaining how it is that the free and open web became so closed and unfree, but free and open software stayed so very free, and came to dominate the software landscape.

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Matt Lieber Goes To Dinner
Cory speaks with the Reply All podcast about DRM in the browser and the W3C.

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O’Reilly Hardware Podcast on the risks to the open Web and the future of the Internet of Things
I appeared on the O’Reilly Hardware Podcast this week, talking about the way that DRM has crept into all our smart devices, which compromises privacy, security and competition.

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Interview on Paul Holdengraber’s “Call from Paul” podcast
I appeared on the current episode of “A Call From Paul”, a podcast created by Paul Holdengraber, who curates the NY Public Library’s amazing interview series. Paul and I talked about London, UK politics, class war, education, and books.

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Interview with O’Reilly Radar podcast
I did an interview with the O’Reilly Radar podcast at the Solid conference last month; we talked about the Apollo 1201 project I’m doing with EFF.

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Q&A from Clarion West benefit/reading in Seattle
Here’s the Q&A portion of the Cory Doctorow in Conversation event I did to benefit the Clarion West Writers’ Workshop in Seattle on July 28, 2015. The audio was provided Frank Catalano, who also conducted the interview.

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Cybersecurity podcast
I’m a guest on this week’s New America Foundation cybersecurity podcast, hosted by Amanda Gaines and Peter Warren Singer (whose new book, Ghost Fleet, a novel about cybersecurity, is about to hit the stands) and edited by the great John Taylor Williams.

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Interview with Radio New Zealand’s This Way Up
Radio New Zealand National’s This Way Up recorded this interview with me, which airs tomorrow (Saturday), about my book Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free.

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Interview with The Command Line podcast
I just appeared on the Command Line podcast (MP3) to talk about Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free — Thomas and I really had a wide-ranging and excellent conversation

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Cory Doctorow On When Computers Disobey (Beyond the Book podcast)
Imagine your computer is designed to disobey you – even worse, to hide things from you. Arthur C. Clarke imagined such a computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey. The HAL 9000 “super computer” famously sabotages a deep space mission when it turns on the human crew. As one astronaut attempts to disconnect “Hal,” the machine with a human voice says calmly, “I can’t let you do that, Dave.”

[Status: 100% transcribed, please help make it better]