WEBVTT 1 00:00:10.320 --> 00:00:13.445 Friends, hello, and welcome to Never Post, a 2 00:00:13.445 --> 00:00:15.765 podcast for and about the Internet. I'm your host, Mike 3 00:00:15.765 --> 00:00:20.645 Rugnetta, and this intro was written on Tuesday, 07/29/2025 4 00:00:20.645 --> 00:00:28.150 at 09:34AM eastern. We have a fresh episode for you today. I 5 00:00:28.150 --> 00:00:30.630 talk with media and communications researcher Emily 6 00:00:30.630 --> 00:00:34.630 Owens and Ryan Broderick of Garbage Day and Panic World 7 00:00:34.630 --> 00:00:40.705 about brain rot. Then Hans talks with four librarians about their 8 00:00:40.705 --> 00:00:45.265 work rescuing and preserving datasets that are under threat 9 00:00:45.265 --> 00:00:47.185 by the United States government. 10 00:00:47.185 --> 00:00:51.505 And also on ask an expert, we talk with on the media's own, 11 00:00:51.825 --> 00:00:55.270 Micah Loeinger. But right now, we're gonna take a quick break. 12 00:00:55.270 --> 00:00:58.310 You'll listen to some ads unless you're on the member feed. And 13 00:00:58.310 --> 00:01:00.950 when we return, we're gonna talk about a few of the things that 14 00:01:00.950 --> 00:01:05.350 have happened since the last time you heard from us. Man, 15 00:01:05.350 --> 00:01:08.835 it's a hot one, like five stories this week from the 16 00:01:08.835 --> 00:01:09.955 midday sun. 17 00:01:10.755 --> 00:01:17.155 The Internet Archive is now a federal depository library. What 18 00:01:17.155 --> 00:01:22.355 does this mean? It means it's a library that will house federal 19 00:01:21.740 --> 00:01:25.340 documents. Writing for KQED, Morgan Sung, who you'll remember 20 00:01:25.340 --> 00:01:28.860 from our hantai segment, writes that the Internet Archive, 21 00:01:28.860 --> 00:01:32.220 quote, will join a network of more than a thousand libraries 22 00:01:32.220 --> 00:01:36.060 around the country tasked with archiving government documents 23 00:01:36.060 --> 00:01:40.095 for public view. The status is particularly notable, some 24 00:01:40.095 --> 00:01:42.495 continues, as the Trump administration has 25 00:01:42.495 --> 00:01:45.375 systematically removed information from federal 26 00:01:45.375 --> 00:01:49.135 websites under new anti woke executive orders. 27 00:01:49.375 --> 00:01:52.870 Archive visitors will now have access to primary government 28 00:01:52.870 --> 00:01:56.710 sources in addition to materials uploaded by users or saved 29 00:01:56.710 --> 00:02:00.390 through accessible websites, end quote. You're gonna hear Hans 30 00:02:00.390 --> 00:02:07.785 talk more about this sort of thing this episode. You stopped 31 00:02:07.785 --> 00:02:11.945 clicking things when you Google. Pew Research finds that only 8% 32 00:02:11.945 --> 00:02:15.705 of people are likely to click on search results if they are shown 33 00:02:15.705 --> 00:02:20.825 an AI summary of those results compared to 15% who are not 34 00:02:20.825 --> 00:02:24.220 shown an AI summary. Furthermore, folks shown AI 35 00:02:24.220 --> 00:02:28.060 summaries are more likely to simply close the browser window 36 00:02:28.060 --> 00:02:31.020 after their search versus those who are not. 37 00:02:31.100 --> 00:02:34.940 Pew says about one in five searches in their study produced 38 00:02:34.940 --> 00:02:36.220 an AI summary. 39 00:02:36.220 --> 00:02:37.180 Oh, man. 40 00:02:37.895 --> 00:02:41.015 Hackers leaked data they stole from Tee, the 41 00:02:41.015 --> 00:02:45.735 women only dating safety app, twice at the time of writing. 42 00:02:45.735 --> 00:02:49.015 Four zero four media reports it was able to access millions of 43 00:02:49.015 --> 00:02:52.135 messages containing sensitive data drawn from what is 44 00:02:52.135 --> 00:02:56.120 nominally an anonymous platform. Highly personal details 45 00:02:56.120 --> 00:02:59.160 including names, addresses, phone numbers, social media 46 00:02:59.160 --> 00:03:03.480 handles, and as one might expect, hellishly hot gossip are 47 00:03:03.480 --> 00:03:07.000 all included. It's unclear who else may have discovered the 48 00:03:07.000 --> 00:03:10.995 security issue and downloaded any data from the more recent 49 00:03:10.995 --> 00:03:15.155 database, four zero four media rights, continuing members of 50 00:03:15.155 --> 00:03:19.155 4chan found the first exposed database last week and made tens 51 00:03:19.155 --> 00:03:23.840 of thousands of images of t users available for download. T 52 00:03:23.840 --> 00:03:27.840 told four zero four media it has contacted law enforcement, end 53 00:03:27.840 --> 00:03:28.240 quote. 54 00:03:28.240 --> 00:03:37.905 Okay. Deep breath before this next one. Itch, the indie games 55 00:03:37.905 --> 00:03:42.145 publisher, last week search banned its sizable offering of 56 00:03:42.145 --> 00:03:46.785 not safe for work and otherwise explicit games. Also removing 57 00:03:46.785 --> 00:03:51.025 them from browse functionality and restricting the sale of many 58 00:03:51.120 --> 00:03:56.240 with almost no warning to game makers and publishers. This 59 00:03:56.240 --> 00:04:00.320 because of pressure from payment processors like PayPal and 60 00:04:00.320 --> 00:04:04.985 Stripe following pressure they received from a very small group 61 00:04:04.985 --> 00:04:08.985 of Australian based activists calling themselves collective 62 00:04:08.985 --> 00:04:13.945 shout, which self describes as a grassroots campaigns movement 63 00:04:13.945 --> 00:04:17.650 against the objectification of women and the sexualization of 64 00:04:17.650 --> 00:04:18.370 girls. 65 00:04:18.610 --> 00:04:23.970 IGN reports that users estimate nearly 20,000 adult games may be 66 00:04:23.970 --> 00:04:28.290 affected by this de indexing. On July 24, Itch released a 67 00:04:28.290 --> 00:04:32.015 statement reading in part, our ability to process payments is 68 00:04:32.015 --> 00:04:35.935 critical for every creator on our platform. To ensure that we 69 00:04:35.935 --> 00:04:38.895 can continue to operate and provide a marketplace for all 70 00:04:38.895 --> 00:04:42.015 developers, we must prioritize our relationship with our 71 00:04:42.015 --> 00:04:45.695 payment partners and take immediate step towards 72 00:04:44.980 --> 00:04:48.820 compliance. An update posted on the twenty eighth further 73 00:04:48.820 --> 00:04:53.220 elaborates saying that to retain the ability to pay anyone, Itch 74 00:04:53.220 --> 00:04:57.060 will be working on stronger age gating, more specific terms of 75 00:04:57.060 --> 00:05:01.245 service, and will begin a search for more lenient payment 76 00:05:01.245 --> 00:05:04.445 processors. There's a grassroots counter campaign underway 77 00:05:04.445 --> 00:05:08.525 seeking to exert equal force in the opposite direction on 78 00:05:08.525 --> 00:05:10.285 payment processors. 79 00:05:10.365 --> 00:05:12.925 We're gonna put a link to more information about that in the 80 00:05:12.925 --> 00:05:22.120 show notes if you're curious. And finally, polling by YouGov 81 00:05:22.120 --> 00:05:28.200 shows a majority of respondents and 60% of those aged 18 to 24 82 00:05:28.280 --> 00:05:32.295 in Europe would prefer locally based social media platforms 83 00:05:32.295 --> 00:05:38.935 over current US based options. I wonder why. Recently, a number 84 00:05:38.935 --> 00:05:42.535 of developers have launched EuroSky, a European alternative 85 00:05:42.535 --> 00:05:46.570 to BlueSky. Its website reads, built in Europe, run on our 86 00:05:46.570 --> 00:05:48.810 cloud, ruled by our laws. 87 00:05:49.050 --> 00:05:52.490 Users choose the content, businesses control their brand 88 00:05:52.490 --> 00:05:56.330 environment, people control the algorithms. Social media is 89 00:05:56.330 --> 00:05:59.575 crucial infrastructure and a vital piece of the European tech 90 00:05:59.575 --> 00:06:03.495 sovereignty agenda. We need to regain structural control over 91 00:06:03.495 --> 00:06:08.375 our information ecosystems, end quote. Developers include Sherif 92 00:06:08.375 --> 00:06:11.495 El Sayed Ali, the executive director of the Future of 93 00:06:11.495 --> 00:06:16.140 Technology Institute, a self described think and do tank, as 94 00:06:16.140 --> 00:06:19.740 well as Sebastian Voglesong, developer of the AT Proto 95 00:06:19.740 --> 00:06:25.820 compatible photo sharing app Flashes. In show news this week, 96 00:06:25.820 --> 00:06:29.155 we released a funding announcement one upload ago. 97 00:06:29.155 --> 00:06:31.875 If you missed it, please go back and give it a listen. But the 98 00:06:31.875 --> 00:06:35.875 long and short is we're about to do some fundraising to assure 99 00:06:35.875 --> 00:06:40.595 that we will be able to continue making this show past the 2025. 100 00:06:40.675 --> 00:06:43.190 What does that mean? It means that you should keep an eye out 101 00:06:43.190 --> 00:06:47.910 for T shirts and a live streamed membership drive, which is 102 00:06:47.910 --> 00:06:51.830 happening the week of August 18, so please put that in your 103 00:06:51.830 --> 00:06:54.790 calendars. We're gonna release a more detailed schedule in the 104 00:06:54.790 --> 00:06:56.925 coming weeks, that's what I can tell you so far. 105 00:06:56.925 --> 00:06:59.565 Week of August 18, we're gonna be doing a bunch of stuff. I 106 00:06:59.565 --> 00:07:03.645 think that Thursday is gonna be particularly busy. Hey. Also, 107 00:07:03.645 --> 00:07:06.765 just as an aside here, the response to the funding 108 00:07:06.765 --> 00:07:11.940 announcement has been sort of unbelievable, honestly. Welcome 109 00:07:11.940 --> 00:07:15.380 to a bunch of new members listening to the show in the ad 110 00:07:15.380 --> 00:07:16.260 free feed. 111 00:07:16.340 --> 00:07:20.180 We are extremely happy and excited to have you. And to 112 00:07:20.180 --> 00:07:24.965 everyone who sent us along a tip, it is so so, so appreciated 113 00:07:24.965 --> 00:07:31.205 and extremely helpful. I can't even be begin to say how much. I 114 00:07:31.205 --> 00:07:35.685 think we're you know, it's a tough time to be an indie show 115 00:07:35.685 --> 00:07:40.000 doing the weird sorts of things that we do, and so far, your 116 00:07:40.000 --> 00:07:44.560 response to us asking for help is just it's incredibly 117 00:07:44.560 --> 00:07:47.200 encouraging. So thank you, really. 118 00:07:47.200 --> 00:07:49.280 Thank you. Thank you. Alright. That's the news I have for 119 00:07:49.280 --> 00:07:52.885 you this week. In this week's episode, Hans, Jenny, Kate, 120 00:07:52.885 --> 00:07:53.365 Molly, 121 00:07:53.365 --> 00:07:59.685 and Linda on tactical archiving. Then me, Emily, and Ryan on 122 00:07:59.685 --> 00:08:03.285 Brain Rot. But first, in our interstitials this week, we're 123 00:08:03.285 --> 00:08:07.780 gonna talk with Micah Loeinger of On the Media and get his 124 00:08:07.780 --> 00:08:12.740 expert opinion on what happens now that the US government has 125 00:08:12.740 --> 00:08:17.060 drastically cut funding to the Corporation for Public 126 00:08:17.060 --> 00:08:30.085 Broadcasting. Michael Lowinger, thank you so much for joining us 127 00:08:30.085 --> 00:08:32.885 on Ask An Expert. You are truly an expert. 128 00:08:33.000 --> 00:08:36.600 You are the cohost of WNYC's On the Media, a nationally 129 00:08:36.600 --> 00:08:40.360 syndicated public radio show that can be heard on over 400 130 00:08:40.360 --> 00:08:44.040 stations across the country. You worked as a producer and then as 131 00:08:44.040 --> 00:08:47.275 On the Media's first staff reporter, and your investigative 132 00:08:47.275 --> 00:08:50.715 and human interest stories have focused on political extremism, 133 00:08:50.715 --> 00:08:54.155 Internet culture, and the evolution of the news industry. 134 00:08:54.395 --> 00:08:57.995 You have won the John m Higgins Award for best in-depth slash 135 00:08:57.995 --> 00:09:01.650 enterprise reporting. You were a finalist for Third Coast's best 136 00:09:01.650 --> 00:09:06.130 news feature, a finalist for a Livingston award, and a finalist 137 00:09:06.130 --> 00:09:11.090 for a Mirror award for best commentary. In 2019, the New 138 00:09:11.090 --> 00:09:13.970 York Times wrote about your experiment on the use of 139 00:09:13.970 --> 00:09:16.825 restorative justice in moderating the Internet's 140 00:09:16.825 --> 00:09:18.585 largest Christian forum. 141 00:09:18.745 --> 00:09:22.425 Your radio and written work has appeared in The Washington Post, 142 00:09:22.425 --> 00:09:27.545 The Guardian, NPR, Death, Sex, and Money, and Gothamist. You 143 00:09:27.545 --> 00:09:31.230 have worked in public media, reported on public media, and 144 00:09:31.230 --> 00:09:37.470 are now the host of a public media show about media. On July 145 00:09:37.470 --> 00:09:41.470 18, Congress passed house resolution four, which took back 146 00:09:41.470 --> 00:09:44.990 1,100,000,000 that had already been allocated via legislation 147 00:09:45.225 --> 00:09:49.065 to fund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. This money 148 00:09:49.065 --> 00:09:53.225 was slated to go from the CPB to local public media radio and TV 149 00:09:53.225 --> 00:09:57.225 stations in all 50 states. And despite two thirds of Americans 150 00:09:57.225 --> 00:10:00.780 supporting the use of that money in that way, Congress has now 151 00:10:00.780 --> 00:10:03.900 eliminated federal funding for public media. 152 00:10:04.460 --> 00:10:07.980 Is this defunding going to change the American media 153 00:10:07.980 --> 00:10:08.860 landscape? 154 00:10:09.500 --> 00:10:09.900 Yes. 155 00:10:27.510 --> 00:10:30.950 Alright. Here we go. Wilson Lever, U of M. As the 156 00:10:31.190 --> 00:10:38.310 clock tolls noon. Isn't that exciting? 157 00:10:38.310 --> 00:10:47.555 Okay. Here go. Here we go. Here we go. A recent, gorgeous July 158 00:10:47.555 --> 00:10:52.115 afternoon, I was very on time, no big deal, for an appointment 159 00:10:52.355 --> 00:10:54.435 to meet a trio of librarians. 160 00:10:54.610 --> 00:10:56.770 Hello. Hello. Hello. Hi. 161 00:10:57.730 --> 00:11:00.690 Jenny. Jenny. Yeah. Welcome. 162 00:11:00.690 --> 00:11:01.170 Thank you. 163 00:11:01.170 --> 00:11:02.290 Go find our room. 164 00:11:02.290 --> 00:11:04.930 Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I love a 165 00:11:04.930 --> 00:11:06.850 library. I love a library. 166 00:11:07.155 --> 00:11:10.595 There's just this feeling when you walk in like, I'm smarter 167 00:11:10.595 --> 00:11:14.115 with all of this collected info around me. Like, these resources 168 00:11:14.115 --> 00:11:17.875 and ideas are available to me. Could just grab them, take them 169 00:11:17.875 --> 00:11:21.220 in, and synthesize them all for free. 170 00:11:21.460 --> 00:11:25.380 So this is what we were thinking. Yeah. It 171 00:11:25.380 --> 00:11:27.140 sounds weird in here. It's so quiet. 172 00:11:27.220 --> 00:11:29.220 Good. Perfect. Change anything. 173 00:11:29.220 --> 00:11:29.380 I can 174 00:11:29.380 --> 00:11:29.700 Love it. 175 00:11:29.780 --> 00:11:30.900 Want tables or chairs or 176 00:11:30.900 --> 00:11:33.935 whatever they want. This is great. We got plenty of 177 00:11:33.935 --> 00:11:36.975 chairs. I'm gonna have us all sit awkwardly close to each 178 00:11:36.975 --> 00:11:39.135 other That's fine. Because that's just 179 00:11:39.215 --> 00:11:40.575 I'll sit way back. 180 00:11:40.655 --> 00:11:44.815 How we do. Yeah. And even though it's the middle 181 00:11:44.815 --> 00:11:49.670 of summer and this university library is basically empty, it 182 00:11:49.670 --> 00:11:54.790 feels very cool. I mean, maybe even more cool to be hanging out 183 00:11:54.790 --> 00:11:56.150 with three librarians. 184 00:11:57.190 --> 00:11:59.350 I'm Jenny McBurney. I am the government 185 00:11:59.350 --> 00:12:02.310 publications librarian here at the University of Minnesota Twin 186 00:12:02.310 --> 00:12:05.845 Cities. Mainly, my job is to steward our collection and make 187 00:12:05.845 --> 00:12:08.325 sure that the public has access to government information. 188 00:12:08.325 --> 00:12:10.085 I'm Kate Sheridan. I'm the publishing 189 00:12:10.085 --> 00:12:13.285 librarian at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, and I run 190 00:12:13.285 --> 00:12:14.805 the library's scholarly publishing program. 191 00:12:15.060 --> 00:12:17.300 I'm Molly Blake. I'm a social sciences librarian 192 00:12:17.300 --> 00:12:21.220 at the University of Minnesota. And along with Jenny and some 193 00:12:21.220 --> 00:12:24.340 other fabulous people, I helped launch the Tracking Gov Info 194 00:12:24.340 --> 00:12:24.980 Project. 195 00:12:25.060 --> 00:12:27.220 The Tracking Government Information Project? 196 00:12:27.220 --> 00:12:31.075 That's why I'm here. Jenny, Kate, and Molly, they'll help 197 00:12:31.075 --> 00:12:34.435 run it along with Sangah Sung of University of Illinois Urbana 198 00:12:34.435 --> 00:12:38.435 Champaign and Ben Amada from California State University in 199 00:12:38.435 --> 00:12:42.115 Sacramento. So these five librarians and their project, 200 00:12:42.275 --> 00:12:44.700 which tracks what changes are being made to the public 201 00:12:44.700 --> 00:12:48.860 information online, is a volunteer effort that is just 202 00:12:48.860 --> 00:12:52.620 one of a group of volunteer efforts that are currently on 203 00:12:52.620 --> 00:12:56.380 the front lines of data and information rescue and 204 00:12:56.380 --> 00:13:00.605 preservation. There have been data rescue efforts in play for 205 00:13:00.605 --> 00:13:05.085 literally thousands of years, from the burning of the library 206 00:13:05.085 --> 00:13:07.885 of Zimri Lim in ancient Mesopotamia, the destruction of 207 00:13:07.885 --> 00:13:11.325 the Maya codices by Diego de Landa in 1532. 208 00:13:11.550 --> 00:13:14.750 You've got the deliberate arson of US Library of Congress in 209 00:13:14.750 --> 00:13:19.790 1812. You got lots of libraries destroyed in World War two. 210 00:13:20.270 --> 00:13:25.230 Information has always and is always at risk of being lost, 211 00:13:25.230 --> 00:13:29.785 and part of the work of librarians is to make sure that 212 00:13:29.785 --> 00:13:30.505 it isn't. 213 00:13:30.505 --> 00:13:32.985 So there's always been librarians and 214 00:13:32.985 --> 00:13:36.185 members of the public who want to help to preserve government 215 00:13:36.185 --> 00:13:39.225 information, and there's super long standing efforts to make 216 00:13:39.225 --> 00:13:39.625 that happen. 217 00:13:40.520 --> 00:13:45.240 But this year feels different. This year, The US has 218 00:13:45.240 --> 00:13:51.720 entered what for it is a new era of information threat. Alright. 219 00:13:51.720 --> 00:13:55.305 So I'm gonna start. I'm gonna read you all a headline, and 220 00:13:55.305 --> 00:13:58.825 then I'm gonna ask you what this headline makes you think of, how 221 00:13:58.825 --> 00:13:59.865 it makes you feel. 222 00:14:00.105 --> 00:14:08.040 This is from 03/20/2025, 04:48PM, from Politico. Trump 223 00:14:08.040 --> 00:14:11.240 signs executive order to dismantle education department. 224 00:14:12.440 --> 00:14:18.040 You all work in information sciences in the library. And so 225 00:14:18.040 --> 00:14:22.435 when you read that, you open up your paper. What people don't do 226 00:14:22.435 --> 00:14:22.915 that anymore. 227 00:14:22.915 --> 00:14:28.595 You open up your browser. And you read that. What like, what 228 00:14:28.595 --> 00:14:33.155 do you think from your perspective as librarians, as 229 00:14:33.155 --> 00:14:34.835 data information folks? 230 00:14:36.690 --> 00:14:40.290 I mean, my first thought is, is that legal? My 231 00:14:40.290 --> 00:14:45.890 second thought then is, uh-oh. Where is all of the stuff that 232 00:14:45.890 --> 00:14:48.450 those people are working on gonna go? Is it gonna disappear? 233 00:14:48.450 --> 00:14:51.170 Are we not gonna have access to that those reports, that data, 234 00:14:51.170 --> 00:14:52.595 any of that stuff anymore? 235 00:14:53.555 --> 00:14:56.675 And the Department of Education produces just an 236 00:14:56.675 --> 00:15:00.035 amazing amount of data that is used by grant writers, that's 237 00:15:00.035 --> 00:15:03.235 used by researchers. I think right away of the Institute for 238 00:15:03.235 --> 00:15:07.235 Educational Sciences, which is in charge of ERIC, which is 239 00:15:07.580 --> 00:15:10.860 probably the most popular educational database of 240 00:15:10.860 --> 00:15:13.740 scholarly articles and gray literature, conference papers, 241 00:15:13.740 --> 00:15:17.100 things that are extremely useful for educational researchers. 242 00:15:17.340 --> 00:15:21.340 ERIC, the Education Resources Information Center, 243 00:15:21.340 --> 00:15:25.975 ERIC, is a searchable online database of about 2,000,000 244 00:15:25.975 --> 00:15:29.575 pieces of education research. Molly and her social sciences 245 00:15:29.575 --> 00:15:31.575 colleagues rely on ERIC. 246 00:15:31.655 --> 00:15:33.655 I work with a lot of researchers that do 247 00:15:33.655 --> 00:15:37.120 systematic reviews and evidence synthesis. So they have a topic 248 00:15:37.120 --> 00:15:41.280 and their goal is maybe their topic is reading in third grade, 249 00:15:41.280 --> 00:15:44.880 for example. And they then want to figure out what is everything 250 00:15:44.880 --> 00:15:48.805 that has been published over the years on this topic. Because of 251 00:15:48.805 --> 00:15:52.565 the cuts of the Department of Education, ERIC is likely not 252 00:15:52.565 --> 00:15:55.205 going to be indexing the same number of journals. It's gonna 253 00:15:55.205 --> 00:15:58.485 be cut by almost half in years to come. 254 00:15:58.565 --> 00:16:01.045 Which means the researchers that are relying on 255 00:16:01.045 --> 00:16:05.600 it can't go back and replicate their searches, and you lose not 256 00:16:05.600 --> 00:16:07.760 just the materials, but the metadata, the indexing of 257 00:16:07.760 --> 00:16:10.240 information, where the information is stored, how it's 258 00:16:10.240 --> 00:16:14.640 discovered. There's just gonna be less to find. But it also 259 00:16:14.640 --> 00:16:18.055 means that there's gonna be downstream effects. Here's Kate 260 00:16:18.055 --> 00:16:18.775 Sheridan. 261 00:16:19.095 --> 00:16:21.175 Eric feeds into so many other things. Right? 262 00:16:21.175 --> 00:16:24.615 Eric records get pulled into commercial databases. Eric 263 00:16:24.615 --> 00:16:28.455 records get pulled into Google Scholar. If Eric is affected, 264 00:16:28.455 --> 00:16:30.135 many other things are affected as well. 265 00:16:34.860 --> 00:16:37.580 If the researchers who come to Mali are gonna have their 266 00:16:37.580 --> 00:16:40.300 systematic reviews impacted by this, that's literally going to 267 00:16:40.300 --> 00:16:43.180 reshape the knowledge we're able to have moving forward. That's 268 00:16:43.180 --> 00:16:46.095 going to reshape our ability to make new discoveries, to make 269 00:16:46.095 --> 00:16:49.695 progress, to innovate. Like, you have to look at what's been 270 00:16:49.695 --> 00:16:53.375 previously done, design a new experiment, test it, report back 271 00:16:53.375 --> 00:16:56.015 on it, and other people will read it and design new 272 00:16:56.015 --> 00:16:58.015 experiments. We're gonna be missing part of that. 273 00:17:00.110 --> 00:17:02.750 Once we lose that information, we lose the ability 274 00:17:02.750 --> 00:17:05.390 to understand things about issues such as school 275 00:17:05.390 --> 00:17:11.150 segregation, issues such as equity. It's taking away data 276 00:17:11.150 --> 00:17:15.685 that people can use to make education better for everyone. 277 00:17:21.365 --> 00:17:23.925 So what was happening in the early days of 278 00:17:23.925 --> 00:17:27.820 the Trump administration is that librarians started getting 279 00:17:27.820 --> 00:17:31.020 questions from researchers saying, my article's gone. Why 280 00:17:31.020 --> 00:17:33.900 is it gone? Help. Other people were saying, wait, this dataset 281 00:17:33.900 --> 00:17:36.540 that I was using is gone. What do I do? 282 00:17:36.540 --> 00:17:38.700 How do I find it? How do I complete my research project? 283 00:17:39.325 --> 00:17:41.805 And there was a super interesting article, which I 284 00:17:41.805 --> 00:17:45.245 brought along today just in case, from The Lancet that was 285 00:17:45.245 --> 00:17:50.525 talking about how an important part of this data is 286 00:17:50.525 --> 00:17:53.900 transparency. In normal practices, if you make a change 287 00:17:53.900 --> 00:17:57.660 to something, you document it. You say, this was changed to 288 00:17:57.660 --> 00:17:58.220 this. 289 00:17:58.540 --> 00:18:01.580 But that's not what's happening here. Changes are just happening 290 00:18:01.580 --> 00:18:04.620 without anyone knowing, without any documentation, without any 291 00:18:04.620 --> 00:18:08.355 recording. How do we even know what's an accurate dataset 292 00:18:08.355 --> 00:18:09.155 anymore? 293 00:18:14.675 --> 00:18:18.275 So Jenny, Kate, Molly, and their colleagues 294 00:18:18.390 --> 00:18:22.390 started the tracking government information project, which is a 295 00:18:22.390 --> 00:18:26.390 crowdsourced spreadsheet that helps everyone be able to track 296 00:18:26.390 --> 00:18:29.990 what's being changed on any federal websites and where you 297 00:18:29.990 --> 00:18:33.110 can go to find what it used to say before the changes. 298 00:18:33.625 --> 00:18:35.465 Say, okay. I'm looking for everything relating 299 00:18:35.465 --> 00:18:38.505 to COVID. You can find everything that has to do with 300 00:18:38.505 --> 00:18:41.225 it. You can see which websites, which documents have been 301 00:18:41.225 --> 00:18:45.785 removed, and find where it is pointing you to. So where is the 302 00:18:45.785 --> 00:18:49.170 preserved copy of the covid.gov website, for example. 303 00:18:50.770 --> 00:18:53.810 And part of what we're doing in addition to 304 00:18:53.810 --> 00:18:56.130 pointing people to preserved copies, which is super 305 00:18:56.130 --> 00:19:00.225 important, is we want to raise awareness about the scope of 306 00:19:00.225 --> 00:19:03.505 this problem. Like, what does it mean that the Department of 307 00:19:03.505 --> 00:19:07.345 Education may be dismantled? What information is being 308 00:19:07.345 --> 00:19:10.465 collected? What is their expertise? What types of work do 309 00:19:10.465 --> 00:19:11.185 they do? 310 00:19:11.585 --> 00:19:14.520 Because even if we can preserve information that goes away, what 311 00:19:14.520 --> 00:19:17.560 we can't do is we can't write a report that's not going to get 312 00:19:17.560 --> 00:19:18.600 written this year. 313 00:19:21.800 --> 00:19:22.440 That's one of 314 00:19:22.440 --> 00:19:24.520 the things that stresses me out the most. I 315 00:19:24.520 --> 00:19:29.160 think there was, like, two weeks when the mortality weekly report 316 00:19:29.160 --> 00:19:32.655 didn't come out. It's the morbidity and mortality weekly 317 00:19:32.655 --> 00:19:37.055 report. The MMWR is intended to publish information that is 318 00:19:37.055 --> 00:19:40.175 timely and related to public health. So if there was, like, 319 00:19:40.175 --> 00:19:40.495 an E. 320 00:19:40.495 --> 00:19:43.695 Coli outbreak happening and they had some new information about 321 00:19:44.000 --> 00:19:47.200 the outbreak source or about something to do with the actual, 322 00:19:47.200 --> 00:19:51.760 like, B. Coli bacterium, something to do with that, you 323 00:19:51.760 --> 00:19:55.600 could find that in the MMWR. And so we don't know what was lost 324 00:19:55.600 --> 00:19:59.115 necessarily, not just because the articles weren't published, 325 00:19:59.115 --> 00:20:01.675 but because we don't necessarily know what they were about. 326 00:20:01.755 --> 00:20:04.235 We will never get those two weeks back. We 327 00:20:04.235 --> 00:20:07.355 will never get those reports back. That is a seventy year old 328 00:20:07.355 --> 00:20:12.060 dataset that has a gap for the rest of eternity. Even if 329 00:20:12.060 --> 00:20:15.180 everything was snap fixed tomorrow moving forward, that's 330 00:20:15.180 --> 00:20:17.580 never gonna come back. That's gone forever. 331 00:20:17.660 --> 00:20:21.100 It it was never created because people weren't able to create 332 00:20:21.100 --> 00:20:21.260 it. 333 00:20:25.705 --> 00:20:28.425 This was a big revelation for me in 334 00:20:28.425 --> 00:20:32.265 understanding all of the layers to what's happening. It's not 335 00:20:32.345 --> 00:20:35.385 just that we need to be concerned with the data being 336 00:20:35.545 --> 00:20:39.660 actively taken out of the public view, but also the impact of the 337 00:20:39.660 --> 00:20:44.460 government efficiencies in heavy scare quotes that have all 338 00:20:44.460 --> 00:20:47.660 eliminated data gathering by shutting down research. They've 339 00:20:47.660 --> 00:20:51.260 canceled server contracts to host and store the data, and 340 00:20:51.260 --> 00:20:56.295 they've fired the people with the expertise that's needed to 341 00:20:56.295 --> 00:20:57.415 contextualize it. 342 00:20:57.415 --> 00:21:00.695 If I can't, like, be assured that I'm gonna be 343 00:21:00.695 --> 00:21:03.975 able to access this website because those people aren't 344 00:21:03.975 --> 00:21:07.895 there or the, you know, there there's link issues or the API's 345 00:21:07.895 --> 00:21:11.530 down or the contract's been ended, I wanna be able to access 346 00:21:11.530 --> 00:21:14.570 that data, and there's no reason why people shouldn't be able to 347 00:21:14.570 --> 00:21:15.690 access that data. 348 00:21:16.010 --> 00:21:19.290 This is Linda Kellum. Linda is a data 349 00:21:19.290 --> 00:21:22.730 librarian with expertise in qualitative data research and 350 00:21:22.730 --> 00:21:27.225 software. And Linda is a leader in the field of data rescue, so 351 00:21:27.225 --> 00:21:31.545 much so that just the mention of her name Tamale prompted She's a 352 00:21:31.545 --> 00:21:33.545 big deal. She's a big deal. She's a big deal. 353 00:21:33.545 --> 00:21:39.000 Yeah. I wanted to talk with Linda in her capacity as 354 00:21:39.080 --> 00:21:42.280 founding organizer of the Data Rescue Project, which is a 355 00:21:42.280 --> 00:21:46.600 volunteer group that works on emergency archiving of datasets. 356 00:21:47.240 --> 00:21:51.685 And I have to say I was a little surprised. Maybe I shouldn't 357 00:21:51.685 --> 00:21:54.725 have been, but I was a little surprised by Linda's reaction 358 00:21:54.725 --> 00:21:58.325 when I read her that March headline, Trump signs executive 359 00:21:58.325 --> 00:22:00.805 order to dismantle education department. 360 00:22:00.885 --> 00:22:03.685 First thing I thought about was I was happy 361 00:22:03.685 --> 00:22:06.860 that we had actually done something. So in a lot of ways, 362 00:22:06.860 --> 00:22:10.940 I felt satisfaction at least we had tried to do something. Wow. 363 00:22:10.940 --> 00:22:14.060 But you're you're right. I mean, I it was it was it's also 364 00:22:14.060 --> 00:22:18.380 disheartening and it's really dismaying to see, you know, that 365 00:22:18.380 --> 00:22:19.420 considered as something that 366 00:22:19.420 --> 00:22:20.715 could be thrown away, You know, not 367 00:22:20.955 --> 00:22:24.635 it's something that's not worth preserving for 368 00:22:24.635 --> 00:22:25.515 the long term. 369 00:22:26.635 --> 00:22:31.195 That's a very surprising answer to me. Not the 370 00:22:31.195 --> 00:22:34.570 second part. The second part is kind of what I expected. Yeah. 371 00:22:35.370 --> 00:22:35.770 You know. 372 00:22:35.770 --> 00:22:38.410 It's made in things. Let's talk about the first part of that 373 00:22:38.410 --> 00:22:42.010 answer, though, where you said you felt satisfied that you had 374 00:22:42.010 --> 00:22:45.050 done work. When you say that as a data librarian, when you say 375 00:22:45.050 --> 00:22:49.315 that as someone who works with a data rescue project, what does 376 00:22:49.315 --> 00:22:52.515 that mean? What what work have you done already when you read 377 00:22:52.515 --> 00:22:54.115 that announcement in in March? 378 00:22:54.195 --> 00:22:57.155 For us, we were just this was rapid response, so 379 00:22:57.155 --> 00:23:00.810 it was really just get what we can. We knew that the Department 380 00:23:00.810 --> 00:23:04.410 of Education had a target on its back and wanted to go ahead and 381 00:23:04.410 --> 00:23:06.010 do as much as we could at that time. 382 00:23:06.010 --> 00:23:09.130 Was there anything specific that that led you to 383 00:23:09.130 --> 00:23:11.450 see that target? Like, how did you know that target was there? 384 00:23:11.845 --> 00:23:13.365 Project twenty twenty five. 385 00:23:13.365 --> 00:23:13.925 Oh, that was 386 00:23:14.085 --> 00:23:15.045 that's the road map. 387 00:23:15.045 --> 00:23:16.645 Oh, you mean they told you? 388 00:23:16.645 --> 00:23:18.885 Yeah. Yeah. They told all of us what they were 389 00:23:18.885 --> 00:23:24.485 gonna do. So we were looking to see where they had explicitly 390 00:23:24.885 --> 00:23:29.200 said it would target agencies. We started with the Department 391 00:23:29.200 --> 00:23:29.920 of Education. 392 00:23:29.920 --> 00:23:33.200 That was the very first department we even looked at, 393 00:23:33.200 --> 00:23:35.920 just to figure out what data sets would be publicly 394 00:23:35.920 --> 00:23:38.720 accessible for us to download and preserve. 395 00:23:40.685 --> 00:23:43.725 The first step was to understand what information 396 00:23:43.725 --> 00:23:45.245 they're even looking for. 397 00:23:45.565 --> 00:23:47.725 And that's what we did. We went, you know, with a 398 00:23:47.725 --> 00:23:52.445 spreadsheet and started documenting inventorying, if you 399 00:23:52.445 --> 00:23:55.660 will, the different datasets and surveys that were available on 400 00:23:55.660 --> 00:23:59.740 that website. What's there? What's the size? What do we can 401 00:23:59.740 --> 00:24:00.220 we get it? 402 00:24:00.220 --> 00:24:03.420 Are there alternative sources that are not government based? 403 00:24:03.660 --> 00:24:07.165 As full a catalog as possible was made of what 404 00:24:07.165 --> 00:24:11.085 needed rescuing, adding metadata and documentation to everything. 405 00:24:11.085 --> 00:24:13.885 We want everything that's associated with that. 406 00:24:14.125 --> 00:24:19.085 Once we felt we had everything we could find, we asked others, 407 00:24:19.085 --> 00:24:21.460 people who had expertise in those areas to add additional 408 00:24:21.460 --> 00:24:25.780 datasets, and then we could start the process of a rescue. 409 00:24:26.740 --> 00:24:29.780 Getting the actual data can be either simple or 410 00:24:29.780 --> 00:24:33.940 complex. Some datasets, you can just click and download. Easy 411 00:24:33.940 --> 00:24:38.695 peasy. Other datasets, not so easy. Some are so big that they 412 00:24:38.695 --> 00:24:41.495 need to be scraped, and there are others that are just 413 00:24:41.495 --> 00:24:42.455 idiosyncratic. 414 00:24:42.535 --> 00:24:45.015 Department of Education has this thing called 415 00:24:45.015 --> 00:24:49.560 the Data Lab, which has wonderful data sets, but they're 416 00:24:49.560 --> 00:24:52.760 all in tables and there are about 900 tables for each data 417 00:24:52.760 --> 00:24:56.840 set. And there's no way to download the entire we just 418 00:24:56.840 --> 00:25:04.115 can't get it out of the system. There's no API access for it. So 419 00:25:04.595 --> 00:25:04.915 Right. 420 00:25:04.995 --> 00:25:05.475 We've been working 421 00:25:05.475 --> 00:25:07.315 on projects where we just go through and download 422 00:25:07.315 --> 00:25:09.235 each individual table. 423 00:25:09.635 --> 00:25:12.835 What? That's like archaeology. That's like dusting 424 00:25:12.835 --> 00:25:15.555 dusting grains of sand in the middle of a desert. 425 00:25:15.940 --> 00:25:19.940 Yeah. It's it's definitely tedious work, and I 426 00:25:19.940 --> 00:25:22.340 thank all of the volunteers who've worked on it. 427 00:25:23.780 --> 00:25:26.740 Once data is downloaded or scraped, it has to 428 00:25:26.740 --> 00:25:30.165 go somewhere as quickly as possible. Somewhere that has the 429 00:25:30.165 --> 00:25:33.685 space to store it, isn't controlled by corporations in 430 00:25:33.685 --> 00:25:37.125 terms of service, and is publicly accessible. 431 00:25:37.205 --> 00:25:40.245 When we take the dataset, we don't keep it. We 432 00:25:40.245 --> 00:25:45.070 put it into ICPSR's DataLumos, which is a crowdsourced 433 00:25:45.070 --> 00:25:51.550 repository for public data. It was in 2017 in response to 434 00:25:51.550 --> 00:25:55.550 concerns about the loss of public data. And from there, it 435 00:25:55.550 --> 00:25:59.215 becomes publicly accessible quite quickly and it has all the 436 00:25:59.215 --> 00:26:03.455 fields that are needed for datasets to include the metadata 437 00:26:03.455 --> 00:26:06.815 in the documentation. The role of ICPSR is long term 438 00:26:06.815 --> 00:26:11.935 preservation so that they can, you know, help make ensure that 439 00:26:11.935 --> 00:26:15.520 that dataset, that package will be accessible in the long term, 440 00:26:16.080 --> 00:26:19.040 which is a very different thing from just web crawling and, you 441 00:26:19.040 --> 00:26:20.480 know, in mass amounts. 442 00:26:20.480 --> 00:26:23.840 So it's a supplement to what Internet Archive and others do, 443 00:26:24.160 --> 00:26:26.160 but geared around data. 444 00:26:31.205 --> 00:26:33.925 So that's the process that Data Rescue Project 445 00:26:33.925 --> 00:26:37.045 has been doing with the Department of Education since 446 00:26:37.045 --> 00:26:42.530 February. But the Department of Education are not the only ones 447 00:26:42.530 --> 00:26:46.130 who have been targeted across the government. We have seen 448 00:26:46.130 --> 00:26:49.490 huge changes to government agencies like Health and Human 449 00:26:49.490 --> 00:26:53.650 Services, CDC, NOAA, Department of the Interior, and some 450 00:26:53.650 --> 00:26:58.665 nongovernmental like USAID and lots, lots more. This same 451 00:26:58.665 --> 00:27:03.785 crisis is happening all over the government all at once, and all 452 00:27:03.785 --> 00:27:11.990 of it is in need of the same levels of response. How how wide 453 00:27:11.990 --> 00:27:13.270 is the aperture for this? 454 00:27:13.670 --> 00:27:15.590 Yeah. I think that's a great question and 455 00:27:15.590 --> 00:27:18.390 something we're still figuring out, certainly. Interesting. 456 00:27:18.390 --> 00:27:20.150 So, yeah, we don't really have a sense? 457 00:27:20.150 --> 00:27:22.150 Yeah. Because we don't know like, somebody's 458 00:27:22.150 --> 00:27:26.775 asked us how much data have you captured, and we don't have a 459 00:27:26.775 --> 00:27:29.495 way of knowing because there was no one inventory for all the 460 00:27:29.495 --> 00:27:32.695 federal government data. Even data.gov is not an inventory for 461 00:27:32.855 --> 00:27:37.210 and and data.gov has its own issues. I think agency by 462 00:27:37.210 --> 00:27:41.050 agency, we have a sense of what has happened. And, you know, in 463 00:27:41.050 --> 00:27:44.090 the coming months, this would be a project we could do is look at 464 00:27:44.090 --> 00:27:48.650 the agency by agency and kind of detail what has occurred. 465 00:27:48.650 --> 00:27:52.505 And but even then, it's it's it may be office to office within 466 00:27:52.505 --> 00:27:56.265 an agency. So it's really challenging to have a sense of 467 00:27:56.265 --> 00:27:58.985 kind of that whole picture at this particular point in time. 468 00:28:00.185 --> 00:28:02.825 But in terms of scale, like, I don't know at this point. I 469 00:28:02.825 --> 00:28:03.545 can't even say. 470 00:28:17.360 --> 00:28:21.185 I find all of this upsetting, not the efforts of 471 00:28:21.185 --> 00:28:24.385 all these wonderful people. That is the only thing that's keeping 472 00:28:24.385 --> 00:28:27.985 me from just laying down on the floor, letting the fates take 473 00:28:27.985 --> 00:28:32.945 me. What I find upsetting is that all this work, all this 474 00:28:32.945 --> 00:28:37.540 data that we're scrambling to save, it already belongs to us. 475 00:28:37.780 --> 00:28:42.260 Yes. This is our data. We are all it's it's for 476 00:28:42.260 --> 00:28:44.660 the people, by the people, of the people. Right? Like, that's 477 00:28:44.660 --> 00:28:45.860 the whole point of our government. 478 00:28:45.860 --> 00:28:49.685 And so the government creates things for us and we have a 479 00:28:49.685 --> 00:28:51.285 right to access it. The role 480 00:28:51.285 --> 00:28:54.245 of the federal government really is to help us 481 00:28:54.245 --> 00:28:59.285 understand ourselves. That's I believe. Right? It's it's the 482 00:28:59.285 --> 00:29:02.800 federal government is the only real entity that can has the 483 00:29:02.800 --> 00:29:06.560 mission to collect public data and make it accessible to the 484 00:29:06.560 --> 00:29:09.520 public. It's built into our constitution that we take a 485 00:29:09.520 --> 00:29:10.240 census. 486 00:29:10.320 --> 00:29:12.800 Collecting data is is part of our who we are. 487 00:29:12.800 --> 00:29:15.120 Certainly, a democratic ideal is that we 488 00:29:15.120 --> 00:29:17.605 should all have unfettered access to information that then 489 00:29:17.605 --> 00:29:21.285 we're able to get and interpret both as private citizens and in 490 00:29:21.285 --> 00:29:23.605 the work we do in any way that we see fit. 491 00:29:24.325 --> 00:29:26.485 It's how we hold the government accountable. It's 492 00:29:26.485 --> 00:29:28.965 how we inform ourselves about our communities. It's how we 493 00:29:28.965 --> 00:29:33.420 understand who we are as a people. Yeah. Yes. 494 00:29:33.420 --> 00:29:37.660 That's an informed electorate is a fundamental part of democracy. 495 00:29:41.740 --> 00:29:45.340 One institution, my institution, my my library can't replace that 496 00:29:45.340 --> 00:29:48.815 mission on the scale that the government can do it. A private 497 00:29:48.815 --> 00:29:54.015 company can try, but their role isn't to do that. Their role is 498 00:29:54.015 --> 00:29:59.055 to to make money. And so when it comes to losing access to any of 499 00:29:59.055 --> 00:30:03.380 the public data that we've had, it's a shame not just from a 500 00:30:03.380 --> 00:30:06.740 from a topic level in the sense of this is what this Department 501 00:30:06.740 --> 00:30:10.980 of Education dataset is for, but in a sense of of this is what 502 00:30:10.980 --> 00:30:12.340 the government should do. 503 00:30:12.820 --> 00:30:15.060 It is gather information about us, help us understand 504 00:30:15.060 --> 00:30:18.735 ourselves, help us be able to project into the future about 505 00:30:18.735 --> 00:30:22.575 ourselves, help us build services for our people. That's 506 00:30:22.575 --> 00:30:24.415 the role of the government in my opinion. 507 00:30:26.895 --> 00:30:29.775 One of the hard parts about this moment is that 508 00:30:29.775 --> 00:30:34.100 these ideals, which represent an idea of how the country has been 509 00:30:34.100 --> 00:30:39.940 run, maybe since it became a country, these ideals are not at 510 00:30:39.940 --> 00:30:44.340 all being met by the actions of the people who currently run it. 511 00:30:44.340 --> 00:30:49.015 And that means that, like Linda, Kate, Molly, Jenny, the 512 00:30:49.015 --> 00:30:51.735 volunteers they work with, and the teams building and running 513 00:30:52.055 --> 00:30:56.935 theirs and other data rescue projects, these are the people 514 00:30:56.935 --> 00:31:00.970 working to build systems that hold up our ideals and keep our 515 00:31:00.970 --> 00:31:06.490 information free and available. As I was listening to Linda talk 516 00:31:06.490 --> 00:31:10.330 about all this, I started actually to see a picture 517 00:31:10.330 --> 00:31:14.465 forming in my head. And this was a picture of, like, pipes being 518 00:31:14.465 --> 00:31:17.745 laid. It was a picture of structures being designed and 519 00:31:17.745 --> 00:31:20.225 pathways being paved. 520 00:31:20.465 --> 00:31:25.985 And it suddenly occurred to me that even though this hurts to 521 00:31:25.985 --> 00:31:31.990 feel such a letdown, We might be laying some kind of groundwork 522 00:31:31.990 --> 00:31:40.230 for something new. Are we creating new infrastructure with 523 00:31:40.230 --> 00:31:43.350 this project that we haven't seen and that might undergird 524 00:31:43.765 --> 00:31:46.085 longer than just to the next administration? 525 00:31:46.485 --> 00:31:48.725 Yeah. I oh, I think there's there's a building 526 00:31:48.725 --> 00:31:52.325 awareness of the existing infrastructure. Certainly, 527 00:31:52.325 --> 00:31:56.405 people now know about DataLumos beyond just a few data 528 00:31:56.405 --> 00:32:00.840 librarians. And I give you an example of that. There were only 529 00:32:00.840 --> 00:32:05.560 a 100 data sets in DataLumos from 2017 to 2025. 530 00:32:05.800 --> 00:32:12.275 Since 2025, we have put 700 in. So Wow. Yeah. It gets doesn't 531 00:32:12.275 --> 00:32:14.835 seem like a lot, but each one of those takes a lot of time and 532 00:32:14.835 --> 00:32:18.835 and effort. And it is the creation of maybe a new way of 533 00:32:18.835 --> 00:32:21.235 thinking about what we're doing. 534 00:32:21.235 --> 00:32:24.710 And we're still figuring this out. Certainly with Data Rescue 535 00:32:24.710 --> 00:32:28.070 Project, one of the things we would like to do is create a 536 00:32:28.070 --> 00:32:32.070 infrastructure for rapid response for digital objects. 537 00:32:32.070 --> 00:32:36.725 Right? So it's not just that every time something happens, we 538 00:32:36.725 --> 00:32:39.845 have to spin up this thing, but we actually have an ongoing 539 00:32:39.845 --> 00:32:43.525 documented, understood way or best practices and as well as 540 00:32:43.525 --> 00:32:46.165 well as technical infrastructure for people who who need to do 541 00:32:46.165 --> 00:32:46.405 this. 542 00:32:54.770 --> 00:32:57.410 Even if we have an eye toward the long term, there 543 00:32:57.410 --> 00:33:01.650 is a lot of information being threatened and a lot of need to 544 00:33:01.650 --> 00:33:06.785 fulfill right now. Luckily, there are people working on it, 545 00:33:06.865 --> 00:33:10.705 and there are plenty of ways that we can all get involved in 546 00:33:10.705 --> 00:33:11.585 helping them. 547 00:33:11.825 --> 00:33:14.065 So for example, we've talked a lot about the 548 00:33:14.065 --> 00:33:17.185 Internet Archive and the Wayback Machine. Those started, like, in 549 00:33:17.185 --> 00:33:21.000 the nineties, early two thousands. Those are essential 550 00:33:21.000 --> 00:33:24.280 tools. They're doing such a great service. And I would 551 00:33:24.280 --> 00:33:28.520 encourage anybody anywhere to add the Wayback Machine browser 552 00:33:28.520 --> 00:33:30.040 extension to your browser. 553 00:33:30.040 --> 00:33:32.120 And if you see something, save something. 554 00:33:32.665 --> 00:33:34.745 Could be on a government website or could be 555 00:33:34.745 --> 00:33:36.825 anywhere that you're just worried about what would happen 556 00:33:36.825 --> 00:33:39.545 if this information goes away. It just takes a second to click 557 00:33:39.545 --> 00:33:40.505 and to save it. 558 00:33:41.385 --> 00:33:43.225 This sort of flagging and identifying, this 559 00:33:43.225 --> 00:33:47.020 is exactly the work that they're hoping everyone can do. Like 560 00:33:47.020 --> 00:33:49.900 contributing, for example, to their tracking government 561 00:33:49.900 --> 00:33:50.940 information project. 562 00:33:50.940 --> 00:33:53.100 We have a really simple form where you can just 563 00:33:53.100 --> 00:33:57.020 report this is the link I wanna, share. This is what I know 564 00:33:57.020 --> 00:34:00.185 hasn't been removed or modified. And, again, we know everybody 565 00:34:00.185 --> 00:34:02.985 uses these websites in different ways, and so we need everyone's 566 00:34:02.985 --> 00:34:05.305 expertise. Like, need to hear from teachers that are using 567 00:34:05.305 --> 00:34:09.545 lessons plans on these websites, anyone who's using reports on 568 00:34:09.545 --> 00:34:12.440 this website. If there's something that you've used and 569 00:34:12.440 --> 00:34:15.320 you you notice it's gone or changed or even if you're not 570 00:34:15.320 --> 00:34:16.920 sure if it's changed, go ahead 571 00:34:16.920 --> 00:34:17.720 and submit it, and we 572 00:34:17.720 --> 00:34:19.880 can kind of, investigate on our end. 573 00:34:20.120 --> 00:34:21.720 And if you're really curious and you wanna go 574 00:34:21.720 --> 00:34:25.645 see what data has already been rescued, you can go to the data 575 00:34:25.645 --> 00:34:31.325 rescue project's tracker to see all 1,200 data sets and 576 00:34:31.325 --> 00:34:34.765 counting. And that doesn't just include their rescues, but 577 00:34:34.765 --> 00:34:35.645 everyone's. 578 00:34:35.645 --> 00:34:37.885 One of our the main things that we wanted to do 579 00:34:37.885 --> 00:34:40.090 is make sure that we were amplifying what other people 580 00:34:40.090 --> 00:34:43.770 were doing. Mhmm. So it's not just about us. We we want people 581 00:34:43.770 --> 00:34:47.370 to know about University of Chicago's data mirror or the 582 00:34:47.370 --> 00:34:51.365 Federal Data Forum or America's Essential Data. Right? 583 00:34:51.365 --> 00:34:54.005 All of those are great things that are doing similar but 584 00:34:54.005 --> 00:34:55.445 different work. And so we wanna make 585 00:34:55.445 --> 00:34:55.925 sure Yeah. 586 00:34:55.925 --> 00:34:58.325 To amplify those. And that's what's great about 587 00:34:58.325 --> 00:35:01.685 this community is we're not It's not about territoriality. We're 588 00:35:01.685 --> 00:35:05.110 trying to amplify each other and work together because I don't 589 00:35:05.110 --> 00:35:07.350 want people doing what you described to going and just 590 00:35:07.350 --> 00:35:11.270 hoarding things and putting it in their servers. That's not 591 00:35:11.270 --> 00:35:15.270 useful. And so we wanna make sure that everybody knows where 592 00:35:15.270 --> 00:35:18.630 they can go for the things that they are working on. 593 00:35:21.265 --> 00:35:25.505 Everyone I talked to, Molly, Kate, Jenny, Linda, 594 00:35:25.905 --> 00:35:32.065 everyone assured me that you do not need to be a data person or 595 00:35:32.065 --> 00:35:37.320 a programming expert or a background in library sciences 596 00:35:37.640 --> 00:35:41.560 to do this work to be able to support and pitch in. You just 597 00:35:41.560 --> 00:35:43.880 need to be willing to join in. 598 00:35:44.120 --> 00:35:46.680 Speaking for myself, I was like, is somebody 599 00:35:46.680 --> 00:35:49.160 a little more experienced than me starting this project 600 00:35:49.160 --> 00:35:52.895 already? And I kept kind of waiting. And eventually, I think 601 00:35:52.895 --> 00:35:55.135 we kinda decided, well, we have to be the ones that start this 602 00:35:55.135 --> 00:35:57.535 project. And we're gonna learn as we go, and we're gonna get 603 00:35:57.535 --> 00:36:00.415 other people involved, but somebody has to be doing this, 604 00:36:01.135 --> 00:36:02.415 and it might as well be us. 605 00:36:16.410 --> 00:36:19.795 Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you to 606 00:36:19.795 --> 00:36:23.475 Jenny McBurney, Molly Blake, Kate Sheridan, and Linda Kellum. 607 00:36:23.475 --> 00:36:27.635 I had long conversations with all these folks, and they were 608 00:36:27.635 --> 00:36:28.275 incredible. 609 00:36:28.275 --> 00:36:35.150 Y'all, librarians are the best. Full stop. Unqualified. I will 610 00:36:35.150 --> 00:36:39.630 be publishing, those longer conversations to our members, 611 00:36:39.790 --> 00:36:42.270 later in August. If you are not a member, but you wanna hear 612 00:36:42.270 --> 00:36:45.550 those conversations, you can always sign up for just $4 a 613 00:36:45.550 --> 00:36:49.095 month and get access to all of the extended interviews, not 614 00:36:49.095 --> 00:36:52.855 just from this episode, which will be there, but also previous 615 00:36:52.855 --> 00:36:53.335 episodes. 616 00:36:53.335 --> 00:37:00.055 You can go deep on a lot. You can also go deep by looking in 617 00:37:00.055 --> 00:37:03.370 the show notes for this episode. I'm gonna link to all of the 618 00:37:03.370 --> 00:37:06.650 projects that were mentioned in this piece, to the Wayback 619 00:37:06.650 --> 00:37:10.090 Machine if you wanna start archiving websites, to the Data 620 00:37:10.090 --> 00:37:13.450 Rescue Project, to the Tracking Government Information Project, 621 00:37:13.450 --> 00:37:16.785 and lots, lots, lots more. If you think you might be 622 00:37:16.785 --> 00:37:21.585 interested in learning more or possibly joining the cause and 623 00:37:21.585 --> 00:37:24.865 volunteering some of your time to help, you can find a great 624 00:37:24.865 --> 00:37:30.305 starter in the show notes or head on over to neverpoe.st. 625 00:38:14.560 --> 00:38:17.195 Michael Lowinger, this removal of funding for the 626 00:38:17.195 --> 00:38:20.315 Corporation for Public Broadcasting is the latest and 627 00:38:20.315 --> 00:38:23.595 most concrete escalation of a battle that has been waging 628 00:38:23.595 --> 00:38:28.250 about public media since it started in 1967. When this 629 00:38:28.250 --> 00:38:31.290 amendment passed, Republican house speaker Mike Johnson said, 630 00:38:31.370 --> 00:38:36.650 this is, in our view, a misuse of taxpayer dollars. They're 631 00:38:36.650 --> 00:38:40.730 biased reporting. They're not objective. They pretend to be 632 00:38:40.730 --> 00:38:43.955 so, and the people don't need to fund that. 633 00:38:44.915 --> 00:38:48.675 In your expert opinion as a media reporter reporting on 634 00:38:48.675 --> 00:38:55.940 media, is public media any more biased than CNN, NBC, Fox News, 635 00:38:55.940 --> 00:38:59.060 or any other nationally broadcast news outlet? 636 00:38:59.940 --> 00:39:00.260 No. 637 00:39:17.505 --> 00:39:21.345 I've seen it used a lot now in tandem with, 638 00:39:21.345 --> 00:39:23.665 like, AI content, like, particularly, like, that weird 639 00:39:23.665 --> 00:39:27.140 Italian crocodile that's popular on TikTok. That's Ryan 640 00:39:27.140 --> 00:39:28.420 Broderick. You might 641 00:39:28.420 --> 00:39:31.060 know him from well, here. I'll just let him 642 00:39:31.060 --> 00:39:31.620 tell you. 643 00:39:31.620 --> 00:39:34.580 Hi. My name is Ryan Broderick. I am the author 644 00:39:34.580 --> 00:39:37.460 of the Garbage Day newsletter and the host of the Panic World 645 00:39:37.460 --> 00:39:42.655 podcast. And if you like this show, you'll like those slightly 646 00:39:42.655 --> 00:39:44.895 less, but like them probably. 647 00:39:45.215 --> 00:39:47.695 Ryan's being glib. You would love his work if 648 00:39:47.695 --> 00:39:50.255 you don't already know it, but you probably do. We are huge 649 00:39:50.255 --> 00:39:54.095 fans at Neverpost at least. And the crocodile that he's talking 650 00:39:54.095 --> 00:39:58.390 about is called Bombardero crocodillo and it's maybe the 651 00:39:58.390 --> 00:40:05.110 most well known character, I guess, in a lineup of characters 652 00:40:05.110 --> 00:40:09.125 featured in a series of now slightly passe TikToks 653 00:40:09.205 --> 00:40:27.330 collectively called Italian brain rot. He brought it up 654 00:40:27.330 --> 00:40:33.330 because I asked him to tell me what exactly brain rot is. 655 00:40:33.650 --> 00:40:36.325 It's ugly. Like, it's it's it's almost always 656 00:40:36.325 --> 00:40:42.325 ugly. It feels lazy and it feels unfulfilling beyond just sort of 657 00:40:42.325 --> 00:40:45.445 understanding the references. This feeling of like you're just 658 00:40:45.445 --> 00:40:47.445 consuming this stuff, but it doesn't really add up. It 659 00:40:47.445 --> 00:40:48.805 doesn't really stay in your mind. 660 00:40:49.200 --> 00:40:53.120 It sort of pleases you in a sensory way, but it's not great, 661 00:40:53.120 --> 00:40:56.720 and you know that deep down. And people really like watching the 662 00:40:56.720 --> 00:41:01.040 videos, but they know that they're bad and and and 663 00:41:01.200 --> 00:41:05.405 unfulfilling. The way I see people use it seems to be 664 00:41:05.405 --> 00:41:07.885 similar to the way you would talk about, like, eating a lot 665 00:41:07.885 --> 00:41:11.565 of junk food. Like, there's a pride to it, but the pride is 666 00:41:11.565 --> 00:41:14.205 kind of making fun of the compulsive aspect to it. 667 00:41:17.230 --> 00:41:20.030 I wanted to ask Ryan about brain rot because it 668 00:41:20.030 --> 00:41:24.190 seems to be front of mind for a lot of people at the moment, 669 00:41:24.190 --> 00:41:28.590 even if that mind is diminishing in its faculties. And it also 670 00:41:28.590 --> 00:41:33.695 seems to be like three different things. It's a verb, which is 671 00:41:33.695 --> 00:41:37.375 what happens to your brain looking at, as Ryan calls it, 672 00:41:37.375 --> 00:41:42.095 unfulfilling content. It's also an adjective, the label given 673 00:41:42.095 --> 00:41:46.340 generally to unfulfilling content. Celebrity gossip, weird 674 00:41:46.340 --> 00:41:49.860 food challenges, those livestreams where they try to 675 00:41:49.860 --> 00:41:54.500 very carefully remove the shell from a raw egg while keeping the 676 00:41:54.500 --> 00:41:59.540 shell membrane intact, you might reasonably call all of that 677 00:41:58.715 --> 00:42:04.875 brain rot, which is also a noun, a genre label for Tralolero 678 00:42:04.875 --> 00:42:08.875 Tralolot, Skibbitty Toilet, Le Poisson Steve, and others. 679 00:42:09.195 --> 00:42:14.890 All media with this shared and specific kind of irreverence or 680 00:42:14.890 --> 00:42:20.490 inanity almost. All of that also is brain rot, maybe with a 681 00:42:20.490 --> 00:42:24.955 capital b. To put this as succinctly and confusingly as 682 00:42:24.955 --> 00:42:29.835 possible, not all brain rot is brain rot, but it may all rot 683 00:42:29.835 --> 00:42:38.760 your brain all the same. So how do we get these three different 684 00:42:38.760 --> 00:42:43.400 but related senses of brain rot? And what sort of anxieties or 685 00:42:43.400 --> 00:42:48.120 compulsions does brain rot as a concept confront? 686 00:42:48.200 --> 00:42:53.075 Why was this term coined and why is it useful is what I'm curious 687 00:42:53.075 --> 00:42:57.155 about in this segment. The contemporary Internet usage of 688 00:42:57.155 --> 00:43:00.435 brain rot, of course, echoes a phrase I grew up hearing 689 00:43:00.435 --> 00:43:04.890 sometimes in earnest, but mostly ironically as a throwback to a 690 00:43:04.890 --> 00:43:09.130 very similar set of anxieties also related to technology. TV 691 00:43:09.130 --> 00:43:10.490 rots your brains. 692 00:43:10.490 --> 00:43:10.810 But you 693 00:43:10.810 --> 00:43:13.370 should know that watching TV rots your brain. Rot your 694 00:43:13.370 --> 00:43:14.090 brains. 695 00:43:14.090 --> 00:43:18.315 This is a very well worn worry that some new 696 00:43:18.315 --> 00:43:22.475 type of media is somehow destroying the minds of its 697 00:43:22.475 --> 00:43:26.475 audience, especially if that audience is young. 698 00:43:31.300 --> 00:43:35.620 We have evidence to show that when the novel was 699 00:43:35.620 --> 00:43:40.660 introduced as a format for the every person to read in Denmark, 700 00:43:40.740 --> 00:43:43.780 the newspapers or and and public commenters at the time were 701 00:43:43.780 --> 00:43:47.195 like, kids can't be reading books. They will essentially rot 702 00:43:47.195 --> 00:43:47.995 their brains. 703 00:43:47.995 --> 00:43:49.515 This is Emily Owens. 704 00:43:49.595 --> 00:43:51.915 Like, this is a very old tradition of young 705 00:43:51.915 --> 00:43:55.195 people doing something, adults finding it abhorrent, it making 706 00:43:55.195 --> 00:43:59.490 its way into the mainstream and becoming our culture in whether 707 00:43:59.490 --> 00:44:02.050 we like it or not, and often in ways which are really cringe. 708 00:44:02.050 --> 00:44:04.530 Emily is a doctoral research fellow at the 709 00:44:04.530 --> 00:44:07.650 University of Oslo working in the Department of Media 710 00:44:07.650 --> 00:44:08.610 Communications. 711 00:44:08.850 --> 00:44:12.290 Broadly, I am interested in teenagers' lives, 712 00:44:12.290 --> 00:44:16.015 meaning their social experiences and their identity development, 713 00:44:16.255 --> 00:44:19.775 and how, if at all, those are shaped by digital media broadly 714 00:44:19.775 --> 00:44:23.455 and in the case of my research, TikTok specifically. 715 00:44:23.615 --> 00:44:26.630 In June, Emily published an article in the 716 00:44:26.630 --> 00:44:31.910 journal New Media and Society titled, It Speaks to Me in Brain 717 00:44:31.910 --> 00:44:37.110 Rot, theorizing brain rot as a genre of participation among 718 00:44:37.110 --> 00:44:41.795 teenagers. In it, she points out that when brain rot was named 719 00:44:41.795 --> 00:44:44.995 word of the year by Oxford University Press in late twenty 720 00:44:44.995 --> 00:44:49.155 twenty four, a parade of hand wringing followed with headlines 721 00:44:49.155 --> 00:44:53.010 like, I'm a neuroscientist. Here's the surprising truth 722 00:44:53.010 --> 00:44:57.810 about TikTok brain rot from BBC News. Smartphone addiction is 723 00:44:57.810 --> 00:45:03.010 leading to brain rot, doctors say from CBS. Pope warns of 724 00:45:03.010 --> 00:45:06.535 brain rot from phone scrolling from Catholic news website 725 00:45:06.535 --> 00:45:07.415 Alethea. 726 00:45:07.415 --> 00:45:12.375 Brain rot, the new generation's epidemic from the cub. And, of 727 00:45:12.375 --> 00:45:13.495 course, more. 728 00:45:19.440 --> 00:45:21.200 People were freaked out about it. They 729 00:45:21.200 --> 00:45:23.520 thought it was a a genuine mental health condition 730 00:45:23.520 --> 00:45:26.400 affecting young people who use the Internet too much, but also 731 00:45:26.400 --> 00:45:30.080 older people who use the Internet too much or the type of 732 00:45:30.080 --> 00:45:34.045 content that causes that mental health condition. So that it was 733 00:45:34.045 --> 00:45:38.045 overwhelmingly, like, negative, very little sort of tongue in 734 00:45:38.045 --> 00:45:41.885 cheek. That's maybe emerged more now as we get more comfortable 735 00:45:41.885 --> 00:45:44.525 with the term, but certainly at the beginning, it was real, 736 00:45:44.525 --> 00:45:46.445 like, panicky vibes. 737 00:45:47.210 --> 00:45:49.930 In the midst of all this, Emily is conducting 738 00:45:49.930 --> 00:45:53.450 research with, quote, a small group of teenagers at an 739 00:45:53.450 --> 00:45:56.970 international school in Oslo, as she writes, and something 740 00:45:56.970 --> 00:45:57.530 happens. 741 00:45:57.850 --> 00:46:00.615 And in, workshop three, since the third time I'd 742 00:46:00.615 --> 00:46:01.975 seen them all, they were starting to get a bit more 743 00:46:01.975 --> 00:46:04.535 comfortable. And that was the first time that Brain Rot 744 00:46:04.535 --> 00:46:08.855 actually came up, and it was brought up by a a young woman 745 00:46:08.855 --> 00:46:13.510 named Yari, 16 years old. And she is the self proclaimed 746 00:46:13.510 --> 00:46:15.110 TikTok expert of the group. 747 00:46:15.110 --> 00:46:17.510 And I say self proclaimed, but others often 748 00:46:17.510 --> 00:46:20.710 also referred to her as the TikTok expert in the group. 749 00:46:20.870 --> 00:46:23.590 And so we were in the middle of a discussion about 750 00:46:23.590 --> 00:46:27.405 why TikTok is valuable to her, why she likes it so much. And 751 00:46:27.405 --> 00:46:30.205 she she started saying to me, like, well, there's 752 00:46:30.205 --> 00:46:32.205 controversies going on in the world, and there's always 753 00:46:32.205 --> 00:46:34.685 someone explaining it on TikTok. And I went, yeah. And she said, 754 00:46:34.685 --> 00:46:37.085 or I've seen, like, Russian ladies describe math to me, and 755 00:46:37.085 --> 00:46:39.325 I understand it. And then another boy, Adrian, 756 00:46:39.325 --> 00:46:40.205 checked in and said, oh, yeah. 757 00:46:40.205 --> 00:46:42.930 I've seen that. I know her. And that's when Yari 758 00:46:42.930 --> 00:46:47.810 said, yeah. It's like it speaks in, like, brain rot to me. I 759 00:46:47.810 --> 00:46:48.850 understand it. 760 00:46:49.010 --> 00:46:53.570 And I embarrassingly responded just by repeating slowly, it 761 00:46:53.570 --> 00:46:57.675 speaks in brain rot. But I think you you can see that in that 762 00:46:57.675 --> 00:47:03.195 excerpt, I was I was sort of computing this concept. Like, I 763 00:47:03.195 --> 00:47:06.155 couldn't even take it in. I just had to say it back to her. And 764 00:47:06.155 --> 00:47:08.075 that's where it essentially started. 765 00:47:08.075 --> 00:47:11.020 And I went on to ask, if you come across a video on TikTok 766 00:47:11.020 --> 00:47:14.140 explaining something, would you find it easier to understand in 767 00:47:14.140 --> 00:47:17.340 school? And every single one of them nodded or said, yeah. And 768 00:47:17.340 --> 00:47:21.180 then a 16 year old boy, Lennox, said exponentially. And when I 769 00:47:21.180 --> 00:47:24.335 said, really? Yari went on to say, yeah, and everybody is on 770 00:47:24.335 --> 00:47:24.815 it. 771 00:47:31.775 --> 00:47:34.735 Emily asked the kids in the next session what 772 00:47:34.735 --> 00:47:38.890 they mean when they say brain rot. They say that it's stuff 773 00:47:38.890 --> 00:47:42.490 for younger kids, stuff that maybe isn't, quote, cognitively 774 00:47:42.490 --> 00:47:47.450 beneficial, but they also say that's kinda the point. She 775 00:47:47.450 --> 00:47:51.475 boils down their stew of responses in the paper like 776 00:47:51.475 --> 00:47:56.755 this. Brain Rot can perhaps be defined as a piece of slang 777 00:47:56.755 --> 00:48:01.315 referring to a way of engaging with childish memes and general 778 00:48:01.315 --> 00:48:06.100 TikTok content which is nonproductive or time wasting by 779 00:48:06.100 --> 00:48:10.980 nature and is humorously understood to rot the brain of 780 00:48:10.980 --> 00:48:14.340 the user. From this definition emerge some of the key 781 00:48:14.340 --> 00:48:18.065 characteristics which make up brain rot as a genre for 782 00:48:18.065 --> 00:48:21.825 engaging meaningfully with TikTok, following its mention by 783 00:48:21.825 --> 00:48:23.985 Yari in the previous example. 784 00:48:24.385 --> 00:48:29.105 One, brain rot is childish or unserious. Two, brain rot 785 00:48:28.800 --> 00:48:32.480 provides no cognitive or developmental benefit. And 786 00:48:32.480 --> 00:48:38.080 three, brain rot is deliberately nonproductive. Brain rot is 787 00:48:38.080 --> 00:48:42.160 therefore a conscious rejection of self development and 788 00:48:42.160 --> 00:48:48.725 productive activity in favor of a childish enjoyment, end quote. 789 00:48:49.205 --> 00:48:53.365 So it turns out teens, like everyone else, live in the world 790 00:48:53.445 --> 00:48:58.805 and are under a lot of pressure from school, home, friends, 791 00:48:59.045 --> 00:49:03.180 stuff they see on the Internet ironically, more on that in a 792 00:49:03.180 --> 00:49:03.660 minute. 793 00:49:03.900 --> 00:49:08.380 And so they, like you, like me, get some scrolling in as a way 794 00:49:08.380 --> 00:49:11.820 to release some of that pressure. But crucially, they, 795 00:49:11.980 --> 00:49:19.235 we still wanna be engaged. We don't want nothing. We just 796 00:49:19.235 --> 00:49:25.315 don't want anything asked or expected of us in contrast to 797 00:49:25.315 --> 00:49:29.555 every other part of life and there is only a particular 798 00:49:29.555 --> 00:49:39.720 stripe of media that can really walk that line. In an attempt to 799 00:49:39.720 --> 00:49:44.200 capture all this, Emily calls Brain Rot a decompression driven 800 00:49:44.200 --> 00:49:46.200 genre of participation. 801 00:49:47.165 --> 00:49:50.925 I asked her to take me through what that means exactly. 802 00:49:50.925 --> 00:49:52.845 To start, I wanna say that that term actually came 803 00:49:52.845 --> 00:49:56.445 from my childhood best friend's mom, Kathleen Moore. I was like, 804 00:49:56.445 --> 00:49:58.445 I don't know what to call this thing. I don't have the right 805 00:49:58.445 --> 00:50:01.790 term. And she was like, sounds like this is a a like, you're 806 00:50:01.870 --> 00:50:04.590 these kids are trying to decompress. It's not necessarily 807 00:50:04.590 --> 00:50:06.030 about relaxing. 808 00:50:06.030 --> 00:50:10.110 That's not the right word. It's not about, like, switching off 809 00:50:10.110 --> 00:50:15.230 entirely. It's more to do with sort of not not trying to 810 00:50:16.315 --> 00:50:21.195 improve in any way or not trying to produce anything. Not you're 811 00:50:21.195 --> 00:50:23.275 not seeking out a new friendship, and you're not 812 00:50:23.275 --> 00:50:26.155 seeking out an interest. You just wanna you just wanna 813 00:50:26.155 --> 00:50:26.715 decompress. 814 00:50:27.700 --> 00:50:30.020 Emily explained to me that genre of 815 00:50:30.020 --> 00:50:32.980 participation is based on the work of cultural anthropologist, 816 00:50:32.980 --> 00:50:37.220 Mizuki Ito, and is a way of centering the idea that people 817 00:50:37.220 --> 00:50:41.220 do things with media. They look for it to play a role in their 818 00:50:41.220 --> 00:50:45.335 lives to solve problems, and it exists in a complex aggregate 819 00:50:45.335 --> 00:50:49.015 with the rest of their experiences versus how media is 820 00:50:49.015 --> 00:50:52.935 often framed and talked about, especially on the news, as being 821 00:50:52.935 --> 00:50:58.650 this monolithic thing that flies in and changes an audience, that 822 00:50:58.650 --> 00:51:02.170 it has some effect on them after they've experienced it, and then 823 00:51:02.170 --> 00:51:06.490 both they and the media move on. To sit down, scroll through 824 00:51:06.490 --> 00:51:11.370 TikTok, and let one's brain rot isn't the comatose welcoming of 825 00:51:11.370 --> 00:51:15.365 cognitive decline the headlines would have you believe, but a 826 00:51:15.365 --> 00:51:19.765 purposeful activity which fits in alongside others that make up 827 00:51:19.765 --> 00:51:23.445 a highly social aggregate. As Emily says 828 00:51:23.845 --> 00:51:25.685 It's more like this is something they kind of 829 00:51:25.685 --> 00:51:29.450 want or need to do anyway, and now it has this digital 830 00:51:29.450 --> 00:51:30.330 component. 831 00:51:34.570 --> 00:51:37.610 Yeah. Like, I I I we we love to believe that the 832 00:51:37.610 --> 00:51:40.970 Internet is this really addicting, dangerous force, and 833 00:51:40.970 --> 00:51:43.605 there's this really, like, intense wave of millennial 834 00:51:43.605 --> 00:51:46.005 Ludditeism right now that's, like, I find very 835 00:51:46.085 --> 00:51:49.285 counterproductive. And so there's this feeling of, well, 836 00:51:49.285 --> 00:51:52.565 you know, the Internet is this dangerous thing. And, I mean, we 837 00:51:53.045 --> 00:51:56.640 we've been talking about that in regards to every media type 838 00:51:56.640 --> 00:51:59.040 throughout history, like, you know, go watch David 839 00:51:59.040 --> 00:52:01.840 Cronenberg's Videodrome, like, if you wanna see how VCRs could 840 00:52:01.840 --> 00:52:04.000 be evil. Like, this is just this isn't new. 841 00:52:04.480 --> 00:52:07.200 But right now, we're really interested in this idea of the 842 00:52:07.200 --> 00:52:10.295 Internet changing our behavior, changing the way we think. So 843 00:52:10.295 --> 00:52:10.935 brain rot, 844 00:52:10.935 --> 00:52:12.615 I think, has become popular as an expression 845 00:52:12.615 --> 00:52:18.455 of that. A tale of two rots, basically. To butcher an old 846 00:52:18.455 --> 00:52:24.790 rhetorical classification, not if by whiskey, but if by rot. If 847 00:52:24.790 --> 00:52:28.310 by rot, you mean the cognitive decline of a generation of young 848 00:52:28.310 --> 00:52:32.390 people whose attention spans and appetite for involved tasks or 849 00:52:32.390 --> 00:52:36.285 consuming long texts has been diminished by short form video 850 00:52:36.285 --> 00:52:40.365 and a bottomless feed of clips expecting nothing from them, 851 00:52:40.365 --> 00:52:45.725 then of course, I am against it. But if by rot, you mean the 852 00:52:45.725 --> 00:52:48.000 ability to manage one's emotional state through the 853 00:52:48.000 --> 00:52:51.920 selective viewing of low stakes feel good media available at all 854 00:52:51.920 --> 00:52:55.040 times in which has the possibility of forming or 855 00:52:55.040 --> 00:53:01.435 reinforcing social bonds amongst peers, then of course, I am for 856 00:53:01.435 --> 00:53:01.995 it. 857 00:53:06.795 --> 00:53:11.435 I wondered aloud to both Ryan and Emily, does this mean Brain 858 00:53:11.435 --> 00:53:16.230 Rot is more of a lens? A framework one brings to media 859 00:53:16.230 --> 00:53:20.950 over and above it being a type of media that one sits down and 860 00:53:20.950 --> 00:53:26.870 is able to make or find on purpose? Ryan and Emily both 861 00:53:26.870 --> 00:53:32.105 kind of agreed. It's found, and being able to find it may be 862 00:53:32.265 --> 00:53:36.425 circumstantial. Ryan's response was dialogical. 863 00:53:36.425 --> 00:53:36.905 I I 864 00:53:36.905 --> 00:53:38.905 think in many ways, it's like brain rot is 865 00:53:38.905 --> 00:53:43.470 always being defined by someone else in a way. Like, it's it's 866 00:53:43.470 --> 00:53:46.750 it's it's it's a label you put on something, or it's like a 867 00:53:46.750 --> 00:53:49.070 label you put on what you're looking at as a way to kind of, 868 00:53:49.070 --> 00:53:52.190 like, digest what you've just spent twelve hours looking at 869 00:53:52.190 --> 00:53:56.125 online. I would be surprised if someone could sit down and 870 00:53:56.125 --> 00:53:59.805 effectively make brain rot to make brain rot. Like, I I feel 871 00:53:59.805 --> 00:54:02.445 like it it's it's almost like outsider art in that way. It has 872 00:54:02.445 --> 00:54:05.085 to kind of be discovered and labeled rather than I'm gonna 873 00:54:05.085 --> 00:54:07.005 sit down and make something really insane, and people are 874 00:54:07.005 --> 00:54:08.685 gonna, like, watch hours and hours of it. 875 00:54:09.300 --> 00:54:12.980 For Emily, this question became one about if 876 00:54:12.980 --> 00:54:16.420 there is a need for teens to decompress, what's the reason 877 00:54:16.420 --> 00:54:21.695 they're going to content, to social media to do that? Why is 878 00:54:21.695 --> 00:54:26.175 the activity they're engaging in scrolling or searching or 879 00:54:26.175 --> 00:54:31.535 watching and not anything else? What does it mean that 880 00:54:31.535 --> 00:54:35.810 decompression, as important as it may be, happens in 881 00:54:35.810 --> 00:54:40.850 environments like social media platforms, which adhere to a 882 00:54:40.850 --> 00:54:43.810 very strict hyper capitalist logic? 883 00:54:44.450 --> 00:54:48.115 One of the themes that emerges in my data a lot, I 884 00:54:47.730 --> 00:54:50.995 which am finding hard to write about because I don't know how 885 00:54:50.995 --> 00:54:55.875 best to do it, is that these kids feel like grown ups do not 886 00:54:55.875 --> 00:55:00.115 give a shit at all, and that they are they are left to their 887 00:55:00.115 --> 00:55:03.075 own devices in terms of everything that they are warned 888 00:55:03.075 --> 00:55:06.750 about. So they you know, I brought up, you know, data and 889 00:55:06.750 --> 00:55:09.630 digitalization. And the first thing they said was, oh, no. 890 00:55:09.630 --> 00:55:12.030 Companies are taking our data. We know, but there's nothing we 891 00:55:12.030 --> 00:55:12.430 can do. 892 00:55:12.430 --> 00:55:19.195 So, like I wrote this article because I was annoyed at how the 893 00:55:19.195 --> 00:55:22.635 grown ups were understanding Brain Rock. I was like, you got 894 00:55:22.635 --> 00:55:26.475 it wrong, and you're replicating this media panic that we've seen 895 00:55:26.475 --> 00:55:30.480 over and over and over and over again. There are problems to do 896 00:55:30.480 --> 00:55:34.560 with TikTok and BrainRot, but they are not BrainRot. It's not 897 00:55:34.560 --> 00:55:37.360 that young people are going to BrainRot to turn their brains 898 00:55:37.360 --> 00:55:40.240 off. It's that young people don't have other places to go to 899 00:55:40.240 --> 00:55:40.800 switch off. 900 00:55:40.800 --> 00:55:44.345 They don't have the tools to do that. There's not a lot of 901 00:55:44.345 --> 00:55:48.345 public spaces to go enjoy. It's not like you can go out to a 902 00:55:48.345 --> 00:55:53.625 park and just switch off and do dumb stuff and be a kid in that 903 00:55:53.625 --> 00:55:57.705 way. To be trapped in a phone when you're trying to decompress 904 00:55:58.200 --> 00:56:01.800 because someone makes money from the fact that your eyes are on 905 00:56:01.800 --> 00:56:04.440 that phone, I think that's really grim. And I think that 906 00:56:04.440 --> 00:56:07.880 these kids, these teenagers that I was working with, they don't 907 00:56:07.880 --> 00:56:11.355 say it explicitly because maybe they haven't cognitively 908 00:56:11.355 --> 00:56:14.715 recognized it as such, but I think they feel that that's not 909 00:56:14.715 --> 00:56:15.275 good. 910 00:56:15.435 --> 00:56:17.675 There are loads of things you could do to decompress. 911 00:56:17.675 --> 00:56:21.115 Sometimes it is use your phone, but oftentimes it's go for a 912 00:56:21.115 --> 00:56:26.890 walk, like go for a swim, take your bicycle out, paint a 913 00:56:26.890 --> 00:56:30.810 painting, write a little story. And we're, I think, 914 00:56:30.810 --> 00:56:34.410 systematically discouraged from doing those things because those 915 00:56:34.410 --> 00:56:38.730 things don't make anybody any money. And that's yeah. That's 916 00:56:38.730 --> 00:56:40.810 my that's my beef with Brain Rot. 917 00:56:40.810 --> 00:56:44.145 It's not that it exists or that young people are doing it. I 918 00:56:44.145 --> 00:56:45.985 think that's fine. We should let kids do what they want. If 919 00:56:45.985 --> 00:56:50.385 they're enjoying it, who cares? It's more that there's this 920 00:56:50.385 --> 00:56:53.345 bigger systematic problem that all of our time is being 921 00:56:53.345 --> 00:56:56.660 capitalized on, and that's not nice. 922 00:56:57.380 --> 00:56:59.460 Such a lame button to on. 923 00:57:00.340 --> 00:57:00.820 Not nice. 924 00:57:00.820 --> 00:57:21.505 But that's a great button to end on. Thanks a 925 00:57:21.505 --> 00:57:26.210 million times over to both Ryan Broderick and Emily Owens for 926 00:57:26.210 --> 00:57:28.530 chatting with me. You can find Ryan's newsletter at 927 00:57:28.530 --> 00:57:32.690 garbageday.email and his podcast Panic World wherever you listen 928 00:57:32.690 --> 00:57:37.035 to pods. You can find Emily's work at emily owens, that's e m 929 00:57:37.035 --> 00:57:48.395 I l I e o w e n s, dot c a and at h f dot u I o dot n o. We'll 930 00:57:48.395 --> 00:57:50.235 put links to all these things in the show notes. 931 00:57:52.970 --> 00:57:57.450 What happens to your brain when it rots? Is there something 932 00:57:57.450 --> 00:58:02.410 that's particularly effective at rotting your brain? How do you 933 00:58:02.890 --> 00:58:07.145 feel about that? Would you admit it to us? Send us an email, a 934 00:58:07.145 --> 00:58:10.825 voice mail, leave us a voice memo about your rotting brain 935 00:58:10.825 --> 00:58:13.945 and we may include it in an upcoming Mailbag episode. 936 00:58:56.430 --> 00:59:00.430 Micah, what does the change in funding for the CPB mean for 937 00:59:00.430 --> 00:59:03.845 media over the next few years in The United States? 938 00:59:03.845 --> 00:59:06.005 Well, we don't know for sure what's going to 939 00:59:06.005 --> 00:59:09.685 happen. We can only guess. But it helps to have some 940 00:59:09.685 --> 00:59:13.765 understanding of how this ecosystem works. Essentially, 941 00:59:13.765 --> 00:59:16.560 we're talking about money that has been taken away from the 942 00:59:16.560 --> 00:59:19.680 Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Federal funds 943 00:59:19.680 --> 00:59:23.840 appropriated by Congress, given to an agency that, in this case, 944 00:59:24.000 --> 00:59:27.600 doles out money to public radio stations and public television 945 00:59:27.600 --> 00:59:28.640 stations around the country. 946 00:59:29.175 --> 00:59:33.095 Some 300 plus TV stations, over a thousand public radio 947 00:59:33.095 --> 00:59:37.735 stations. Now that that money is gone, those stations will have 948 00:59:37.735 --> 00:59:41.975 to ask themselves, what do we really value? Do we value these 949 00:59:41.975 --> 00:59:44.930 national programs that our audience really likes that helps 950 00:59:44.930 --> 00:59:49.490 us fundraise? Do we value local news? Do we value keeping an 951 00:59:49.490 --> 00:59:50.850 environmental reporter? 952 00:59:51.170 --> 00:59:54.210 Somebody going to the courthouse? Somebody hanging out 953 00:59:54.210 --> 00:59:58.635 in the State house all day? What do we value? Because we are 954 00:59:58.635 --> 01:00:02.235 seeing that there are gonna be heterogeneous effects. Some 955 01:00:02.235 --> 01:00:05.035 urban radio stations, for instance, they only rely on, 956 01:00:05.035 --> 01:00:09.515 say, you know, less than 5% of their overall revenue coming 957 01:00:09.515 --> 01:00:11.595 from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. 958 01:00:11.595 --> 01:00:14.990 Really rural radio stations, some of them rely on it like 959 01:00:14.990 --> 01:00:19.550 99%, 90%, 80%. I saw one estimate from this guy named 960 01:00:19.550 --> 01:00:22.270 Alex Kerley, who's a former product manager who worked at 961 01:00:22.270 --> 01:00:26.190 NPR. He created a tool called adoptastation.org to help 962 01:00:26.190 --> 01:00:29.035 people, like, figure out how much their local radio station 963 01:00:29.035 --> 01:00:33.115 is at risk of losing because of these cuts. He estimates that 964 01:00:33.115 --> 01:00:36.875 15% of public radio stations might shut down in the next 965 01:00:36.875 --> 01:00:41.180 year, because 15% of public radio stations rely on more than 966 01:00:41.180 --> 01:00:43.820 50% of their revenue traditionally coming from the 967 01:00:43.820 --> 01:00:46.220 Corporation for Public Broadcasting. That would be 968 01:00:46.220 --> 01:00:47.020 disastrous. 969 01:00:47.500 --> 01:00:51.340 I do think in the short term, we're already seeing this, lots 970 01:00:51.340 --> 01:00:56.355 of huge surges in funding for radio stations and public media 971 01:00:56.355 --> 01:01:00.275 organizations, particularly ones in urban areas. But you know how 972 01:01:00.275 --> 01:01:03.235 it is, like, when there's a crisis, people show up and open 973 01:01:03.235 --> 01:01:06.755 up their wallets, but then life goes on and it gets harder to 974 01:01:06.755 --> 01:01:07.715 get people to care. 975 01:01:08.230 --> 01:01:10.230 With all this in mind, Micah, do you feel like 976 01:01:10.230 --> 01:01:12.710 we're seeing the end of public media? 977 01:01:14.470 --> 01:01:14.870 No. 978 01:01:39.690 --> 01:01:42.730 Okay. That is the show we have for you this week. 979 01:01:42.730 --> 01:01:45.330 We're gonna be back here in the main feed on Wednesday, August 980 01:01:45.330 --> 01:01:51.205 13. Friends, listeners, now is the time. If you've been waiting 981 01:01:51.205 --> 01:01:54.805 for a moment to support Neverpost with a membership, we 982 01:01:54.805 --> 01:01:58.325 could use your help right now more than ever. 983 01:01:58.565 --> 01:02:01.365 Our runway is quickly ending. We need to find a way to make the 984 01:02:01.365 --> 01:02:04.380 show financially sustainable by the end of the year to keep 985 01:02:04.380 --> 01:02:12.780 doing whatever it is we do here. Media criticism? Tech theory? 986 01:02:13.020 --> 01:02:14.380 Synth solos? 987 01:02:15.420 --> 01:02:21.915 Become a member at neverpo.st at $4.07, or $12 a month for which 988 01:02:21.915 --> 01:02:25.195 you will get access to a bunch of bonus content, but mostly 989 01:02:25.515 --> 01:02:28.235 knowledge that you're helping an indie podcast to do weird, 990 01:02:28.235 --> 01:02:32.795 wonderful work so off the beaten path, even we are not exactly 991 01:02:32.795 --> 01:02:36.240 sure what to call it. Neverpost's producers are Audrey 992 01:02:36.240 --> 01:02:38.800 Evans, Georgia Hampton, the mysterious. Doctor first name, 993 01:02:38.800 --> 01:02:42.320 last name. Our senior producer is Hans Buto. Our executive 994 01:02:42.320 --> 01:02:45.760 producer is Jason Oberholzer, and the show's host, that's me, 995 01:02:45.760 --> 01:02:46.640 is Mike Rugneva. 996 01:02:50.985 --> 01:02:57.225 The green color of the Cheshaco smells of fresh recollections of 997 01:02:57.225 --> 01:03:04.570 what once has been in the distant, remote past. Cha No Yu 998 01:03:04.810 --> 01:03:09.370 by Katherine Christer Annex. Neverpost is a production of 999 01:03:09.370 --> 01:03:13.210 charts and leisure and is distributed by Radiotopia.