I’m a big fan of the fiction podcasts. The hurdles to making one are much lower than publishing a book, so they have more freedom to experiment. Unlike audiobooks, they are created as audio stories, so I like to think of them as TV shows without the visuals, and not as audiobooks without the book.

This means that while making a podcast is easy, making a good podcast is… not. So I was excited and surprised when, a couple of days ago I found one. I’ll let it introduce itself:

The Program audio series is a fiction podcast set in a future in which Money, State, and God became fused into a single entity called the Program. Each episode is a self-contained story focusing on ordinary people inhabiting this extraordinary world. And for them, it is not this future that is terrifying - it is our present.

It talks about AI, intelligently, correctly characterising what risk from runaway AI looks like. I’m only aware of Friendship is Optimal as another piece of fiction to do this. Its writing and soundscaping is usually very good, some of the stories being genuinely quite touching, even though it does sometimes veer into philosophy 101. It leaves you wondering whether it’s depicting a utopia or a dystopia.

Most strikingly, it is political, without being partisan. Moreover, it pulls this off really well, without the ‘Politics is the Mind Killer’ sort of cynicism often held by people who don’t associate themselves with a political ideology. It touches on homelessnes, the urban-rural tension, capitalism, cancel culture, animal rights, … It’s hard to put a label on, but if I had to I’d say it was written by people who subscribe to “The Age of Surveilance Capitalism”, who believe that most people aren’t evil, and that something worrying is wrong with current political discourse. They avoid sweeping claims, and stick to real (fictionalised) issues.

And it does all that while being hillarious, and filled with tech puns! Recommended.

NIRO: Well, is it also true what mum told me that people used paper to pay for stuff?

IRIS: Yes Niro. The paper you are referring to was called “money”.

NIRO: I thought money was called “dollars”.

IRIS: Dollars were just one of many different kinds of money. Other famous money includes yuans, euros, and pounds.

NIRO: Pounds? Wasn’t that what was used before kilograms?

IRIS: Pounds denoted both weight and monetary value.

NIRO: Wait, are you telling me people used pounds for both?

IRIS: Only in one country. But it was a silly country. It did not end well.

– Episode 11: Motherboard

Still not convinced? Check out I couldn’t bring myself to advertise The Program on Facebook… So I turned to Pornhub by the author of the whow.