I was not sure about the podcast on Thursday, November 21, a couple of days after release day, but it went well, I think. This was with Guy Powell on Backstory on Marketing and AI, Powell has written books on marketing, but also one on the Shroud of Turin. I listened to his most recent podcast and was pleased to hear him and his guest talking about the broader issues of AI, albeit in a marketing context. They talked about the ethics and other nuances of the use of AI in marketing. I was thus in a position to answer his leading question, "what is your backstory?" and say some complimentary things about sensitivities some people, he and his guest, were bringing to the issue of marketing and AI. I told him I had not thought about those specific issues very much, despite, ironically, being on his podcast to market my book. Our subsequent conversation was rather wide ranging, touching on but not concentrating on marketing. I managed to end up with a plug for the book and a summary of the urgency of our situation, the need to be aware, and the importance of voting. We finished up in about 45 minutes, but he had enough interest that he wanted to keep chatting for another 15 minutes after he turned off the recording. He also worked in a deep and interesting question about whether a planet would still have inertia if the Universe expands until all the stars are infinitely far away. I could not answer it specifically but had some pertinent thoughts. He will send out a teaser in a few days and the full podcast in a couple of weeks.
I did another podcast on Friday at noon, Future Tech and Foresight with Marc Verbenkov, a young Canadian man working from near Vancouver. I'd listened to his previous podcast so knew his first question would be "how did you get involved?" but he told me that anyway before he started recording. I think his release will be audio only, but he Zoom-recorded the video as well, so I used my trick of talking to a small image up near my camera. Can't do that with Google's version. I learned some new terms listening to Marc's previous podcast with Mark Weinstein, author of Restoring our Sanity Online: Conscious Capitalism and Freemium, a business model that provides some services free but charges for others, a substitute for "take all your data with no recompense" sites. I also learned that Web 2.0 is synonymous in some quarters with Surveillance Capitalism. I enjoyed my chat with Marc. We were very much on the same wavelength on many topics, including perhaps the most in-depth discussion I have yet had of brain-computer interfaces and the promise and perils that may await there. It was not exactly my place as a guest to praise Marc for alerting his audience to the issues we face, but I did so. Programs like his are a critical part of the message I am trying to bring of first being aware. Marc said his podcast reaches from 1000 to 10,000 people, depending on the topic.
I had a break on Saturday, then planned to do a podcast with Dave Monk from Perth at 7 PM on Sunday and the Coast to Coast AM radio program from midnight to 2 AM. Monk has scheduled only a half hour, about as long as our pre-interview, and has provided some questions, all pretty straightforward. Coast to Coast will call and talk on my mobile phone with Zoom backup. I have emergency phone numbers of producers. I submitted a release, with some grumbling about rights being passed to others, unnamed. The main challenge will be avoiding mind fog at that hour.