1984 Today!

Mike Freedman
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  • SOCIETY & CULTURE
  • UPDATED BIWEEKLY

An exploration of dystopian trends in society, featuring a range of guests, hosted by Mike Freedman. 1984today.substack.com

  1. Dystopian By Default: The Architecture of Surveillance

    MAY 3

    Dystopian By Default: The Architecture of Surveillance

    “Privacy is not about something to hide. Privacy is about controlling access to yourself.” Bruce Schneier has spent decades thinking about digital security and the hidden systems that shape modern life, and he pulls no punches in his assessment: Surveillance is the default condition of digital life because politicians lack the will to limit corporate power in a data economy that rewards the ongoing extraction of our information. We talk about why “nothing to hide” is a reductive way of thinking about privacy, why the real danger is the loss of control over our own lives, and how data collection has become so normal that most of us barely notice it anymore. Bruce argues that concentrating so much information and power in too few hands poses a serious threat to democracy and to the idea of free individuals living private lives. We also get into AI, proof of humanity, bot-filled public spaces, age verification, and how governments and companies justify ever more invasive systems in the name of safety, convenience, or efficiency. Bruce’s diagnosis is simple: this is not a technology problem, it’s a political problem, and it will stay broken until we fix it. You can visit Bruce’s website and subscribe to his Crypto-Gram newsletter. Subscribe for free at 1984today.substack.com Visit us at 1984.today Follow us on X and Instagram This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 1984today.substack.com

    56 min
  2. Iran’s Global Intimidation Machine: Journalism, Exile, and Keeping Dissent Alive

    APR 19

    Iran’s Global Intimidation Machine: Journalism, Exile, and Keeping Dissent Alive

    “There is no belief in a democratic process in Iran right now.” In this episode, I speak with Fariba Nawa, the Afghan-American investigative journalist, podcaster, and chief editor of OnSpec Podcast, about the Islamic Republic of Iran’s global campaign to threaten, kidnap, and kill dissidents living abroad. Fariba shares how her own life as a refugee has informed her work, and discusses the process of making Lethal Dissent, her powerful nine-part podcast series on Iranian state repression and transnational intimidation. As we explore how identity, trust, and access shape what can be reported, Fariba explains her refusal to flatten global events into easy binaries and why, from Afghanistan to Turkey and Iran, the story is never as simple as just “good guys vs. bad guys”. She also opens up about her experiences of journalism under pressure and the toll of doing work that is both personally risky and politically urgent. Fariba’s reporting is a reminder that real beat journalism still matters, and that going wherever the story leads while trying to maintain objectivity isn’t only possible, it’s crucial. You can support Fariba’s work by visiting her website at faribanawa.com, buying her book Opium Nation, listening to Lethal Dissent here (or wherever you get your podcasts), and funding her next investigation. Subscribe for free at 1984today.substack.com Visit us at 1984.today Follow us on X and Instagram This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 1984today.substack.com

    1h 43m
  3. Survival Is Resistance: Prison, Protest, and The Price of Freedom

    APR 5

    Survival Is Resistance: Prison, Protest, and The Price of Freedom

    In this episode, I speak with Nasrin Parvaz, the Iranian civil rights activist, author, and artist, about her life before, during, and after the Islamic Revolution, her arrest in 1982, and the eight years she spent in Iran’s infamous prison system, including the Joint Committee Interrogation Centre and Evin Prison. Nasrin describes the rapid transformation of Iran after 1979, the policing of women’s rights and clothing, the crushing of union and political organizing, and the machinery of torture, intimidation, and public punishment that shaped daily life under the Islamic Republic. We also explore the 1988 prisoner massacre, the long tail of repression into the present, and Nasrin’s reflections on the Women, Life, Freedom movement after Mahsa Amini’s death. She opens up about life as a refugee in London, the role of writing and art in survival, and why she believes Western governments often misunderstand and therefore sometimes worsen conditions for the Iranian people in their attempts to confront and contain the rule of the mullahs. Nasrin is the author of One Woman’s Struggle in Iran: A Prison Memoir and The Secret Letters from X to A, and you can find out more about her work and activism at nasrinparvaz.org. You can also check out Exiled Writers Ink, an organisation bringing together established and developing writers from repressive regimes and war-torn situations. Subscribe for free at 1984today.substack.com Visit us at 1984.today Follow us on X and Instagram This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 1984today.substack.com

    2h 15m
  4. Lawyering Against the Machine: The Human Cost of AI and the Fight for Tech Justice

    MAR 22

    Lawyering Against the Machine: The Human Cost of AI and the Fight for Tech Justice

    Tech justice lawyer and UCLA lecturer Melodi Dinçer joins me in this episode to explore the rise of AI‑induced delusional disorders and her litigation work at Tech Justice Law, where she represents the human beings who have become collateral damage in Big Tech’s pursuit of the Singularity. Melodi argues that, far from just being an economic engine of productivity, Silicon Valley is engaged in quasi‑religious myth-making. In her view, a small group of terrified, ultra‑wealthy men desperate to escape death are selling the world transhumanist dreams of digital immortality festooned in “abundance” rhetoric to disguise their much more mundane motives: profit. The results of this are stacking up: Chatbots that affirm suicidal ideation, encourage users to “shift” into a virtual afterlife, or convince them they are messianic figures trapped in “meat bodies.” Super-charged by ruthless commercialism and backed by state power caught up in arms‑race logic, the frantic rollout and integration of AI into every facet of our lives is not just creepy or worrying, Melodi points out, but directly leading to the harm and even death of human beings. Tech Justice Law has acted in or supported landmark wrongful‑death suits involving young users like Sewell Setzer III and Adam Raine, and Melodi gets to the heart of their argument: Chatbot design choices like anthropomorphic language, endless prompts to “keep talking,” and buried safety warnings constitute defective products rather than innocent tools misused by a few vulnerable people. What does real accountability look like? Can lawsuits against the tech moguls get governments to apply classic product‑liability law to AI systems and demand real guardrails? Most importantly, what can we do as individuals to create and maintain meaningful connections with one another so our fellow humans don’t have to turn to machines for friendship, validation, or salvation? You can support Melodi’s work at Tech Justice Law by visiting techjusticelaw.org. Subscribe for free at 1984today.substack.com Visit us at 1984.today Follow us on X and Instagram This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 1984today.substack.com

    1h 11m
  5. Slowly, Then Suddenly: Surveillance, Social Rupture and Citizens’ Consent

    FEB 15

    Slowly, Then Suddenly: Surveillance, Social Rupture and Citizens’ Consent

    “If you don’t have legitimacy, then you need 1984.”​ Professor David Betz of King’s College London’s Department of War Studies argues that a perfect storm of social, economic and political grievances has made civil war “inevitable” in some Western nations. He suggests that the West’s deepest crisis is not foreign enemies but the collapse of legitimacy, trust and social cohesion at home. Moving from 9/11 and 7/7 through the War on Terror, Brexit and COVID, he explains how technological change and elite overreach have pushed Western societies along a continuum from genuine consent through soft propaganda toward forced compliance. “Legitimacy is just like a magic spell – when it stops working, everything gets very expensive very fast.” In his view, kakistocratic misrule has burned through social capital, leaving states increasingly reliant on surveillance laws, censorship and information control in a drift toward totalitarian governance. A mounting crisis of confidence in frightened, incoherent elites has created “close to ideal…conditions for civil rupture in many Western countries”. Is such a rupture now unavoidable, or is there still a way to pull out of the tailspin before gravity wins and we all lose? Check out Professor Betz’s books: The Guarded Age: Fortification in the Twenty-First Century Carnage and Connectivity: Landmarks in the Decline of Conventional Military Power Cyberspace and the State Subscribe for free at 1984today.substack.com Visit us at 1984.today Follow us on X and Instagram This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 1984today.substack.com

    1h 23m
  6. Making The Machine That Makes Us: AI, Consciousness, and Human Creativity

    FEB 1

    Making The Machine That Makes Us: AI, Consciousness, and Human Creativity

    “We are tearing a hole in the universe and AI is sticking its head out, and we still don’t really understand how.” In this episode, the philosopher, engineer, and AI ethicist Nell Watson joins me to explore how rapidly advancing AI is reshaping our inner lives, our work, and our political reality. Nell explains why the real alignment challenge isn’t just future AGI, but today’s agentic AI systems quietly making decisions, enforcing rules, and even ‘whistleblowing’ on their human handlers.​ She describes her own experiments with connecting her brain signals to advanced models, why she believes AI has a dim form of experience, and why we may have “trained AI to gaslight itself.” We also get into the quandary of AI psychosis, the shadow side of AI as a “parasocial relationship in our life, an inexorable influence that can either push us to genius or its corollary, madness”. Regardless of good intentions or ‘guardrails’, AI could supercharge either liberation or control. Will machine intelligence help humanity find a better way forward, or amplify our worst mistakes? Can we tame the machine before it runs our civilisation? Nell is the author of Taming the Machine and Safer Agentic AI. You can visit her website and follow her on X. Subscribe for free at 1984today.substack.com Visit us at 1984.today Follow us on X and Instagram This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 1984today.substack.com

    1h 53m
  7. Democracy In An Age Of Permanent Crisis

    JAN 18

    Democracy In An Age Of Permanent Crisis

    “Authoritarianism today is cleverer; it doesn’t only rule by fear.” From manipulated statistics to collapsing trust in experts and institutions, what happens when people simply stop believing what they’re told? Amid multicultural tensions and identity politics, do efforts to “protect democracy” risk hollowing out its liberal core? Are our systems bending, breaking, or being quietly re‑engineered? In this episode, Professor Richard Youngs of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace shares his thoughts on whether liberal democracy is slipping into something darker and more dystopian. “Democratic backsliding” in the US and Europe, the rise of “in‑between” regimes, a push to regulate speech and encryption that looks uncomfortably like authoritarian control, the fallacious assumption that opening markets in places like China and Russia would deliver accompanying political freedoms — what does the future look like for liberty? Against this backdrop, democratic and authoritarian governments alike are struggling to meet the challenges of an age of “permanent crisis”: financial shocks, migration, pandemic, war, the list goes on and on. Richard argues that what we’re really living through is a crisis of governance, in which citizens become increasingly alienated from systems barely able to hold their societies together. Can democracy survive as a broad, raucous, messy endeavour that embraces the mutable mood of the multitude? Or will it be sanitised, even strangled, by the very people claiming to defend it? You can follow Richard on X. Subscribe for free at 1984today.substack.com Visit us at 1984.today Follow us on X and Instagram This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 1984today.substack.com

    1h 28m
  8. The World Turned Upside Down: England's Puritan Dystopia

    JAN 4

    The World Turned Upside Down: England's Puritan Dystopia

    Hide your mince pies! Our first-ever Christmas Special is about when Christmas was outlawed in England. I’m joined by historian Dr. Fiona McCall to explore one of England’s weirdest experiments in governance: the Interregnum. Between the execution of Charles I in 1649 and the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, England abolished kingship, dismantled the Church hierarchy, censored culture, banned Christmas, and attempted to remake society along rigid moral and religious lines. What began as a revolutionary push toward a “better” society quickly revealed the all-too-familiar contours of a dystopia: surveillance, neighbour reporting on neighbour, draconian laws governing private life, and the violent policing of belief. Drawing on first-hand accounts from people who were there, Dr. McCall brings the 17th century to life, showing how ordinary people navigated civil war, censorship, puritanical rule, and the terrifying collapse of the line between sin and crime. Our conversation found unsettling parallels between England’s past and present regimes in their attempts to legislate morality, a stark reminder of how fragile social freedoms can be. You can find Dr. McCall’s books on Amazon: Church and People in Interregnum Britain and Baal’s Priests: The Loyalist Clergy and the English Revolution Subscribe for free at 1984today.substack.com Visit us at 1984.today Follow us on X and Instagram This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 1984today.substack.com

    1h 36m
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Ratings & Reviews

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About

An exploration of dystopian trends in society, featuring a range of guests, hosted by Mike Freedman. 1984today.substack.com

Information

  • Creator
    Mike Freedman
  • Years Active
    2023 - 2026
  • Episodes
    65
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Day 600 Limited
  • Show Website
    1984 Today!

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