01 // Currently in production
An audio-only essay podcast from the frontier of digital culture. Written, recorded and edited by me since 2018.
permanentlymoved.online
A long-running audio essay show about digital culture, internet culture, and the changing shape of the web.
The show explores internet culture, artificial intelligence, worldrunning, and the shifting tides of social media — life lived online in the shadow of the stack, and what all of that does to the way we live and think.
Regularly in the iTunes Top 100 personal journal charts in countries around the world, and once at number one.
02 // Two eras of the show
One show, two very different shapes. The first run was a stopwatch; the second takes its time.
Exactly 301 Seconds
For its first run, Permanently Moved was a weekly essay show exactly 301 seconds long. Five minutes and one second, every week, for three hundred and one episodes.
Any given episode might explore an aspect of the internet and how it changes us; stories about long-dead saints and why they matter; or the existence of a wild crisp conspiracy in the heart of UK supermarkets.
Tightly scripted, yet nakedly transparent about the creative process. A small, sharp thing you could finish before the kettle boiled.
The Long Way Round
The show has changed pace and scale. It is now a quarterly release: longer-form, and more willing to take the long way round.
Episodes are still tightly written, but with more space for detours, context, and the odd obsession to fully unfold.
Each new episode arrives alongside Start Select Reset, its print companion — an essay in the post four times a year, with an introduction and afterword that don’t exist in the audio.
03 // In the charts
A small independent audio essay show, surprisingly well travelled.
In January 2020 Permanently Moved broke into the iTunes UK Top 50 Personal Journal podcasts chart for the first time; only 43 places behind 301’s bête noire Desert Island Discs.
It has since appeared in the Top 50 podcast charts in countries including Brazil, South Africa, and Sweden. In January 2023 it reached #1 in Personal Journals in Iceland — a small but very pleasing moment for an independent audio essay podcast.
04 // Newest episode
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EPISODE #303INTERNET OPERATOR
Social media as theatre: a long-form audio essay about puppets, profiles, avatars, AI, and how identity is animated online.
05 // Every episode
The full archive, newest first. More than three hundred episodes since 2018.
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EPISODE #302
Monsters In The Mirror
What are large language models, really? On AI, Language, and the new entities that wear language as their skin.
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EPISODE #2601
Pre-Flight: The New Container
I’m emerging from a chrysalis. Six months since I finished 301, and closed the loop on the biggest creative project of my life.
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EPISODE #2520
Episode 301
Begun at age 32, completed today, the day after I turned 40: one fifth of a lifetime distilled into a body of work.
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EPISODE #2519
Landing Sequence
This show represents an enormous amount of effort and discipline. Sustaining any single format for eight years is achievement enough for me.
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EPISODE #2518
King of Mind | 2518
The glowing screen does not possess the king of mind. You merely have rehearsed the reflex of the infinite scroll.
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EPISODE #2517
It’s Beginning to Feel a Bit Like The Future | 2517
We must attempt to reclaim some proximity to the future. We have to stop strip-mining yesterday and act as though the future is already…
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EPISODE #2515
No-Go London | 2515
Over the last few months I’ve been having a conversation with someone about why, exactly, “London is over/a bleak woke dystopia”
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EPISODE #2514
More Distant Than Ever | 2514
Growing up in Britain in the 1990s, America felt like a country that existed only on television and in toy boxes. A place across…
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EPISODE #2513
GPT Job Losses: Slowly, Then Suddenly | 2513
AI boosters on LinkedIn will have you belive AI will be taking everyone’s job tomorrow, but the anti-AI voices however still say never.
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EPISODE #2512
Overdosed on AI Music | 2512
This week, I stood at the Slop Machine, experiencing not the future, but the extreme present. All day, every day, I’ve been listening to…
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EPISODE #2511
Be Generous Online | 2511
Generosity is the protocol that transforms the web from a collection of isolated ‘contents’ into a thriving, interconnected community.
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EPISODE #2510
The Work Of The Body, Though Toil | 2510
Amidst the day-to-day rhythms of the body, The Artist must pay attention to the humble thoughts that might become great actions.
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EPISODE #2509
Surface Without Substance | 2509
With its smooth, depthless glass, the smartphone is the ultimate surface. It denies the body its place in the interface.
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EPISODE #2508
Leaving Worlds Behind | 2508
To run a world is to be responsible for its edges as much as its centre.
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EPISODE #2507
Practice Makes Progress | 2507
Another reflection in my long running ‘Artist’ series, on why the journey matters more than the destination. Creation begets creation. Practice makes progress.
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EPISODE #2506
Information Age Iconoclasm | 2506
The Ghibli image crisis isn’t really about copyright or ethics. It’s about who gets to make images? and what gives them meaning.
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EPISODE #2505
Helpful LLocal Models | 2505
Tutorial engines are coming. And they’ll run atop local AI models embedded in our devices at the OS level..
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EPISODE #2504
Human Gunk and the AI Slopocalypse | 2504
If you find it hard to distinguish between content slop written by AI or content written by a human, don’t worry.
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EPISODE #2503
Desktop Publishing | 2503
I can’t remember the last time I heard anyone seriously use the phrase ‘Desktop Publishing.’ Maybe the mid-2000s?
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EPISODE #2502
Email is a Destination | 2502
In primary school, we had a lesson in the new computer lab which involved sending an email to each other at adjacent desks.
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EPISODE #2501
Survive Until 2025 | 2501
Survive Until 2025. 2024 is leaning over into this year in a way that makes everything feel very precarious.
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EPISODE #2430
EOY 2024 | 2430
Permanently Moved will be evolving next year. 301, 301 second long episodes, is enough.
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EPISODE #2429
The Processing of Words | 2429
In 1984, author Ray Hammond reminded readers that ‘the computer has no power to write words.’
