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 #2320Stale Yesterdays | 2320
It is a choice to carry stale yesterdays into tomorrow. Shed the flotsam and idle chatter from the surface of the mind.
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EPISODE #2319Update Interlude | 2319
Looking through my scripts for 2023, I realise I haven’t made a general update show since February. So let’s do that.
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EPISODE #2318Tears of the Kingdom | 2318
I fully expect to see Succession get more words published about it in online media outlets in the coming weeks than the new Zelda…
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EPISODE #2317Dial M for Metaverse | 2317
Both Choose Your Own Adventure gamebooks & phone tree menu systems are progeny of the explosion of creativity that happened after D&D arrived
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EPISODE #2316Machine Touch | 2316
We must try to cultivate a better sense of somatic awareness of the tools in our lives and give names to the things we…
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EPISODE #2315Embrace Cadence, Find Rhythm | 2315
The artist has made sanctuary upon their little Isle, found stable ground. Now they plant a garden. For it is there the work can…
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EPISODE #2314Speed of Thought | 2314
For me now, at this point in my life, writing and thinking are co-continuous. I type between 55-60 words per minute – the speed…
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EPISODE #2313Lore as Lens | 2313
The growing importance of lore reflects the rise of a new kind cultural sense-making and social technology.
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EPISODE #2312Tools for Thinking | 2312
A friend asked me the other day “What tools do you use for thinking?” I replied… “My Brain????”. Apparently this was the wrong answer.
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EPISODE #2311How to Listen to a Podcast | 2311
Sometimes between the host, the guest and the listener, no one is actually listening to anybody, so you might as well not be listening…
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EPISODE #2310There Will Be Crisis | 2310
From nowhere north winds may howl. Waves may rise with such fury that they may come to threaten the artist’s craft. There will be…
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EPISODE #2309Sunset on an Empire: Left, Right, Capital, and the Fash | 2309
Many members of Britain’s elite have spent every single day of their lives – from public school to parliament – amid the decaying ruins…
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ShowMUDs to Metaverse: The Unreal Estate Deal | 2308
Costly virtual land in the metaverse today is a result of memory constraints on mainframes. A solution to a problem that no longer exists.
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EPISODE #2307What a Difference A(I) Week Makes | 2307
In less than 6 weeks we’ve gone from ‘OpenAI’s chatbot is weird but interesting’ to ‘Google is doomed because they’re not shipping AI search…
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EPISODE #2306Four Blocks of Ten | 2306
The year ahead is no longer one long road with 50 or so weekly stops along the way to the Christmas horizon.
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EPISODE #2305Not Only in the Now | 2305
The artist should not concern themselves with the effervescent present of social media. The artist lives for deeper time & even deeper links.
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EPISODE #2304It’s Just a Hobby | 2304
Have you ever met someone who’s like really into musical theatre and it’s the most important thing in the world to them? Twitter people…
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EPISODE #2303Good Taste Online | 2303
Given the affordances of different social media platforms. How does one demonstrate taste in the digital realm?
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EPISODE #2302Geocity and the City | 2302
This episode is about what happens when the metaphors we use change. But mostly it’s about Geocities.
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EPISODE #2301Lost in the Woods | 2301
After 10 years of meditation, I’ve concluded it’s not an act of self care. It’s an act of colossal self indulgence.
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EPISODE #2245EOY 2022 | 2245
Alright then that’s it for 2022. 45 episodes, 3 3/4 hours audio read from approximately 42k words of script.
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EPISODE #2244Step Away From Noise | 2244
Perhaps things that are meaning-less can be made meaning-full by stepping away from them?
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EPISODE #2243What the Hell Is Going On? | 2243
Steady state capitalist realism and cultural fracking has got so bad they are rebooting the damn moon landings.
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EPISODE #2242Goncharov’s New Dabloons | 2242
It’s not the truth of a cultural object that matters. But the collective truth that arises from consensus of interpretation.