5. The Photocopier
The Coming Storm
BBC
4.8 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 9 October 2024
⏱️ 38 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Gabriel Gatehouse is on holiday with his family when he gets an invitation to an exclusive party in New York City from a group called Praxis. The tech start-up plans to create a new sovereign state somewhere on the Mediterranean coast, part of a new tech movement called ‘the network state’. The idea is that these statelets, governed not by a giant state bureaucracy but on the blockchain, will eventually replace the nation state. Gabriel meets crypto cowboys cheering on the end of democracy and tech bros hoping to replace the dollar with meme coins. It looks like kids playing around, larping as revolutionaries. But kids playing around with memes gave rise to Pizzagate, Qanon and Jan 6…
Producer: Lucy Proctor Sound design and mix: James Beard Editor: Richard Vadon Script consultants: Richard Fenton-Smith and Afsaneh Gray Commissioning editor: Dan Clarke Original music: Pete Cunningham
CREDITS: The Network State Conference 2023 - Livestream, The Network State Podcast, Youtube JD Vance: The US is being run by 'childless cat ladies', Fox News EVERY ANGEL IS TERRIFYING, Praxis_tv, Youtube
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Before you listen to this BBC podcast I'd like to tell you why I love |
| 0:03.7 | podcasting. I'm Natasha Aronson I'm an assistant commissioner for the BBC and I work on |
| 0:09.4 | making podcasts my real passion is discovering unbelievable unheard stories and working with the biggest |
| 0:16.9 | stars who can really bring those stories to life. |
| 0:20.1 | I love the whole process of making podcasts from the spark of an idea to hearing the final edit. |
| 0:26.4 | There's nothing like it. What makes BBC Podcast special is that we're working for you. |
| 0:31.0 | So whatever we commission has to reflect the things that you care about and love wherever you are in the |
| 0:36.0 | UK. So if you like this BBC podcast, there's so much more to discover. Have a listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:43.0 | BBC sounds. BBC sounds. BBC sounds, music radio podcasts. |
| 0:47.0 | Hello, welcome back. |
| 0:49.0 | I'm Gabriel Gatehouse and this is Series 2 of The Coming Storm from BBC Radio 4. |
| 0:56.0 | Episodes will be released weekly wherever you get your podcasts. |
| 1:00.0 | But if you're in the UK, you can listen to the latest episodes first on BBC Sounds. |
| 1:05.0 | So at the end of the last episode, we were talking to Meg Connley. |
| 1:11.0 | The network states that people in Silicon Valley are becoming very excited about. |
| 1:17.0 | The woman who left the Mormon church and had got interested in this idea |
| 1:25.0 | idea that like nation states are gonna fail |
| 1:29.0 | and like their time is done |
| 1:31.0 | and network states will rise. The network state, start up nations. As it happened, |
| 1:39.6 | I've been kind of obsessed with this network state idea for a while. |
| 1:44.1 | So I'm going to say network and you say network. |
| 1:49.9 | Network. |
... |
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