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Be...

You're listening to serious inquiries only. The Hello and welcome to Serious Inquiries only this is episode of 138. I'm your host Thomas Smith.

Today I'm speaking with B.J. Mendelssohn about online privacy, data, all kinds of cool stuff

and also he's got just a really interesting story. He went

viral in 1998. Didn't even know that was possible but he's gonna tell us

about that. He also quickly amassed 1 million Twitter followers for a weird reason which you'll

find out but also it wasn't really quite what you would expect on top of that he's also got some interesting

inside into the darker side of some Silicon Valley origin stories. Seems like

there's potentially a lot of whitewashing that goes on in the in the stories these companies tell about themselves.

So lots to talk about that of course we also got to talk privacy, Cambridge, Analytica, that kind of thing.

With those teasers aside though, I want to tell you about something very important.

I will be speaking to NOSHA, that's the New Orleans Secular Humanist Association,

and that's going to be on May 19th, coming right up.

So if you're anywhere near the New Orleans area, please come out and see me or email me or something if you want to find out more but you can go to nosha n o s-h-h-h-a-

dot info and that has more details if you're anywhere near that area I'd love to see you I'm going to be giving a very what I think is a very interesting talk and I'm super excited so that's

no-sha dot info n-sha dot, please check it out if you're anywhere near.

All right, with that said, let's get over to my conversation with B.J Mend How you doing? I'm well. I'm fighting a cold, so if you hear me sniff or sniff a little bit, you'll know what that's from. But otherwise I'm great. That's podcasting for you. It's like half the time.

Well, you've got a book that I think right around this time after, you know, in the wake of Cambridge Analytica and just,

...