Social Sleuth

"Fight the oligarchs, fund our future." Online culture, grassroots organizing, and provincial politics collide in this episode of Social Sleuth. I sit down with Emily Lowan, leader of the BC Green Party, to talk about her leadership campaign, the evolution of internet culture, and what happens when online energy meets the realities of the democratic process. Emily walks us through the challenges o...

"Join us in embracing that 2016 is SO BACK!" What happens when internet culture collides with Gen X motherly instinct? In this episode of Social Sleuth, the internet culture podcast, Kenny brings mom back for a belated Mother's Day deep dive into everything that's changed — and everything that hasn't — on the world wide web. We sit down with Kenny's mom: a Gen X internet user whose online experien...

The psychedelic renaissance has a PR problem, or rather, it has a capitalism problem. In this episode of Social Sleuth, we sit down with Jamie Brownlee and Kevin Walby, authors of Psychedelic Capitalism, for a critical look at how big money is reshaping, and arguably distorting, the psychedelic space. Jamie and Kevin unpack the corporate takeover of psychedelics: the push for medicalization, the e...

Data isn't just something that gets collected about us, it’s something we can use. In this episode of Social Sleuth, we're joined by two of the four authors of Mobilizing Data for Justice: A Guide to Activism in the Digital Age, Chris Hurl and Kevin Walby, for a conversation about how social movements are using data, digital tools, and techniques like visceralization to fight for justice and build...

Online extremism didn't emerge from nowhere, and it isn't staying in its lane. In this episode of Social Sleuth, we talk with Dr. Edwin Hodge, adjunct professor in Sociology at the University of Victoria, about how once-underground networks have gone global, the realities of moderating online spaces, and the lasting influence of conspiracy theories like QAnon. Edwin breaks down Gamergate as a key...

Rhetoric isn't just a political tool, it’s the infrastructure of everything we read, share, and believe online. In this episode of Social Sleuth, we sit down with Dr. Loren Gaudet, Assistant Professor at the University of Victoria, whose research spans the rhetoric of health and medicine, science, and technology. We explore how meaning gets made in digital spaces: how health and wellness content g...

What does it actually take to walk away from corporate media and build something independent? In this episode of Social Sleuth, we sit down with Ryan Jespersen, host of Real Talk, to unpack his move from the institutional media world to independent podcasting, and what he's learned on the other side. We dig into cancel culture, not the reflexive discourse around it, but what it actually looks like...

Not every conversation about internet culture has to be a warning. In this episode of Social Sleuth, we take a more reflective turn with Andy Sahlstrom, interactive technology engineer, inventor, and kinetic artist, who brings a genuinely personal lens to what the digital landscape does to us, and for us. We talk through Andy's evolving project Shampoooty, how nostalgia functions in an age of infi...

AI is inescapable online right now, the debates, the discourse, the grievances. But this episode of Social Sleuth takes a different angle: instead of tallying up critiques, we sit down with Eli James, an artist hesitant of generative AI, to explore the emotional and personal dimensions of what it actually means to make things. We get into the philosophical questions that tend to get flattened in t...

The climate crisis is everywhere online, in the campaigns, the greenwashing ads, the clicktivism invites. And yet something about the way we talk about it on the internet keeps us spinning. In this episode of Social Sleuth, we talk with Dr. William K. Carroll about ecocide: what it is, how fossil capitalism got us here, and why the systems driving the crisis can't be the ones to fix it. Bill recen...

We're in a strange moment with Big Tech. The pushback is growing, the frustration is real, but so is our own complicity. In this episode of Social Sleuth, we sit down with Lina Maria Clevenger to navigate what can only be described as the next stage of digital bureaucracy. Lina helps unpack what techno intolerance actually looks like in practice: when resistance to technology becomes meaningful an...

Surveillance isn't something that happens to other people, it’s the background condition of digital life. In this episode of Social Sleuth, we return to the topic that started it all, with one of the academics who first got me thinking about it: Dr. Midori Ogasawara. Midori's work sits at the intersection of surveillance studies, digital culture, and power, and she doesn't soften the picture. We t...

BookTok is one of the most powerful literary communities on the internet right now, and most people have no idea how it actually works. In this episode of Social Sleuth, we talk with Sydney, the creator behind Bloody Brilliant Books, who gives us a full inside look at the BookTok ecosystem on TikTok. We get into how short-form video is reshaping the publishing industry, the genuine benefits for bo...

A different kind of Social Sleuth episode. In this one, we explore the internet the way most people actually experience it, not through research papers or academic frameworks, but through lived experience, parenting instincts, and a healthy amount of confusion. My mom joins the pod for a conversation that takes many side quests: growing up before the internet, surveillance, wellness culture online...

Misinformation isn't new, but it's never been this fast, this personalized, or this hard to escape. In this episode of Social Sleuth, we talk with Matthew Facciani, a social scientist at the University of Notre Dame whose research focuses on information systems, media literacy, and how people interact with AI. Matthew brings a rare thing to this conversation: not just analysis of the problem, but...

Memes as surveillance. Algorithms as gatekeepers. The internet as a place no one fully understands, including the people building it. In this episode of Social Sleuth, we sit down with Aidan Walker: writer, content creator, internet culture researcher, and someone who has literally published dissertations on memes. We go deep on how memes have evolved from punchlines into a form of cultural shorth...

What does a meme actually mean, and who decides? In this inaugural episode of Social Sleuth, the internet culture podcast, we crack open the complexity of memes with Marnus: a long-time friend, self-proclaimed chronically online person, and fellow deep diver into the weird corners of the web. We dig into how memes function as language, as protest, as absurdism, and what it means that two people wh...