The Discourse Podcast

Richard Millington sits down to dismantle the idea that community is something you can manufacture on a deadline. We get into why belonging is the whole game, what actually goes wrong when enterprises copy-paste community playbooks, and how influencers and OnlyFans models quietly rewrote what "community" even means. Also on the table: the future of hosted platforms, AI's appetite for community dat...

What does it take to build an online community that actually lasts? In this conversation, I sit down with Hawk to talk about the evolution of digital communities - from the early days of forums to the algorithm-driven platforms we're stuck navigating today. We dig into why so many online spaces burn out, what the attention economy is doing to the way we connect, and what community builders can do...

Sam Saffron co-founded Discourse over a decade ago because he thought internet forums had stopped getting better. In this episode, he talks about what's actually changed now that AI is inside the development loop, why he thinks most teams are misusing it, and how Discourse is building AI into moderation, search, and community management without breaking what makes communities work. Joan and Sam ge...