Hello HN! In June 2018, I unveiled a fictional podcast called The Program on HackerNews [1]. You can think of The Program as a historical podcast set in a futur

Hello HN! In June 2018, I unveiled a fictional podcast called The Program on HackerNews [1]. You can think of The Program as a historical podcast set in a future in which Money, State, and God became fused into a single entity. Each episode is a self-contained story focusing on ordinary people inhabiting this extraordinary world. And for them, it is not this future that is terrifying - it is our present. The remarkable reception I’ve received on HackerNews (one person called the show "the best 3 hours of entertainment and critical thinking [he has had] in a long time") motivated me to invest even more time and energy into The Program, a labour of love for me and everyone else involved. So I have made ten episodes in total and officially launched the show two weeks ago. Five days after the release, The Program has been featured on Apple Podcasts' New & Noteworthy list in Canada. Less than 48 hours later, it topped the Canadian Fiction chart, beating out heavyweights such as Welcome to Night Vale and Gimlet’s newest fiction offering. This auspicious start owes a lot to the feedback I’ve received here (thanks to everyone who completed the survey back then!) and the general intellectual stimulation this website provides. There are full episodes that have been inspired wholly by articles HackerNews’ readers shared and discussions they provoked - in fact, some upcoming stories incorporate comments from the threads almost verbatim [2] [3]. So I wanted to share the show with you and let you decide if I’m right to believe you’ll find it interesting. You can find the first six episodes at https://programaudioseries.com https://programaudioseries.com or simply search for “the program audio series” (full title) in your podcast app. Thank you all for making HN such a precious place! If you have comments or feedback, feel free to share them here so we can continue the conversation. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17425278 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17425278 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15651510 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15651510 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20666272 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20666272