INFLUENCE

Feeling dismayed by U.S. politics in 2018, J.D. Boehninger (pen name) got advice from a friend who was writing self-published monster fiction for the Amazon Kindle. Many authors were making a good living writing paranormal stories, erotica, and things about Donald Trump. So Boehninger decided to combine all three.

The result was "Melania: Devourer of Men," an erotic tale about the first lady who was secretly a killer vampire from Filipino folklore. The book debuted. A few friends left reviews on Amazon. And then...nothing.

Eight years later, the book suddenly popped into the Internet's crosshairs after Amazon gave Melania $40 million to produce a documentary about her life - a pile of money that smells suspicious to say the least.

As a small gesture of protest, a subreddit called r/Boycott UnitedStates got wind of the book, and hatched a plan: What if all Amazon searches for "Melania" lead to the satirical monster book INSTEAD of the documentary?

J.D. Boehninger joins Matt to discuss the online machinations that sent his 8-year-old book to the top of the Amazon charts.

Disclosure: I have verified Mr. Boehninger's identity and authorship and am anonymizing his face and voice for this interview.

This show is made possible by listener support: https://www.patreon.com/influencepod

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By day, Amber Ivey uses big data to inform governmental policy decisions. Back in 2020, she was invited to tinker with a new tool from a young startup called OpenAI - two years before the public had ever heard the phrase "ChatGPT."

She knew right away that the LLM would have huge ramifications for the way we relate to the Internet, and that kids would be particularly enraptured by it.

She wrote a children's book about it, and her access to experts on the topic lead her to the next project: A podcast for kids and families about AI literacy - the risks, the potential, and the how we reckon with a digital world where nothing is what it seems.

This week, Amber and Matt sit down to discuss what kids really understand when interacting with generative models,

Listen to "AI for Kids" wherever you get podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ai-for-kids/id1745917083

Connect with Amber and follow her work: https://www.ambermivey.com/

This show is made possible by listener support: https://www.patreon.com/influencepod

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Brian Hull unlocked his super power at a young age. Mimicking the voices of the world's most recognizable cartoon characters earned him lots of social cred on the schoolyard.

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Like many of us, the urban planning strategy game "SimCity" was an obsession for Diana Regan growing up. When she published YouTube videos about a modern incarnation -- "Cities: Skylines" and its sequel -- she grew a loyal audience around the games.

But she was more interested in using these sims for social commentary about urban design, capitalism, politics, and absurdist online culture. One problem: Her audience HATED it. That is until one of her TikToks about corporate cities went viral and inspired her to return to YouTube to expand the work into robust video essays.

These days, Diana works full time as a video creator, covering a wide range of topics and painting with all sorts of surrealist brushes: video games, travel videos, memes, archival footage, and AI-generated voices of historical figures saying the darndest things.

Diana sits down with Matt to discuss her singular creative style and how she overcame the limitations of social video platforms that only reward you for doing the same things over and over.

Subscribe to Cities By Diana:

https://www.youtube.com/@CitiesByDiana

https://www.instagram.com/citiesbydiana/

https://www.tiktok.com/@citiesbydiana

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Greetings! I am couch/bed-ridden as my entire family recovers from Covid-19 (the BEST Covid!) While I waste away, I think you'll enjoy this episode from my other podcast.

- Original Show Notes | August 15, 2025 -

https://haveenteredthechat.com/episodes/215-luke-plunkett-games-journalism-aftermath

If you've read a video game article on the Internet in the last two decades, chances are it was written by Luke Plunkett. His tenure at Kotaku spanned 17 years, and all the highs and lows of the digital media rollercoaster.

When the bottom eventually fell out, he and other games media refugees co-founded Aftermath, a worker-owned video game news and commentary site, whose business model eschews advertising, SEO, and clickbait in favor of — get this — reader subscriptions!

Luke joins us to discuss the evolution of games media, getting paid $10 to post pictures of cake on Kotaku in 2006, living on the opposite side of the world from his co-workers, and why we are entering a new and (hopefully) more sustainable era for online journalism.

Connect with Luke:

https://www.lukeplunkett.com/

https://aftermath.site/

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Depending on what state or country you live in, logging into Instagram, Reddit, or (dare we say) Corn Hub might prompt you to submit a government ID to proceed. This fresh privacy nightmare is thanks to a variety of "online safety" laws going into effect, or being upheld by courts. They are aimed at protecting minors from accessing harmful content online -- a laudable goal. But requiring all users to submit their face and address to tech companies comes with a host of privacy issues and pressures on free speech.

To explain what's going on, who might be affected, and what happens next, Matt sits down with Laura Riposo VanDruff, a partner at the law firm Kelley Drye & Warren who has spent much of her career focused on tech, privacy, cybersecurity, and AI litigation, and a decade of work at the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, which is often the de facto government body that regulates these kinds of digital issues.

Connect with Laura and her work:

https://www.kelleydrye.com/people/laura-riposo-vandruff

https://www.linkedin.com/in/laura-riposo-vandruff-1598b921/

Shout out to our Producer Tier Patreon supporters!

BowieBarks

Dominick Kerr

Evan

Jolene Jula

Robert Tortorelli

Sam

William

News items discussed in this episode:

https://www.npr.org/2025/08/14/nx-s1-5482925/scotus-netchoice

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/08/no-uks-online-safety-act-doesnt-make-children-safer-online

This show is made possible by listener support: https://www.patreon.com/influencepod

Listen & subscribe wherever you get podcasts:

🍎 https://apple.co/44FeACS

🟢 https://spoti.fi/3UGQjrN

⏯ https://amzn.to/3wCdueF

Join our Discord community! https://discord.gg/influencepod

Call the show and leave a message: (347)-871-6548

Email me with guest & trivia suggestions! [email protected] (NOICE)

Follow me:

🦋 https://bsky.app/profile/mattsilverman.bsky.social

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Hey friends! I'm bringing an important conversation over from my other feed, as this story has huge ramifications for protected speech, the LGBTQ+ community, and how powerful companies can change what's allowed on the Internet. While certainly alarming, this conversation (and what has transpired since) has made me hopeful.

- Original Show Notes from July 25, 2025 -

Hundreds of NSFW games were removed from Steam last week after Valve quietly changed some policies around adult content. But journalists realized it was actually the payment processors — Visa and Mastercard — who refused to complete transactions around certain kinds of porn.

Digging deeper, it was revealed that a small Australian conservative activism group was taking a victory lap around Steam's porn purge, all in the name of "protecting children" from "harmful content." And they are targeting Itch.io next, which has already de-indexed many adult games.

So how did a tiny group of pearl-clutchers convince two multi-national banking conglomerates to censor the world's largest video game marketplace?

Games journalist Ana Valens attempted to answer this with two reported articles on Vice's gaming site Waypoint. But those articles were taken down by Vice's corporate owners, prompting Ana (and many of her colleagues) to immediately quit.

This week, Ana joins Matt to discuss this legally and ethically complex issue, why banks can now decide what art we're allowed to see on the Internet, the pressing threat for the LGBTQ+ community, and what we can (actually) do about it.

If this conversation inspired you to take action, please discuss it in our Discord, check out the links below, and follow Ana's work:

Both archived articles: https://archive.ph/USxe6 + https://archive.ph/x5cGQ

https://yellat.money/

Follow Ana on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/acvalens.net

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In August 2005, YouTube was a 6-month-old beta test, the iPhone was still years away, putting music on your iPod required a cable, and MuggleNet was *the* destination for news and conversation about Harry Potter. The books and movies were still coming out, and online fandom was taking shape in novel ways.

One of which was a “podcast” — it’s like a radio show, but you download it from the Internet and listen on your computer, burn it to a CD for the car, or dare we say load it onto your portable music player. Very few existed, but the excitement for them among niche communities was palpable. At the suggestion of a MuggleNet staffer/volunteer, MuggleCast was born. The show began as news segments about the books and movies: casting, release dates, trailers, and more. But its extremely likeable and relatable hosts (some of whom were teenagers at the time) quickly built a thriving fan community unto themselves. The show became a forum for granular, chapter-by-chapter literary criticism of the books, and lively discussion of their wider cultural impact. MuggleCast is about to celebrate its 20th anniversary, making it one of the longest-running podcasts ever (mere months behind the medium’s earliest adopters like Leo Laporte and “This Week In Tech).

Eric and Micah, two of MuggleCast’s four current hosts, join Matt to discuss their entry into the HP fandom, podcast production in the days of dial-up, that time Steve Jobs mentioned the show on stage, their commitment to inclusivity, reckoning with JK Rowling’s transphobic views, and why we need the anti-fascist themes of Harry Potter (and other fantasy fiction) more than ever.

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I'm taking the week off, but hope you'll check out my new improv comedy podcast for kids and families!

Listen to the first episode here, share it with the kids in your life, and subscribe wherever you get your favorite podcasts:

https://www.talesfromthecloudsea.com/

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