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Last week, we shared the first half of Mike's interview with Barry Eisler at the Commonwealth Club of California. This week, we've got the second half of that discussion, which pivots from national security and the surveillance state to Barry's novels, his experiences publishing them, and the time he met Keanu Reeves.

Those of you who've heard our previous episodes with Barry Eisler know that he has a unique insight into many of the topics we discuss here at Techdirt, stemming from the wide variety of perspectives he's had in his past: as an operative for the CIA, as a tech industry lawyer, and now as a bestselling author (his new book, The God's Eye View, explores a plausible future inspired by the Snowden revelations). Recently, Mike conducted an interview with Barry at the Commonwealth Club of California, and on this week's podcast we've got the first half of that interview, with a fascinating discussion about the truth (and fiction) of the modern surveillance state.

The digital world is increasingly giving rise to "winner take all" industries, where a market is all but dominated by one company and, sometimes, a single smaller competitor. Since innovation is so often driven by competition and hindered by monopolies, this is a worrying trend — but its true extent, and its implications, are hardly clear. This week, we discuss various winner take all situations and what they mean for the future of innovation.

There are lots of criticisms of free trade agreements, especially the fact that they go far beyond "free trade" — but the Trans-Pacific Partnership truly takes the cake. This week, we're joined by Maira Sutton, the EFF's Global Policy Analyst, to discuss the many problems with the TPP. Tellingly, this episode is nearly twice as long as usual.

Lately, there's been a lot of talk about cooperation between the government and the technology industry in the fight against terrorism, radicalization and, specifically, ISIS. A lot of this talk consists of the hugely problematic requests we discuss here regularly, like compromising encryption and cooperating with mass surveillance — but is that all there is to it? This week, we discuss what role Silicon Valley actually could play in combating ISIS.

After a few weeks off for the holidays, we're back! And as anyone on the internet can't ignore, CES 2016 has just wrapped up. Our own Mike Masnick was there, and today he's joined by journalist and long-time CES veteran Rob Pegoraro for a post-mortem of the event and this year's crop of new products.

Welcome to the last podcast episode of 2015! For the whole year (and since long before that) Techdirt has been speaking out against surveillance and government invasion of privacy, to the point where it might seem like we give no consideration to the legitimacy of any kind of surveillance. But that's not necessarily true, so this week we're approaching things from the other side and discussing the limits of reasonable and acceptable surveillance.

There's been a lot of back-and-forth recently over Mark Zuckerberg's announcement of the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, combining widespread praise with a lot of disappointment in the details and the fact that he isn't really "giving away" $45 billion. There's a lot to be said on both sides of this question, and this week we're discussing the new initiative and the wide variety of reactions to it.

Last week, we spoke with Daphne Keller of Stanford's Center For Internet And Society about the collision between privacy and free speech in the EU. Much of this discussion involves the question of "intermediary liability" — how and when service providers are held liable for the actions of their users. This week, Daphne is back for a broader look at intermediary liability, and why it's one of the most important questions for the future of the internet.

Privacy and free speech aren't fundamentally opposed, but they do have a tendency to come into conflict — and recent developments in Europe surrounding the right to be forgotten have brought this conflict into focus. This week, we're joined by Daphne Keller of Stanford's Center For Internet And Society to discuss the collision between these two important principles.