Artifacts: Stories from the Emotional History of the Internet

Enjoying the show? Support it here.What did it feel like to discover an entire world inside a CD-ROM? A time before Google, Wikipedia, and instant answers, when there was a different way to explore knowledge.CD-ROM encyclopedias like Microsoft Encarta turned the family computer into a doorway to somewhere much bigger. You could look up the Roman Empire, discover dinosaurs, explore a map, watch a video, and somehow end up learning about something you never intended to find.In this episode of

Enjoying the show? Support it here.Before status updates, before social media profiles, and before we carried the internet in our pockets, there were away messages.A few lines of text attached to a screen name.And somehow, they mattered.In Episode 4 of Artifacts, Danny Brown explores how AIM away messages became one of the earliest forms of online self-expression. From song lyrics and inside jokes to cryptic messages aimed at one specific person, away messages gave people a small but meaningful way

Enjoying the show? Support it here.Before streaming playlists, there were burned CDs.Carefully curated collections of songs, handwritten track lists, homemade cover art, and hours spent deciding exactly what came next.In Episode 3 of Artifacts, Danny Brown explores why burned CDs became so much more than a way to listen to music. They were expressions of identity, creativity, friendship, and sometimes even love.From Napster downloads and LimeWire mishaps to the emotional labour of creating the

Enjoying the show? Support it here.Before social media feeds, algorithms, and endless scrolling, the internet felt different.Smaller.Messier.More personal.In Episode 2 of Artifacts, Danny Brown explores the strange emotional connection people still have to old internet forums - from recognizable usernames and chaotic communities to forum signatures, inside jokes, and the feeling of belonging to tiny digital neighbourhoods.Why did these spaces feel so human?And what did we lose when the internet

Enjoying the show? Support it here.The Dreamcast failed. At least, that’s the official version of the story.Released on 9/9/99, Sega’s final console lasted only a few short years before disappearing from store shelves forever. But decades later, people still talk about the Dreamcast with a kind of emotional reverence usually reserved for much bigger success stories.So why does it still matter so much?In the first episode of Artifacts, Danny Brown explores how the Dreamcast became more than just a