Featured in this week’s episode:

- "Your Ultimate Home Bar Guide" and the fine art of aging coffee (not yet available online), from Imbibe

- "25 Beautiful Girls," from New Moon Girls (not yet available online)

- Women recover from sexual violence during the Rwandan genocide, from Herizons 

 Sources: Imbibe, New Moon Girls, Herizons

In 2006, Google quietly purchased Paper of Records, a digital archive of early newspapers, for its Google News Archive. Shortly after they took over management from the site’s founder Bob Huggins late last year, the archive vanished from the web.

Inside Higher Ed reports on the stir the archive’s disappearance aroused among scholars. While many were upset by the sudden interruption of their research, others raised a more troubling question—what does this incident say about the security and accessibility of resources that are controlled by a large, private company like Google?

Weighing in on the debate, Huggins observes that “there is no other entity on the planet that is Google.” He claims that it will be a hundred years before digitization projects supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities and other organizations are useful to scholars. Meanwhile, Google sits alone in its ability to efficiently manage large-scale digitization efforts.

The danger, historian John F. DeFelice comments, is that whoever controls the sources controls history. “They control the paths to access and perhaps even filter which primary sources are available and which are not. Unlike real world archives, digital sources can be manipulated, altered, edited, re-translated, falsified, adulterated, and made to disappear forever at the touch of a key.” While no one is accusing Google of manipulating electronic information in this way, the fact that it is easily within their power to do so unsettles DeFelice enough to ask, “When the originals are recycled, what will be left?”

Alt Wire is a morning digest of links and information collected and explained by a different guest blogger most weekdays. Today's guest is William Patrick Tandy, creator and editor of Smile, Hon, You're in Baltimore! (a Best Zine nominee for the 2009 Utne Independent Press Awards ).  We asked him for five links and here's what he came up with. 

Baltimore has never done a particularly good job marketing itself.  The Powers That Be in the nation’s 20^th largest metropolitan area strive for that “big city” recognition among out-of-towners who are otherwise abandoned to negotiate for themselves the gap between John Waters and David Simon – each of whom, like the world’s religions, might possess kernels of the truth, though never its entirety.  The following subjects – lesser known beyond the city limits – are a mere sampling of the scuffed heritage and earthy character that still captivate me, a Jersey boy, nearly 10 years after my arrival…

A. Aubrey Bodine: From 1920 until his death in 1970, legendary Baltimore Sun photographer A. Aubrey Bodine documented life in Baltimore and across Maryland in the pictorialist style while simultaneously exhibiting his work and winning competitions the world over.  Today, Bodine’s daughter, Jennifer, maintains an extensive, ever-growing online database of his work, offering reproductions for sale.

The Johnny Eck Museum: Billed as the “Half-Man”, Baltimore native son Johnny Eck made a name for himself early in life through appearances on the sideshow circuit and, most notably, in director Tod Browning’s 1931 classic Freaks.  In later years, Eck became a renowned painter of window screens, a common practice in his East Baltimore neighborhood since the early 1900s.

Baltimore John Watch: Outraged by the area’s illicit sex trade (and attendant criminal activity), a handful of bold (and tech-savvy) residents of Baltimore’s Pigtown neighborhood launched Baltimore John Watch in 2008.  Contributors document the often brazen activities (which frequently go down – no pun intended – within feet of the elementary school, during school hours), going so far as to post photographs of the perpetrators, their vehicles and plate numbers.

Killduffs.com: Curator Thomas Paul maintains this online repository devoted primarily to collecting the histories and images of old movie houses in Baltimore and across Maryland, most of which have been razed, long ago converted for alternative use or simply left to rot.  Paul’s brother, Adam, operates the equally engrossing Baltimore Ghosts: Unsung Monuments of the Monumental City, which delves even further into such esoteric history as streetcars, advertising, railroad lines, streetlights and more.

Baltimore Crime Beat: In his nearly 20 years with The Baltimore Sun, veteran crime reporter Peter Hermann has run the journalistic gamut from covering the city’s police department to serving as the Sun’s Middle East correspondent.  At a time when the Fourth Estate more closely resembles the House of Usher, Hermann’s knowing which questions to ask (and of whom) as well as his insight and good old-fashioned legwork render this daily blog an indispensable portal into the city’s criminal element, its victims and the men and women of law enforcement who stand between them.

Guns and Potato Chips: Former bounty hunter Michael Papantonakis stands accused of selling guns over the counter at the Utz potato chip stall where he has worked since his old man bought the place 39 years ago.  “I love the Utz stand down there!” a friend of mine (and former employee in the Mayor’s Office) said in disbelief when I brought the story to her attention.  “Indeed,” I replied, “and according to the charging documents, so do the Bloods, the Crips and the Angels.”  Smile, hon, you’re in Baltimore!

Bio: William Patrick Tandy began publishing Smile, Hon, You’re in Baltimore! under his Eight-Stone Press imprint shortly after fleeing the Garden State for less-oppressive climes in 2000.  From the harbor to the hills, the submission-based Smile, Hon collects the tales of those on whom Mobtown has left her indelible mark: polished, professional essays; barroom sermons delivered from the sanctity of a favorite stool, the poet’s fleeting sentiment captured in both word and snapshot – a slice of Baltimore as told by Baltimore, all presented with the time-honored, DIY accessibility of a limited-run, handcrafted zine.  Learn more at http://www.eightstonepress.com.

Previous Alt Wire Guests:   Alycia Sellie, Davy Rothbart, Roger White, Dan Sinker, Phil Yu, Matt Novak,  Jason Marsh, David LaBounty, Jen Angel, Will Braun, Regan Hofmann, Josh Breitbart, Andrew Lam,  Jessica Valenti, Jessica Hoffmann, Noah Scalin, Rinku Sen, Paddy Johnson, Melissa Mcewan,  Fatemeh Fakhraie , Joe Biel, Anne Elizabeth Moore 

Image by Davida Gypsy Breier.

Video by the delightful and competent  Chuck Olsen  of  MN Stories  and  The Uptake .

Alt Wire is a morning digest of links and information collected and explained by a different guest blogger every weekday. Today's guest is zine librarian Alycia Sellie. We asked her for five links and here's what she came up with. 

Zine World:  Zine World is the most well-known print source for reviews and information about zines, and it's web presence is formidable as well with a comprehensive list of links for everything from postal rates, upcoming events and zine news.

Queer Zine Archive Project: QZAP is a free digital zine archive that strives to "preserve queer zines and make them available to other queers, researchers, historians, punks, and anyone else who has an interest DIY publishing and underground queer communities." This site is beautifully designed, perpetually growing with new titles, extremely inspiring, and an amazing historical record.

Zine Wiki: The amazing thing about Zine Wiki is that the phlethora of information about zines already there is just a start; the fantastic thing is that anyone can add and edit (meta)data about their zine, or add themselves to the extensive list of zinesters!

We Make Zines Ning: For more meta and social networking (when your stapling arm gets too tired), the We Make Zines Ning is a place (that isn't those other sites that we all know too well) to promote your zine, find out about zine events and even friend your local zine librarian.

Nobody Cares about your Stupid Zine Podcast: Here's a new zine project for your ears, ipods and RSS readers: Alex Wrekk (of Stolen Sharpie Revolution) and Mark Parker (Independent Publishing Resource Center librarian and creator of zinethug.com) team together to interview zinesters far and wide, and I am looking forward to the next installment!

Bio: Alycia Sellie is an academic art librarian living in Bed Stuy, Brooklyn. After participating in the first ever Zine Librarians (un)Conference in Seattle, Washington, she is busy planning the NYC Zine Fest to be held at the Brooklyn Lyceum in June 2009, and can be reached at http://alycia.brokenja.ws/.

Previous Alt Wire Guests:   Davy Rothbart, Roger White, Dan Sinker, Phil Yu, Matt Novak,  Jason Marsh, David LaBounty, Jen Angel, Will Braun, Regan Hofmann, Josh Breitbart, Andrew Lam,  Jessica Valenti, Jessica Hoffmann, Noah Scalin, Rinku Sen, Paddy Johnson, Melissa Mcewan,  Fatemeh Fakhraie , Joe Biel, Anne Elizabeth Moore 

In the May issue of The Walrus, Don Gillmor explores the continuing rise of the world’s thriving (or is it throbbing?) center of romance: Harlequin Enterprises, which has shipped more than five and a half billion bodice-rippers during its 60-year tenure.

The piece is a great read, filled with lots of interesting analysis and history—in the 1970s, a new president zeroed in on the romance-novel audience and went to hilarious lengths to get Harlequin novels into women’s hands—and, ultimately, it seems that the company has succeeded because of its adherence to its own tried-and-true formula. Gillmor describes “editorial guidelines for each series that lay out the theme, the profiles of the hero and heroine, the acceptable amount of sex, and the number of words.”

The specs for the Desire series describe the hero as powerful and wealthy, “an alpha male with a sense of arrogance and entitlement. While he may be harsh and direct, he is never physically cruel.” The heroine, on the other hand, is “complex and flawed. She is strong-willed and smart though capable of making terrible mistakes when it comes to matters of the heart.” Other series are described as being “grounded in reality” or “heartwarming” or “what it means to be American,” or focus on “breathtakingly charismatic alpha-heroes who are tamed by spirited independent heroines.”

Gillmor also takes a brave trip to a Harlequin cover audition—the publisher “shoots 120 covers a month,” he writes—to take in an array of firefighters, carefully managed body hair, and Fabio-esque manes. (Check out the Walrus' highly entertaining gallery of Harlequin cover images.)

Source: The Walrus

Images courtesy of The Walrus, a 2009 Utne Independent Press Award nominee for best writing.

“In America today, there are almost as many people making their living as bloggers as there are lawyers,” begins Mark Penn’s dubious article for the Wall Street Journal, which suggests that nearly 2 million bloggers make money from their work, and for nearly half a million, it is their primary source of income.

Over at Virginia Quarterly Review, Waldo Jaquith takes issue with Penn’s sources as well as his math: “The mind reels at how an apparently-bright guy could write such a fundamentally inaccurate article and get it published in a major U.S. daily.”

Jaquith reports that Penn gleaned his “almost 2 million” paid bloggers from the website blogwordexpo.com, which promotes a blogger conference and thus has a vested interest in building the blogging hype. Yet, even their claim is muted compared to Penn’s.

“1.7 million American adults list making money as one of the reasons they blog,” the website states.

“That’s not to say that they make money,” Jaquith points out, “just that they want to make money. Many people write novels because they want to be rich, but that doesn’t mean that all aspiring novelists are wealthy. So we can see that claim—one of the pillars of Penn’s article—is totally invented.”

Source: Virginia Quarterly Review, Wall Street Journal

  Image by Brett L, licensed under Creative Commons

Alt Wire is a morning digest of links and information collected and explained by a different guest blogger every weekday. Today's guest is Davy Rothbart, creator and editor of Found magazine and frequent contributor to This American Life. We asked him for five links and he came up with 13. No complaints. 

These days I spend about 87 hours a day on YouTube, usually hopping from found snippets (someone blowing out the candles at their birthday party or singing sadly alone in a car) to 80's rap videos (Nice & Smooth; EPMD) to the kind of classic sports moments that set my nostalgiac streak a-tremblin' (think Elvis Grbac's touchdown pass to Desmond Howard). Whatever emotional buttons you want to press on yourself, with YouTube you're only a couple of clicks away. (I've been having trouble, though, locating a clip of Jeff Van Gundy hanging on for dear life to Alonzo Mourning's leg—any leads appreciated.)

I can still remember my first visit to YouTube way back in 2007: A friend had sent me a link to Stephen Colbert roasting President Bush at the White House Correspondent's Dinner. It was love at first sight—not with Colbert, but with YouTube. Here are five favorites from my favorite web planet:

Creep, Kansas City: This video, to me, represents the magic of the found bits available on YouTube. This is one of the most raw, sad and beautiful videos I can imagine, and I don't think a filmmaker could craft something quite this rich and pure. This girl has a ton of other similar, strangely affecting videos.

Wet Pets: As a longtime fan of local cable commercials, I've seen some dandies (Puffer Reds, anyone?) but this one outshines them all.

V. Count Macula's "Smooth Wizardz": When people ask me what it's like to live in Michigan, I share with them this visionary song and video from Detroit's next legend, V. Count Macula. The best shot's gotta be of Shark wielding the nunchucks while he's on his cellie.

Bakopoulos/Okopski Holiday Card 2008: Novelist/professional bad-ass Dean Bakopoulos sent over my favorite holiday card of 2008.

Baron Davis, It's Time to Come Home: How could B.D. not have been swayed?

Frosting: Another found snippet, this one of a happy family; oddly, I recognize my brother Peter's Poem Adept CD playing in the background. "YouTube, where are you now?"

Gasoline Addiction: Speaking of Peter, when he first moved to Seattle, he was offered lead guitar in this band; apparently, they often play shows on the motocross circuit. I'll never forgive him for turning the opportunity down.

Bio: Davy Rothbart is the creator and editor of Found magazine, a frequent contributor to public radio's This American Life, and author of the story collection "The Lone Surfer of Montana, Kansas." He's also the subject of an upcoming documentary film, My Heart Is An Idiot. Davy and Peter Rothbart are about to hit the road on a 57-city FOUND Tour; please check local listings.  

EDITOR'S NOTE: We couldn't resist turning Rothbart's post into a YouTube playlist. Here are his picks, make it a lunch-at-your-desk date:

Previous Alt Wire Guests:   Roger White, Dan Sinker, Phil Yu, Matt Novak, Jason Marsh, David LaBounty, Jen Angel, Will Braun, Regan Hofmann, Josh Breitbart, Andrew Lam,  Jessica Valenti, Jessica Hoffmann, Noah Scalin, Rinku Sen, Paddy Johnson, Melissa Mcewan,  Fatemeh Fakhraie , Joe Biel, Anne Elizabeth Moore 

Featured in this week’s episode:

- Meatpaper’s Pig Issue on how to share a pig, factory-farmed pigs vs. sustainable pigs, and much more (not available online)

- Hunting (and cooking) octopus, from Art Lies

- A collection of dreams about Barack Obama, from the eco-redesigned Geist

- Sustainable architecture in Cape Town, from Azure

Toward the end of the Bush administration, right-wing media was forced to play defense for a beleaguered conservative movement. With Obama in charge, the right-wingers have gone on the attack. So far, that attack has been characterized by “violent, doomsday, and anti-intellectual rhetoric,” according to Media Matters. Rush Limbaugh has says the Obama administration has launched “an all-out assault on capitalism.” Sean Hannity calls the administration, “radicalism you can believe in” asserting that “the Bolsheviks have already arrived.” Media Matters has compiled myriad examples of violent rhetoric, warnings of a “new world order,” scapegoating and other general paranoia coming from the conservative media.

For a more amusing take on the issue, you can watch Current TV’s SuperNews! segment on paranoia poster boy Glenn Beck:

Or Stephen Colbert on the same issue:

Featured in this week’s episode:

- A rumor mill for Baltimore, one of the ideas dreamt up by this year’s Urbanite Project participants (from Urbanite)

- Western innovations from High Country News

- The new Rad Dad, with dispatches from southeast Asia and a pair of essays exploring gender, identity, and parenting (not available online)

- Tapping Alaska’s grease market, from biodieselSMARTER

Sources: Urbanite, High Country News, Rad Dad, biodieselSMARTER

Are young people in the digital age perpetually plugged-in drones, or tolerant, politically and socially shrewd citizens with untapped potential? There has always existed a culture gap between educators and their students, but technology seems to have widened it into a chasm. Given the alienation that many educators feel from their students today, the debate over the fate of so-called “Digital Natives” and how to teach them continues.

William Deresiewicz over at The Chronicle Review laments the loss of solitude for today’s youth. He worries for his students and the apparent nonstop nature of their connectedness, from Facebook to Twitter to text messaging.

“Technology is taking away our privacy and our concentration,” he writes, “but it is also taking away our ability to be alone.”

Deresiewicz then wonders what this loss portends: “And losing solitude, what have they lost? First, the propensity for introspection, that examination of the self that the Puritans, and the Romantics, and the modernists (and Socrates, for that matter) placed at the center of spiritual life – of wisdom, of conduct. Thoreau called it fishing ‘in the Walden Pond of [our] own natures’, ‘bait[ing our] hooks with darkness.” 

Barry Duncan and Carol Arcus take a less pessimistic stance at the Education Forum of Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation. While acknowledging the concern for Digital Natives’ ability to think critically about the media they consume, Duncan and Arcus instead see an opportunity to “link this multi-sensory, multi-modal, multi-literate experience to new notions of literacy and identity.”

They suggest that “Net Geners” might be “smarter, quicker and more tolerant of diversity than their predecessors. They are more politically savvy, socially engaged and family-centered than society gives them credit for.”

And, they see in the conversation around teaching Digital Natives the possibility “to figure out and invent ways to include reflection and critical thinking in the learning...but still do it in the Digital Native language.”

Sources: The Chronicle Review, Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation 

Image by Bombardier, licensed under Creative Commons

Alt Wire is a morning digest of links and information collected and explained by a different guest blogger every weekday. Today's guest is Dan Sinker, journalism professor and founding editor of Punk Planet magazine. We asked him for five links and here's what he came up with:

"All around the world I've been looking for new..." so sings the Jam's Paul Weller. It's a good song, and a good philosophy for exploring the web as well: Look for new things, and look for them globally. To me, while there's a lot of great stuff happening on the web locally, stretch outside the States and you suddenly unlock the door to the incredible.

Ushahidi: While newspapers in the U.S. struggle to find footing in the great digital reboot, it's exciting to see groups like Ushahidi emerge where nothing existed before using suddenly ubiquitious technologies. Originally started to report on rioting following elections in Kenya in 2008, Ushahidi is now a system for distributing reporting using cellphones with basic SMS text functionality.

Bonus link: I think that mobile technology is where all the action is at, in terms of true leveling of the information space around the globe (there are, after all 4 billion active cell phones around the world now). Peruse MobileActive.org for more exciting innovation in the global mobile space.

Abandoned Japanese Theme Parks : I can't even begin to tell you anything about this project other than the fact that I've known about it for three years and I keep coming back to it time and again. The images are so haunting and strange, I think they will probably stay with you too.

Bonus link: Dig far enough into the collection to find the surreal image of an abandoned Gulliver, still tied up by Lilliputians who long left him for dead. When I am at my absolute worst, I dream of that image. 

The music mashups of Kutiman: This Israeli musician takes snippets of YouTube videos and creates whole orchestras of new sound. I'm going to let a good friend, Kevin Duneman, take the heavy lifting on contextualizing this for you: "It's the art of it that gets me. To be able to tune in so thoroughly and pay that close attention to his source material, that is a seriously classical approach. It makes me think about the near impossibility of having another true master painter, a Rembrandt. This is that, but for now." Exactly right, Kevin. My only addition: On the above embedded video, the last movement of the song, which begins at 4:36, makes me cry every time I hear it--if it doesn't do the same to you, you'd better check that your heart is still beating.

Bonus link: This essay about Kutiman, by Merlin Mann, is simply badass.

Cameras for Kibera: An inspiring, short webdoc about a Dutch endeavor that puts video cameras into the hands of young people living in the Kibera slum in Nairobi Kenya. A good reminder of how transformative technologies we take for granted can be when placed into the right hands and the right contexts.

Added bonus: Rocketboom, the site that this video originates from, is worth a daily visit for sure.

Projeto Secreto: Brazillian journalist Denis Burgierman returned from a year in the States and set out on the road, in a tiny car, to document the growing DIY youth culture of Brazil. The goal is to create a new kind of magazine for this new generation of mediamakers (those who have grown up free from the shadow of dictatorship and open to the possibilities of a digital revolution). Entirely written in Portuguese (so brush up, or install Ubiquity--detailed below), this blog offers a unique look into a unique time in a unique land.

Bonus link:The final magazine concept as presented in this Flickr set makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

Bonus bonus link: Ubiquity, translation made easy. The Mozilla Foundation has a project called Ubiquity that's a little confusing to explain in full (go to their site for the full explanation though, like me, you may still be confused), but it's a tool that I use for a single purpose: translating text from web pages in place. Once you've installed Ubiquity into your Firefox browser, you can simply select text, right click (or, on a Mac control-click) on it and a contextual menu will open up that allows you to choose, simply Translate, and Ubiquity will do the heavy lifting of figuring out what language it is, translating the text, and--to me this is the best part--placing the newly translated text back into position on the very website you're looking at. The first few times you use it, it's like magic.

BIO: Dan Sinker teaches in the journalism department at Columbia College Chicago where he focuses on entrepreneurial journalism and the mobile web. He was the founding editor of the influential underground culture magazine Punk Planet until its closure in 2007 and is the editor of We Owe You Nothing: Punk Planet, The Collected Interviews. He blogs about media for the Huffington Post and makes videos about DIY businesses at the website hangingbyashoestring.

Previous Alt Wire Guests: Phil Yu, Matt Novak, Jason Marsh, David LaBounty, Jen Angel, Will Braun, Regan Hofmann, Josh Breitbart, Andrew Lam,  Jessica Valenti, Jessica Hoffmann, Noah Scalin, Rinku Sen, Paddy Johnson, Melissa Mcewan,  Fatemeh Fakhraie , Joe Biel, Anne Elizabeth Moore 

At Crumpled Press, a young, independent bookmaking outfit based in Brooklyn, each book is a tactile treasure—custom cut, bone folded, and hand sewn. In a profile for University of Chicago Magazine, Melissa F. Pheterson writes of how the press’s four editors collaborate with each author “to create a book’s artisinal feel...to savor the printed-page aesthetic in an era of digitized technology.”

For each edition, the press hosts binding parties in McIntyre’s loft, with about a dozen crafty friends paid in snacks and conversation. “It’s like quilting,” says founding editor Jordan McIntyre. “It’s a homespun model that people miss.”

Since 2005, Crumpled Press has used this homespun model to publish ten titles, and the business is flourishing, with consumers drawn in by the books’ homemade beauty. While sales were in the low double digits for their first four publications, recent titles like Anthony Grafton’s Codex in Crisis (2008), a treatise on the digitization of books, and Derek McGee’s When I Wished I Was Here: Dispateches from Fallujah (2007) have sold several hundred copies.

“The standard line is that digitization kills books,” says editor Alexander Bick. “I think it’s more accurate to say there’s a symbiosis. The Internet generates most of our sales. We use digital technology like laser printing to produce our books…Our success contradicts the idea that bookmaking no longer makes sense.”

The American educational system is experiencing a crisis in literacy. Too many students are falling behind in the critical reading skills that provide the fundamentals of a successful education. At the same time, teachers lament the excessive time students spend on digital media like video games and television.

Though teachers may be loath to admit it, digital media provide an opportunity to revive the American educational system, James Paul Gee and Michael Levine write for Democracy Journal. Educators should use students’ enthusiasm for video games, television, and mobile devices to teach the skills needed to succeed in the modern marketplace.

“The current approach to the literacy crisis is locked in a time warp,” according to Gee and Levine, “almost totally removed from the ubiquitous digital media consumption that currently drives children’s lives.”

The solution to America’s literacy crisis, and the increasingly problematic digital divide, lies beyond simple access to technology. Gee and Levine suggest in a creating a “digital teaching corps,” modeled on programs like Teach for America, which would send bright young teachers into low-performing schools to mentor children on technology and communication. The writers also propose the creation of digital community centers, staffed by the digital teaching corps, to increase access to the technology as well. On a federal level, the government should modernize the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and take educational programs like Sesame Street and The Electric Company into the digital age.

Teachers need to move beyond the “book-centered” learning, which too often devolves into standardized test prep, and explore “experience-centered” learning that digital media provides. This way, schools can modernize their overhead projectors and filmstrips to give students the skills they need in an increasingly digitized world.

Image by  Michael Surran , licensed under  Creative Commons .

Sources: Democracy Journal (excerpt available online)

Alt Wire is a morning digest of links and information collected and explained by a different guest blogger every weekday. Today's guest is Matt Novak of Paleo-Future. We asked him for five links. He sent us the best online archivists you may not know (want more paleo-future goodness? Listen to our Utnecast interview with Matt).

Charlie Shopsin has cornered the market on 20th century popular science magazines. If you're looking for inspiration from pure American ingenuity, look no further than the Modern Mechanix blog.

While the name of this blog has never made sense to me, the collection of amateur photos from '50s and '60s tourists to American theme parks on Gorillas Don't Blog is pretty interesting to peruse.

The Animation Archive collects comic books, single-panel cartoons and animated films from all eras of illustrated history.

After discovering the Prelinger Archives in college I spent about 3 sleepless months downloading and watching an amazing collection of old industrial and ephemeral films. You've been warned.

BIO: Since he started the Paleo-Future blog 2007, Matt Novak has become an accidental expert on past visions of the future, and has amassed the world's largest (only?) library of media related to the study of paleo-futurism. 

Previous Alt Wire Guests: Jason Marsh, David LaBounty, Jen Angel, Will Braun, Regan Hofmann, Josh Breitbart, Andrew Lam,  Jessica Valenti, Jessica Hoffmann, Noah Scalin, Rinku Sen, Paddy Johnson, Melissa Mcewan,  Fatemeh Fakhraie , Joe Biel , Anne Elizabeth Moore