Maria Bustillos is the current editor in chief of Popula, an alternative news and culture magazine that recently launched on the blockchain-based Civil platform. In this week's episode, Don and Maria walk through one of Popula's first pieces published, her 20,000-word interview with the late Anthony Bourdain — “he spent two and a half hours with me in the comfy Irish bar, blabbing about everything under the sun ... And nobody bothered us in all that time, it was like there was a force field around him.” — as well as blockchain-based journalism — “it’s obvious why [blockchain] recordkeeping is valuable for journalism: it allows us to maintain archives that can’t be censored or altered after the fact. We can amend previous records only through addenda, in other words: not through erasure. This is the first benefit of blockchain technology to the free press, and this benefit alone makes it worth moving our news media into blockchain-based publishing systems.” Maria's work has previously appeared in The New Yorker, The Awl, The New York Times, Harper’s and The Guardian. This week’s episode includes explicit language.

Ask this episode

“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.

Transcript

Related