America's obsession with crime, from Serial to Investigation Discovery marathons, runs deep, and libraries are right there with our patrons, stocking the thrillers and hosting the book clubs.

But in Episode 49, Dave, Beth, and Mike ask a harder question: what lies beneath every cold case, wrongful conviction, and uninvestigated crime? The answer, again and again, is an information failure. Witness statements that never get digitized. Rape kit backlogs numbering in the hundreds of thousands. Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women who vanish from official databases as easily as they vanish from news coverage. Algorithms trained on biased data that tell police where to patrol and judges who to detain.

From the Golden State Killer's multi-decade run across jurisdictions that weren't sharing data, to the Nancy Guthrie abduction case and the stark disparities it reveals about whose stories get resources, this episode explores how the architecture of information systems shapes who gets justice, and who gets erased.

NOTE: This episode discusses true crime cases and includes discussions of violent crime, sexual assault missing persons cases, and the systematic failures that leave victims and families without justice.

Some say it’s theft, some call Generative AI a collaborator, many see the underpinnings of AI as simply remixing what is. Yet, the ideas of theft, remixing, and collaboration are all firmly founded in the arts. From pop art to hip hop, the idea of creation through imitation and derivation has a long tradition. Renaissance painters learned and made a living from copying their masters. Song covers like Luke Comb’s Fast Car and, yes, even The Beatles “Twist and Shout” have become more well known than the originals.

In this episode we look at AI filling our playlists, our literary magazines, and gulp, even our library shelves. Does an embrace of AI alienate institutions like libraries from their communities, or is it an embrace of a new creative medium? How do you draw the line between AI slop and AI assist?

Let’s stop for a moment, take a deep breath, and look around at the world that we humans have created and that we inhabit. Here’s a snapshot of what it's like to live day to day in 2026 with smartphones, the Internet, Web, AI, social media, augmented reality, and all the other digital systems that we rely on in various aspects of our lives - work, social relationships, entertainment, politics, communications & information.

In this episode, we consider the nature, joy and despair and the challenges and opportunities that we deal with every day in the digital age. Are we in control? Are we merely pawns in their game? Are we caught up in mindless compulsions and addictions? Or is this the moment where institutions like libraries can help us become neither victims nor isolated users, but informed communities who collectively decide what these technologies should do for us?"