Literally 2 Cents About Content! is a podcast about content mills and the broader concept of labeling all creative work ”content.” Why do we call everything anyone produces ”content”? How does this ”content” frame affect us as content consumers? And what types of conditions do content creators labor under? Check out Liz’s website at https://lizmakesstuff.com and Alex’s site at www.content-lab.agency
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20 recent
May 3, 2026Episode 112 hr 4 min
The Nintendo 64 at 30
As we approach the 30th anniversary of its release, Alex and Liz look back quasi-fondly at the Nintendo 64, including:
Its historical place, as the first Nintendo console to debut during Japan's Lost Decades and after the Cold War.
Why it was so difficult to develop for, even for seasoned software shops.
How it was in retrospect a failed attempt at what the Nintendo Switch ultimately achieved: a technical breakthrough that ran on old-fashioned ROM carts
August 16, 2025Episode 101 hr 36 min
David Golumbia retrospective, part 1: "Is Wario cyberlibertarian?"
Alex and Liz discuss only some of the works of linguist, philosopher, and academic David Golumbia, including:
The Cultural Logic of Computation (2009)
The Politics of Bitcoin: Software as Right-Wing Extremism (2016)
Cyberlibertarianism: The Right-Wing Politics of Digital Technology (2024)
Technology and Silicon Valley are often associated with left-leaning politics. Still, various causes (SOPA/PIPA discourse, internet publication and copyright discourse, digital innovation) have roots in libertarian or conservative and reactionary narratives. Golumbia’s work shows that it’s difficult (read: impossible) to divorce reactionary values from Silicon Valley and its staunchest supporters.
Reading list:
The Great White Robot God
A declaration of the independence of cyberspace
The Language of Science and the Science of Language: Chomsky's Cartesianism
March 5, 2025Episode 91 hr 19 min
An insult to dumpsters and fires
Alex and Liz talk about the Glassdoor reviews of their old employer, touch upon the depravity of working for an SEO content mill, and compare monopoly and monopsony.
The classic Popula article about working at this very content mill.
What is monopsony?
Liz's site
Alex's blog
October 18, 2024Episode 81 hr 25 min
Book club: Kate Manne's "Unshrinking"
Alex and Liz take a look at Kate Manne's 2024 book, Unshrinking: How to face fatphobia. Along the way, they examine some of the key assumptions that drive widespread fatphobia in contemporary society, what the point of weight loss is supposed to be, the history of hazardous weight-loss treatments, and how Manne's book intersects with other publications by Ragen Chastain, Abigail C. Saguy, Paul Campos, and Paul Ernsberger.
Ragen Chastain on weight loss as a prescription
Chastain on how weight-loss studies are often deliberately misleading
Abigail C. Saguy's book.
Paul Campos' book and blog.
1989 debate over whether "obesity" is hazardous, with Paul Ernsberger taking the "negative" side.
Ernsberger's earlier catalog of hazardous "obesity" treatments.
June 20, 2024Episode 71 hr 24 min
Unspoiled paradise of streaming content
Liz and Alex talk about streaming, why its business model is so lousy compared to cable, the social aspects of watching TV vs the isolation of streaming, how sports holds linear TV together, and why it feels more sustainable to support individual creators than to pay for a bundle.
Liz's website
Alex's blog
How the Criterion Channel works
The failed promise of binge TV
The life and death of Hollywood
March 24, 2024Episode 61 hr 26 min
Our most hated "content" words
Liz and Alex lay into their most despised words from the content mill industry, from "dynamic content" and "content management system" to "optimize" and "authentic." Also covered: video game DLC (that's "downloadable content," remember!), store brand sodas, and the 1990s web.
Liz's site
Alex's blog
The “and yet you participate in society” cartoon
Mastodon post on “data”
Rob Horning blog
January 5, 2024Episode 51 hr 18 min
A funny thing happened on the way to the AI forum
Alex and Liz dig their claws into "AI," this time focusing on some recent hype-y conferences Liz attended in Chicago and Las Vegas. We also look at cyberlibertarianism, the difficulties that LLMs have with ambiguity (and why making them better at this could paradoxically make them worse overall), the costs associated with producing cutting-edge work, and the embedded biases of AI.
Alex's blog
Liz's site
We don't need generative AI
At least the robber barons built things
Is a neural network like a pocket calculator? “AI” and epistemic injustice
Chatbot revolution?
September 28, 2023Episode 41 hr 34 min
Digital content in the analog world: Snackable ideas while engaging with our lunch
Alex and Liz talk about what really makes digital content different from physical and analog equivalents, and what distinctive ideological concepts—"everything's binary, monopolies are good, technology itself is the agent, users should be treated with hostility"— are uniquely embodied by it.
And even though everything digital seems ethereal and immaterial, it requires tremendous amounts of real resources—water, electricity, space—behind the scenes. We also dive into Leo Marx's famous "Technology: The Emergence of a Hazardous Concept" essay, discuss Martin Scorsese's dislike of Marvel (and what it says about "content"), how the Hollywood strikes were spurred by the content-ization of movies and TV, and spew some weird facts about vinyl records.
Scorsese pieces: NYT (2019), GQ (2023)
My old "content"pieces: A spin on Marx's piece and the 5 core assumptions of "content" as a term.
Emma Thompson thinks "content" is a rude term.
September 3, 2023Episode 31 hr 24 min
The artificial intelligence is coming from inside the house
Alex and Liz talk about the hottest topic out there—"AI," or "artificial intelligence" (quotes because we're a little skeptical of it being in any way "intelligent"), with a look at some recent essays that explore whether "AI" is agent or tool, its problematic uses in higher education, why Silicon Valley is so intent on building things ("AI" or otherwise) that they'd read about or seen in sci-fi (while also of course acting as if books, films, and other artistic endeavors are worthless, just like the rest of the humanities), and how Jonny Quest predicted the Apple Watch in 1964.
Alex's recent blog post on "the economy."
Liz's website.
Check out Liz's book at Barnes & Noble.
Rob Horning's essay, Pro tools.
The Emily Bender profile in New York magazine.
The empty brain.
August 15, 2023Episode 21 hr 8 min
Ghost writing the cliffhanger ending to the private cloud
Alex and Liz talk about their time at the content mill, how it was all about ghost writing, what techniques they honed by doing that (such as learning how to easily add 100-200 superfluous words to any article's intro), and how that overall experience influenced their personal writing. Liz talks about self-publishing her book and Alex talks about the histories and features of various blogging platforms.
Alex's blog about social media post-2016.
Liz's website.
Buy Liz's book!
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