Episode Details

🌹 Use the code "15OFF" for a discount on Current Affairs: https://www.currentaffairs.org/membership

Mark Graham is the director of the Wayback Machine at the Internet Archive, and Chris Freeland is the Internet Archive’s director of library services and one of the co-authors of the new report Vanishing Culture: A Report on Our Fragile Cultural Record. Their work focuses on preserving digital materials that might otherwise disappear.

Graham and Freeland joined Current Affairs editor-in-chief Nathan J. Robinson to discuss why the internet is not forever, how digital culture vanishes through deletion, paywalls, broken links, platform decay, and corporate control, and what can be done to preserve public access to our collective cultural record.

0:00-4:59 Is the Internet Forever?

4:59-9:52 Intentional Erasure vs. Accidental Loss

9:52-14:14 What Happens When We Lose Access?

14:14-20:41 The Problem With Social Media Archives

20:41-24:39 Ownership vs. Licensing

24:39-29:52 The Truth Is Paywalled But the Lies Are Free

29:52-34:38 The Loss of Historically Significant Media

34:38-38:02 The Vanishing Culture Report

38:02-49:20 What Can We Do?

💻 Vanishing Culture Report: https://archive.org/details/vanishing-culture-2026/mode/2up

💻 Internet Archive: https://archive.org/

🦩Subscribe to Current Affairs: https://www.currentaffairs.org/membership

🦩 Merch: https://shop.currentaffairs.org/