Catch up on last season’s Ars Technica Live with our podcast!

Cyrus Farivar (left) and Annalee Newitz (right) interview law professor Elizabeth Joh about surveillance. It's hard to look serious with tiki furniture everywhere, but we managed.

Way back in February 2016, I had a crazy idea. Like many crazy ideas, it was partly the fault of Ars staffer Cyrus Farivar. We were hosting an Ars meetup at Longitude, a fantastic tiki bar in Oakland, California, when the event turned into an impromptu interview with Nick Farmer, the creator of the futuristic Creole language spoken by Belters in The Expanse series on Syfy. We had so much fun, I thought to myself: why don't we do this again sometime? Cyrus was easily persuaded to join in the madness. And so Ars Technica Live was born.

On the third Wednesday of every month, we returned to Longitude to interview interesting people who work at the intersection of technology, science, and culture. We talked to law professor Elizabeth Joh about the future of surveillance, and we talked to anthropologist Krish Seetah about the history of meat eating in human culture. Computer security researcher Morgan Marquis-Boire told us about defending journalists against state hackers, and space activist Ariel Waldman explained her role on the National Academy of Sciences Human Spaceflight Committee. We recorded everything (you can see video of the 2016 season here) thanks to videographer Chris Schodt and Ars' intrepid producer Jennifer Hahn. Ars editors Joe Mullin and Dan Goodin pitched in, too, bringing their expertise to discussions of patent reform and security. And luckily, Longitude bar owner Suzanne Long kept letting us come back. She seems to have a weak spot for nerds.

Now we're celebrating the end of 2016 and the dawning of our 2017 season by releasing all our interviews as podcasts. If you ever subscribed to the Ars Technicast, you may have already gotten these episodes in your feed. If not, now's the time.

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