Chicago Public Square Podcasts
by Charlie MeyersonInterviews with people who merit a place on Chicago's new front page.
Episodes
How tech-savvy author Cory Doctorow got scammed
0s · PublishedHear him define it—and his harrowing explanation of how he, one of the world’s most tech-savvy authors and journalists, got scammed out of $8,000 before he could figure out what was going on. Also: The one “ironclad” rule you should follow to avoid a similar fate.
And then, in this—our first conversation since this podcast from 2019—you’ll learn, among many other things, why he thinks Amazon embodies enshittification and why so many major publishers refused to consider one of his books.
Listen here, or on Spotify, Pandora, YouTube, Amazon’s Alexa-powered speakers or Apple Podcasts. Or if you prefer to read your podcasts, check out the transcript below. And if you’re a completist, here’s the original, mostly unedited, behind-the-scenes raw audio and video from the recording of this podcast via Zoom on YouTube. ■ Enjoying these podcasts? Help keep them coming by joining The Legion of Chicago Public Squarians. ■ And consider subscribing—free—to the daily Chicago Public Square email newsletter.
Now, here’s a roughly edited transcript of the interview, recorded March 7, 2024:
[00:00:00] Charlie Meyerson: The American Dialect Society’s 2023 Word of the Year? Enshittification. And our guest is the guy who coined it:
[00:00:10] Cory Doctorow: What I think is going on is that this bad idea, right?—“Let’s make things worse for our customers and our suppliers and better for ourselves”—is omnipresent in every firm.
[00:00:55] CD: Well, there was a pandemic, and you know, lucky for me the way that I cope with anxiety and stress is by writing. And so I wrote nine books, which are all coming out in a string, which has left me pretty busy—but in a good way. My friend Joey Dilla says, when life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla. So that’s definitely where I’m at now.
[00:01:18] CM: You have a daily email newsletter, you have a podcast, and you’re on this nationwide book tour now, although you’re home now in California. When do you rest, huh?
[00:01:27] CD: Well, when I rest, I think about how terrible everything is, and so I try to do as little of that as possible. I mean, my family and I go off and do things from time to time. But, yeah, I have always written as a way of processing the world, and the world needs a lot of processing, so I’m doing a lot of writing.
[00:01:48] CM: Did your, uh, restlessness contribute to an unfortunate happening that I think shocked a lot of readers on February 5, 2024, when it was the most-tapped item in Chicago Public Square? And I’m gonna quote you here, “I was robbed $8,000-plus worth of fraud before I figured out what happened, and then he tried to do it again a week later.” What happened?
[00:02:11] CD: Yeah, that was while I was taking a rest as it happened. So for Christmas break, my wife and I, and then my daughter and my parents joined us, went to one of my favorite places in the world, New Orleans. So, we landed and needed cash. So I went to an ATM in the French Quarter, was like a, a chase ATM, and the whole transaction ran and then it threw an error and said, we can’t give you your money. I was like, Ugh, what a pain. And later on, we were walking through town and we passed a credit union’s ATM branch.
I bank with a one-branch credit union. And most credit unions don’t charge fees to each other. So I was like, oh, we’ll just use this one. So I got some money up. A couple of days go by, it’s time to leave, my folks have already gone, my wife and daughter are at the hotel, and I’ve gone out to get my very favorite sandwich just before we go. And my phone rings and it’s the caller ID for my bank.
And they say, “Mr. Doctorow, this is your bank calling. Uh, did you just try and spend a thousand dollars, uh, at an Apple store in New York?” And I was like, Ugh. One of those ATMs turned out to be dodgy. Either was the one that threw that error. And the reason was that it had, like, a skimmer mounted on it and they captured my card number.
Or maybe it was that cheap Chinese ATM that the one-branch credit union I went to was using one or the other. I was definitely skimmed. So, you know, I make my peace with it and I start talking with this guy and you know, when you bank with a little one-branch credit union, they don’t have their own after-hours fraud unit. They just contract out. And so these guys, you know, they’re a little clumsy. They’re a little amateurish. They ask you a bunch of questions your bank should know the answer to because they’re not really your bank, they’re their fraud center partner.
I’m just going through this whole thing and it’s going on and on, and I can see the store that sells my sandwich, and I can see the time ticking down.
And finally, I said like, “Look, fella, you’ve already frozen the card, you’ve gotten most of the recent transaction data. I’m gonna go. When I get to the airport after I clear security, I’ll call the bank’s after-hours number,” and he got really surety and I was like, you’re just gonna have to suck it up.
This is how it goes. You know, whatever losses you’re experiencing have nothing compared to the losses of me missing my flight with my wife and daughter. So go back and go to the, go to the airport and on the way I look at my phone and I find out that DC-737 Max Boeing Aircraft has just lost its door plug and all the 737 Maxes in the U.S., they’ve just been grounded. And we get to the airport and it’s a zoo. Everyone’s trying to rebook. By the time we get to the gate, we’ve got five minutes. ’Cause there’s just the lines, you know. Massive.
So I call the bank’s after-hours number and they say, “Sorry, sir, you pressed the wrong button. This is lost cards. Fraud’s a different number, but it sounds like you told the guy to freeze your cards. So it should be fine. Just come in on Monday and get your new card.”
So, uh, Monday morning I print out the list of all the fraudulent transactions, about $8,000 worth, and I go into the bank. And the cool thing about the one-branch credit union is that the person who helped me out was a vice president there and she was pissed about this $8,000 fraud. ’Cause if Visa wouldn’t cover it, then we’d have to eat it. You know—not me, but the credit union and, and so she’s pissed. I’m pissed. And I say, “Look, you know, some of this has to do with that crummy after-hours fraud center you guys use. ’Cause I told them to freeze my card on Saturday and all this fraud took place on Sunday.”
And she said, “Ugh, that’s no good. I’m gonna call them up now and find out what’s going on.”
She comes back five minutes later and says, “They never called you on Saturday. That was the fraudster.”
My card hadn’t been skimmed at all. So it turns out that guy—I’m like thinking about all the information I gave him: “Well, I gave him my name, but that’s in my Wikipedia entry. Gave him my date of birth; that’s in my Wikipedia entry. I gave him where I live; that’s in my Wikipedia entry. I gave him the last four digits of my credit card, and that’s not an—and then I was like, “Wait a second. He didn’t ask for the last four digits. He asked for the last seven digits”
And I said to the vice president of the bank, “You guys only have a single VISA prefix, right? The first nine digits are the same for every card you issue?”
She’s like, yep.
And I’m like, “OK. So I gave him the last seven digits and that was enough. Then he had the whole card number. And that’s how they robbed me.”
And he did it again the following Friday just before MLK weekend. And he called at 5:30 just before the bank’s closed for a three-day weekend or just after the bank’s closed for a three-day weekend, which is like the fraud golden hour.
And, you know, I recognized who it was and, and he said, “You know, your car’s been compromised. It’s so and so.” And I’m like, “No, it hasn’t. Card’s still in my wallet. Hasn’t left my wallet since I picked it up on
Axios Chicago’s Monica Eng and Justin Kaufmann: ‘This is a talk show in an email format’
0s · PublishedJoining Charlie Meyerson for this edition of the Chicago Public Square / Rivet360 podcast, Chicago Media Talks: Axios Chicago newsletter authors Justin Kaufmann and Monica Eng.
Now, here’s a roughly edited transcript of the interview with Eng and Kaufmann. Corrections? Email [email protected].
Food critic Louisa Chu’s vivid pandemic moment: ‘Crying so much’
0s · PublishedJoining this edition of the Chicago Public Square / Rivet360 podcast, Chicago Media Talks: Chef, journalist, adventurer and Chicago Tribune critic Louisa Chu—who takes us from her time as a 4-year-old worker at her family’s Chicago restaurant through her stint as a judge on Food Network’s Iron Chef America to what she’s working on next.
Stephanie Skora and A.D. Quig: Reshaping Chicago’s news and political scene
0s · PublishedPulitzer winners Hopkins and Reyes: Teamwork ‘wasn’t always easy’
0s · PublishedTheir groundbreaking alliance netted them and their news organizations a 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting. But that doesn’t mean they always worked together seamlessly.
Meet the Sun-Times’ new executive editor, Jennifer Kho
0s · PublishedWTTW’s new stars navigate changing news landscape
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Charlie Meyerson 00:00
Odds are good you didn’t know their names a decade ago when one of them was just breaking into Chicago radio news and another was barely removed from an internship at Chicago’s public TV station. And now they’re two of the city’s most influential journalists.
Brandis Friedman 00:14
The truth is I never would have chosen Chicago for myself until I did.
Paris Schutz 00:18
I thought, “At some point, my internship is going to end, and they’re going to hire me and pay me.”
Charlie Meyerson 00:23
Brandis Friedman and Paris Shutz are multiple award-winning reporters and co-anchors for WTTW television’s signature broadcast Chicago Tonight. I’m Charlie Meyerson with Rivet 360 and ChicagoPublicSquare.com. And this is Chicago Media Talks, a show in which people in Chicago media talk about Chicago media. Here’s my co-host, my friend and my Rivet 360 colleague, journalism strategist Sheila Solomon.
Sheila Solomon 00:51
How is Chicago Tonight different from other local news shows in Chicago?
Brandis Friedman 00:57
We e get this question a lot, and Paris can address this as well, I think we try to spend more time on our subject matter. And, no disrespect to our colleagues at the commercial TV stations, you know, there’s a place for each of us in this market. But what’s different is, we spend more time on our subjects. So a report or package, maybe 3, 4, 5 minutes versus the minute, minute-and-a-half that you’d probably get at other stations. So that we can let it breathe, and provide a b
Block Club Chicago’s origin story
0s · PublishedMusic journalist Jim DeRogatis: ‘Every system in this city failed … to protect these young black girls’
0s · PublishedAfter a lifetime at the Chicago Tribune, Eric Zorn and Steve Johnson are leaving. What’s next?
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Chicago Public Square Podcasts has 20 episodes in total of non- explicit content. Total playtime is 0:00. The language of the podcast is English. This podcast has been added on November 22nd 2022. It might contain more episodes than the ones shown here. It was last updated on April 23rd, 2024 06:10.