PUNK ROCK PODCASTING 

There is an irreverent attitude, a stance, a presence not cowering, that could pull us through to the other side of this crisis of creativity and the robbing us of our agency and that outlook, that action is PUNK. 

First, learn how to say (or scream), NO! 

Your expression, your voice, your story, your body is the only way forward and out of current dystopic stupor.
Dreams of a better world or a better life begin with your local experience and when those localities are linked together they can and will become more powerful than the systems that seek to dominate us. 

Start Go Stop 

Most punk songs are about 3 minutes long and many have unintelligible, ranting, messy lyrics.
What you hear is a lot of energy and youthful passion directed through greatly distorted guitars, broken drum sets and fried-out vocal chords.
It is the sound of creative people getting things done, making art and expressing themselves without fear of being judged.
If that sounds that refreshing to you then it is time you made a PUNK ROCK PODCAST. 

“Just do it.” (And make sure to co-opt, beg, borrow and steal to do it.) 

A punk rock podcast is short – 3 minutes, 5 minutes, 10 minutes long.
There are no rules.
Say what is on your mind.
Or, make a tape of your cat sleeping.
It can be a joke.
It can be a series of inaccurate public transportation announcements.
No one gives a flying fuck, and that is beautiful.

When you are done, send it to your friends.
Send it to your enemies.
Aim for a budget of zero money.
Beg, borrow, steal and consider carefully where you post your punk rock podcast and how you send it to people!
Ask yourself who might, in the end, own and benefit from your work.
Are your voice and words being used to further train AI robots or fund war efforts? Watch who you run with!

Do Sell Out! 

The worst insult one punk could issue to another was to call them a sell out.
Now everybody sells out. It seems like the point of all art and human activity these days is to make money and sell out to the tech bros.
How about just making something for yourself and your friends and avoid the modern, pervasive trap of vanity?
How about embracing the suck and just cranking something out so you can later improve on it or, when you are done, just hit it with a hammer, spit on it and throw it away?
Wouldn't that feel a little better than being so precious about everyone and everything?

Know your history: safety-pins & spit 

In the mid-1970s, when punk emerged, the world moved at a slower pace. Economic stagnation, the oil crisis and the tapering off of the Vietnam War were the backdrop for a new form of fast, irreverent, loud, and purposely (ob)noxious music called . . . PUNK ROCK. It was marked by an anti-authoritarian, anti-consumerist, anti-establishment attitude and a DYI (do it yourself) ethos of rebellion and solidarity. 

But while Punk Rock was exciting to many, it was repulsive to many more.
This new form of rebellion was so over the top that kids pierced their faces with safety-pins and audiences showered their appreciation on bands and the music that blared off dark and smokey stages by steadily spitting on the musicians as they played! And, of course, there was the fashion, the slam dancing and the Mohawk haircuts. This was sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll taken (up or down) to a whole new level. 

In the UK those out of work and with few opportunities to find a job united under the banner of “no future” while punks to the east, on the other side of the iron curtain, strained under “too much future” rejecting the lives prescribed to them by planned economies within police (and citizen) surveillance states and they often ended up in Stasi prisons. 

Get their attention. Give ‘em the middle finger. 

Today, though social media and the mobile-phone-based “service economy” may have systematically robbed a generation or two of face-to-face skills and the ability to do and increasingly understand much of anything in the real world, there are many of us that are seeking an alternative to the doom and inevitableness of a world controlled by machines controlled by the very few. Let us make this threat condition toward humanity temporary.

Reject immediacy and authority of the AI game offered today 

You do not need a competing political program. You do not need a complete utopic social vision to raise your voice. You are entitled, perhaps obliged, to say what you will not accept, what you will not tolerate, what you believe to be wrong about the future being presented to us. 

When you conform and speak the language of AI, when you formulate questions (prompts) in a certain format not of your own making, you have already lost the battle. You also have the right and obligation to not to play the game, not to pretend that the solutions to problems are at the end of just the right question. 

Be tactical, not strategic 

Institutions and systems, governments and corporations use strategies used to control and organize us but individuals can use tactics to navigate, negotiate and disrupt those systems. This is about moving beyond aesthetics and into action. It is not how you look or where you are from but what you do, what you say and stand for. It is about where you are going. 

Use your voice and don't let yourself be numbed and dumbed down. Your voice, your body, this is all you need. Be a punk toward those who tell you what to think and what to do. Take a strong position but listen intently, ready to be changed and to learn. 

Stop being a tool. Don’t live in a toolbox 

The tactics, the attitude and the refusal to go quietly is what you must learn and what you must practice. In the face of those who promote silence and in(ter)action through “artificially intelligent” social media solutions, now is the time to get up in their faces – Do they have faces? -- and get punk.

Nihilist? 

Punks were and are often accused of nihilism but ask yourself, after reading those quotes above and thinking about the messages about AI that are bombarding you on a daily basis, ask yourself: Who are the nihilists today? 

“Punk isn’t a hairstyle,” film director John Cameron Mitchell recently wrote, “it’s getting your friends together to make useful stories outside approved systems.
And it’s still happening right now, all over the world.” To that, I say, FUCK YEAH! 

Let ‘em have it! 

The music and fashion of punk rock will not save us, but rather the fiercely independent and irreverent fuck-the-system message of the punk rock era.
We are being told that our stories do not count anymore because a computer can do better.
But, indeed our stories do matter, no matter how messy, amateur or refusnik they may be.
If you want to leave the system, then it is time to start telling your story, loud, fast and often.

Make a Punk Rock Podcast! 

There is plenty of time to make something beautiful later. 

Thanks for being here. Do not send me your thoughts because I don't care.(See above)

Make me a punk rock podcast instead and send that. I will post them on the Berlin School of Podcasting website. Short, fast, loud and dirty, please! 

Disclaimer: This article was written using AI BI: Benjamin intelligence. 

I’ve been using Hindenburg full-time for nearly a decade, and it’s the only audio software I’ve ever truly loved. It’s fast, stable, and beautifully intuitive—built for storytellers, not engineers. You can do precise micro-edits with ease, layer complex scenes quickly, and never get bogged down by bloated features you don’t need. Everything in Hindenburg is thoughtfully designed and genuinely useful. I couldn’t imagine making audio documentaries any other way.