Author Edward Wilson-Lee joins Brewster Kahle to uncover the astonishing true story behind The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books. Wilson-Lee chronicles the adventures of Hernando Colón, who sailed with his father Christopher Columbus before setting out to build a library of everything ever printed—a quest marked by shipwreck, mutiny, and the relentless pursuit of knowledge.

Grab your copy of The Catalogue Of Shipwrecked Books from The Booksmith: https://www.booksmith.com/book/9781982111403

This conversation was recorded on 6/28/2022. Watch the full video recording at: https://archive.org/details/book-talk-the-catalogue-of-shipwrecked-books

Check out all of the Future Knowledge episodes at https://archive.org/details/future-knowledge

For years, the open access movement has promised a more equitable world for scholarship. But as more of our publishing infrastructure is shaped—or captured—by commercial incentives, a harder question keeps surfacing: if knowledge is openly available but controlled by the same market forces as before, has anything truly changed?

In Publishing Beyond the Market, Samuel Moore challenges us to rethink open access from the ground up. Guiding our conversation is Heather Joseph, the executive director of SPARC.

Grab your copy of Publishing Beyond the Market: https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/105971

This conversation was recorded on 12/04/2025. Watch the full video recording at: https://archive.org/details/publishing-beyond-the-market

Check out all of the Future Knowledge episodes at https://archive.org/details/future-knowledge

While major recording artists are sued for alleged plagiarism and most creators earn pennies for their work, media industry profits continue to soar. Libraries face mounting barriers to providing access to ebooks—often while being sued by the very publishers whose books they buy.

In this episode of Future Knowledge, tech and culture writer Glyn Moody discusses his book Walled Culture: How Big Content Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Keep Creators Poor. Moody traces how copyright laws designed for a world of physical scarcity have been repurposed for the digital age—creating legal and technical “walls” that restrict access to knowledge, limit creativity, and overwhelmingly benefit large media corporations over creators and the public. Joining the conversation is Maria Bustillos, writer and editor at the Brick House Cooperative.

Grab your copy of Walled Culture: https://walledculture.org

This conversation was recorded on 11/10/2022. Watch the full video recording at: https://archive.org/details/book-talk-walled-culture

Check out all of the Future Knowledge episodes at https://archive.org/details/future-knowledge