Democratised Storytelling

About Democratised Storytelling

Storytellers change the world, but the channels they depend on are owned by a handful of billionaires who decide which stories get told and which don't. This series is about changing that for good, and with it, what it's like to live in that world. It starts in Hollywood, where Michael Topic watched gifted editors and crew work in precarious conditions, while the rewards flowed elsewhere. Around the turn of the century, he and a small team set out to fix it with NeoPixSys: freelance collaboration, built-in rights protection, direct-to-audience distribution, and Mediex, a money issued for value created, not debt. It never shipped. The patents stalled. The world wasn't ready. Twenty-five years on, the idea looks bigger than video. What if there were a technical architecture that preserved human agency, dignity, meaning and joy, instead of squeezing every last drop of profit from the people the network is meant to serve? We've all watched enshittification play out: customers and suppliers get less and less, shareholders more and more. That's not sustainable. Eventually, users simply walk away. Part memoir, part manifesto, and honest about the wreckage, the series retells a project that failed in its ultimate goals and asks whether its time has finally come. Along the way: rewilding the internet, federated networks governed by sortition, and why storytelling is a crucial life skill. It's a stick in the ground, offered to anyone who can make it fly, or show exactly why it can't. Cover art: Clare Topic – Copyright 2026 – All rights reserved. Editor: Alex Topic Music: composed and produced by Michael Topic Buy me a Ko-fi (https://ko-fi.com/michaeltopic)

Publisher

Michael Topic

Category

technology

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

30 Sept 2026

Latest episode

2 Nov 2026

Latest episodes

7 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   2 Nov 2026

   Democratised Storytelling - Freelance Collaborative Content Creation

   Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! (https://rss.com/podcasts/democratised-storytelling/voicemail) A quarter of a century ago, Michael Topic tried to make sense of how creative work is done, and how the terms under which it is done might change. He is still thinking about it. The episode starts with a Hollywood reality far from the romantic idea of steady studio jobs. Most creative professionals were freelancers by necessity: temporary spaces, short-term contracts, long hours, then a wrap, and everything dismantled and scattered. Michael asks what would happen if creatives could instead join a peer-to-peer network of federated production, offering skills, resources and even computing power from anywhere. He introduces Mediex, a complementary digital token designed to let a closed creative economy trade skills for finished media, storage and computing. He explains why the early 2000s, with no Bitcoin or Ethereum yet and unsolved problems like consensus and double spending, were too early, and why the idea endured. Three interludes carry the deeper argument. The first turns to the human need for meaning and Carl Sagan's call for a worthy cosmic goal, making the case that better storytelling tools are necessities and not luxuries. The second is an antidote to dumbing down, drawing on George Orwell and the long industrial habit of conditioning people to obey. The third takes on institutional stupidity, a rational madness that is perfectly logical inside its own framework, and asks whether embedding rational values in software could displace it with institutional wisdom. Between them, the episode covers credit where credit is due, with an immutable ledger of authorship and royalties, LinkedIn-style provenance, and GitHub-style version control for video, audio and design. It then explains how NeoPixSys would work: one colossal virtual machine spread across millions of everyday devices, where the fabric is the host, the applications run everywhere, and it is owned and operated by everyone who joins. It may have been ahead of its time, but the future of how we tell stories together is closer than ever. Original blog posts were posted on: (https://pm4p.net/)pm4p.net (http://pm4p.net) Direct link to the fifth post in the series: https://medium.com/product-management-for-the-people/a-fever-dream-of-democratised-storytelling-episode-5-ef3105459599 (https://medium.com/product-management-for-the-people/a-fever-dream-of-democratised-storytelling-episode-5-ef3105459599) The e-book of the series is available at: (https://gumroad.com/)Gumroad.com (http://Gumroad.com) Direct link: https://tropicalgroup.gumroad.com/l/cqmjcu?autocomplete=true&layout=discover&recommended_by=search&_gl=1*1wf314y*_ga*ODgxMjc2NDEzLjE3MzEzMjQxNDk.*_ga_6LJN6D94N6*czE3OTA2ODU2ODQkbzEyJGcwJHQxNzkwNjg1Njg1JGo1OSRsMCRoMA (https://tropicalgroup.gumroad.com/l/cqmjcu?autocomplete=true&layout=discover&recommended_by=search&_gl=1*1wf314y*_ga*ODgxMjc2NDEzLjE3MzEzMjQxNDk.*_ga_6LJN6D94N6*czE3OTA2ODU2ODQkbzEyJGcwJHQxNzkwNjg1Njg1JGo1OSRsMCRoMA).. Cover art: Clare Topic – Copyright 2026 – All rights reserved. Editor: Alex Topic Music: composed and produced by Michael Topic Buy me a Ko-fi (https://ko-fi.com/michaeltopic)

2. 

   22 Oct 2026

   Democratised Storytelling - What was NeoPixSys?

   Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! (https://rss.com/podcasts/democratised-storytelling/voicemail) How do you bring a revolutionary idea to life? In this episode, Michael Topic explains what he and his collaborator tried, and why it was never as simple as building a product. The story begins with the idea that intellectual revolutions are driven by critical thinking and scientific literacy, the antibodies against misinformation. Drawing on Carl Sagan's warning about a society that depends on science and technology without understanding them, Michael describes the ambition behind the project: an appliance of science, and storytelling tools that put authorship into everyone's hands. Cinematic-quality stories, he argues, could illuminate the mind and help people think for themselves. Then comes the practical question of how to start such a revolution. The answer was a company: NeoPixSys LLC, formed in Delaware as a vessel for intellectual property, pitches and funding. Michael unpacks the name (a nod to The Matrix and bullet-time, pixels and motion pictures, and a federated, network-based system) and the elevator pitch that never quite fit into an elevator: mixed-reality editing, collaborative workflow, global media storage and peer-to-peer distribution, all without traditional gatekeepers. He is candid about the obstacles. Research is expensive, and investors preferred safe bets to a peer-to-peer vision of a better society. The idea threatened to upset a few applecarts, so the team had to walk on eggshells. Three interludes frame the episode. The first is on intellectual revolutions and the civic skill of scientific thinking. The second turns to Galileo and the price visionaries pay for challenging dogma. The third, in the spirit of the Pale Blue Dot, reflects on pattern recognition: telling vision from delusion and real science from pseudoscience, and remembering that every story ever told has taken place on one tiny blue world. The world has begun to catch up with some of what was imagined, but the story of NeoPixSys is far from over. The tools we use to tell stories shape the stories themselves, and that is just the beginning. Original blog posts were posted on: (https://pm4p.net/)pm4p.net (http://pm4p.net) Direct link to the fourth post in the series: https://medium.com/product-management-for-the-people/a-fever-dream-of-democratised-storytelling-episode-4-f20e08d0bd8a (https://medium.com/product-management-for-the-people/a-fever-dream-of-democratised-storytelling-episode-4-f20e08d0bd8a) The e-book of the series is available at: (https://gumroad.com/)Gumroad.com (http://Gumroad.com) Direct link: https://tropicalgroup.gumroad.com/l/cqmjcu?autocomplete=true&layout=discover&recommended_by=search&_gl=1*1wf314y*_ga*ODgxMjc2NDEzLjE3MzEzMjQxNDk.*_ga_6LJN6D94N6*czE3OTA2ODU2ODQkbzEyJGcwJHQxNzkwNjg1Njg1JGo1OSRsMCRoMA (https://tropicalgroup.gumroad.com/l/cqmjcu?autocomplete=true&layout=discover&recommended_by=search&_gl=1*1wf314y*_ga*ODgxMjc2NDEzLjE3MzEzMjQxNDk.*_ga_6LJN6D94N6*czE3OTA2ODU2ODQkbzEyJGcwJHQxNzkwNjg1Njg1JGo1OSRsMCRoMA).. Cover art: Clare Topic – Copyright 2026 – All rights reserved. Editor: Alex Topic Music: composed and produced by Michael Topic Buy me a Ko-fi (https://ko-fi.com/michaeltopic)

3. 

   22 Oct 2026

   Democratised Storytelling - Motivations

   Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! (https://rss.com/podcasts/democratised-storytelling/voicemail) Episode two showed that the technology for a democratised media production tool was emerging; fragile but promising. Now a harder question lingers: why build it at all? Michael Topic returns to ask who would want such tools, why they would want them, and what work would be needed to cross the gap between concept and reality. At the turn of the century, the people funding content and the people making it had what could politely be called artistic differences. Investors, hedge funds and corporations demanded low-risk, guaranteed returns: sequels, superhero franchises, the predictable and the profitable. Audiences and creators wanted novelty, surprise and risk. Formulaic storytelling was wearing thin, and an industry unwilling to take chances shut experiments down before they could breathe. Michael argues that democracy in storytelling is not just an aesthetic choice but a matter of survival. Content creation was a closed shop, with gatekeepers controlling tools, distribution and ultimately the stories the world was allowed to hear. Storytelling is inherently political: when control is restricted, only one narrative survives, and when it is democratised, dissent emerges, which is how societies evolve. Meanwhile, private equity and consolidation put profit over creativity. Films were scrapped before reaching audiences, series cancelled mid-arc, storylines butchered by quarterly reports. Even unions couldn't fix it. Creators needed a way to self-organise, to federate, and to build their own content on their own terms. The episode imagines the alternative: a platform connecting creators worldwide, with geography irrelevant and collaboration boundless. It would merge film editing and CGI workflows, open up impossible camera angles and shared asset pools, and make remote work the default rather than a compromise. Today, idle computing power across the globe can be joined into federated systems, and blockchain offers a ledger of provenance, with immutable contracts and royalties that follow contribution rather than corporate whim. For the first time, creators could receive both credit and fair compensation. It is a fever dream not yet fully realised, but closer every day. Original blog posts were posted on: (https://pm4p.net/)pm4p.net (http://pm4p.net) Direct link to the third post in the series: https://medium.com/product-management-for-the-people/a-fever-dream-of-democratised-storytelling-episode-3-923a5f07cb9b (https://medium.com/product-management-for-the-people/a-fever-dream-of-democratised-storytelling-episode-3-923a5f07cb9b) The e-book of the series is available at: (https://gumroad.com/)Gumroad.com (http://Gumroad.com) Direct link: https://tropicalgroup.gumroad.com/l/cqmjcu?autocomplete=true&layout=discover&recommended_by=search&_gl=1*1wf314y*_ga*ODgxMjc2NDEzLjE3MzEzMjQxNDk.*_ga_6LJN6D94N6*czE3OTA2ODU2ODQkbzEyJGcwJHQxNzkwNjg1Njg1JGo1OSRsMCRoMA (https://tropicalgroup.gumroad.com/l/cqmjcu?autocomplete=true&layout=discover&recommended_by=search&_gl=1*1wf314y*_ga*ODgxMjc2NDEzLjE3MzEzMjQxNDk.*_ga_6LJN6D94N6*czE3OTA2ODU2ODQkbzEyJGcwJHQxNzkwNjg1Njg1JGo1OSRsMCRoMA).. Cover art: Clare Topic – Copyright 2026 – All rights reserved. Editor: Alex Topic Music: composed and produced by Michael Topic Buy me a Ko-fi (https://ko-fi.com/michaeltopic)

4. 

   22 Oct 2026

   Democratised Storytelling - Episode 3 Trailer

   Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! (https://rss.com/podcasts/democratised-storytelling/voicemail) Stories shape cultures, guide societies and define our shared memory, yet storytelling remains controlled by a few gatekeepers. Democratised Storytelling asks what happens when technology lets everyone create. Join Michael Topic as he explores the future of narrative, a future built by all of us. Together. Original blog posts were posted on: (https://pm4p.net/)pm4p.net (http://pm4p.net) Direct link to the first post in the series: pm4p.net/a-fever-dream-of-democratised-storytelling-episode-1-413b69bcfc98 (https://medium.com/product-management-for-the-people/a-fever-dream-of-democratised-storytelling-episode-3-923a5f07cb9b) The e-book of the series is available at: (https://gumroad.com/)Gumroad.com (http://Gumroad.com) Direct link: https://tropicalgroup.gumroad.com/l/cqmjcu?autocomplete=true&layout=discover&recommended_by=search&_gl=1*1wf314y*_ga*ODgxMjc2NDEzLjE3MzEzMjQxNDk.*_ga_6LJN6D94N6*czE3OTA2ODU2ODQkbzEyJGcwJHQxNzkwNjg1Njg1JGo1OSRsMCRoMA (https://tropicalgroup.gumroad.com/l/cqmjcu?autocomplete=true&layout=discover&recommended_by=search&_gl=1*1wf314y*_ga*ODgxMjc2NDEzLjE3MzEzMjQxNDk.*_ga_6LJN6D94N6*czE3OTA2ODU2ODQkbzEyJGcwJHQxNzkwNjg1Njg1JGo1OSRsMCRoMA).. Cover art: Clare Topic – Copyright 2026 – All rights reserved. Editor: Alex Topic Music: composed and produced by Michael Topic Buy me a Ko-fi (https://ko-fi.com/michaeltopic)

5. 

   5 Oct 2026

   Democratised Storytelling - Origins of a New Idea

   Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! (https://rss.com/podcasts/democratised-storytelling/voicemail) In every age, humanity has searched for ways to share its stories: firelight and painted walls, the printed page, and now pixels and photons stitched into moving images. Michael Topic returns as your guide through ideas you may not have encountered, starting with a simple one: observation matters. Watch people at their craft and you begin to notice the small, invisible frictions that make work harder than it needs to be. That noticing is where empathy takes root, not as sentiment but as a searchlight for pain points hidden in every workflow. Removing even a grain of sand from the gears is what drives real innovation, and it scales until whole systems move more freely. Three cosmic interludes frame the journey. Dark matter shapes galaxies unseen, just as invisible obstacles bend the path of every story. Stars are born in collapse, much as innovation ignites when the tools finally catch up with the need. And the universe has been recording itself for billions of years, in the same way that every new medium archives what humanity dreamed possible. Along the way, the episode returns to the turn of the millennium, when Moore's Law put once-corporate computing power within reach of a personal credit card, while freelance editors lived with uncertainty and "Hollywood Accounting" declared million-dollar hits unprofitable. It traces the rise of stereophotogrammetry, computer vision and volumetric capture, and looks toward free-viewpoint television, where audiences step inside the scene. Creation has been democratised, but distribution remains tightly held, and real-time creation has always been just out of reach. Building on the software fabric introduced in episode one, Michael explains how millions of idle devices, working in concert, could supply the shared processing power and storage to close that gap, and become a collaborative, creator-direct-to-audience distribution system owned by everybody. The dream of empowering storytellers everywhere is no longer an "if" but a "when," and that "when" could be soon. Original blog posts were posted on: pm4p.net (https://pm4p.net) Direct link to the second post in the series: https://medium.com/product-management-for-the-people/a-fever-dream-of-democratised-storytelling-episode-2-3bad25afc94e (https://medium.com/product-management-for-the-people/a-fever-dream-of-democratised-storytelling-episode-2-3bad25afc94e) The e-book of the series is available at: Gumroad.com (https://gumroad.com/) Direct link: https://tropicalgroup.gumroad.com/l/cqmjcu?autocomplete=true&layout=discover&recommended_by=search&_gl=1*1wf314y*_ga*ODgxMjc2NDEzLjE3MzEzMjQxNDk.*_ga_6LJN6D94N6*czE3OTA2ODU2ODQkbzEyJGcwJHQxNzkwNjg1Njg1JGo1OSRsMCRoMA (https://tropicalgroup.gumroad.com/l/cqmjcu?autocomplete=true&layout=discover&recommended_by=search&_gl=1*1wf314y*_ga*ODgxMjc2NDEzLjE3MzEzMjQxNDk.*_ga_6LJN6D94N6*czE3OTA2ODU2ODQkbzEyJGcwJHQxNzkwNjg1Njg1JGo1OSRsMCRoMA).. Cover art: Clare Topic – Copyright 2026 – All rights reserved. Editor: Alex Topic Music: composed and produced by Michael Topic Buy me a Ko-fi (https://ko-fi.com/michaeltopic)

6. 

   5 Oct 2026

   Democratised Storytelling - The Background

   Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! (https://rss.com/podcasts/democratised-storytelling/voicemail) A generation ago, a fever dream took hold: a vision of tools for storytellers, built to liberate creators rather than constrain them, and to free their work from the gatekeepers who have long controlled public expression. In this opening episode, Michael Topic, a product manager and engineer with decades of experience building things people love, tells the story he has wrestled with for twenty-five years. What began as a way to pay freelance creatives more fairly grew into a blueprint for a parallel economy, one that rewards lasting value, discourages speculation and exploitation, and fosters innovation. It is a sketch for billionaire-proofing the Internet. The story starts in 1990s Hollywood, where film was cut with razor blades and tape, and where non-linear editing first gave editors the power to undo, experiment and change their minds. Michael and his collaborator Patrick Gregston saw a small step toward democratisation. But while cameras, YouTube and TikTok put the means of production in everyone's hands, distribution stayed in the hands of the few. That gap inspired NeoPixSys, a company born of fever and possibility, and a reminder of Carl Sagan's warning that making an apple pie from scratch means first inventing the universe. Along the way, Michael borrows from Jules Verne's Journey to the Centre of the Earth, treating this podcast as his way of scratching his name into the rocks for the next explorer to find. It's a story about power, ownership and who gets to tell stories. And it ends with a glimpse of the product itself: software that turns every device into a node in a distributed fabric of computation, where the machine is the cloud and the people are the power. Original blog posts were posted on: pm4p.net (https://pm4p.net) Direct link to the first post in the series: pm4p.net/a-fever-dream-of-democratised-storytelling-episode-1-413b69bcfc98 (https://medium.com/product-management-for-the-people/a-fever-dream-of-democratised-storytelling-episode-1-413b69bcfc98) The e-book of the series is available at: Gumroad.com (https://Gumroad.com) Direct link: https://tropicalgroup.gumroad.com/l/cqmjcu?autocomplete=true&layout=discover&recommended_by=search&_gl=1*1wf314y*_ga*ODgxMjc2NDEzLjE3MzEzMjQxNDk.*_ga_6LJN6D94N6*czE3OTA2ODU2ODQkbzEyJGcwJHQxNzkwNjg1Njg1JGo1OSRsMCRoMA (https://tropicalgroup.gumroad.com/l/cqmjcu?autocomplete=true&layout=discover&recommended_by=search&_gl=1*1wf314y*_ga*ODgxMjc2NDEzLjE3MzEzMjQxNDk.*_ga_6LJN6D94N6*czE3OTA2ODU2ODQkbzEyJGcwJHQxNzkwNjg1Njg1JGo1OSRsMCRoMA).. Cover art: Clare Topic – Copyright 2026 – All rights reserved. Editor: Alex Topic Music: composed and produced by Michael Topic Buy me a Ko-fi (https://ko-fi.com/michaeltopic)

7. 

   30 Sept 2026

   Democratised Storytelling Series Trailer

   Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! (https://rss.com/podcasts/democratised-storytelling/voicemail) A generation ago, Michael Topic dreamed of tools that would let anyone share their story without gatekeepers. He wanted creators paid fairly. He stumbled on a blueprint for billionaire-proofing the Internet. Some call that dangerous. He calls it emancipation. Join him for the story of a vision that still burns. Original blog posts were posted on: pm4p.net (https://pm4p.net) Direct link to the first post in the series: pm4p.net/a-fever-dream-of-democratised-storytelling-episode-1-413b69bcfc98 (https://medium.com/product-management-for-the-people/a-fever-dream-of-democratised-storytelling-episode-1-413b69bcfc98) The e-book of the series is available at: Gumroad.com (https://Gumroad.com) Direct link: https://tropicalgroup.gumroad.com/l/cqmjcu?autocomplete=true&layout=discover&recommended_by=search&_gl=1*1wf314y*_ga*ODgxMjc2NDEzLjE3MzEzMjQxNDk.*_ga_6LJN6D94N6*czE3OTA2ODU2ODQkbzEyJGcwJHQxNzkwNjg1Njg1JGo1OSRsMCRoMA (https://tropicalgroup.gumroad.com/l/cqmjcu?autocomplete=true&layout=discover&recommended_by=search&_gl=1*1wf314y*_ga*ODgxMjc2NDEzLjE3MzEzMjQxNDk.*_ga_6LJN6D94N6*czE3OTA2ODU2ODQkbzEyJGcwJHQxNzkwNjg1Njg1JGo1OSRsMCRoMA).. Cover art: Clare Topic – Copyright 2026 – All rights reserved. Editor: Alex Topic Music: composed and produced by Michael Topic Buy me a Ko-fi (https://ko-fi.com/michaeltopic)

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Spotify

5.0 / 5

1 ratings