• Eleven Minutes of Bullshit About Carbon Footprints and Privacy
    Jul 2 2026
    Ditching streaming algorithms and AI slop for an old MP3 player, independent Bandcamp music, and ethical web hosting. Just a bloke waffling about intentional living without being preachy.
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    12 mins
  • A Casual Chat on Solitude and Nature
    Jun 25 2026
    Chatting from a willow tree after dodging a rare adder, exploring digital minimalism, why solitude is vital for mental health, and the joy of random cat pictures.
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    12 mins
  • Sitting in a Tree Talking Crap
    Jun 14 2026
    Alright, cheers for tuning into Carl Versus Reality. I'm sitting up my podcasting tree after a crisp morning walk, proper clearing the head after a week that left me so mentally exhausted I didn't even know what day it was. In this episode, I'm having a natter about finding that vital nature connection'hunting for beach hag stones, adding to my little shrine at home, and completely kicking against the gross, polished corporate algorithms of Instagram and Facebook. I've officially built my own independent base camp over at carlvsreality.com using a bit of code, and honestly, swapping the corporate internet for the decentralised IndieWeb has been amazing. It's just a bunch of real people expressing themselves without being used as a product. Come check out the site, escape the feed, and take care of yourselves.
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    11 mins
  • Why I Ditched the Algorithm (and Why Success is Failure)
    Jun 10 2026
    Hello and welcome back to Carl vs Reality. I'm currently sitting right back up in my podcasting tree, about a twenty-five-minute trek out into the coastal wilderness to find a bit of peace and tranquillity, only to have a massive, deafening fighter jet go roaring back and forth right over my head'which is a bit of a perfect metaphor for life lately, isn't it? I've been away from the microphone for a while because I made the mistake of trying to chase the algorithm, slicing the show up into these little thirty-second, out-of-context clips for TikTok and Instagram just because people kept asking how many listeners I get, and honestly, it became a completely demoralising chore. It made me realise that what the modern internet calls "success"'chasing views and signing sponsorship deals with crap companies'actually feels like failure to me, so I've completely ditched the corporate apps and found this brilliant movement called the IndieWeb, where people are just self-hosting their own personal blogs and using decentralized networks like Mastodon without any algorithms messing with your head. It feels exactly like the old-school internet back in the day, so I'm completely self-hosting this podcast now, starting an independent blog because I'm a bit of a hipster, and running down to the beach to record some nice ambient nature sounds of the sea, assuming that jet has finally buggered off.
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    10 mins