{about}
The Show
Every line of code has a story. Most of us just never hear it.
Found in the Machine is a narrative technology podcast about the forgotten history of computing, software, and the internet. Each episode uncovers the true story behind a piece of computing history or internet lore to surface the forgotten people, decisions, and accidents that quietly shaped the digital world.
If you've ever wondered who actually made something you use every day, and why you've never heard their name before, you'll feel at home here. This show is for the curious, not the credentialed. You don't need a technical background to follow along. You just need to be the kind of person who pulls on threads.
New episodes every other week.
The Host
I'm Daina Bouquin. By training I'm a librarian and a data scientist, which means I've spent my career thinking about what gets into the record and what the record can actually tell you. Both fields are fundamentally about gaps. What can be found and what disappears. Who gets credited and who gets quietly dropped. What the data shows and what it can't see. That set of preoccupations is what drives this show.
My work has moved through library science, astrophysics research infrastructure, and data science, but the thread running through all of it is a fixation on attribution and the hidden infrastructure of knowledge. Today I work inside the open source software community, surrounded by the people who build and maintain the tools the rest of the world takes for granted. That proximity is not incidental to this show. These stories are not curiosities to me. They are about people I recognize.
Found in the Machine is the show I always wanted to hear.
The Format
Each episode is a self-contained narrative: story-first, research-driven, and designed to be genuinely listenable whether you're a software engineer or have never written a line of code. Episodes run roughly 10 - 15 minutes and publish every other week. Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.
Found in the Machine is independently produced. If you enjoy the show, you can support it with a coffee.