Mike Rugnetta was my favourite internet person for a full decade, between 2012 and 2022 when he stopped being publicly active. He was the brains behind PBS Idea Channel , a quirky, very 2012-y show about the internet, pop culture, art, philosophy, and the intersections between them all.
Mike is the one who turned me on to the idea that internet culture was interesting and was worth thinking about deeply. He pointed me towards so many interesting ideas --- Susan Sontag’s essays on photography , Jean Beaudrillard’s hyperreal, and the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics
The tone of Idea Channel is phrenetic and very jumpcut-y, but it’s still very much worth a watch and a good think!
Update 2025-01-27: He’s back!
Mike has a newsletter you can subscribe to using RSS (here). He’s also on bluesky