About Us
In late 2022, we launched a revised edition of BJ Mendelson's book, "Privacy: And How We Get It Back" as a podcast miniseries called “Stupid Sexy Privacy.”
The book was originally published in 2017 by Curious Reads and released as an audio book known as "The End of Privacy." It consisted of a revised section of BJ's first book, "Social Media Is Bullshit" (St. Martin's Press), that was cut prior to publication in 2012.
Stupid Sexy Privacy's first run was sponsored by DuckDuckGo and Slate interviewed BJ about it here.
Now, given the rising tide of fascism around the world, we've again partnered with our friends at DuckDuckGo to bring the miniseries back.
The original mini-series will begin re-airing in August of 2025, and 25 new episodes will begin airing immediately after that, taking us through December of 2026.
All episodes will release once a week on Thursdays at midnight EST. On Friday, you'll get an email with the show notes and a note from BJ. If you sign up as a member for this website, it's free, you can also get the full transcript of each episode. This is especially useful because we do a lot of interviews.
(Don't let that "old" episode description fool you though. We took great pains to update all 31 original episodes with new interviews and additional content for 2025 and 2026.)
You can listen to Stupid Sexy Privacy on Apple Podcasts here.
And you can listen to Stupid Sexy Privacy on Spotify here.
One More Thing ...
Our podcast transcripts, and additional material found exclusively at this website, is going to be for members only.
There is NO cost to become a member. It's FREE.
We did this to stop tech companies from stealing, repurposing, and distributing our content.
BJ's first book, "Social Media Is Bullshit" was stolen by Anthropic — alongside thousands of other books — and used to train its AI Model. (See: Bartz, et al. v. Anthropic PBC and Bartz v Anthropic.)
So, we'd like to help put a stop to the free ride the Broligarchy is current enjoying. Artists, writers, and other creative talents — as well as their editors, inkers, and other parties in the creative process — deserve compensation for their work.
If there was a way to completely prevent our content from being scraped by tech companies, we would do it.
Until then, we encourage you to sign-up for a membership while you're here. (And don't forget to use your @ Duck forwarding address to do so.)
Transparency: A Word About AI Use, Data Collection, and Affiliate Links
Our project is sponsored by DuckDuckGo.
But DuckDuckGo has no editorial oversight over the content of Stupid Sexy Privacy.
Thanks to DuckDuckGo we can give all of our information away for free, including a copy of our new e-book and audio book, "How to Protect Yourself From Fascists & Weirdos."
More on that in April of 2026.
We're (Mostly) Anti-AI
With a few exceptions, we don't rely on generative AI or other AI tools to produce this project.
Our one exception: We use Riverside.fm's transcription tool to produce transcripts. BJ then listens to each episodes and corrects those transcripts to make sure they're accurate.
We also use Riverside.fm's AI production tools for editing the audio for Privacy Tips with BJ Mendelson. (Mostly, we use the "Enhance to Studio Quality" feature on our recordings, but that's about it on their AI features. We don't use their generative AI component called Co-Pilot.)
Everything else you read and hear was written and produced by B.J. Mendelson. Typos, spelling errors, and borderline inappropriate jokes about Wonder Woman included.
Stupid Sexy Privacy is produced by Andrew VanVoorhis and hosted by Rosie Tran.
Occasionally, Amanda King joins us too.
No generative AI is used to produce this website or the podcasts.
If you like what we're doing, there are additional ways you can support us:
-In addition to the FREE membership, we also offer a $2 a month paid option. Subscribers using this plan will be able to leave comments on our blog posts. This is our primary source of income for this project.
Yes. It's a "Troll Toll." Yes. This is a reference to what you think it is. No. There is no obligation to subscribe. You can become a member of Stupid Sexy Privacy for free.
We offer this option for those who like what we're doing and want to support our mission to make 5% of Americans 1% better at protecting themselves from fascists and weirdos.
-We sometimes utilize affiliate links only for books. You should know none of these affiliate links costs you anything extra to use. We use them because they kick back a small amount of money toward us IF you do use them.
-There is one link at the bottom of the page that measures clicks to DuckDuckGo. It says, "Get DuckDuckGo Privacy Plus." This lets us tell DuckDuckGo how much traffic we sent to them from this website. (This helps us pay the rent here.)
-There are no product or service recommended through an affiliate link except on the Contact Page for ProtonMail. We are customers of ProtonMail, and if you use this link, we get a credit which helps keep our costs down in using that service. (Everything for Stupid Sexy Privacy is done through Proton. We use Proton Docs to write content. Proton Sheets for the budget. Proton Drive to send audio to each other. And Proton Mail to book guests.)
Our commitment to you is that we do not recommend anything unless we personally use it ourselves.
For example, with DuckDuckGo, we've been using services such as their search engine, browser, and more recently, the @ duck forwarding service for years.
Our recommendation of their products would have happened regardless of their involvement in the show.
There is also no obligation to use these links. All affiliate links will be flagged or otherwise called out so you know where they are.
We Use Ghost & Plausible
This website is powered by Ghost. While Ghost does function as a newsletter platform first, we want to be clear: Nobody is accessing or seeing your data beyond the producers of this show.
This data will not be shared or provided to anyone, for any reason. Ghost is also pretty solid in terms of respecting your privacy compared to some of the other publishing platforms that exist today.
We also use Plausible Analytics to gather information on this project's performance in the least invasive way possible. As they explain:
Plausible is privacy-friendly analytics. All the site measurement is carried out absolutely anonymously. Cookies are not used and no personal data is collected. There are no persistent identifiers. No cross-site or cross-device tracking either. Your site data is not used for any other purposes. All visitor data is exclusively processed with servers owned and operated by European companies and it never leaves the EU.
No company is perfect. *Card Subject to Change" as they say in the professional wrestling business.
We will do our best to protect your data whenever possible.
Get In Touch
If you'd like to get in touch, here's how to do so.