Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchThe "AI"-Enabled Immigration Panopticon (with Petra Molnar), 2025.05.05
Episode 57
This week, Alex and Emily talk with anthropologist and immigration lawyer Petra Molnar about the dehumanizing hype of border-enforcement tech. From hoovering up data to hunt anyone of ambiguous citiz…
Published on 5 months, 3 weeks ago
AGI: "Imminent", "Inevitable", and Inane, 2025.04.21
Episode 56
Emily and Alex pore through an elaborate science fiction scenario about the "inevitability" of Artificial General Intelligence or AGI by the year 2027 - which rests atop a foundation of TESCREAL nons…
Published on 6 months ago
AI Hell in a Handbasket, 2025.04.14
Episode 55
It's been 4 months since we've cleared the backlog of Fresh AI Hell and the bullshit is coming in almost too fast to keep up with. But between a page full of awkward unicorns and a seeming slowdown i…
Published on 6 months, 2 weeks ago
"AI" Agents, A Single Point of Failure (with Margaret Mitchell), 2025.03.31
Episode 54
After "AI" stopped meaning anything, the hype salesmen moved on to "AI" "agents", those allegedly indefatigable assistants, allegedly capable of operating your software for you -- whether you need to…
Published on 7 months ago
Linguists Versus 'AI' Speech Analysis (with Nicole Holliday), 2025.03.17
Episode 53
Measuring your talk time? Counting your filler words? What about "analyzing" your "emotions"? Companies that push LLM technology to surveil and summarize video meetings are increasingly offering to (…
Published on 7 months, 2 weeks ago
The Anti-Bookclub Tackles 'Superagency', 2025.03.03
Episode 52
Emily and Alex read a terrible book so you don't have to! Come for a quick overview of LinkedIn co-founder and venture capitalist Reid Hoffman's opus of magical thinking, 'Superagency: What could pos…
Published on 7 months, 4 weeks ago
The War on Knowledge (with Raina Bloom), 2025.02.24
Episode 51
In the weeks since January 20, the US information ecosystem has been unraveling fast. (We're looking at you Denali, Gulf of Mexico, and every holiday celebrating people of color and queer people that…
Published on 8 months, 1 week ago
Petro-Masculinity Versus the Planet (with Tamara Kneese), 2025.01.27
Episode 50
Sam Altman thinks fusion - particularly a company he's personally invested in - can provide the energy we "need" to develop AGI. Meanwhile, what if we just...put data centers on the Moon to save ener…
Published on 8 months, 4 weeks ago
The UK's Misplaced Enthusiasm (with Gina Neff), 2025.01.20
Episode 49
In January, the United Kingdom's new Labour Party prime minister, Keir Starmer, announced a new initiative to go all in on AI in the hopes of big economic returns, with a promise to “mainline” it int…
Published on 9 months, 1 week ago
Sam Altman's Fever Dream, 2025.01.13
Episode 48
Not only is OpenAI's new o3 model allegedly breaking records for how close an LLM can get to the mythical "human-like thinking" of AGI, but Sam Altman has some, uh, reflections for us as he marks two…
Published on 9 months, 3 weeks ago