Comradio

The creator of Small Robots (@smolrobots) joins us for one of our most serious and most silly episodes. With the help of a large cast of Thomas's adorable robot characters, we take a range of approaches from the philosophical to the daft to: robots in culture, AI, transhumanism, immigration, gender reveal parties, memes and memetics, A Cyborg Manifesto, killer robots, F1, alpacas, upturned plugs, and more.  

 

Plus, Cities For Life Day. 

 

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Small Robots archive - smolbotbot.com 

 

Small Robots Patreon 

 

Deliverypersonbot 

 

Lt Commander Data as a bot 

 

Tory leader bot 

 

Banthesunbot 

 

Abolishicebot 

 

What ICE really does - Sofie Werthan for Slate (2018) 

 

ACLU - Defending Civil Liberties At The Border 

 

US Immigration facts 

 

Genderrevealbot 

 

Genderbot 

 

Transrightsbot 

 

Trans/nb solidarity bot account on Twitter 

 

Good Trans News Twitter account. Only positive transgender news stories. 

 

Transbot 

 

Managing automation: Employment, inequality and ethics in the digital age - IPPR (2017) 

 

Transhumanism and Marxism: Philosophical Connections - James Steinhoff (2014) 

 

10 Technologies Banned From F1 

 

Dying to be big: a review of anabolic steroid use - H Perry (1992) 

 

The Cyborg Manifesto - Donna Haraway (1985) 

 

Donna Haraway's "A Cyborg Manifesto" (26:59) - Theory & Philosophy podcast 

 

No death and an enhanced life: Is the future transhuman? - Robin McKie in The Guardian (2018) 

 

Memebots 

 

Resistbot as a tarot card 

 

Resistbot (original) 

 

Stop Killer Robots campaign 

 

Stop Killer Robots - Twitter account 

 

Alpacabot 

 

NFT bot 

 

Watchbot 

 

The Goon Show: What Time Is It, Eccles? 

 

Bigbot 

 

Bigskeletonbot  

 

Newbot 

 

Splatbot 

 

Upturnedplugbot 

 

Parallelparkbot  

 

Mondaybot  

 

Sittingbot  

 

Fencesittingbot  

 

Cities For Life Day 

 

World Coalition Against The Death Penalty 

 

Custombot order form 

 

Small Robots book on Hive

For the ALE theme this month, which is "cooperation" , we are talking boycotts. The history of them (taking in the struggle for Irish independence, an anti-slavery forerunner to Fair Trade, the "girlcott", and more) and the best tactics to use today. Plus, Armed Forces cosplay for MPs.  

 

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The Origins and Development of Boycotting - Gerard Moran (1985) 

 

Why We Boycott: Consumer Motivations for Boycott Participation - J G Klein et al (2004) 

 

Strike Map UK 

 

Row over 'drunk' MPs on Gibraltar military visit - BBC News (2021) 

 

Armed Forces Parliamentary Scheme website 

 

Sephiroth from Final Fantasy

What is "electability"? Why is the word so popular in Indonesia? What does it mean for UK politics? We answer these questions and even ask an AI to describe the concept, as well as what it understands by "the Second Row Socialists" and, most importantly, its thoughts on John Rentoul's fluid intake.  

 

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Google trends data for "electability" 

 

Extremists who win primaries are 37 percent less likely to win the general election compared to more moderate candidates.- Andrew B. Hall (2015) 

 

Man Bites Blue Dog: Are Moderates Really More Electable than Ideologues? - Stephen M. Utych (2019)  

 

In U.S., Socialist Presidential Candidates Least Appealing - Justin McCarthy for Gallup (2015) 

 

Bulletpoint: Is Electability A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy? - Nate Silver for Five Thirty Eight (2019) 

 

Estimating the gender penalty in House of Representative elections using a regression discontinuity design - Lefteris Anastasopoulos (2016)  

 

Voters are back to worrying whether a woman can win - Ella Nilsen for Vox (2020) 

 

Just 6 per cent of Labour voters backed the party because of their local MP - Jon Stone for The Independent (2017) 

 

Only half of the population have heard of Emily Thornberry 

 

Starmer : I will break pledges to make Labour electable - Andrew Woodcock for The Independent (2021) 

 

Labour members split on whether the party should prioritise electability or principles - Fintan Smith for YouGov (2021) 

 

PiP's Scotpol podcast episode with talk of the Scottish Greens

A particularly red episode for you this week. The history of instability in Sudan that contributed to the military coup on 25th October, the COP26 circus, The Times on conversion therapy and the government consultation, the lawyer who won billions for indigenous peoples then felt the full force of the law, Matt and Chlöe on the libel train, the Beatles Museum, the horror of virtual reality with Mark Zuckerberg and Nick Clegg, and a new workers cooperative in Corbyn country.  

 

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Boris Johnson's fascist 'fall of Rome' comments 

 

Urging change of gender to be criminalised - George Grylls in The Times (archived link) 

 

Government consultation on conversion therapy 

 

This Attorney Took On Chevron. Then Chevron-Linked Judges and Private Prosecutors Had Him Locked Up. - Sofia Andrade for Slate (2021) 

 

Lawnmower man - trapped in virtual reality 

 

Play Bamboozle! Quiz 

 

Astley In The Noose - The Wonderstuff 

 

A conversation with the founder of ethical food delivery service, Wings - London In Bits 

 

Wings Ethical Food Delivery (Finsbury Park only)

Throughout the universe, far from home, all human dead will be reanimated to walk again eternally.  Cosmism, a seemingly unkillable philosophy, launches our supernatural, technological, and political history of a modern myth that crystallised in the Cold War and which now has millions of adherents, from unaffiliated believers to extreme cultists to the utopian Trotskyists known as the Posadists. 

 

Swing down sweet chariots for the mothership connection: it's the Comradio 2021 Halloween Special.  

 

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The Space Pope 

 

Episode 18, where we talk about Cosmism in the context of the space race 

 

Is There A God? (in Russian) - Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1932) 

 

Le Voyage Dans La Lune - George Méliès 

 

Alien demonology: the Christian roots of the malevolent extraterrestrial in UFO religions and abduction spiritualities - Christopher Partridge (2004) 

 

Comet Hale-Bopp 

 

On UFOlogy with Chinese Characteristics and the Fate of Chinese Socialism - Malcolm Thompson (2020) 

 

Episode 52 - The Illuminazis feat. We Don’t Talk About the Weather 

 

"Alexa" scene from Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home 

 

Sovereignty and the UFO - Alexander Wendt & Raymond Duvall (2008) 

 

Interview with Alexander Wendt in Vox - Sean Illing (2020) 

 

Scientist Edward Condon of Colorado University published a scientific study of UFOs  in 1968 

 

The Drake Equation 

 

David Halperin on the Hills' abduction experience 

 

UFOs, Otherness, and Belonging: Identity in Remote Aboriginal Australia - Eirik Saethre (2007) 

 

I Want to Believe: Posadism, UFOs, and Apocalypse Communism - A.M. Gittlitz (2020) 

 

Afrofuturism: where space, pyramids and politics collide - Chardine Taylor-Stone (2014) 

 

Parliament Funkadelic - The Mothership Connection (Halloween, 1976)  

 

Further reading

Tsiolkovsky, Russian Cosmism and Extraterrestrial Intelligence - Lytkin et al (1994) UFOs and the US intelligence community - Charles A. Ziegler (2008) 

 

The Roswell Myth in the FBI Files: Aliens, UFOs, and the Cold War - Anna Wortman (2004) 

 

Afrofuturism, science fiction, and the history of the future - Lisa Yaszek (2010)

In this episode on LGBT+ experiences of sport, we are joined by sociologist Rory Magrath and LGBT comedian & sports fan Sam Whyte. We discuss Rory's LGBT Fans Project, homophobia and transphobia in sport, the intersection of these with racism as well as social class, masculinity, gender expectations arising from the roots of modern football, personal experiences, sporting authorities, the media, policy, and Trans Radio UK FC's awesome football shirt.  

 

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Inclusionary and exclusionary banter: English club cricket, inclusive attitudes and male camaraderie 

 

Natalie Washington - Football vs transphobia 

 

More Americans shot by dogs... 

 

Trans Radio UK 

 

TRUK United FC 

 

TRUK United FC shirt

A short preview of our Patreon exclusive episode.

 

For Halloween we board the Nostromo with Tara Court from The Killening podcast to discuss the 1979 film Alien. We look into sinister corporations, alien bits that look like other bits, and Žižek getting psychoanalytical about it all, while dragging Lacan along with him.  

 

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The Killening

 

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Conference, Conference, Conference! Here at Comradio we have all the Conferences. This is a Conference blow out! We have a vast selection of Conferences! We got Tory Conference, Labour Conference, Lib Dem Conference, SNP Conference, protest Conference, apple pie Conference, beans Conference... For the perverts we've got Reform Party Conference and we even have a preview of Green Party Conference. 

 

If we don't have it, you don't want it! If you can find more Conference anywhere, um.. attend it.  

 

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Dominic Hutchins challenging Rees-Mogg 

 

Mf eating beans 

 

"the scene from A Clockwork Orange" (CW: Violence) 

 

Sir Gordon Messenger asked to "stamp out waste and wokery" in NHS - Daily Mail (archive) 

 

Trashfuture episode talking about Starmer's speech and climate 

 

SNP conference: Freeports in Scotland must meet six guarantees - The National 

 

Podcasting is Praxis episode talking about freeports  

 

Dawn Foster memorial library sale 

 

Beans

This Alternative Left Entertainment launch episode sees our identity-protected scientist guest smack down the myths of the invisible hand as we wrestle with how capitalism enables dangerous practices within the pharmaceutical and medical markets.  

 

For our five minute focus we look at one way to do things better; The People's Vaccine.  

 

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Biotech and Biological Sciences Research Council  

 

The People's Vaccine

Jordan and Chlöe go to Labour Conference and The World Transformed. With the help of this week's guest, CLP delegate Gary, they tell us about shenanigans from Conference Chairs, Labour List karaoke, challenging Paul Mason to not hate Catholics, and more. 

 

We apologise for the low quality of some of the audio in the first 13 minutes.  

 

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Community Pizza Fire Scene