Max Haiven (and company)

Léonicka Valcius is a literary agent specializing in championing the work of racialized and equity-seeking writers in genres including YA fiction, fantasy, historical fiction, kid lit, romance and sci-fi. In this interview, Léonicka breaks down how the publishing industry is changing and the consequences, good and bad, for emerging authors trying to disrupt the dominant scripts of the fantastic and futuristic.

* https://www.leonicka.com/

The Workers' Speculative Society is a research podcast about the world Amazon is building and the workers, writers and communities that are demanding a different future. It is part of the Worker as Futurist Project, which supports rank-and-file Amazon workers to write speculative fiction about "The World After Amazon. It is hosted by Xenia Benivolski, Max Haiven, Sarah Olutola, and Graeme Webb and is an initiative of RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab, with support from the Social Sciences a Humanities Research Council of Canada. Editing and theme music by Robert Steenkamer.

* soundcloud.com/reimaginevalue/sets/the-workers-speculative

* workersspeculativesociety.org

* reimaginingvalue.ca

Amazon presents its "revolution" in logistics as a bloodless technological coup against the forces of convention, waged in the name of customer satisfaction. But in Alessandro Delfanti's book The Warehouse: Workers and Robots at Amazon, the University of Toronto professor reveals that its labour exploitation all the way down. In this episode he helps us understand the stakes of a struggle not only for workers' rights, but for the future of technology.

* https://delfanti.org/

* https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745342177/the-warehouse/

The Workers' Speculative Society is a research podcast about the world Amazon is building and the workers, writers and communities that are demanding a different future. It is part of the Worker as Futurist Project, which supports rank-and-file Amazon workers to write speculative fiction about "The World After Amazon. It is hosted by Xenia Benivolski, Max Haiven, Sarah Olutola, and Graeme Webb and is an initiative of RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab, with support from the Social Sciences a Humanities Research Council of Canada. Editing and theme music by Robert Steenkamer.

* soundcloud.com/reimaginevalue/sets/the-workers-speculative

* workersspeculativesociety.org

* reimaginingvalue.ca

In his 2020 memoir Black Water, award-winning author David A. Robertson reflects on how his Cree heritage and his family's survival of colonialism has shaped his imagination. In this conversation, he speaks of the joys and challenges of writing speculative fiction for adults and children, informed by Indigenous worldviews and struggles. Approaching fiction as a work of community-building, he speaks to the need for courage to push back against dominant narratives.

Robertson is author of numerous bestselling books for readers of many ages in a wide diversity of imaginative genres. In 2021 he received the Writers’ Union of Canada Freedom to Read Award and was named Globe and Mail Children's Storyteller of the Year. He has won Canada's prestigious Governor General's Literary Award several times.

* https://www.darobertson.ca/

* https://www.cbc.ca/listen/cbc-podcasts/425-kiwew

The Workers' Speculative Society is a research podcast about the world Amazon is building and the workers, writers and communities that are demanding a different future. It is part of the Worker as Futurist Project, which supports rank-and-file Amazon workers to write speculative fiction about "The World After Amazon. It is hosted by Xenia Benivolski, Max Haiven, Sarah Olutola, and Graeme Webb and is an initiative of RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab, with support from the Social Sciences a Humanities Research Council of Canada. Editing and theme music by Robert Steenkamer.

* soundcloud.com/reimaginevalue/sets/the-workers-speculative

* workersspeculativesociety.org

* reimaginingvalue.ca

The legendary thinker and radical historian Robin DG Kelley joins us to discuss the importance of the radical imagination and the history of workers' writing.

Kelley is author of many books on the history of labour and anti-racist struggles, and about luminary proletarian creative figures. These include: Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination, Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class, and Africa Speaks, America Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times.

In this conversation, Kelley explains how, in the face of corporate and capitalist power, which has never failed to mobilize racism, working people have consistently turned to the written word as a tool of solidarity and a means to demand a different future. In an age of digital capitalism where corporations like Amazon dominate the market for books, films and other "content," reclaiming the power to create and share works of the imagination are more important than ever.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Kelley

* http://www.beacon.org/Freedom-Dreams-P1855.aspx

The Workers' Speculative Society is a research podcast about the world Amazon is building and the workers, writers and communities that are demanding a different future. It is part of the Worker as Futurist Project, which supports rank-and-file Amazon workers to write speculative fiction about "The World After Amazon. It is hosted by Xenia Benivolski, Max Haiven, Sarah Olutola, and Graeme Webb and is an initiative of RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab, with support from the Social Sciences a Humanities Research Council of Canada. Editing and theme music by Robert Steenkamer.

* https://soundcloud.com/reimaginevalue/sets/the-workers-speculative

* http://workersspeculativesociety.org

* http://reimaginingvalue.ca

Amazon's exploitation of data, robotics, and workers has created a breathtaking global empire. Charmaine Chua, a labour organizer with Amazonians United and an assistant professor at University of California Santa Barbara's Department of Global Studies, is uniquely well qualified to guide us through what that means, for workers and for the world. Her work focuses on the ways working people resist and build solidarity against what can seem like insurmountable odds.

* https://www.charmainechua.com/

* https://www.amazoniansunited.org/

* https://www.global.ucsb.edu/people/charmaine-chua

The Workers' Speculative Society is a research podcast about the world Amazon is trying to build and the workers, writers, and communities that are demanding a different future. It is part of the Worker as Futurist Project, which supports rank-and-file Amazon workers to write speculative fiction about "The World After Amazon." It is hosted by Xenia Benivolski, Max Haiven, Sarah Olutola, and Graeme Webb and is an initiative of RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab, with support from the Social Sciences a Humanities Research Council of Canada. Editing and theme music by Robert Steenkamer.

* https://soundcloud.com/reimaginevalue/sets/the-workers-speculative

* http://workersspeculativesociety.org

* http://reimaginingvalue.ca

In Marc McGurls " Everything and Less" the Stanford University professor of American literature explores the fate of the novel in the "Age of Amazon." Well known for his illuminating studies of the institutions that surround how we read and write, McGurl turns his attention to what he suggests may be the most important shift in literature in our moment: the fact that, today, one corporation has disproportionate control over the market for books and especially e-books. In this interview, we consider the consequences for readers, writers and the future of the written word.

* https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/2769-everything-and-less

* https://english.stanford.edu/people/mark-mcgurl

The Workers' Speculative Society is a research podcast about the world Amazon is building and the workers, writers and communities that are demanding a different future. It is part of the Worker as Futurist Project, which supports rank-and-file Amazon workers to write speculative fiction about "The World After Amazon". It is hosted by Xenia Benivolski, Max Haiven, Sarah Olutola, and Graeme Webb and is an initiative of RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab, with support from the Social Sciences a Humanities Research Council of Canada. Editing and theme music by Robert Steenkamer.

* https://soundcloud.com/reimaginevalue/sets/the-workers-speculative

* http://workersspeculativesociety.org

* http://reimaginingvalue.ca

For 15 years Brent Lee not only believed in conspiracy theories but helped produce and popularize them. Today, he warns others about both the danger and the appeal of conspiratorial world-building. We have been taught to imagine that people fall into the proverbial "rabbit hole" because of isolation, idiocy and paranoia. But in this interview, Brent explains how he and many others came to it from through critical thinking, skepticism towards the operations of social power and empathy with those who were suffering. We explore with him why he stayed in the conspiracy world thanks, in part, to the sense of righteous community it provided. And we cover how the right-wing weaponization of conspiracy theories in the mid-2010s triggered Brent's exit from the community. Today, motivated by contrition for what he helped create and compassion for those who, like him, are taken in, he dedicates his time to helping those inside and outside conspiracy worlds understand and challenge them.

Brent Lee, a former conspiracist who now seeks to challenge and reveal the lures and dangers of conspiracism, maintains a blog (http://brentleetv.blogspot.com/) and a YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/c/BrentLeeTV) and can often be found on Twitter (https://twitter.com/BrentLeeSDCIC). His new podcast Some Dare Call it Conspiracy, dedicated to reverse-engineering conspiracy theories, launched in June 2022 (https://anchor.fm/somedarecallitconspiracy)

How do today's videogames inherit and reiterate colonial ideologies, tropes and ways of seeing the world? Can such games be played “against the grain" in ways that defy the colonial script? We speak with Souvik Mukherjee.

Dr Souvik Mukherjee is assistant professor in Cultural Studies at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences Calcutta, India. Souvik’s research looks at the narrative and the literary through the emerging discourse of videogames as storytelling media and at how these games inform and challenge our conceptions of narratives, identity and culture, especially in Postcolonial contexts.  Souvik is the author of two monographs, Videogames and Storytelling: Reading Games and Playing Books (Palgrave Macmillan 2015) and Videogames and Postcolonialism: Empire Plays Back (Springer UK 2017). He is also the co-editor (with Dr Emil Hammar) of the special issue ‘Postcolonial Perspectives in Videogames’. Souvik was named a ‘DiGRA Distinguished Scholar’ in 2019 by the Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA)

For more information, visit http://conspiracy.games

The line separating conspiracy theories from "legitimate" political discourse or critical theory is far from sharp. Renowned scholars Peter Knight and Clare Birchall join us to to reveal what's at stake and the broader (neoliberal capitalist) context.

Clare Birchall is Reader in Contemporary Culture at King’s College London. She is the author of Knowledge Goes Pop: From Conspiracy Theory to Gossip and Radical Secrecy: The Ends of Transparency in Datafied America. With Peter Knight, she is writing a book on Covid-19 conspiracy theories, which is the result of a one year AHRC grant on the topic.

Peter Knight is professor of American Studies at the University of Manchester. His research is on conspiracy theories, and the economic humanities. He is the author of Conspiracy Culture (2000), The Kennedy Assassination (2007), and Reading the Market (2016). He is editor of Conspiracy Nation (2002), Conspiracy Theories in American History: An Encyclopedia (2004), and The Routledge Handbook of Conspiracy Theories (2020). He directed the EU-funded Comparative Analysis of Conspiracy Theories network, and a project funded by the AHRC on conspiracy theories and the pandemic. He is currently leading “Everything Is Connected,” an AHRC-funded team project examining how conspiracy theories have changed in the age of the internet.

The left's relationship with games is "complicated." We're joined by labour organizer, YouTuber, writer and teacher Marijam Didžgalvytė to explain why, and what can be done about it.

Marijam Didžgalvytė is a creator of content at the intersection between videogames and politics. She lectures at the Royal Holloway, University of London and is a Marketing Executive at a Bafta-winning games studio. Didžgalvytė has helped form both the British and International chapters of the game unionisation movement and organizes antifascist gaming events. She has been shortlisted for GamesIndusty.biz's 100 Women in Games 2019 and was nominated Campaigner of the Year at MCV UK Awards 2019. Her writing has been commissioned for publications including Vise, the Guardian, Kotaku and the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation and she ha sconsulted for Tate, V & A Galleries, Birkbeck, the European Humanities University and Indiecade.