When commenting on the power and influence of the Catholic Church, Stalin is supposed to have asked: ‘how many divisions has the pope?’ Donald Trump has yet to question how many F35s Leo XIV has, but he may as well have done in his angry response to the American pope’s criticism of the US and Israel’s attack on Iran. With the US president’s supporters invoking the Catholic theory of ‘just war’ to defend the bombing of Iran, and the claims of Silicon Valley to offer their own paths to salvation, the Church of Rome faces multiple challenges to its role as a moral and diplomatic force.

To consider why the conflict between the pope and the American right has escalated so quickly in the past few weeks, James is joined by Massimo Faggioli, a professor in ecclesiology at the Loyola Institute at Trinity College Dublin, and Jack Hanson, an associate editor at the Yale Review. They also discuss the nature of papal authority and its evolution since the loss of the papal states in 1870, and whether we’re seeing the return of faith to the public sphere or simply the shattering of a consensus about what constitutes religion.

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When Disneyland opened to the public in 1955, it demystified the hidden world of factory automation through its extraordinary new attractions. In Disneyland and the Rise of Automation: How Technology Created the Happiest Place on Earth (Princeton University Press, 2026), Dr. Roland Betancourt tells the story of how the visionary engineers and designers at Disney transformed the technologies of the postwar assembly line into an entertainment experience unlike anything the world had ever seen.
This book traces the origins and evolution of these technical innovations during the theme park’s first three decades in operation, exploring how engineers reimagined the systems and machines of industrial manufacturing and the military. The magnetic tape used to test ballistic missiles was repurposed to animate the talking macaws in the Enchanted Tiki Room. Programmable Logic Controllers, widely used on automotive assembly lines, brought to life the spectacular rides of the Matterhorn Bobsleds and Space Mountain. Dr. Betancourt shows how these and other attractions helped to allay fears about automation and job displacement in 1950s America. Along the way, he situates Disneyland’s remarkable creations within a broader history of the technologies that increasingly order and construct the world around us, from the Fordist factory to artificial intelligence.
Essential reading for anyone interested in engineering, corporate histories, or popular culture, Disneyland and the Rise of Automation invites us to consider how technology and the logic of automation become integrated into our lives through entertainment.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

Repression of protest has ramped up in the U.S., but everything that's happening now began with the backlash to the Standing Rock protest back in 2016. In today's episode we look at the connections between fossil fascism, petromasculinity, and protest.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In Data Cartels, legal scholar Sarah Lamdan exposes the shadowy industry built around collecting, packaging, and selling our personal data. She reveals how powerful companies hoard information and use aggressive tactics to maintain control—turning data into a commodity that can deepen inequality and restrict the democratic flow of knowledge. Heather Joseph, executive director of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) speaks with Lamdan about the hidden power structures behind the data economy.

Grab your copy of Data Cartels: https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=33205

This conversation was recorded on 11/30/2022. Watch the full video recording at: https://archive.org/details/book-talk-data-cartels

Check out all of the Future Knowledge episodes at https://archive.org/details/future-knowledge

To accompany our podcast series, Death in Westminster, hosts Kojo Koram and Dalia Gebrial met with investigative journalist Peter Geoghegan and former private wealth lawyer Stephanie Brobbey at EartH in Hackney last month.

Digging into the dark money that flows through Westminster, Kojo and Dalia find out what made Stephanie quit her job hiding rich people’s assets, why Peter couldn’t find anyone to publish his story about Labour corruption, and what normal people can do to challenge the global system of wealth extraction.

Listen to Death in Westminster, hosted by Dalia and Kojo Koram, in the Novara Media podcast feed. Follow Peter’s work through the Democracy For Sale newsletter.

Kenya's crisis stems from elites disconnected from our societal roots. Imported from global neoliberal templates, they prioritize foreign debt traps, IMF dictates, and elite capture over organic, people-driven solutions. This alienation fuels inequality, erodes trust, and stifles authentic African agency—demanding we reclaim leadership grounded in our lived realities.

What happens when a private equity company takes over a music festival? For this Critical Listening live taping at the ESNS Conference in Groningen, we spoke with Dutch investigative journalist Henk Willem Smits to unpack this very question. Smits works with the community-supported outlet Follow the Money,  specializing in tax avoidance by multinationals and wealthy individuals in music, and the intersections of private equity and electronic music culture. His 2025 piece "Loud Music, Silent Takeovers" specifically looked at the 1.3 billion euros spent by U.S.-based private equity firm KKR on music festivals in recent years.

In his reporting, Smits has found that after private equity buys festivals, they can be subject to higher ticket prices, more commercial partnerships, and homogenized lineups driven by Spotify and TikTok data—in order to "tailor lineups more precisely to audience demand," he wrote last year. "A lot of festivals, especially smaller dance festivals, don't have big margins," Smits told us. "It's a very small margin business. So what you see now is management layers getting fired... That is something that happens a lot, but that is not something the audience notices. What also happens is you see some festivals not being organized. Or they skip a year."

Below, see some more highlights from our conversation with Smits, which also covered his reporting on the connections between KKR and Israel, and how pop stars use the Netherlands as a tax haven.

How else do festivals change when they are acquired by private equity?

What has been the biggest takeaway from your festival reporting?

Are there any open questions for you, still, regarding the relationship between private equity and live music?

In this wide-ranging conversation, Ronny Joe Grooms of KSVY Sonoma 91.3 FM sits down with author, journalist, and digital rights activist Cory Doctorow to discuss his novel The Lost Cause and the real-world systems shaping its near-future vision.

Originally recorded on December 7, 2023, this interview takes on new resonance today as many of the issues explored in The Lost Cause—political instability, technological disruption, and the restructuring of society after crisis—have moved from speculative fiction into lived experience.

Doctorow connects the themes of the book to present-day realities, breaking down how copyright law has expanded far beyond its original purpose, why it often fails to protect creators in a monopolized system, and how artificial intelligence is reshaping labor, ownership, and creative work.

The conversation also explores:

• how The Lost Cause imagines a world after a failed political turning point
• the concept of “enshittification” and the lifecycle of digital platforms
• why lawsuits against AI companies may miss the real issue
• the role of monopoly power in shaping both technology and culture
• how open systems and collective action offer alternative paths forward

This is both a literary conversation and a systems-level analysis—connecting fiction, policy, and lived reality in a rapidly changing world.

Host: Ronny Joe Grooms (KSVY Sonoma 91.3 FM)
Guest: Cory Doctorow

Recorded: December 7, 2023

• The Lost Cause and its vision of the near future
• Copyright law and its modern expansion
• Fair use and legal access
• Creative Commons and global collaboration
• AI training, lawsuits, and labor implications
• Platform economics and “enshittification”
• Monopoly power and media systems

• The “failed revolution” concept in The Lost Cause
• Why fair use often depends on legal resources

• AI and the misunderstanding of infringement
• Platform decline and user exploitation

Cory Doctorow is a science fiction author, journalist, and activist focused on digital rights, copyright reform, and the political economy of technology. His work explores the intersection of technology, power, and society.