The Chatterbox

To kick off our series, we are talking with Geo Maher from the W.E.B. Du Bois Movement School for Abolition & Reconstruction - a school for collective thinking and learning about injustices and political change to empower movement organizers of all ages and backgrounds to challenge and transform oppressive systems - what we think is at the heart of whatever a "schole of the undercommons" might be.

The W.E.B. Du Bois Movement School for Abolition & Reconstruction is a political education program for aspiring revolutionaries and movement leaders from those communities most impacted by poverty, policing, and mass incarceration.

Through participatory and collective study of political economy, the history of global resistance movements, and the theoretical and practical aspects of social change, they aim to teach a new generation of organic intellectuals not only how to understand the world, but more importantly, how to change it.

Geo Maher, Ph.D., is a writer, organizer, and popular educator who has taught in colleges and universities, in prisons, and in the barrios of Caracas, Venezuela—learning an immense amount from his students in the process. Growing up poor in the Maine woods, he was taught at an early age to despise oppression, and found early inspiration in local and global struggles against capitalism, colonialism, imperialism, and white supremacy—and in the revolutionary internationalist vision for a new world that those who fight continue to carry in their hearts. He is the author of five books, including A World Without Police and Anticolonial Eruptions.

Time Stamps:

Intro (0:00)

What is the Abolition School? (2:37)

Impact of 2020 Protests on Abolitionist Discourse (2:37)

The Challenges of Sustaining Abolitionist Momentum (4:21)

Abolition and Reconstruction: Learning from History (7:35)

Building Alternative Structures in Abolitionist Education (12:21)

We need to create the kind of society in which these institutions do not make sense (12:44)

The capitalist system does not want you to study together (15:23)

Participatory Education: Principles and Practices (19:21)

We're all intellectuals: The organic intellectual (33:09)

Academia is going to shit quickly (38:25)

How can I continue to study because I value study because I want to understand the world? (44:19)

Creating Alternative Educational Systems and Global Collaborations (46:21)

If it's not there, build it (51:00)

Are you engaging with community? (52:52)

Outro (56:57)

Learn more and support the Abolition School here: bit.ly/abolitionschool

Can the US stop the electric wave? In 2022 the US introduced its first ever set of serious climate policies. That took an unprecedented collaboration of racial justice, environment and labour interests. But oil and gas interests fought back quickly and effectively. Now the 2nd Trump administration is using sanctions, trade wars, and military power in a bid to slow the energy transition. 

Guests: 

Rhiana Gunn-Wright - Advisor to NY Mayor Zohran Mamdani, former climate policy program director at the Roosevelt Institute

Ted Fertik  - Vice President, manufacturing and industrial policy, Blue-Green Alliance; formerly of the Working Families Party.

Hosted by energy and climate finance expert Kate Mackenzie, and Tim Sahay from the net zero industrial policy lab at Johns Hopkins University. They co-author The Polycrisis newsletter, which explores connections between energy, geopolitics, climate change, finance and industry. 

• Produced by Sarah Allely
• Music composed by Russell Stapleton
• Mixed by Bethany Stewart

Contact us at: [email protected]

Recorded on March 18, 2026, this podcast features a lecture by Julien Migozzi, an economic geographer and Assistant Professor in Development Studies at the University of Cambridge. Dr Migozzi's lecture, "Algorithms of Distinction: Class, Credit Scores, and Property in South Africa," examined how 21st-century class dynamics become connected with data-driven stratification systems, focusing on the digital transformation of property markets.

This talk was part of a symposium series presented by the UC Berkeley Computational Research for Equity in the Legal System (CRELS) training program (https://crels.berkeley.edu), which trains doctoral students representing a variety of degree programs and expertise areas in the social sciences, computer science and statistics. The talk was co-sponsored by Social Science Matrix, the Berkeley Economy and Society Initiative (BESI) Tech Cluster, and the UC Berkeley Department of Sociology.

ABSTRACT

How do persistent inequalities and rapid technological change shape class formation? Centred on South Africa, the most unequal country in the world, this presentation examines how contemporary class dynamics become intertwined with racialised, data-driven mechanisms of social sorting. Integrating computational analysis with in-depth fieldwork across the suburbs and corporate boardrooms of Cape Town, I demonstrate how digital, legal, and financial transformations have reorganized the housing market around a data imperative. Once based on racial categories to exclude the majority from urban property under apartheid, the market is now structured around credit scoring to allocate mortgages and sort the "good" from the "bad" home-seeker, encoding racial inequalities in seemingly colour-blind market outcomes. Thinking class from the realm of digitized markets, I document and theorize how the making of the South African middle-class rests upon the production of a "mortgaged periphery", where middle-income households earn their middle-class stripes by scoring "high enough" to access debt-leveraged homeownership in gated estates. In this suburban, post-apartheid space, physical fences and algorithmic barriers regulate the production and access to housing wealth, materialising class boundaries through asset ownership, capital gains, property aesthetics, and debt relationships.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Julien Migozzi is an economic geographer and an Assistant Professor in Development Studies at the University of Cambridge, after appointments at Oxford University and the École Normale Supérieure. At the intersection of geography, urban studies and economic sociology, Julien's research investigates how digital technologies affect markets, cities, and inequalities, with a particular interest in housing and financial markets. At Cambridge, Julien is teaching a course on digital capitalism. He is a coauthor of the Atlas of Finance (Yale University Press, 2024).

A transcript of this talk is available at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/julien-migozzi.

Nourhan Bassam, (The Feminist Urbanist, CEO of The Gendered City, Asst. Professor of Feminist Urbanism) Author of the new book Women After Dark, reflects on how cities continue to exclude women and marginalised groups after sunset.

Grounded in personal experience, feminist research, and a multi-year project with the FemDes Network, the discussion explores how the night intensifies inequalities related to safety, mobility, visibility, and access to public space. Conventional solutions such as policing, CCTV, and excessive lighting are questioned, with a focus instead on participatory, community-led, and context-sensitive urban design.

The episode also draws on insights from nighttime governance in cities like Amsterdam, London, and Barcelona, highlighting fear as a structural issue and the need to centre lived experience in creating safer, more inclusive cities after dark.

Nourhan on Linkedin

https://www.linkedin.com/in/nourhan-bassam-39164b78/

Here are links to get the book: "You can get the book from Waterstones, La Feltrinelli, or Amazon."

• https://www.waterstones.com/book/women-after-dark/nourhan-bassam//9798266961876

• https://www.lafeltrinelli.it/women-after-dark-how-cities-libro-inglese-nourhan-bassam/e/9798266961876?srsltid=AfmBOooNB7la4Zb9zMYDUnWzvIjyHxI3VJLjt5tPkxqF910WmLk99A2_

• https://www.amazon.it/Women-After-Dark-Cities-Failing/dp/B0FWCR7FB3

You can also check out the Feminist Placemaking Academy, a viral program that is expanding worldwide, here:
https://genderedcity.org/feminist-pm-program

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Keep Up the Good Work. Keep Loving Cities ❤️️

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All opinions expressed in each episode are personal to the guest and do not represent the Host of Urbanistica Podcast unless otherwise stated.

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Let's connect and talk further about this episode

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Thanks to Urbanistica Podcast partner AFRY (Urban Planning and Design)

AFRY is an international engineering and design company providing sustainable solutions in the fields of energy, industry, and infrastructure.

Sociologist Prof. Steve Fuller shares his insights on how social media and new media technologies shape the way we think, why intellectuals must become performers in the digital age, and how artificial intelligence is unlocking undiscovered knowledge in academic research.

Prof. Steve Fuller is Professor of Sociology at Warwick University, UK. He has written extensively on politics and social theory and the sociology of science. His many books include Kuhn vs Popper, which was named book of the month (Feb 2005) by Popular Science; The Intellectual was named a book of the year by the New Statesman for 2005; and Dissent over Descent was named book of the week by Times Higher Education in July 2008. He has spoken in 30 countries, often keynoting professional academic conferences, and has been a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts since 1995. His writings have been translated into over twenty languages.

ABOUT THE HOST

Luke Robert Mason is a British-born futures theorist who is passionate about engaging the public with emerging scientific theories and technological developments.

He hosts documentaries for Futurism, and has contributed to BBC Radio, BBC One, The Guardian, Discovery Channel, VICE Motherboard and Wired Magazine.

CREDITS

Producer & Host: Luke Robert Mason

Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @FUTURESPodcast

Follow Luke Robert Mason on Twitter at @LukeRobertMason

Subscribe & Support the Podcast at http://futurespodcast.net

Language doesn't wait for the world, it runs on its own wild current, often generating fictitious meaning from nothing but itself. Our conversation with Professor Elan Barenholtz returns to the ancient question of mind and word, revealing that what we thought was a bridge to reality is really a river with no banks. LLMs didn't invent this untethered intelligence, they held up a mirror to something that was always already there, humming beneath every thought, every name, every half-remembered dream. Tune in and let the structure speak for itself.

Part 2: https://youtu.be/txvK99bhL5o

PATREON

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https://secretaryofnature.bandcamp.com/album/everything-is-so-good-here

PARADIGM DRIFT

https://demystifysci.com/paradigm-drift-show

00:00 Go! Physics, Language, and the LLM Mirror

00:06:47 Language as a Self-Generating System

00:13:30 Rethinking Meaning and Causality

00:22:06 How Language Enables Abstract Thought

00:31:06 Internal Simulation and Mental Modeling

00:38:11 AI as a Mirror for Language Itself

00:41:54 The Crisis of Meaning in Linguistics

00:52:08 Chomsky's Legacy and Its Limits

00:59:06 Do LLMs Actually Think?

01:08:13 Insight Requires More Than Language

#AI #ArtificialIntelligence #LargeLanguageModels #LLM #ChatGPT #Linguistics #CognitiveScience #Philosophy #Neuroscience #Chomsky #Language #Consciousness #MachineLearning #MindAndBrain #PhilosophyOfMind #HumanCognition #AIResearch #physicspodcast, #philosophypodcast

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Paris Marx is joined by Sam Biddle to discuss what it means for data centers to become targets in a war, and how Silicon Valley is aiding the US war against Iran.

Sam Biddle is a technology journalist at The Intercept.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

Take your personal data back with Incogni! Use code SAVEUS at the link below and get 60% off an annual plan: https://incogni.com/saveus

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Kyla Hewson.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Send your questions to mailbag [at] techwontsave [dot] us!
• Sam wrote about Iran’s attacks on data centers and its legality.
• Here is Sam’s most recent piece about Palantir and NYC public hospitals.
• The Intercept is also covering the role of social media in the US-Iranian war.

Support the show

Gladiators are one of the most instantly recognizable yet alien aspects of Roman society, and Dr. Harry Sidebottom's new book - Those Who Are About to Die - offers a cutting-edge view of these fascinating entertainers based on the most recent research. We discuss what recent research has revealed about their lives, why the Romans were so intrigued by them, and why they matter today.

Patrick has a brand-new history show! It’s called Past Lives, and every episode explores the life of a real person who lived in the past. Subscribe now: https://bit.ly/PWPLA

Patrick's new book - Lost Worlds: The Rise and Fall of Human Societies from the Ice Age to the Bronze Age - is now available for preorder, and will be released on May 5th! Preorder in hardcopy, ebook, or audiobook (read by Patrick) here: https://bit.ly/PWLostWorlds.

And don't forget, you can still Get The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years that Shook the World in hardcopy, ebook, or audiobook (read by Patrick) here: https://bit.ly/PWverge.

Audible subscribers can listen to all episodes of Tides of History ad-free right now. Join Audible today by downloading the Audible app.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In lieu of a standard episode today, we are premiering the first episode of Marx Prestige, a series where Danny, Derek, and historian Andrew Hartman discuss Karl Marx and how the philosophy and politics he created shaped and reshaped the United States. 

Subscribe now at the annual tier for free access to series like this one!

In this first episode of Marx Prestige, Danny, Derek, and Andrew Hartman talk about how Karl Marx understood the United States as a testing ground for capitalism and democratic development in the nineteenth century. They delve into the reception history approach to Marx in America, Marx’s early views on American democracy and capitalism, his writings on the Civil War and slavery, the transition in Marx’s thought from philosophy to political economy, Reconstruction and its limits, early American interpretations of Marx, and the emergence of Marxism in the late nineteenth century.

Be sure to check out Andrew's Book ⁠⁠Karl Marx in America⁠⁠.

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