The Chatterbox

We're joined by Steve Maher, co-author with Scott Aquanno of The Fall and Rise of American Finance: From J.P. Morgan to BlackRock (Verso, 2024). The book argues that financialization did not hollow out the "real" economy or shrink the state. Instead, it intensified competitive discipline to maximize efficiency, profits, and the exploitation of labor, backed by an increasingly authoritarian state. That means reforming finance won't get us somewhere different. There is no postwar golden age to return to. So what do we do? Tune in to find out...

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The world has a northern bias: our politics, culture, and literature all tend to view the northern viewpoint as the default position, leaving the far southern latitudes (Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, and Southern Africa among others), as a faraway land full of strangeness. But what if you live in those lands? How can a strange, faraway place be home? In this episode, Jacke talks to Elleke Boehmer about her book Southern Imagining: A Literary and Cultural History of the Far Southern Hemisphere, which analyzes the impact of the world's northern bias on literature and culture--and offers an alternative perspective to the way we usually look at the world. PLUS John McMurtrie (Literary Journeys: Mapping Fictional Travels Across the World of Literature) stops by to discuss his choice for the last book he will ever read.

The music in this episode is by Gabriel Ruiz-Bernal. Learn more at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠gabrielruizbernal.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

Help support the show at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/literature⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠or ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠historyofliterature.com/donate⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. The History of Literature Podcast is a member of Lit Hub Radio and the Podglomerate Network. Learn more at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠thepodglomerate.com/historyofliterature⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.⁠⁠⁠

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Paris Marx is joined by Gita Jackson to discuss why the left’s hatred of AI is justified, why a different approach to technology is necessary, and how they’re reassessing their own relationships with digital tech.

Gita Jackson is a co-founder of Aftermath.

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.

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

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Gita wrote about why the left doesn’t hate technology.
• Gita also wrote about downloading digital music onto a Snowksy Fiio Echo Mini.
• Chris Person wrote about the Boox Palma eReader as an alternative to Kindle.
• Learn more about Mike Pondsmith and his Cyberpunk TTRPG.
• Gita will one day get Paris to watch Frieren.

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On today’s show, host Douglas Haynes is in conversation with Lindsay Weinberg about her new book, Smart University: Student Surveillance in the Digital Age. It’s a timely book that gives a snapshot of how higher education is increasingly relying on digital student surveillance presumably to better prepare students for the digital economy. But the reality is that education technology or “ed tech” too often perpetuates austerity, structural racism, and the privatization of public universities under the guise of solving problems. 

Weinberg writes about predictive analytics that divert students to certain degree paths, data brokers, how student learning software tracks student activity and behavior, automated exam proctoring that uses facial recognition, and the rise of student wellness technologies. These measures are undertaken in the name of improving student success metrics and outcomes. But schools are cutting the proven and effective programs run by real people in order to usher in technology-based solutions. Ed tech is often marketed as a cost-saving solution, but these technologies are quite costly themselves. Weinberg’s research shows how ed tech and austerity go hand in hand. 

Students really aren’t aware of how their institutions are tracking them, even before they matriculate, says Weinberg. She traces how, in practice, FERPA actually enables public-private information sharing and says we need more transparency about student data and work. The rise of ed tech in higher education is possible because we’ve romanticized technology and students aren’t invited to the conversation. 

Weinberg also tracks the resistance to ed tech, from community organizing and policy efforts that seek to “turn back the clock” on digital technologies in education. She’s seen students successfully fight to get predatory technology off their campuses. Weinberg advocates slowing down to allow the time and space for democratic process and deliberation.

Lindsay Weinberg is a clinical assistant professor and the Director of the Tech Justice Lab in the John Martinson Honors College at Purdue University.

Featured image of the cover of Smart University: Student Surveillance in the Digital Age by Lindsay Weinberg. 

The post In Search of Data, Schools Snoop on the Their Students appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

• Tripaldi, Laura. Parallel Minds: Discovering the Intelligence of Materials (Urbanomic, 2022).
• Tripaldi, Laura. "Substrates Unbound" (Antikythera, 2025).
• Tripaldi, Laura. Soft Futures (newsletter, Substack).
• Haraway, Donna. A Cyborg Manifesto (1985).
• Parisi, Luciana. Abstract Sex: Philosophy, Biotechnology and the Mutations of Desire (Continuum, 2004) — source of the concept of hyper nature.
• Hui, Yuk. The Question Concerning Technology in China (Urbanomic, 2016) — source of the concept of cosmotechnics.
• Barad, Karen. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning (Duke, 2007) — onto-epistemology and intra-action.
• Irigaray, Luce — referenced as an influence on Tripaldi's feminist materialism.
• Pasquinelli, Matteo. The Eye of the Master: A Social History of Artificial Intelligence (Verso, 2023) — discussed in relation to technology as captured labor; Tripaldi pushes back via the history of automata.
• Laschi, Cecilia. Soft Robotics Lab, National University of Singapore — pioneer of octopus-inspired soft robotics.
• Hookway, Branden. Interface (MIT Press, 2014).

Artificial intelligence (AI) is often framed as a technological breakthrough. But behind the headlines is a deeper question: who owns the infrastructure shaping how we communicate, create, and understand truth?

In this episode of Art of Citizenry Podcast, we slow down the AI conversation to ask harder questions – not just about what these systems can do, but who built them, who profits from them, and what we give up by using them. Manpreet Kalra is joined by Vauhini Vara, author of Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age and longtime journalist covering Big Tech, to unpack the structural forces at play behind the AI boom.

Together, we explore how AI is less a neutral technology than a mirror of the economic and ideological forces that built it. A social system shaped by corporate incentives, embedded bias, and the quiet erosion of our ability to define truth for ourselves and what it means for all of us when the infrastructure shaping that truth is privately owned, profit-driven, and constantly learning from us.

This isn't a conversation with easy answers. It's about sitting with complexity, and the uncomfortable reality that opting out is rarely simple.

In this episode, we explore:

AI isn’t just a technical system. It’s a social and economic one. The outputs we see reflect the data they’re trained on, the incentives of the companies building them, and the broader political economy of the internet. If we want different outcomes from AI, the conversation must expand beyond engineering fixes to include questions of ownership, accountability, and power.

Vauhini Vara is the author of Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age, named a best book of the year by Esquire, Slate, and Publisher’s Weekly and a winner of the Porchlight Business Book Award. Her previous books are This is Salvaged, which was longlisted for the Story Prize and won the High Plains Book Award, and The Immortal King Rao, a Pulitzer Prize finalist and winner of the Colorado Book Award. She is also a journalist, currently working as a contributing writer for Businessweek.

📌Support the Podcast: Art of Citizenry is proudly independent. Support us as we critically explore, challenge, and unravel mainstream narratives by empowering listeners with accessible, nuanced perspectives. 

Follow the show on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/artofcitizenry

Follow Manpreet on Instagram: https://instagram.com/manpreetkalra

Explore Past Episodes of the Art of Citizenry Podcast with Manpreet Kalra: https://www.artofcitizenry.com/podcast

For more, you can find the full show notes of every episode at https://www.artofcitizenry.com/episodes

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• Get Tomas’ book: Argentina, a Tale of Two Utopias: Anarchism, Soccer, Neoliberalism
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• Check out more books about football and politics in our online store
• More info, such as further reading, a video documentary, sources and (soon) a full transcript for the main episodes, are available on the webpage for this episode: https://workingclasshistory.com/podcast/e115-116-argentina-uprising-2001/

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• Episode graphic: pictures of those disappeared during Argentina's 'Dirty War'. Credit: Giselle Bordoy WMAR/Wikimedia Commons.
• Our theme tune is Bella Ciao, thanks for permission to use it from Dischi del Sole. You can purchase it here or stream it here.
• Edited by Jesse French