The Chatterbox

Max Pearson presents a collection of the week's Witness History interviews from the BBC World Service.

The expert guest is Dr Mirjam Brusius, a research fellow in colonial and global history at the German Historical Institute.

First, we hear about Martín Chambi - Peru's pioneering documentary photographer.

Then Amaize Ojeikere talks about his father, JD 'Okhai’ Ojeikere, who created an iconic collection revealing the elaborate ways African women styled their hair.

Plus, the story of Magnum Photos – the picture agency started up by World War Two photographers.

And, Vivian Maier, the nanny who - since her death - has been hailed as one of the best street photographers of the 20th century.

Finally, the mystery behind Lunch Atop a Skyscraper – the famous photograph showing 11 ironworkers eating lunch nearly 70 storeys high.

Contributors:

Roberto Chambi – grandson of photographer Martín Chambi

This programme has been updated since the original broadcast.

(Photo: Two books of photographs in the exhibition 'Martin Chambi and his contemporaries’. Credit: Getty Images)

In Driven: The Race to Create the Autonomous Car (Simon & Schuster, 2022), Alex Davies tells the enlightening and significant story of the effort to create driverless cars and the intense competition among tech heavyweights such as Google, Uber, and Tesla to move this technology forward. Autonomous vehicles (AVs) have been one of the most hyped technologies of recent years, but early promises that they would quickly become common place have not borne fruit. Alex Davies set forth the twisted paths of this technology’s evolution from its genesis to the current moment. The idea began with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which aimed to create a land-based equivalent to the drone, a vehicle that could operate in war zones without risking human lives. DARPA established “Grand Challenges” that enticed future-oriented thinkers including amateurs and students to help drive the technology from fantasy to reality. Carnegie-Mellon University and other universities played a major role. The technology got the attention of Silicon Valley companies like Google and Uber. Next arriving were the major US automakers, GM and Ford, who initiated their programs of their own to commercialize the technology, and Chinese companies also showed an intense interest. As road testing went forward, however, the challenges became far more apparent. The difficulties of traversing diverse terrains under varying weather conditions without a driver came out to be far more daunting than expected. Progress was made but in no way as fast as the developers of the technology hoped. The early enthusiasm of the key players dissipated as they came to realize that AI-assisted driverless transportation faced formidable barriers. This book provides fabulous insights into the key characters in this story and how they struggled with a technology that was not ready for rush-hour driving It is a fast-paced, exciting account of how autonomous technology emerged, the main players, the conflicts between companies, and state of the technology today. The book provides the reader with a genuine feel for how real happens. The writing is fantastic because of the emphasis on that details that come from the many conversations that Davies had with people at the center of the story.

Hosted by Alfred Marcus, Edson Spencer Professor of Strategy and Technology University of Minnesota Carlson School of Management.

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In this episode, I’m joined by critical development economists Ndongo Samba Sylla, Africa Region Director for Research and Policy at the International Development Economics Associates (IDEAs), and Farwa Sial, Asia Region Director for Research and Policy at IDEAS, to discuss the international financial system and its role in upholding empire. We explore how this system has been structurally designed to keep Global South countries trapped in a state of perpetual dependency and underdevelopment through predatory lending and unsustainable debt burdens, and discuss what a more just global financial order might look like.

Return to Bandung is hosted by Pranay Somayajula, an Indian-American writer, researcher, and organizer based in Washington, D.C. His work explores themes of diaspora, (inter)nationalism, anticolonial politics, and the many lives and afterlives of empire. You can learn more about Pranay and read his writing on his website, as well as on his Substack blog, culture shock.

If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to leave a review or rating, and subscribe to the show on Spotify or Apple Podcasts!

Sources and helpful links:

• ⁠International Development Economics Associates (IDEAs) website⁠

• IDEAs — ⁠70 Years After Bandung: Challenges and Struggles on the Road to Self-Determination and South-South Solidarity conference⁠

• Ndongo Samba Sylla and Kai Koddenbrock (editors) — ⁠Delinking and Global Reparations⁠ (Transcript Publishing, 2025)

• Maha Ben Gadha, Fadhel Kaboub, Kai Koddenbrock, Ines Mahmoud and Ndongo Samba Sylla (editors) — ⁠Economic and Monetary Sovereignty in 21st Century Afric⁠a (Pluto Press, 2021)

• Ndongo Samba Sylla (editor) — ⁠Imperialism and the Political Economy of Global South’s Debt⁠ (Emerald Publishing, 2023)

• Dan Smith — ⁠How Capitalists Created International Financial Institutions to Rule the Planet⁠ (Jacobin, October 2022)

• Jason Hickel — ⁠Apartheid in the World Bank and the IMF⁠ (Al-Jazeera, November 2020)

• Vladimir Lenin — ⁠Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism⁠ (1917)

• Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research — ⁠How Neoliberalism Has Wielded ‘Corruption’ to Privatise Life in Africa⁠ (November 2024)

• James Baratta — ⁠Activists Are Challenging Laws That Enable Vulture Funds to Exploit Global South⁠ (Truthout, January 2022)

• Bodo Ellmers — ⁠Vulture funds: US court ruling on Argentina enrages debt justice campaigners ⁠(Eurodad, September 2013)

• Eric Toussaint — ⁠The World Bank and the Third World Debt Crisis in historical Perspective⁠ (CADTM, March 2002)

• Michael Galant —⁠ The Shackles of Debt in the Global South Weigh Down Workers Everywhere⁠ (Jacobin, June 2021)

• Larry Elliott — ⁠Developing countries face worst debt crisis in history, study shows⁠ (The Guardian, July 2024)

• UN Trade and Development — ⁠Debt crisis: Developing countries’ external debt hits record $11.4 trillion⁠ (March 2025)

• Ndongo Samba Sylla — ⁠The Conceptual Roots of the Global South’s Debt Crisis ⁠(Project Syndicate, January 2024)

• Jason Hickel — ⁠How Britain stole $45 trillion from India⁠ (Al-Jazeera, December 2018)

• Daniela Gabor and Ndongo Samba Sylla — ⁠The Global South Must Be at the Center of the Making of a Just Global Economic Order⁠ (Jacobin, February 2023)

• Ndongo Samba Sylla — ⁠Live as African: On the Relevance of Thomas Sankara‘s Agenda for Economic Liberation⁠ (University of Bayreuth, 2022)

• Thomas Sankara — ⁠A United Front Against Debt⁠ (1987)

Social links:

Return to Bandung:

• Twitter: ⁠twitter.com/returntobandung⁠

• Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/returntobandung/⁠

Pranay Somayajula:

• Twitter: ⁠https://twitter.com/p_somayajula⁠

• Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/pranay.somayajula/⁠

• Website: ⁠https://www.pranaysomayajula.com/⁠

• Substack: ⁠https://www.culture-shock.xyz/⁠

Ndongo Samba Sylla:

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/nssylla

Farwa Sial:

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/farwasial

International Development Economics Associates (IDEAs)

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/deveconnetwork

• Website: https://www.networkideas.org/

Repression as Infrastructure

The Deeper Thinking Podcast

When everything feels permitted, but nothing quite feels free—repression may no longer be psychological, but infrastructural.

Repression is not hidden; it is designed. Not as an accident of the psyche, but as a feature of the system. If repression once belonged to the inner life—some stubborn knot of childhood or dreamwork—then now it belongs to the infrastructures that route our decisions before we know we’ve made them. It is embedded in how choices are presented, how emotions are monetized, how attention is farmed. This is no longer Freud’s domain of latent desire breaking through the cracks. This is repression as supply chain, as operating system, as user interface.

A supermarket shelf represses more than it offers: it offers you infinite choice between brands while repressing the question of why you need fifty versions of the same cereal. A dating app filters desire into swipeable patterns that mask the infrastructural loneliness that made the app necessary. Governance does not tell you no—it lets you say yes to whatever is already allowed. The contemporary subject is not forbidden; they are permitted into submission.

In this light, freedom becomes a performance of options. Repression becomes what structures those options so that they never touch the root. And in this switch from the unconscious to the infrastructural, repression becomes ambient, ergonomic, and invisible. It is felt not in what is denied, but in what is subtly redirected. You don’t even notice the desire fall away—you only feel that everything is somehow available, and somehow hollow.

Freud imagined repression as a psychic mechanism necessary to civilize instinct. But in a system that profits from instinct—where the raw is the sellable and the intimate is the dataset—repression morphs. It is no longer the silencing of the unacceptable but the engineering of what is acceptable in the first place. And so the civilizing function doesn’t suppress—it guides, gently, into paths pre-structured for behavior, belief, and consumption.

The architecture of repression is now algorithmic. It auto-completes not only your sentence, but your desire. The silence is not in your head—it’s in the system. In what the feed does not show you. In what the platform makes impossible to articulate. This is not repression that causes neurosis. It is repression that produces normativity. It teaches you not to ask.

If repression was once the cost of being social, it is now the substrate of sociality itself. The medium is the repression. The governance is the silence. And in this, we do not suffer from too much constraint. We suffer from the illusion of none.

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Further Reading

When control feels like compatibility, the most radical act may be to notice what no longer arrives.

#Repression #InterfaceEthics #DigitalGovernance #Neoliberalism #SystemicDesign #Freud #AlgorithmicSociety #TheDeeperThinkingPodcast #PhilosophyOfControl

Ed and David chat with special guest Andreas Malm, author of How the World Surrendered to Climate Breakdown and How to Blow Up a Pipeline: Learning to Fight in a World on Fire. 

They discuss Malm’s critiques of climate inaction—how liberal democracies, fossil capital, and the Global North have collectively abandoned meaningful efforts to stop climate breakdown—and what comes next for movement strategy, the ethics and effectiveness of disruption, and what kind of climate action might actually work in the next crucial decade.

Full show notes & references

About Our Guest:

Andreas Malm is an associate professor of human ecology at Lund University. His latest book, with Wim Carton, is The Long Heat: Climate Politics When It's Too Late, forthcoming from Verso in October.

Produced by Amit Tandon & Bespoke Podcasts

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What if everything we believe about “clean energy” is built on a myth?

French historian Jean-Baptiste Fressoz joins Power Struggle to challenge the dominant narrative of energy transition. From coal in electric cars to the illusion of hydrogen aircraft, Fressoz unpacks how modern societies haven’t replaced fossil fuels — they’ve layered more and more energy on top. This episode questions climate optimism, explores the real drivers of energy growth, and argues why sufficiency — not just innovation — must be part of the path forward.

Send us a text

The energy conversation is polarizing. But the reality is multidimensional. Get the full story with host Stewart Muir.

Reach out to us with thoughts, questions, or ideas at [email protected]

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🎧 For audio versions of our podcast visit powerstruggle.ca and listen on the go in your favourite podcast app!
Video available on Power Struggle’s YouTube! https://www.youtube.com/@PowerStrugglePod

As one of the most illustrious rock stars of the sustainability movement, Tim Jackson suggests that we must “f**k the patriarchy” to get beyond capitalism. In his new book, The Care Economy, Jackson argues that our growth-obsessed capitalist economic system is fundamentally dysfunctional, prioritizing wealth accumulation over health and wellbeing. He advocates replacing GDP-focused metrics with care-based economics that emphasizes balance and restoration rather than endless expansion. Jackson critiques how Big Food and Big Pharma profit from making people sick then selling expensive treatments, creating a "false economy." Drawing a dotted line from Bobby Kennedy to RFK Jr., he sees health as the unifying political issue that will enable us to bridge traditional divides.

five key takeaways

1. Redefine Prosperity as Health, Not Wealth True prosperity should be measured by health (physical, psychological, and community wellbeing) rather than GDP growth. Jackson argues that endless accumulation undermines the balance necessary for genuine human flourishing.

2. The Food-Pharma Industrial Complex is a "False Economy" Big Food creates addictive, unhealthy products that cause chronic disease, then Big Pharma profits from treating symptoms rather than causes. This cycle generates GDP growth while systematically undermining public health.

3. Care Work is the Foundation of All Economic Activity The predominantly female-performed labor of caring for children, elderly, and sick people is invisible to traditional economics but essential for society's functioning. This unpaid work must be recognized and valued.

4. Individual Solutions Can't Fix Systemic Problems While people can make personal health choices, expecting individuals to overcome an engineered food environment designed to exploit human psychology is unrealistic. Systemic change is required.

5. Health Could Unite Across Political Divides Unlike abstract environmental concerns, health is universally relatable and could serve as a rallying point for economic reform that appeals to both working-class and affluent communities.

Tim Jackson is an ecological economist and writer. Since 2016 he has been Director of the Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity (CUSP). CUSP is a multidisciplinary research centre which aims to understand the economic, social and political dimensions of sustainable prosperity. Its guiding vision for prosperity is one in which people everywhere have the capability to flourish as human beings—within the ecological and resource constraints of a finite planet. Tim has been at the forefront of international debates on sustainability for three decades and has worked closely with the UK Government, the United Nations, the European Commission, numerous NGOs, private companies and foundations to bring economic and social science research into sustainability. During five years at the Stockholm Environment Institute in the early 1990s, he pioneered the concept of preventative environmental management—a core principle of the circular economy—outlined in his 1996 book Material Concerns: Pollution Profit and Quality of life. From 2004 to 2011 he was Economics Commissioner for the UK Sustainable Development Commission where his work culminated in the publication of his controversial and ground-breaking book Prosperity without Growth (2009/2017) which has subsequently been translated into twenty foreign languages. It was named as a Financial Times ‘book of the year’ in 2010 and UnHerd’s economics book of the decade in 2019. In 2016, Tim was awarded the Hillary Laureate for exceptional international leadership in sustainability. His book Post Growth—life after capitalism (Polity Press, 2021) won the 2022 Eric Zencey Prize for Economics. His latest book The Care Economy was published in April 2025. Tim holds degrees in mathematics (MA, Cambridge), philosophy (MA, Uni Western Ontario) and physics (PhD, St Andrews). He also holds honorary degrees at the University of Brighton in the UK and the Université Catholique de Louvain in Belgium. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts, the Academy of Social Sciences and the Belgian Royal Academy of Science. In addition to his academic work, he is an award-winning dramatist with numerous radio-writing credits for the BBC.

Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.

Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Why are we following the lead of tech billionaires when it comes to guiding public policy? Science journalist Adam Becker joins host Krys Boyd to discuss the ways Silicon Valley scions might have A.I. all wrong, the obsession with space colonies and why we aren’t asking more critical questions for their version of the future. His book is, “More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley’s Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity.“

University of Texas history professor Mark Lawrence discusses the rise of Ronald Reagan, his impact on the conservative movement, and the Reagan Administration's performance in his first term.

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