The Chatterbox

The demand for sex tech is booming. That is, toys and apps that can be used for pleasure, communication or to improve sexual health.

Developers are using innovative ways to incorporate AI in a way that is respectful of both consent and the diversity of human desire.

But it seems some male developers are intent on weaponising it against women.

In this special episode of Future Tense, Stephen Stockwell, explores the power of the emerging technology, its potential benefits and harms, and the need to keep a clear focus on consent.

Guests

Madison Griffiths – Melbourne-based writer, artist and producer

Bryony Cole – host of the Future of Sex Podcast

Professor Alan McKee – pornography researcher and Head of the School of Art, Communication and English, University of Sydney

Ashley Neale – founder of My Peach AI

Further information

Madison Griffiths - Orifice.ai, and the Arousal of Rejection

Identified as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, contemporary Macau has metamorphosed into a surreal, hypermodern urban landscape augmented by massive casino megaresorts, including two of the world’s largest buildings. In Betting on Macau: Casino Capitalism and China’s Consumer Revolution, Tim Simpson uncovers various roots of the region’s radical transformation. Here, Simpson is joined in conversation with Cathryn H. Clayton.

Tim Simpson is associate professor of communication at the University of Macau.

Cathryn H. Clayton is associate professor and chair of the Asian studies program at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa.

WORKS REFERENCED:

David Schwartz / Suburban Xanadu

Natasha Dow Schüll / Addiction by Design

Susan Strange / Casino Capitalism

Cathryn H. Clayton / Sovereignty at the Edge

PEOPLE REFERENCED:
Sheldon Adelson

John Maynard Keynes

Deng Xiaoping

“A must-read for scholars and practitioners of urban planning and architecture, particularly those working in or studying urbanization in China.”
—Miodrag Mitrašinović

Betting on Macau: Casino Capitalism and China’s Consumer Revolution is available from University of Minnesota Press.

Sean and Andy are joined by returning guest and cofounder of ILC-Chicago Jamie Merchant (@pathtopraxis) to discuss his new full-length monograph, out now from Reaktion Books, called Endgame: Economic Nationalism and Global Decline. In it, Jamie provides a masterful, insightful and readable account of the political economy of the present moment.

What is the connection between the functioning of the profit system and the world-historic shift away from globalization? How do ruling class ideas like economic nationalism spread and why has conspiracism racked the left and right in recent years? Why has a bipartisan consensus emerged around state industrial policy and beggar-thy-neighbor trade policy? And what might the left do about all this except tail the least worst elements of it? This, along with an update on Independent Labor Club of Chicago and how civil-social organizing might pose a path forward that doesn't end in WWIII or a Brave New World.

Read an excerpt at Brooklyn Rail: https://brooklynrail.org/2022/03/field-notes/Endgame-Finance-and-the-Close-of-the-Market-System/

And stay tune for his 11/23 release event at https://www.woodbine.nyc/

To support our work become a patron at www.patreon.com/theantifada

Interested in joining the Independent Labor Club of North America? There may be a branch near you or other workers nearby interested in starting one, here's our Telegram: https://t.me/+TNXgQOPkV18yOGRh

Song: Rage Against the Machine - People of the Sun

For this Money Talks, it’s time to turn the rat race into a rat walk on the beach. Brigid Schulte, author of Over Work: Transforming the Daily Grind in the Quest for a Better Life, speaks with about America’s toxic relationship with labor in which employees at all levels are underpaid, under-rested, and over-hustled. They discuss what America can learn from work cultures in other countries and what it will take to achieve the four-day workweek. 

In this Money Talks: The pandemic wrecked global supply chains — but they were already set up for disaster. Peter S. Goodman, author of How the World Ran Out of Everything: Inside the Global Supply Chain, speaks with Emily Peck about the failure of the “just-in-time” logistics model, how a global shipping cartel is suffocating small exporters, and how another pandemic-style supply chain breakdown could leave store shelves empty once again.

Want more Slate Money? Subscribe to Slate Plus to unlock weekly bonus episodes for each regular Slate Plus episode. Plus, you’ll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of the Slate Money show page. Or, visit slate.com/moneyplus to get access wherever you listen.

Podcast production by Jared Downing, Cheyna Roth, and Patrick Fort.

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This week, Jeremi and Zachary have a conversation with Professor Mary Bridges, author of 'Dollars and Dominion: U.S. Bankers and the Making of a Superpower.' They explore the significant, yet often overlooked, role of banking institutions, particularly the Federal Reserve, in shaping American democracy and foreign policy.

Zachary sets the scene with his poem, "Reserves".

The conversation delves into the historical impact of Banker's Acceptance credit instruments on global trade, the establishment of the U.S. dollar as a reserve currency, and the dynamics of financial power during and after World War I. They also address the importance of transparency and accountability in maintaining a participatory democracy.

Mary Bridges is an Ernest May Fellow in History and Policy at Harvard's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. She is a historian of the twentieth-century United States. Her book, Dollars and Dominion: US Bankers and the Making of a Superpower, has just been published. Her next research project focuses on infrastructure building as a means of projecting U.S. influence overseas. Mary has also worked as a business reporter and editor.

As hyperscale data centers move into communities, they come with significant water and energy demands that some are not willing to put up with. We go to Ireland, Spain, and Chile to learn about the effects of data centers on the ground and why some communities are fighting back. They’re asking whether the tradeoffs they’re being expected to make are really necessary. This is episode 2 of Data Vampires, a special four-part series from Tech Won’t Save Us.

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 show is hosted by Paris Marx. Production is by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• People Before Profit TD Brid Smith, Tu Nube Seca Mi Río organizer Aurora Gomez Delgado, and King’s College London lecturer Sebastian Lehuede were interviewed for this episode.
• Some pieces by Dara Kerr in NPR, Sarah Emerson and Emily Baker-White in Forbes, and Hannah Daly in The Irish Times were cited.
• A full transcript can be found on the show’s official website.

Support the show

On October 8, the Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity Campaign held an online conference on “Boris Kagarlitsky and the Challenges of the Left.” Although Kagarlitsky is serving a five-year sentence in a Russian penal colony, he has just published a book called The Long Retreat: Strategies to Reverse the Decline of the Left. The conference addressed Kagarlitsky’s wide-ranging analysis of the left’s dilemmas in the face of multiple global crises, including the rise of right-wing authoritarianism. We will bring the whole conference to Jacobin Radio with a stellar lineup of international scholars and activists.

Today we hear the panel “Imperialism(s) Today,” looking at the nature of imperialism historically and in the present. Robert Brenner begins with the theory of imperialism from before WWI through the post-war period and up to the present, essentially arguing that in the present period of American hegemony, imperialism is the weapon of weaker powers. Ilya Matveev follows by examining three theorists of imperialism—Lenin, Schumpeter, and Mearsheimer—and looks at the Russian case through the lens of their different theories. Hanna Perekhoda, originally from Donetsk in the contested Donbas region, examines Putin's view of Ukraine as a creation by Russia's enemies. According to Putin, Lenin's support of the self-determination of Ukraine divided Russia, preventing it from becoming a leading power in the world. For proponents of this view, Russian sovereignty is under threat so long as Ukraine exists.

Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.

Andreas Malm on "Overshoot: How the World Surrendered to Climate Breakdown", his new book project with Wim Carton (Verso, 2024).

The Democratic Planning Research Platform is now live:

https://www.planningresearch.net/

https://www.indep.network/events/

Shownotes

https://www.versobooks.com/products/3131-overshoot

https://www.versobooks.com/products/2726-corona-climate-chronic-emergency

https://www.versobooks.com/products/135-fossil-capital

https://www.versobooks.com/products/2649-how-to-blow-up-a-pipeline

https://www.keg.lu.se/en/andreas-malm

https://as.nyu.edu/research-centers/remarque.html

https://www.indep.network/

https://www.indep.network/events/

https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/news/comrades-verso-needs-your-support

https://www.versobooks.com/products/3069-the-price-is-wrong

https://thenew.institute/en/people/cedric-durand

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stranded_asset

https://www.suhrkamp.de/buch/philipp-staab-anpassung-t-9783518127797

https://keith.seas.harvard.edu/people/david-keith

https://www.ende-gelaende.org/

https://justcollapse.org/2023/11/20/dr-tadzio-mueller-on-justcollapse/

https://www.crossbordertalks.eu/2023/04/06/no-bassaran/

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/27/world/europe/france-climate-change-water-wars.html

https://lessoulevementsdelaterre.org/en-eu/blog

Further Future Histories Episodes on related topics:

S02E55 | Kohei Saito on Degrowth Communism:

https://www.futurehistories.today/episoden-blog/s02/e55-kohei-saito-on-degrowth-communism/

S03E03 | Planning for Entropy on Sociometabolic Planning:

https://www.futurehistories.today/episoden-blog/s03/e03-planning-for-entropy-on-sociometabolic-planning/

S02E27 | Nick Dyer-Witheford on Biocommunism:

https://www.futurehistories.today/episoden-blog/s02/e27-nick-dyer-witheford-on-biocommunism/

S03E08 | Simon Schaupp zu Stoffwechselpolitik:

https://www.futurehistories.today/episoden-blog/s03/e08-simon-schaupp-zu-stoffwechselpolitik/

S02E47 | Matt Huber on Building Socialism, Climate Change & Class War:

https://www.futurehistories.today/episoden-blog/s02/e47-matt-huber-on-building-socialism-climate-change-class-war/

S03E05 | Daniela Russ zu Energie(wirtschaft) und produktivistischer Ökologie:

https://www.futurehistories.today/episoden-blog/s03/e16-daniela-russ-zu-energie-wirtschaft-und-produktivistischer-oekologie/

Future Histories Contact & Support

If you like Future Histories please consider supporting Future Histories on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/join/FutureHistories

Contact: [email protected]

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All episodes: www.futurehistories.today English only website: https://futurehistories-international.com/ 

#AndreasMalm, #FutureHistories, #JanGroos, #ClimateChange, #FossilCapitalism, #EnvironmentalActivism, #EcologicalCrisis, #ClimatePolitics, #EcoSocialism, #EnergyTransition, #ClimateResistance, #ClimateJustice, #ClimateAction, #CapitalismAndEcology, #EnvironmentalDegradation, #PoliticalEcology, #ClimateMovements, #RadicalEnvironmentalism, #Anthropocene, #Capitalocene, #ClimateCrisis, #IPCC, #ClimateRevolution, #Geoengineering, #DirectAirCapture, #CarbonRemoval, #ClimateMitigation, #NegativeEmissions, #TechnoFixes, #ClimateScience, #CarbonCaptureAndStorage, #ClimateEngineering, #EnvironmentalTechnology, #verso, #overshoot, #futurehistoriesinternational, #FutureHistoriesInternational

Theo Williams’ Making the Revolution Global: Black Radicalism and the British Socialist Movement before Decolonisation (Verso, 2022) shows how black radicals transformed socialist politics in Britain in the years before decolonisation. A history that runs from 1929 to the years after WWII here we see a number of significant activists and intellectuals such as George Padmore, C.L.R. James, Jomo Kenyatta and Amy Ashwood Garvey, establish significant groups on the British Left and how they related to the dominant groups in this field, most notably the Communist Party of Great Britian (CPGB) and the Independent Labour Party (ILP). As Williams shows, while these activists continually emphasised the need to combine international socialism with colonial liberation, these other groups were often resistant to this, with the CPGB responding to the shifting demands of international communism and the ILP facing internal splits on the role of colonialism. Despite these frustrations, these activists develop a significant radical tradition which doesn’t reject the British Left, but rather changes it, as the events during, and after WWII show.

As our conversation discusses Williams is encouraging us to reconsider this history, not just in order to correct the historical record and more fully account for the place of this black radical tradition within the British left, but also to think about the continuing impacts of decolonisation and what this may mean for contemporary demands to ‘decolonise the university’.

Your host Matt Dawson is Professor of Sociology at the University of Glasgow with research interests in social theory and the history of sociology. He is the author of a number of books, including G.D.H. Cole and British Sociology: A Study in Semi-Alienation (2024, Palgrave Macmillan)

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This episode focuses on a cluster of issues of longstanding significance in Southeast Asia and in Southeast Asian Studies – plantation agriculture, global commodity chains or supply chains, exploitation of labour and environmental degradation, and resistance. To discuss these issues, we are joined by Dr. Alyssa Paredes, an environmental and economic anthropologist who is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Michigan.

Dr. Paredes received her PhD in Anthropology (with distinction) from Yale University in 2020. Her work has been published in a variety of journals, including Antipode, Ethnos, Gastronomica, and the Journal of Political Ecology. She is a contributor to the edited volume Multispecies Justice and the Feral Atlas website, and she is co-editor of Halo-Halo Ecologies: The Emergent Environments Behind Filipino Food, forthcoming with the University of Hawai’i Press in April 2025. She is currently working on a book manuscript provisionally titled Bananapocalypse: Plantation Capitalism from Philippine Mindanao, which traces the afterlives of externalities in the making and unmaking of an industrial agricultural crop, drawing on approaches from such fields as anthropology, science and technology studies, human geography, and critical food studies.

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