Zero Sum Empire

Welcome back everyone. This episode ended up orbiting around the idea of being suspended in a universe beyond time and causality. It’ll make sense in context. The podcast is on a monthly schedule now, in case you’ve been wondering where this episode is. Life events have conspired to prevent us from doing more than that, at least for now.

In the news this week: Michael Bloomberg, Michael Milken, and the return of the return of the son of the Business Roundtable.

(20:45) Our first billionaire is Steve Wynn, a Vegas mogul, alleged sex pest, and former finance chair of the RNC. Somehow we end up talking about the ideological function of gambling, seduction, and the end of the world.

8/10 on the David Koch Memorial Asset Liquidation Index

(45:45) Second billionaire: Travis Kalanick. The Uber guy. Chad tries to feel his way into the Kalanick mindset by reading through his Principles of Work. We come to the conclusion that all of the magazine profiles that called Kalanick a douchebag were pretty on the money in their assessment of his character.

7/10 on the David Koch Memorial Asset Liquidation Index

What a weird episode—two already-famous billionaires is a first. Thanks again for listening. Please like and subscribe. Leave a review. Follow us on twitter.com at @empire_sum. Hell, shoot us a DM.

P.S., The global economic meltdown happened after we recorded this episode, so we'll get to it next time.

Links:

David Harvey clip: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/david-harveys-anti-capitalist-chronicles/id1442025854?i=1000466819896

Mean Streets fight scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psMz_i9XfU4

Casino capitalism article: https://www.salon.com/2012/03/09/casino_capitalism_as_gambling_spreads_metaphor_becomes_reality/

The Age of Chance excerpt: https://books.google.com/books?id=T7aEAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA137&lpg=PA137&dq=%22The+vertigo+of+seduction%22&source=bl&ots=75EG0zviSI&sig=ACfU3U0BDFpIo42UHR-Faz7nrJjqZWtedw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi_4Y7F6IToAhUUVs0KHVVyC4oQ6AEwAXoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=%22The%20vertigo%20of%20seduction%22&f=false

WE’RE BACK!!! Welcome (back) to Zero Sum Empire, the podcast that’s taking a critical census of the mostly-anonymous American billionaire class. Sorry we’ve been gone for so long. Joe was on paternity leave. Please like, subscribe and share.

In the News: Vinod Khosla is back with some new lawsuits to keep those pesky surfers off of the public beach he thinks he owns. That leads us into a discussion of his meeting with Saudi Crown Prince MBS and Peter Thiel. Then that leads us into the absolutely crazy story about Jeff Bezos’ dick pics, the National Enquirer, Saudi state propaganda in Wal-Mart, Thiel’s Palantir data analytics company.

Billionaire #1: Fisk Johnson

1/10 on the David Koch Memorial Asset Liquidation Index

Fisk Johnson is CEO of S.C. Johnson, the cleaning products company that makes Glade, Windex, Drano, Ziploc, Saran, Pledge, Method, and a bunch of other products you’ve probably used. Fisk Johnson is our first “1” on the D.K.M.A.L.I. That does not mean his assets should not be liquidated. It just means it’s somewhat less urgent to take his money than most others we’ve covered. For a cleaning products company that deals with a lot of chemicals, S.C. Johnson’s environmental record is sparkling. They also seem to have relatively sane labor practices. In truth, because it’s a privately held company, there’s a lot about them that we simply don’t know. Chad talks about the company’s “welfare capitalist” model and why any apparent positive outcomes of this model are not sustainable or replicable for most companies.

Billionaire #2: Joseph Liemandt

5/10 on the David Koch Memorial Asset Liquidation Index

Joseph Liemandt started Trilogy Software and ESW Capital, an investment company that buys software companies. While that might be incredibly boring, Liemandt makes up for it by being a party boy when he’s off the clock. Details are scant, but he was a subject of Emily Chang’s Brotopia, and according to her he “wrote the bro code” that created a hostile environment for women in Silicon Valley tech (link to article below). After creating a software company that mostly produced toxic masculinity, he went on to start a “Global Software Sweatshop” that employs a truly dystopian employee surveillance technology called WorkSmart, “a FitBit for how you work.”

Liemandt: “How A Mysterious Tech Billionaire Created Two Fortunes—And A Global Software Sweatshop: https://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanvardi/2018/11/19/how-a-mysterious-tech-billionaire-created-two-fortunesand-a-global-software-sweatshop/#655dbd846cff

National Enquirer and Saudi Royal Family: https://apnews.com/d293d282a9ec4d0c83fe0a25ff5f285c

References on S.C. Johnson and welfare capitalism:

Sanford Jacoby’s Modern Manors: Welfare Capitalism Since the New Deal

Stuart Brandes’ American Welfare Capitalism, 1880-1940

It was a lot of work to get to 20 episodes. Thanks to everyone who’s listening. We are excited to start the next season of shows in the new year and have a lot of great ideas for improvements.

Reflecting back on this episode, I realize that we talked a lot about a particular kind of barrier. Joe introduced us to the technical choice that the hardware store chain Menard’s made to include one-way turnstiles at all of their entryways. The effect of the turnstiles is to trap people in the store: you have to traverse the entire length of the store if you want to exit. Google and Facebook (referred to in the ad industry as “walled gardens”) collect data about you, and then use that data to advertise to you on their own platforms. They maintain a practical duopoly on online advertising because they don’t share data with other advertising companies. They “wall off” your data because it’s the one thing of value that they produce. To capitalize on the data they’ve collected, they need to “keep you in the store” as long as possible, which means they need to keep you using services they own. Because there is minimal censorship of the internet in the US, it’s harder for Google and Facebook to erect digital turnstiles to contain users than it is for, say, the Chinese government. China has developed the “Great Firewall of China” to block and censor information that the government believes runs contrary to its interests. What China has discovered, however, is that it’s far easier to proactively erect a Menard’s-style “digital turnstile” than it is to play whack-a-mole by reactively censoring content. So, that’s what they’re doing. Baidu, the “Google of China,” now overwhelmingly serves up search results linking to sites that Baidu owns. Once you go through the Baidu turnstile by using their search engine, you have to scroll very far down the list of search results to find the exit. All of the top results just redirect to Baidu content. It should go without saying that Baidu is compliant with (and at least partially run by) the Chinese government censors.

In the News: We return to billionaires of episodes past to talk about where they’ve been showing up in the news.

John Menard, Jr.: 8/10 on the D.K.M.A.L.I. (15:00)

Owner and Founder of Menard’s, a chain of home improvement stores.

Jeff Green: 5/10 on the D.K.M.A.L.I. (37:00)

Owner and Founder of The Trade Desk, an internet advertising company.

Links:

John Menard Jr.

https://www.milwaukeemag.com/bigmoney-john-menard/

https://urbanmilwaukee.com/2013/06/20/murphys-law-the-strange-life-of-john-menard/

Jeff Green and The Trade Desk:

https://youtu.be/SaVJkQVhntA (Part of an infuriating series of videos called “In Human Terms” that Green posted to Youtube. All of them are infuriating.)

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/31/the-trade-desk-is-growing-in-china-and-wall-street-loves-it.html

https://qz.com/1530831/an-obituary-for-baidu-argues-chinas-vast-internet-has-no-search-engine/

This week’s News segment begins with hedge fund billionaire Lee Cooperman crying on TV and (what else?) Michael Bloomberg announcing he’ll run for president.

Jerry Moyes: 7/10 on the David Koch Asset Liquidation Index

Chad introduces us to Jerry Moyes, the retired founder of Swift Transportation. Moyes owned the possibly-fictional NHL hockey team the Arizona Coyotes before he ran it into bankruptcy. He owns the biggest boat on Lake Powell, which he named The Big Dog. He gives tons of money to Trump. He’s been involved in a number of shady financial dealings to serve his own greed. All basic billionaire shit. The main part of the Moyes segment involves the labor history of the trucking industry in the US. It’s a sad story, and you can probably guess how it goes.

Gary Rollins: 7/10

Joe talks about Gary Rollins, CEO of Rollins, Inc., which owns Orkin Pest Control. The Rollins family has some drama. The kind of drama where you hire private investigators to steal your grandchildren’s medical records. Kids suing parents. Parents suing grandparents. Ratmen suing Ratbabies. This story is nuts. Orkin also regularly cheats people, poisons people, and sometimes cheats the people it poisons. Joe offers us some thoughts on insects (and our relations to them. Innenwelt and Umwelt.

Lee Cooperman crying:

https://www.cnbc.com/video/2018/07/24/lee-cooperman-parting-advice-luxury-you-cannot-afford-is-arrogance.html

Lee Cooperman crying again:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEte-K-H8NY&feature=emb_title

Steve Viscelli’s sociology of trucking:

https://penntoday.upenn.edu/research/penn-sociologist-deconstructs-america-s-trucking-industry

Hubba Hubba: A Tribute to Jerry Moyes:

https://youtu.be/exZCgJzcrfg

The Big Dog:

https://youtu.be/GuKbzj_hfaA

Michael H. Belzer’s Sweatshops on Wheels

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/sweatshops-on-wheels-9780195128864?cc=us&lang=en&

Jakob von Uexkull’s tick essay:

http://www.codebiology.org/pdf/von%20Uexk%C3%83%C2%BCll%20J%20(1934)%20A%20stroll%20through%20the%20worlds%20of%20animals%20and%20men.pdf

Baltimore Sun story on the Rollins family fued:

https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-2000-05-28-0005270151-story.html

Forbes story on the fued:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2014/09/29/inside-the-3-billion-feud-tearing-georgias-rollins-family-apart/#1efc7a7e5cec

It’s almost Halloween and you know what that means—only 7 months until Mother’s Day!

In the news this week: It looks like Steve Mnuchin bent the U.S. treasury rules for designating opportunity zones to help out Michael Milken (long time enemy of the show) with a huge tax break. That’s bad, but “opportunity zones” are still a grift even when they’re not abused so egregiously.

(11:30) Joe introduces us to Brian Roberts, CEO of Comcast. Roberts had the extremely typical billionaire life trajectory of growing up rich, going to Wharton, then running the company his father founded for the rest of his life. We talk about Comcast’s rise to market dominance as a vertically-integrated media company. Joe tells us a little bit about cable provider infrastructure in the US and why it means that Americans have some of the worst and most expensive internet service on the planet. It’s not just an inconvenience, it’s a form of social injustice that works against social mobility. Roberts gets a 5 on the David Koch Memorial Asset Liquidation Index.

(30:35) Chad talks about Haim Saban, founder of Saban Entertainment. Saban Entertainment is most famous for Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers, but Saban is responsible for a massive amount of children’s programming. We get into Saban’s business partner Shuki Levy’s amazing work in the field of television theme song composition. There’s a link below to Levy’s website, where he hosts all these songs. Saban’s shows are mainly the result of deregulation of children’s programming in the 80s that resulted in ruining the brains of a generation. It also helps us illustrate the continuous character of capitalism’s primary accumulation. Rated a 7 on the DKMALI.

We had to cut a whole section at the end about how Saban is also an extreme right-wing Zionist and was the biggest contributor to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign. There are some links below if you want to explore that dark dimension of his life.

Comcast Links

• The Future of American Broadband is a Comcast Monopoly

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/yw7e7g/the-future-of-american-broadband-is-a-comcast-monopoly

• Comcast Political Donations

https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/recips.php?cycle=2020&id=d000000461

Haim Saban Links:

• Hollywood Reporter article where Saban talks about hating Bernie Sanders: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/haim-cheryl-saban-talk-power-philanthropy-israel-2020-presidential-race-1222856

• Hillary Clinton’s letter to Saban denouncing BDS (leaked to journalists by her campaign to entice pro-Israel donors): https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2158218-hillary-clintons-letter-to-haim-saban-against-bds.html

• Haim Saban is Bad for Democracy by Alex Pareene: https://splinternews.com/haim-saban-is-bad-for-democracy-1827319779

• Haim Saban New Yorker profile: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/05/10/the-influencer

• Shuki Levy’s website with high quality streams of his cartoon theme songs. Hours of fun: http://shukilevy.com/themes-and-scores/

First: sorry for the delay in getting this episode out. Joe was traveling for a wedding and we also decided to switch our release days to Tuesdays. We are back to releasing an episode every two weeks for the foreseeable future.

Second: Chad accidentally recorded some of the episode with the internal mic on his computer, so there's a dip in our normally pristine sound quality.

We begin the episode with an excursion into the world of immersive POV Youtube lawn mowing subculture. Real sick stuff.

In the news this week: For the first time in US History, the wealthiest 400 families paid less in taxes than working class Americans. Ken Fisher of Fisher Investments has a normal one. Ray Dalio’s recipe for success. Wealth-X Billionaire Census empirically proves that rich people like golf.

John Doerr: 6/10 points on the David Koch Memorial Asset Liquidation Index

Doerr is a Silicon Valley venture capitalist who got rich in the early-2000s tech boom. His firm went in big on the 2007-2011 “Cleantech Boom,” lost a ton of money when none of the investments panned out, and then more or less gave up on innovation in renewable and sustainable energy. People talk about him being a genius investor, but he also invested in Segway and Juicero. Doerr gives us an opportunity to talk about the moral deadlock between capitalist ideology and the climate crisis.

Thomas Tull: 2/10 points on the David Koch Memorial Asset Liquidation Index

Tull started in laundromats and specializes in marginally improving efficiencies in existing businesses. Tull also formerly produced movies with Legendary Entertainment, which was responsible for the Christopher Nolan Batman movies. So, you have Tull to thank, at least in part, for the Joker that made us all so damaged and twisted.

Lawn Fetish: https://youtu.be/e72txdwCMCY

Regressive Taxation: http://shorturl.at/cBFKM

Ken Fisher: http://shorturl.at/csyzT

Doerr: http://shorturl.at/dnqvU

Venture Capital and Clean Tech: https://energy.mit.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/MITEI-WP-2016-06.pdf

Wired article about Green Tech Bust: https://www.wired.com/2012/01/ff_solyndra/

Capitalism to the Rescue: https://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/05/magazine/05Green-t.html

Tull interview: https://youtu.be/Orp274LdGf0

Intro/Billionaires in the News:

Back to the Future II is neoliberal propaganda (shout out to Micah Bateman). T. Boone Pickens dead; Robert Smith tells young people to respect capitalism; Sackler Family doing more horrible stuff; Peter Thiel thinks libertarianism will eliminate politics.

Billionaire #1: Austen S. Cargill II: 10/10* (16:30)

The opening clip is a recording of the Church Universal and Triumphant praying for rock musicians to be cast into the fiery pit of hell in case you’re curious (link below). Austen Cargill is retired and lives on a ranch in Montana. Before that, he was on the board of directors of Cargill, the largest private company in the US. We talk about Cargill and anonymity and briefly touch on some of their many, many crimes. Luckily, there are 14 members of the Cargill family on our list, so just look at this segment as a table of contents for things to come in future episodes.

Billionaire #2: Paul Fireman: 5/10* (44:15)

This segment was a lot of fun, so we hope you stick around for it. Fireman made his fortune by building the Reebok company and then selling it to Adidas. Fireman embodies every boring billionaire stereotype, so we get to talk a little about what those are. Also, make sure you watch the real estate company ad for his mansion that we mention because it is hilarious.

*Rating Score on the David Koch Memorial Asset Liquidation Index

Links:

Fireman mansion ad: https://youtu.be/d4AwDHoYpQs

Austen Cargill buys CUT Ranch: https://www.bozemandailychronicle.com/article_dddc76fe-b5ac-531d-95e0-d22565dd8cea.html

Back to the Future Product Placement: https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/Product_placement

Mighty Earth Report: http://www.mightyearth.org/wp-content/uploads/Mighty-Earth-Report-Cargill-The-Worst-Company-in-the-World-July-2019.pdf

Brewster Kneen’s Invisible Giant: https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745319582/invisible-giant/

Church Universal and Triumphant from the Sounds of American Doomsday Cults: https://youtu.be/i3ZsUYKDJF4

Boston Citgo Sign: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Citgo_sign

Remember fidget spinners? Joe doesn’t.

(2:18) This week in the news: We talk about the Amazon fires and their relationship to soybean farming and tariffs. Then, in celebration of David Koch’s death, we introduce the David Koch Memorial Asset Liquidation Index, a rating scale we made up for the billionaires we cover. We decide, on a scale of 1 – 10, how urgent it is that the billionaire’s assets are immediately liquidated and the proceeds distributed among their victims. It goes without saying that all billionaire fortunes should be liquidated and redistributed, but we want to liquidate some more quickly than others. David Koch is the namesake of the rating scale because he was unquestionably a perfect 10.

(12:40) Bharat Desai and Neerja Sethi: 2.5/10

Desai and Sethi are a married couple who started a technology services company that basically outsources various business needs to overseas workers. They sold the company a few years ago and have retired to Fisher Island, FL. Fisher Island is a tiny island right next to Miami Beach, and it is currently the wealthiest zip code in the US. It is only .3 sq. mi., and has a population under 500. A lot of rich people buy condos there and establish the place as their primary residence because Florida doesn’t have state income tax. This trend has seen a huge boost since the 2017 Republican tax bill capped property tax deductions at $10,000. We end up talking about Pizzagate and “hypothetical” food-based criminal code languages.

We highly suggest checking out Opulence Magazine’s (a magazine about South Florida luxury condos) Fisher Island party videos:

https://vimeo.com/162627583

https://vimeo.com/16225305

(35:55) Conrad Prebys: 4/10

Conrad Prebys was, apparently, a messy bitch who loved drama. He was estranged from his son, then reunited with him, and then wrote him out of his will. He made his money in the construction business in San Diego, and later in life made a bunch of big philanthropic donations to build buildings with his name on them. Many were for performing arts centers, and others were for buildings on university campuses. Joe pops off about how stupid it is that debt-laden universities keep building new, expensive buildings that accrue more debt because they think nicer buildings will recruit more students. Unsurprisingly, there’s not much data to support that claim. We come back around to the Koch brothers, their donations to universities and the inherent problems with those kinds of donations, and we finish up with a dramatic reading of an article defending David Koch’s legacy that drives Chad over the edge.

America Loves To Hate Billionaires

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/op-eds/america-loves-to-hate-billionaires

A full list of the Koch Foundation’s 2016 donations to higher ed: https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/WwbbU/1/

Billionaires in the News: Trump wants to buy Greenland. As I write this show description, I realize I missed a huge pun opportunity when I failed to say “Trumpelstiltskin.” It’ll make sense when you hear the segment. Really kicking myself over this one. The main news item for this week is the Business Roundtable announcement that “fiduciary responsibility to shareholders” is no longer the First and Only Rule of Business. This segment is part of our ongoing project to track instances of rich people calling for reforms to capitalism. A new wrinkle has emerged in the rhetoric: they’re pushing a “return” to a pre-80s form of “ethical” capitalism that considers the interests of all stakeholders (i.e., everyone else in society). Andrew Ross Sorkin wrote a NYT editorial and went on The Daily podcast to parrot the false history being peddled by the rich: that there was a time prior to the deregulatory Reagan era during which capitalism operated in a more ethical mode for the benefit of society at large. This is false. Capitalists will never choose to operate for the benefit of society at large. They will only respond to pressure from other forces that seek to rein in capitalist excess.

The first billionaire segment this week (17:00) covers Blair Parry-Okeden, an heiress to the Cox Enterprises fortune. Parry-Okeden lives in Australia and doesn’t have much of a public profile. She might be the most anonymous billionaire we’ve covered so far, yet she is Australia’s richest person. Given the dearth of information on Parry-Okeden, Joe decides to cover the Cox fortune more generally, including heirs James Kennedy, Anne Cox-Chambers (lmao), and the current CEO Alex Taylor. Cox owns a lot of different things, including Auto Trader magazine. We end up talking a little about coupons.

The second billionaire segment covers Richard Peery and his business partner John Arrillaga (38:15). Peery and Arrillaga got rich by building office space in Silicon Valley. We begin with a bit of a tangent about inventor of the transistor William Shockley (a vile man who would absolutely write for Quillette if he were alive today). Most of the buildings Peery-Arrillaga constructed were “tilt-ups,” a type of concrete slab building that’s especially vulnerable to earthquakes (which was known at the time they were building them). Last, we discuss Arrillaga’s daughter, Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen (married to Marc Andreessen of Netscape fame). She runs a consulting firm that advises rich people on how to give their money to worthy causes. Like all consulting, it gives off huge scam vibes.

Show links:

Shareholder Value is No Longer Everything, Top CEOs Say:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/19/business/business-roundtable-ceos-corporations.html

Alex Taylor Interview 1:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SCMUFZyjtc

Alex Taylor Interview 2:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2FrtjYNKuI

Coupon: The Movie:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQUXoH6g97c&t=323s

A portrait of Blair Parry-Okeden:

http://thisisnofantasy.com/home/vn-blair-parry-okeden-1000pw-2/

“The Secretive Billionaire Who Built Silicon Valley”:

https://fortune.com/2014/07/07/arrillaga-silicon-valley/

Tilting at Danger: Loose soils and cheap construction clash in Silicon Valley's "Golden Triangle":

http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/10.14.99/tiltup-9941.html

New Yorker Summary of Zuckerberg’s Newark Schools Gift:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/05/19/schooled

Techcrunch article on Arrillaga-Andreessen:

https://techcrunch.com/2014/09/09/laura-arrillaga-andreessen-argues-for-bringing-a-data-driven-mindset-to-philanthropy/

Cory Booker’s Charter Schools Retreat:

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/cory-booker-charter-school-support_n_5d45c744e4b0acb57fcd4ebb

Thanks again for listening, everyone. Please make sure to help spread the word. Repost, retweet, share, like, etc.

In place of our normal intro this week, Joe made me offer a disclaimer about my behavior during the podcast. I tried to loosen up to promote a more relaxed vibe, so I drank a bunch of White Claws while we were recording. It worked pretty well at first, but by the end of the episode I was more or less incoherent. (No laws when you’re drinkin’ claws, baby! Woo!). In case you were wondering, now it’s clear: Joe is the daddy of the podcast, and I’m baby. Some really important links down below today, so make sure to check them out.

This really did turn out to be my favorite episode so far. First, we talked about which Democratic presidential candidates are getting the most billionaire donations (3:15). Mayor Pete was the big winner (i.e., loser): 23 billionaires! Bernie was the big loser (i.e., winner) with zero billionaire donations.

Chad introduces us to Philip Anschutz (11:30), a conservative evangelical media mogul and real estate bigwig. He’s one of the richest we’ve covered so far and his empire is so large that we had to skip over some interesting aspects of what he does. We chose to focus on his media ownership, which includes Walden Media (see links below for some truly horrifying trailers). Walden, along with Anschutz’s Foundation for a Better Life, are ideology mills for what Chad is calling “market morality,” the notion that the being a moral person begins and ends with individuals exchanging good deeds with other individuals. It’s morality for people who think “there’s no such thing as society.”

Joe talks about David Sun (38:00) co-founder of Kingston Technologies. He ends up not saying a whole lot about David Sun other than that Sun is involved with flash memory. That factoid serves as a prompt for a wide-ranging discussion about memory, media, history, Victorian fantasies, epiphylogenetic memory, and even some sci-fi style speculative theorizing about the future of data storage. All of these wild ideas prompted a fairly drunk Chad to embarrassingly say the conversation was “like a mushroom trip.” Sorry everyone.

CORRECTION: It is not actually clear at this point if White Claw has bad politics—we’ll keep you updated.

CORRECTION: There are still laws when you are “drinking claws.” All the normal laws still apply.

Everyday Heroes, an Orrin Hatch joint: https://youtu.be/ArXw-ls5pXA

Walden Media movies: https://www.walden.com/movies/

A Dog’s Purpose: https://youtu.be/1jLOOCADTGs

Won’t Back Down (The charter school propaganda movie): https://youtu.be/1e5CAG4MU2w

Foundation for a Better Life (radio spots): https://www.passiton.com/radio

Bernard Stiegler from the film The Ister (memory stuff begins around 8min): https://youtu.be/Znvdk5cq9f4

John Durham Peters "Space, Time, and Media": https://www.cjc-online.ca/index.php/journal/article/view/1389/1467

Seagate "Data Age 2025": https://www.seagate.com/files/www-content/our-story/trends/files/idc-seagate-dataage-whitepaper.pdf