Matt Colquhoun (author/editor of Egress and Postcapitalist Desire ) speaks to to Thomas Moynihan about his most recent book X-Risk: How Humanity Discovered Its Own Extinction . From forecasts of disastrous climate change to prophecies of evil AI superintelligences and the impending perils of genome editing, our species is increasingly concerned with the prospects of its own extinction. With humanity's future on this planet seeming more insecure by the day, in the twenty-first century, existentia...
May 30, 2023•52 min•Ep. 93
Writer and academic Anthony Gardner ( NSK from Kapital to Capital , Politically Unbecoming ) interviews Marko Ilić about his new book A Slow Burning Fire , which documents Yugoslavia's cultural output throughout the 60s, 70s and 80s. This first comprehensive study of the former Yugoslavia's alternative art scene tells the origin stories of some of the most significant artists of the late twentieth century. In Yugoslavia from the late 1960s to the late 1980s, state-supported Students' Cultural Ce...
May 29, 2023•51 min•Ep. 92
Dungeons and Dragons expert Jon Peterson ( The Elusive Shift , Game Wizards ) speaks with Peter Bebergal (Season of the Witch, Too Much to Dream) about his new book Appendix N , an anthology of writing which takes its name from the list of “inspirational reading” provided by Gary Gygax in the first Dungeon Master's Guide. Drawing upon the original list of “inspirational reading” provided by Gary Gygax in the first Dungeon Master's Guide , published in 1979, as well as hobbyist magazines and rela...
May 28, 2023•57 min•Ep. 91
Writer Huw Lemmey (Chubz, Red Tory, Unknown Language) speaks with Mattilda Bernstein Sycamor e about her most recent book The Freezer Door and searching for connection in a world that enforces bland norms of gender, sexuality, and friendship. Produced by Sam Kelly; Mixed by Samantha Doyle; Soundtrack by Kristen GallerneauxSoundtrack by Kristen Gallerneaux...
May 27, 2023•58 min•Ep. 90
This episode features discussions with Thomas Weaver (Senior Acquisitions Editor for Art and Architecture) and Victoria Hindley (Acquisitions Editor in Visual Culture and Design) about publishing in the fields of art, architecture, and visual culture, as part of our virtual attendance of the 2021 College Art Association Conference . Hosted and produced by Sam Kelly; Mixed by Samantha Doyle; Soundtrack by Kristen Gallerneaux...
May 26, 2023•55 min•Ep. 89
Clive Nwonka and Anamik Saha discuss their forthcoming book Black Film, British Cinema II (publishing in March with Goldsmiths Press) , a book which brings together scholars, thinkers and practitioners to consider the politics of blackness in contemporary British cinema and visual practice. Black Film British Cinema II considers the politics of blackness in contemporary British cinema and visual practice. This second iteration of Black Film British Cinema , marking over 30 years since the ground...
May 25, 2023•41 min•Ep. 88
Nick Aikens and Elizabeth Robles discuss The Place Is Here (Sternberg Press, 2019) and the range of perspectives on black art in Thatcherite Britain offered by the collection of artworks, essays, and conversations found in the book. The Place Is Here begins to write a missing chapter in British art history: work by black artists in the Thatcherite 1980s. Richly illustrated, with more than two hundred color images, it brings together artworks, essays, archives, and conversations that map the vary...
May 24, 2023•41 min•Ep. 87
Cathi Unsworth, journalist and author of Bad Penny Blues , as well as numerous other novels, speaks with artists and author Jenny Hval about her recent book Girls Against God . At once a time-travelling horror story and a fugue-like feminist manifesto, this is a singular, genre-warping new novel from the author of the acclaimed Paradise Rot. “It’s 1992 and I’m the Gloomiest Child Queen.” Welcome to 1990s Norway. White picket fences run in neat rows and Christian conservatism runs deep. But as th...
May 23, 2023•47 min•Ep. 86
Damon Kruskowski , author of Ways of Hearing and The New Analog , previously member of Galaxie 500 and currently a member of Damon & Naomi interviews Rose Simpson about her book Muse, Odalisque, Handmaiden . Rose is an English former musician. Between 1968 and 1971, she was a member of the Incredible String Band, with whom she sang and played bass guitar, violin, and percussion. Between 1967 and 1971 Rose Simpson lived with the Incredible String Band (Mike Heron, Robin Williamson and Licoric...
May 22, 2023•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 85
The philosopher Bruno Latour ( We Have Never Been Modern, Laboratory Life, Science in Action ) and Eugene Richardson , physician, anthropologist, and author of Epidemic Illusions discuss COVID, colonialism and Critical Zones . Hosted and produced by Sam Kelly; Mixed by Samantha Doyle; Soundtrack by Kristen Gallerneaux...
May 21, 2023•57 min•Ep. 84
Michael Truscello, author of Infrastructural Brutalism: Art and the Necropolitics of Infrastructure , discusses the ways in which infrastructure determines who may live and who must die under contemporary capitalism. In this book, Michael Truscello looks at the industrial infrastructure not as an invisible system of connectivity and mobility that keeps capitalism humming in the background but as a manufactured miasma of despair, toxicity, and death. Truscello terms this “infrastructural brutalis...
May 20, 2023•48 min•Ep. 83
Tai Shani (Turner Prize winning artist, educator and author of Our Fatal Magic ) and Amy Hale (anthropologist, folklorist, and writer) discuss the work of artist, occultist and writer Ithell Colquhoun to celebrate the publication of Amy’s book Ithell Colquhoun: Genius of The Fern Loved Gully . This book offers the first in-depth biographical study of the British surrealist and occultist Ithell Colquhoun, situating her art within the magical contexts that shaped her imaginative life and work. Aft...
May 19, 2023•57 min•Ep. 82
An extended conversation between Lauren Fournier , writer, independent curator, artist, and author of Autotheory as Feminist Practice in Art, Writing, and Criticism and writer, educator and philosopher McKenzie Wark (A Hacker Manifesto, Gamer Theory, Capital Is Dead, Reverse Cowgirl .) Hosted and produced by Sam Kelly; Mixed by Samantha Doyle; Soundtrack by Kristen Gallerneaux...
May 18, 2023•1 hr 35 min•Ep. 81
Lauren Fournier , writer, independent curator, artist, and author of Autotheory as Feminist Practice in Art, Writing, and Criticism discusses her forthcoming book with writer, educator and philosopher McKenzie Wark (A Hacker Manifesto, Gamer Theory, Capital Is Dead, Reverse Cowgirl .) In the 2010s, the term “autotheory” began to trend in literary spheres, where it was used to describe books in which memoir and autobiography fused with theory and philosophy. In this book, Lauren Fournier extends ...
May 17, 2023•44 min•Ep. 80
In the final episode of this series, Brandon Terry , political theorist and African American Studies scholar at Harvard discusses the life and work of Martin Luther King Jr. Terry is the editor of Fifty Years Since MLK , published in 2018 by MIT Press and Boston Review and co-edited To Shape a New World , alongside Tommie Shelby, which was published in 2018 by Harvard University Press. These books explore the conscription of MLK's legacy to narratives not of his own politics, and how his work mi...
May 16, 2023•46 min•Ep. 79
In her groundbreaking and timely book Think Tank Aesthetics: Midcentury Modernism, the Cold War, and the Neoliberal Present (MIT Press, 2020), distinguished art historian Pamela M. Lee poses fundamental questions about how the rise of the “think tank” in the mid-20th century has challenged, and indeed must challenge, our understandings of aesthetics, political economy, scholarly knowledge production, and war. A conceptually rich and prolifically sourced work, Think Tank Aesthetics shows how the ...
May 16, 2023•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 183
Around the world, liberal democracies are in crisis. Citizens have lost faith in their government; right-wing nationalist movements frame the political debate. At the same time, economic inequality is increasing dramatically; digital technologies have created a new class of super-rich entrepreneurs. Automation threatens to transform the free economy into a zero-sum game in which capital wins and labor loses. But is this digital dystopia inevitable? In our final discussion before the election, Ge...
May 15, 2023•34 min•Ep. 78
In this series of interviews from The MIT Press Podcast , we'll be drawing on the research of various authors to reflect on some of the issues shaping the American political landscape of today. In this episode Carol A. Stabile discusses her book The Broadcast 41 (published in April of last year by Goldsmiths Press .) In her book, Carol traces the history of forty-one women who were forced out of American television and radio in the 1950s as part of a censorship program often referred to as the R...
May 14, 2023•43 min•Ep. 77
In this series of interviews from The MIT Press Podcast , we'll be drawing on the research of various authors to reflect on some of the issues shaping the American political landscape of today. The second episode of this series features a discussion with the author of Anti-vaxxers , Jonathan M. Berman . Vaccines are a documented success story, one of the most successful public health interventions in history. Yet there is a vocal anti-vaccination movement, featuring celebrity activists including...
May 13, 2023•40 min•Ep. 76
Prisons are not typically known for cutting-edge media technologies. Yet from photography in the nineteenth century to AI-enhanced tracking cameras today, there is a long history of prisons being used as a testing ground for technologies that are later adopted by the general public. If we recognize the prison as a central site for the development of media technologies, how might that change our understanding of both media systems and carceral systems? In Prison Media: Incarceration and the Infra...
May 13, 2023•25 min•Ep. 4
In this series of interviews from the MIT Press Podcast, we'll be drawing on the research of various authors to reflect on some of the issues shaping the American political landscape of today. In this, the first episode, Robert I. Rotberg (author of Anticorruption ) discusses corruption - what is it? where is it? And is it getting worse? He explains the long history of corruption in the USA, as well as the measures that can be taken to eradicate it. We also explore issues of corruption across th...
May 12, 2023•33 min•Ep. 75
Michael Hollingshead, the man who turned Timothy Leary onto LSD, managed to fundamentally influenced modern drug culture whilst remaining virtually anonymous in popular culture at large. In this episode, biographer Andy Roberts talks us through the life of a key character in psychedelic history. Of all the figures associated with the history of LSD there is none more enigmatic than Michael Hollingshead. Appearing as if from nowhere, he turned Timothy Leary on to LSD in 1962, and was influential ...
May 11, 2023•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 74
In this episode, Bita Moghaddam discusses the emergence of ketamine as a combat anesthetic in the Vietnam war, its transformation into a recreation drug central to club culture, and its current transition into a treatment for depression. Ketamine, approved in 2019 by the Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of depression, has been touted by scientists and media reports as something approaching a miracle cure. This volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series chronicles the ascent...
May 10, 2023•31 min•Ep. 73
This episode offers an insight into the work of leading cancer specialist and author of When Blood Breaks Down , Mikkael A. Sekeres. 1 in 2 people will develop cancer in their lifetime, but thankfully treatment for the disease is rapidly changing and improving. I ask Mikkael about the drugs that allow people to beat cancer and live better with it. When you are told that you have leukemia, your world stops. Your brain can't function. You are asked to make decisions about treatment almost immediat...
May 09, 2023•33 min•Ep. 72
Drawing on interviews with approximately sixty advocates, drug users, former users, friends, families, witnesses, clinicians, and scientists; Nancy D. Campbell has drawn together a history of a defining tragedy of contemporary life; the overdose. I ask her about the reality of drug overdoses and one of the tools being used by activists to prevent more deaths-- Naloxone . For years, drug overdose was unmentionable in polite society. OD was understood to be something that took place in dark alleys...
May 08, 2023•43 min•Ep. 71
C. Riley Snorton and Hentyle Yapp read from Saturation , a book that offers an analysis of racial representation and controversy in the art world. Controversies involving race and the art world are often discussed in terms of diversity and representation—as if having the right representative from a group or a larger plurality of embodied difference would absolve art institutions from historic forms of exclusion. This book offers another approach, taking into account not only questions of racial ...
May 07, 2023•25 min•Ep. 70
Rapid Reviews: COVID-19 brings together urgency and scientific rigor so the world’s researchers can quickly disseminate new discoveries that the public can trust. Amy Brand (Director, The MIT Press) and Vilas Dhar (Trustee, The Patrick J. McGovern Foundation) discuss this new overlay journal, its innovative goals, and its role as a proof-of-concept for new models of peer-review and rapid publishing.
May 06, 2023•11 min•Ep. 69
Conor Rose reads from Jackie Wang's Carceral Capitalism . This extract, taken from the opening of the book, offers insight into the Black Lives Matter movement as well as new forms of predatory policing, informed by the 2008 financial crash. In this collection of essays in Semiotext(e)'s Intervention series, Jackie Wang examines the contemporary incarceration techniques that have emerged since the 1990s. The essays illustrate various aspects of the carceral continuum, including the biopolitics o...
May 05, 2023•24 min•Ep. 68
Susan Schuppli is Director of the Centre for Research Architecture in the Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London. In her book, Material Witnesss , her research is an exploration of the evidential role of matter in contexts including the natural disaster, climate change, and conflict zones. In this interview she discusses her work as a writer, artist and educator. The evidential role of matter--when media records trace evidence of violence--explored through a series of ...
May 04, 2023•25 min•Ep. 67
Best known for its introduction of French theory to American readers, Semiotext(e) has been one of America's most influential independent presses since its inception more than three decades ago. Publishing works of theory, fiction, madness, economics, satire, sexuality, science fiction, activism and confession. In this interview Chris Kraus and Hedi El Kholti , who run Semitext(e) alongside Sylvère Lotringer, discuss the history of the press....
May 03, 2023•46 min•Ep. 66
