Podcast appearances and mentions of brian merchant

As The World Churns’ Andy Levy examines the fallout from the Trump and Musk feud.Blood in the Machine author Brian Merchant details how AI is already quietly killing job prospects in America.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A News Roundup episode, and an episode of two halves.  We start with a discussion of the recent public Oval Office meeting between Trump and Cyril Ramaphosa, in which Trump harangued the South African president with accusations of 'white genocide' based on 'evidence' which tracks straight back to people in our usual wheelhouse.  Then we move on to a chat about the recent decision by language learning app Duolingo to replace loads of their contributors with AI, plus some dismaying news about Babbel, leading to a discussion of the impending AI jobs crisis.  Then we cap it off with an odd flex for us... a feel good story! Episode Notes: Trump spreads racist South African Farm Murders Memes in meeting with Ramaphosa Trump/Ramaphosa meeting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TLkZv3gzO0 Response: https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/21/politics/video/trump-ramaphosa-south-africa-video-larry-madowo-vrtc * A check of Trump's false claims about white genocide in South Africa | Reuters https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-makes-false-claims-white-genocide-south-africa-during-ramaphosa-meeting-2025-05-21/ Trump's evidence of South Africa ‘white genocide' contains images from DR Congo – The Irish Times https://www.irishtimes.com/world/africa/2025/05/23/trumps-evidence-of-south-africa-white-genocide-contains-images-from-dr-congo/ Trump confronted South African president with ‘evidence' of genocide – here's what the video really showed | The Independent https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-south-africa-genocide-video-b2755625.html Trump ambushes South African president with video and false claims of anti-white racism | Trump administration | The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/21/trump-south-africa-president-meeting?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=bluesky&CMP=bsky_gu What's Behind Trump's South Africa Obsession? | Benjamin Fogel | TMR https://youtu.be/gR_gwPI5l-0?si=QfWeEuoosYeUD-JG South Africa to offer Elon Musk Starlink deal ahead of Trump meeting | Business Insider Africa https://africa.businessinsider.com/local/markets/south-africa-to-offer-elon-musk-starlink-deal-ahead-of-trump-meeting/v0k8bxk?op=1 White Nationalists Praise Trump's Promotion Of White Genocide Conspiracy Theory – Angry White Men https://angrywhitemen.org/2025/05/22/white-nationalists-praise-trumps-promotion-of-white-genocide-conspiracy-theory/ Exclusive: Trump Shared Racist, Flat-Earth Facebook Account With South African President https://www.meidasplus.com/p/exclusive-trump-shared-racist-flat Roaming Charges: White Lies About White Genocide - CounterPunch.org https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/05/23/white-lies-about-white-genocide/ DR Congo: Killings, Rapes by Rwanda-Backed M23 Rebels | Human Rights Watch https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/06/13/dr-congo-killings-rapes-rwanda-backed-m23-rebels As Goma ceasefire largely holds, Congo rushes to bury bodies from rebel offensive | Reuters https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/east-congo-city-goma-rushes-bury-bodies-after-rebel-offensive-2025-02-04/ A white nationalist moved to Idaho in search of an ‘ethnic enclave.' He's not alone. https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2022/jul/21/a-white-nationalist-moved-to-idaho-in-search-of-an/ * Duolingo Replacing Contract Workers With AI The Verge, “Duolingo will replace contract workers with AI” https://www.theverge.com/news/657594/duolingo-ai-first-replace-contract-workers “AI isn't just a productivity boost,” von Ahn says. “It helps us get closer to our mission. To teach well, we need to create a massive amount of content, and doing that manually doesn't scale. One of the best decisions we made recently was replacing a slow, manual content creation process with one powered by AI. Without AI, it would take us decades to scale our content to more learners. We owe it to our learners to get them this content ASAP.” von Ahn's email follows a similar memo Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke sent to employees and recently shared online. In that memo, Lütke said that before teams asked for more headcount or resources, they needed to show “why they cannot get what they want done using AI.” Fortune, “Duolingo CEO walks back AI-first comments: ‘I do not see AI as replacing what our employees do'” “To be clear: I do not see AI as replacing what our employees do (we are in fact continuing to hire at the same speed as before),” he wrote. “I see it as a tool to accelerate what we do, at the same or better level of quality. And the sooner we learn how to use it, and use it responsibly, the better off we will be in the long run.” Babbel quietly ending Babbel Live Babbel Support, “Discontinuation of Babbel Live” https://support.babbel.com/hc/en-us/articles/26749152437522-Discontinuation-of-Babbel-Live “Babbel Live was introduced in 2021. Knowing the power of human teachers, we aimed to offer our learners this experience from their homes. Over time, however, we did see a clear trend: the majority of them did not accept Babbel Live as part of their language learning path, making it impossible for us to sustain it as a business. This change will help us achieve our goal of helping you become fluent in your new language quickly by enabling us to focus on improving our app, which most learners, especially beginners, prefer.” Boycott Over Upcoming E-sports Event in Riyadh Makes Geoguessr Change Its Stance Geoguessr Community Protests Esports World Cup by Disabling Popular Maps. https://www.si.com/esports/news/geoguessr-protests-esports-world-cup Statement from Feneb, one of the World Championship players, about his decision to boycott the Riyadh event. https://discord.com/channels/1003591679644807229/1026965093331779634/1375003211513204746 “The decision to participate in the Esports World Cup, which is directly funded by the Saudi Arabian government in an effort to distract public attention from the above human rights violations, is thus directly incompatible with any stated aims by GeoGuessr to promote an inclusive and diverse community, and extremely disappointing. I also do not want to dismiss the issue of hosting a tournament in Saudi Arabia, regardless of whether the event is directly run by the Saudi government or not. It is completely unnecessary to host a tournament in a country which some current or possible future world league players would be unable to travel to safely.” Statement from Geoguessr regarding their decision to reverse the event in Riyadh (Reddit) https://www.reddit.com/r/geoguessr/comments/1ksky0k/geoguessr_is_withdrawing_from_the_esports_world/ Geoguessr challenge links: (Standard) World Map https://www.geoguessr.com/challenge/MIJFcVhIFNpVapVs https://www.geoguessr.com/challenge/sedHxYRoMPdmFxdZ https://www.geoguessr.com/challenge/eIRYCYBhuUUBVIT2 An Official World https://www.geoguessr.com/challenge/tK9A8O1KUXQfZgCu https://www.geoguessr.com/challenge/NGYJ4uk0WhxNR5Ui https://www.geoguessr.com/challenge/Yc4uD6P8lFISKIgb A Community World https://www.geoguessr.com/challenge/B87Y20LMvmtDvUwN https://www.geoguessr.com/challenge/I9ub9gc9CmoEQpjn https://www.geoguessr.com/challenge/ZwKxnW3Ms9UTZZt6 * The AI jobs crisis is here, now - by Brian Merchant https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/the-ai-jobs-crisis-is-here-now Something Alarming Is Happening to the Job Market - The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/economy/archive/2025/04/job-market-youth/682641/  Show Notes: Please consider donating to help us make the show and stay ad-free and independent.  Patrons get exclusive access to at least one full extra episode a month plus all backer-only back-episodes. Daniel's Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/danielharper/posts Jack's Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=4196618&fan_landing=true IDSG Twitter: https://twitter.com/idsgpod Daniel's Twitter: @danieleharper Jack's (Locked) Twitter: @_Jack_Graham_ Jack's Bluesky: @timescarcass.bsky.social Daniel's Bluesky: @danielharper.bsky.social IDSG on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/i-dont-speak-german/id1449848509?ls=1

Kim jest człowiek w świecie technologii? Użytkownikiem? Owszem. Biomasą? Owszem. Trybikiem w maszynie? Też. Ofiarą? Zdarza się? Buntownikiem? Zdarza się coraz częściej. Właśnie o buntownikach, ofiarach, trybikach i zwykłych ludziach, którzy nie chcą już być bezsilni w świecie wielkich technologii jest ten odcinek. A opowiadamy o nich przez pryzmat trzech uzupełniających się książek. Jedna opowiada o zjawisku historycznym, które dziś powraca, ale w innej formie. Dzięki niej można inaczej spojrzeć na pracę m.in. kurierów albo pracowników magazynów. Druga jest o ludziach, których dotknęły - przeważnie negatywnie - procesy i narzędzia AI. Jak wpływają na nasze zdrowie, ciało, pracę - i czy mamy się jak bronić. A trzecia rozprawia się z powiedzeniem, że "Największy podstęp diabła to przekonanie nas o tym, że on nie istnieje". A konkretnie o tym, jakich sposobów, mechanizmów i sztuczek używają big techy, żeby wpełznąć do naszego kraju, gminy, szkoły, do ucha polityków, naukowców i decydentów i przekonać nas, że należą im się boskie ofiary. O tych książkach rozmawiamy: - “Krew w maszynie. Luddyści i pierwszy bunt przeciwko technologicznym gigantom”, Brian Merchant, tłum. Grzegorz Ciecieląg, wydawnictwo: Bo.Wiem, 2025 - “W cieniu AI. Jak sztuczna inteligencja ingeruje w nasze życie?” Madhumita Murgia, tłum. Michał Lipa, wydawnictwo Port, 2025 - “Bóg Techy. Jak wielkie firmy technologiczne przejmują władzę nad Polską i światem”, Sylwia Czubkowska, Wydawnictwo Znak, 2025

Yesterday, the self-styled San Francisco “progressive” Joan Williams was on the show arguing that Democrats need to relearn the language of the American working class. But, as some of you have noted, Williams seems oblivious to the fact that politics is about more than simply aping other people's language. What you say matters, and the language of American working class, like all industrial working classes, is rooted in a critique of capitalism. She should probably read the New Yorker staff writer John Cassidy's excellent new book, Capitalism and its Critics, which traces capitalism's evolution and criticism from the East India Company through modern times. He defines capitalism as production for profit by privately-owned companies in markets, encompassing various forms from Chinese state capitalism to hyper-globalization. The book examines capitalism's most articulate critics including the Luddites, Marx, Engels, Thomas Carlisle, Adam Smith, Rosa Luxemburg, Keynes & Hayek, and contemporary figures like Sylvia Federici and Thomas Piketty. Cassidy explores how major economists were often critics of their era's dominant capitalist model, and untangles capitalism's complicated relationship with colonialism, slavery and AI which he regards as a potentially unprecedented economic disruption. This should be essential listening for all Democrats seeking to reinvent a post Biden-Harris party and message. 5 key takeaways* Capitalism has many forms - From Chinese state capitalism to Keynesian managed capitalism to hyper-globalization, all fitting the basic definition of production for profit by privately-owned companies in markets.* Great economists are typically critics - Smith criticized mercantile capitalism, Keynes critiqued laissez-faire capitalism, and Hayek/Friedman opposed managed capitalism. Each generation's leading economists challenge their era's dominant model.* Modern corporate structure has deep roots - The East India Company was essentially a modern multinational corporation with headquarters, board of directors, stockholders, and even a private army - showing capitalism's organizational continuity across centuries.* Capitalism is intertwined with colonialism and slavery - Industrial capitalism was built on pre-existing colonial and slave systems, particularly through the cotton industry and plantation economies.* AI represents a potentially unprecedented disruption - Unlike previous technological waves, AI may substitute rather than complement human labor on a massive scale, potentially creating political backlash exceeding even the "China shock" that contributed to Trump's rise.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Full TranscriptAndrew Keen: Hello, everybody. A couple of days ago, we did a show with Joan Williams. She has a new book out, "Outclassed: How the Left Lost the Working Class and How to Win Them Back." A book about language, about how to talk to the American working class. She also had a piece in Jacobin Magazine, an anti-capitalist magazine, about how the left needs to speak to what she calls average American values. We talked, of course, about Bernie Sanders and AOC and their language of fighting oligarchy, and the New York Times followed that up with "The Enduring Power of Anti-Capitalism in American Politics."But of course, that brings the question: what exactly is capitalism? I did a little bit of research. We can find definitions of capitalism from AI, from Wikipedia, even from online dictionaries, but I thought we might do a little better than relying on Wikipedia and come to a man who's given capitalism and its critics a great deal of thought. John Cassidy is well known as a staff writer at The New Yorker. He's the author of a wonderful book, the best book, actually, on the dot-com insanity. And his new book, "Capitalism and its Critics," is out this week. John, congratulations on the book.So I've got to be a bit of a schoolmaster with you, John, and get some definitions first. What exactly is capitalism before we get to criticism of it?John Cassidy: Yeah, I mean, it's a very good question, Andrew. Obviously, through the decades, even the centuries, there have been many different definitions of the term capitalism and there are different types of capitalism. To not be sort of too ideological about it, the working definition I use is basically production for profit—that could be production of goods or mostly in the new and, you know, in today's economy, production of services—for profit by companies which are privately owned in markets. That's a very sort of all-encompassing definition.Within that, you can have all sorts of different types of capitalism. You can have Chinese state capitalism, you can have the old mercantilism, which industrial capitalism came after, which Trump seems to be trying to resurrect. You can have Keynesian managed capitalism that we had for 30 or 40 years after the Second World War, which I grew up in in the UK. Or you can have sort of hyper-globalization, hyper-capitalism that we've tried for the last 30 years. There are all those different varieties of capitalism consistent with a basic definition, I think.Andrew Keen: That keeps you busy, John. I know you started this project, which is a big book and it's a wonderful book. I read it. I don't always read all the books I have on the show, but I read from cover to cover full of remarkable stories of the critics of capitalism. You note in the beginning that you began this in 2016 with the beginnings of Trump. What was it about the 2016 election that triggered a book about capitalism and its critics?John Cassidy: Well, I was reporting on it at the time for The New Yorker and it struck me—I covered, I basically covered the economy in various forms for various publications since the late 80s, early 90s. In fact, one of my first big stories was the stock market crash of '87. So yes, I am that old. But it seemed to me in 2016 when you had Bernie Sanders running from the left and Trump running from the right, but both in some way offering very sort of similar critiques of capitalism. People forget that Trump in 2016 actually was running from the left of the Republican Party. He was attacking big business. He was attacking Wall Street. He doesn't do that these days very much, but at the time he was very much posing as the sort of outsider here to protect the interests of the average working man.And it seemed to me that when you had this sort of pincer movement against the then ruling model, this wasn't just a one-off. It seemed to me it was a sort of an emerging crisis of legitimacy for the system. And I thought there could be a good book written about how we got to here. And originally I thought it would be a relatively short book just based on the last sort of 20 or 30 years since the collapse of the Cold War and the sort of triumphalism of the early 90s.But as I got into it more and more, I realized that so many of the issues which had been raised, things like globalization, rising inequality, monopoly power, exploitation, even pollution and climate change, these issues go back to the very start of the capitalist system or the industrial capitalist system back in sort of late 18th century, early 19th century Britain. So I thought, in the end, I thought, you know what, let's just do the whole thing soup to nuts through the eyes of the critics.There have obviously been many, many histories of capitalism written. I thought that an original way to do it, or hopefully original, would be to do a sort of a narrative through the lives and the critiques of the critics of various stages. So that's, I hope, what sets it apart from other books on the subject, and also provides a sort of narrative frame because, you know, I am a New Yorker writer, I realize if you want people to read things, you've got to make it readable. Easiest way to make things readable is to center them around people. People love reading about other people. So that's sort of the narrative frame. I start off with a whistleblower from the East India Company back in the—Andrew Keen: Yeah, I want to come to that. But before, John, my sense is that to simplify what you're saying, this is a labor of love. You're originally from Leeds, the heart of Yorkshire, the center of the very industrial revolution, the first industrial revolution where, in your historical analysis, capitalism was born. Is it a labor of love? What's your family relationship with capitalism? How long was the family in Leeds?John Cassidy: Right, I mean that's a very good question. It is a labor of love in a way, but it's not—our family doesn't go—I'm from an Irish family, family of Irish immigrants who moved to England in the 1940s and 1950s. So my father actually did start working in a big mill, the Kirkstall Forge in Leeds, which is a big steel mill, and he left after seeing one of his co-workers have his arms chopped off in one of the machinery, so he decided it wasn't for him and he spent his life working in the construction industry, which was dominated by immigrants as it is here now.So I don't have a—it's not like I go back to sort of the start of the industrial revolution, but I did grow up in the middle of Leeds, very working class, very industrial neighborhood. And what a sort of irony is, I'll point out, I used to, when I was a kid, I used to play golf on a municipal golf course called Gotts Park in Leeds, which—you know, most golf courses in America are sort of in the affluent suburbs, country clubs. This was right in the middle of Armley in Leeds, which is where the Victorian jail is and a very rough neighborhood. There's a small bit of land which they built a golf course on. It turns out it was named after one of the very first industrialists, Benjamin Gott, who was a wool and textile industrialist, and who played a part in the Luddite movement, which I mention.So it turns out, I was there when I was 11 or 12, just learning how to play golf on this scrappy golf course. And here I am, 50 years later, writing about Benjamin Gott at the start of the Industrial Revolution. So yeah, no, sure. I think it speaks to me in a way that perhaps it wouldn't to somebody else from a different background.Andrew Keen: We did a show with William Dalrymple, actually, a couple of years ago. He's been on actually since, the Anglo or Scottish Indian historian. His book on the East India Company, "The Anarchy," is a classic. You begin in some ways your history of capitalism with the East India Company. What was it about the East India Company, John, that makes it different from other for-profit organizations in economic, Western economic history?John Cassidy: I mean, I read that. It's a great book, by the way. That was actually quoted in my chapter on these. Yeah, I remember. I mean, the reason I focused on it was for two reasons. Number one, I was looking for a start, a narrative start to the book. And it seemed to me, you know, the obvious place to start is with the start of the industrial revolution. If you look at economics history textbooks, that's where they always start with Arkwright and all the inventors, you know, who were the sort of techno-entrepreneurs of their time, the sort of British Silicon Valley, if you could think of it as, in Lancashire and Derbyshire in the late 18th century.So I knew I had to sort of start there in some way, but I thought that's a bit pat. Is there another way into it? And it turns out that in 1772 in England, there was a huge bailout of the East India Company, very much like the sort of 2008, 2009 bailout of Wall Street. The company got into trouble. So I thought, you know, maybe there's something there. And I eventually found this guy, William Bolts, who worked for the East India Company, turned into a whistleblower after he was fired for finagling in India like lots of the people who worked for the company did.So that gave me two things. Number one, it gave me—you know, I'm a writer, so it gave me something to focus on a narrative. His personal history is very interesting. But number two, it gave me a sort of foundation because industrial capitalism didn't come from nowhere. You know, it was built on top of a pre-existing form of capitalism, which we now call mercantile capitalism, which was very protectionist, which speaks to us now. But also it had these big monopolistic multinational companies.The East India Company, in some ways, was a very modern corporation. It had a headquarters in Leadenhall Street in the city of London. It had a board of directors, it had stockholders, the company sent out very detailed instructions to the people in the field in India and Indonesia and Malaysia who were traders who bought things from the locals there, brought them back to England on their company ships. They had a company army even to enforce—to protect their operations there. It was an incredible multinational corporation.So that was also, I think, fascinating because it showed that even in the pre-existing system, you know, big corporations existed, there were monopolies, they had royal monopolies given—first the East India Company got one from Queen Elizabeth. But in some ways, they were very similar to modern monopolistic corporations. And they had some of the problems we've seen with modern monopolistic corporations, the way they acted. And Bolts was the sort of first corporate whistleblower, I thought. Yeah, that was a way of sort of getting into the story, I think. Hopefully, you know, it's just a good read, I think.William Bolts's story because he was—he came from nowhere, he was Dutch, he wasn't even English and he joined the company as a sort of impoverished young man, went to India like a lot of English minor aristocrats did to sort of make your fortune. The way the company worked, you had to sort of work on company time and make as much money as you could for the company, but then in your spare time you're allowed to trade for yourself. So a lot of the—without getting into too much detail, but you know, English aristocracy was based on—you know, the eldest child inherits everything, so if you were the younger brother of the Duke of Norfolk, you actually didn't inherit anything. So all of these minor aristocrats, so major aristocrats, but who weren't first born, joined the East India Company, went out to India and made a fortune, and then came back and built huge houses. Lots of the great manor houses in southern England were built by people from the East India Company and they were known as Nabobs, which is an Indian term. So they were the sort of, you know, billionaires of their time, and it was based on—as I say, it wasn't based on industrial capitalism, it was based on mercantile capitalism.Andrew Keen: Yeah, the beginning of the book, which focuses on Bolts and the East India Company, brings to mind for me two things. Firstly, the intimacy of modern capitalism, modern industrial capitalism with colonialism and of course slavery—lots of books have been written on that. Touch on this and also the relationship between the birth of capitalism and the birth of liberalism or democracy. John Stuart Mill, of course, the father in many ways of Western democracy. His day job, ironically enough, or perhaps not ironically, was at the East India Company. So how do those two things connect, or is it just coincidental?John Cassidy: Well, I don't think it is entirely coincidental, I mean, J.S. Mill—his father, James Mill, was also a well-known philosopher in the sort of, obviously, in the earlier generation, earlier than him. And he actually wrote the official history of the East India Company. And I think they gave his son, the sort of brilliant protégé, J.S. Mill, a job as largely as a sort of sinecure, I think. But he did go in and work there in the offices three or four days a week.But I think it does show how sort of integral—the sort of—as you say, the inheritor and the servant in Britain, particularly, of colonial capitalism was. So the East India Company was, you know, it was in decline by that stage in the middle of the 19th century, but it didn't actually give up its monopoly. It wasn't forced to give up its monopoly on the Indian trade until 1857, after, you know, some notorious massacres and there was a sort of public outcry.So yeah, no, that's—it's very interesting that the British—it's sort of unique to Britain in a way, but it's interesting that industrial capitalism arose alongside this pre-existing capitalist structure and somebody like Mill is a sort of paradoxical figure because actually he was quite critical of aspects of industrial capitalism and supported sort of taxes on the rich, even though he's known as the great, you know, one of the great apostles of the free market and free market liberalism. And his day job, as you say, he was working for the East India Company.Andrew Keen: What about the relationship between the birth of industrial capitalism, colonialism and slavery? Those are big questions and I know you deal with them in some—John Cassidy: I think you can't just write an economic history of capitalism now just starting with the cotton industry and say, you know, it was all about—it was all about just technical progress and gadgets, etc. It was built on a sort of pre-existing system which was colonial and, you know, the slave trade was a central element of that. Now, as you say, there have been lots and lots of books written about it, the whole 1619 project got an incredible amount of attention a few years ago. So I didn't really want to rehash all that, but I did want to acknowledge the sort of role of slavery, especially in the rise of the cotton industry because of course, a lot of the raw cotton was grown in the plantations in the American South.So the way I actually ended up doing that was by writing a chapter about Eric Williams, a Trinidadian writer who ended up as the Prime Minister of Trinidad when it became independent in the 1960s. But when he was younger, he wrote a book which is now regarded as a classic. He went to Oxford to do a PhD, won a scholarship. He was very smart. I won a sort of Oxford scholarship myself but 50 years before that, he came across the Atlantic and did an undergraduate degree in history and then did a PhD there and his PhD thesis was on slavery and capitalism.And at the time, in the 1930s, the link really wasn't acknowledged. You could read any sort of standard economic history written by British historians, and they completely ignored that. He made the argument that, you know, slavery was integral to the rise of capitalism and he basically started an argument which has been raging ever since the 1930s and, you know, if you want to study economic history now you have to sort of—you know, have to have to address that. And the way I thought, even though the—it's called the Williams thesis is very famous. I don't think many people knew much about where it came from. So I thought I'd do a chapter on—Andrew Keen: Yeah, that chapter is excellent. You mentioned earlier the Luddites, you're from Yorkshire where Luddism in some ways was born. One of the early chapters is on the Luddites. We did a show with Brian Merchant, his book, "Blood in the Machine," has done very well, I'm sure you're familiar with it. I always understood the Luddites as being against industrialization, against the machine, as opposed to being against capitalism. But did those two things get muddled together in the history of the Luddites?John Cassidy: I think they did. I mean, you know, Luddites, when we grew up, I mean you're English too, you know to be called a Luddite was a term of abuse, right? You know, you were sort of antediluvian, anti-technology, you're stupid. It was only, I think, with the sort of computer revolution, the tech revolution of the last 30, 40 years and the sort of disruptions it's caused, that people have started to look back at the Luddites and say, perhaps they had a point.For them, they were basically pre-industrial capitalism artisans. They worked for profit-making concerns, small workshops. Some of them worked for themselves, so they were sort of sole proprietor capitalists. Or they worked in small venues, but the rise of industrial capitalism, factory capitalism or whatever, basically took away their livelihoods progressively. So they associated capitalism with new technology. In their minds it was the same. But their argument wasn't really a technological one or even an economic one, it was more a moral one. They basically made the moral argument that capitalists shouldn't have the right to just take away their livelihoods with no sort of recompense for them.At the time they didn't have any parliamentary representation. You know, they weren't revolutionaries. The first thing they did was create petitions to try and get parliament to step in, sort of introduce some regulation here. They got turned down repeatedly by the sort of—even though it was a very aristocratic parliament, places like Manchester and Leeds didn't have any representation at all. So it was only after that that they sort of turned violent and started, you know, smashing machines and machines, I think, were sort of symbols of the system, which they saw as morally unjust.And I think that's sort of what—obviously, there's, you know, a lot of technological disruption now, so we can, especially as it starts to come for the educated cognitive class, we can sort of sympathize with them more. But I think the sort of moral critique that there's this, you know, underneath the sort of great creativity and economic growth that capitalism produces, there is also a lot of destruction and a lot of victims. And I think that message, you know, is becoming a lot more—that's why I think why they've been rediscovered in the last five or ten years and I'm one of the people I guess contributing to that rediscovery.Andrew Keen: There's obviously many critiques of capitalism politically. I want to come to Marx in a second, but your chapter, I thought, on Thomas Carlyle and this nostalgic conservatism was very important and there are other conservatives as well. John, do you think that—and you mentioned Trump earlier, who is essentially a nostalgist for a—I don't know, some sort of bizarre pre-capitalist age in America. Is there something particularly powerful about the anti-capitalism of romantics like Carlyle, 19th century Englishman, there were many others of course.John Cassidy: Well, I think so. I mean, I think what is—conservatism, when we were young anyway, was associated with Thatcherism and Reaganism, which, you know, lionized the free market and free market capitalism and was a reaction against the pre-existing form of capitalism, Keynesian capitalism of the sort of 40s to the 80s. But I think what got lost in that era was the fact that there have always been—you've got Hayek up there, obviously—Andrew Keen: And then Keynes and Hayek, the two—John Cassidy: Right, it goes to the end of that. They had a great debate in the 1930s about these issues. But Hayek really wasn't a conservative person, and neither was Milton Friedman. They were sort of free market revolutionaries, really, that you'd let the market rip and it does good things. And I think that that sort of a view, you know, it just became very powerful. But we sort of lost sight of the fact that there was also a much older tradition of sort of suspicion of radical changes of any type. And that was what conservatism was about to some extent. If you think about Baldwin in Britain, for example.And there was a sort of—during the Industrial Revolution, some of the strongest supporters of factory acts to reduce hours and hourly wages for women and kids were actually conservatives, Tories, as they were called at the time, like Ashley. That tradition, Carlyle was a sort of extreme representative of that. I mean, Carlyle was a sort of proto-fascist, let's not romanticize him, he lionized strongmen, Frederick the Great, and he didn't really believe in democracy. But he also had—he was appalled by the sort of, you know, the—like, what's the phrase I'm looking for? The sort of destructive aspects of industrial capitalism, both on the workers, you know, he said it was a dehumanizing system, sounded like Marx in some ways. That it dehumanized the workers, but also it destroyed the environment.He was an early environmentalist. He venerated the environment, was actually very strongly linked to the transcendentalists in America, people like Thoreau, who went to visit him when he visited Britain and he saw the sort of destructive impact that capitalism was having locally in places like Manchester, which were filthy with filthy rivers, etc. So he just saw the whole system as sort of morally bankrupt and he was a great writer, Carlyle, whatever you think of him. Great user of language, so he has these great ringing phrases like, you know, the cash nexus or calling it the Gospel of Mammonism, the shabbiest gospel ever preached under the sun was industrial capitalism.So, again, you know, that's a sort of paradoxical thing, because I think for so long conservatism was associated with, you know, with support for the free market and still is in most of the Republican Party, but then along comes Trump and sort of conquers the party with a, you know, more skeptical, as you say, romantic, not really based on any reality, but a sort of romantic view that America can stand by itself in the world. I mean, I see Trump actually as a sort of an effort to sort of throw back to mercantile capitalism in a way. You know, which was not just pre-industrial, but was also pre-democracy, run by monarchs, which I'm sure appeals to him, and it was based on, you know, large—there were large tariffs. You couldn't import things in the UK. If you want to import anything to the UK, you have to send it on a British ship because of the navigation laws. It was a very protectionist system and it's actually, you know, as I said, had a lot of parallels with what Trump's trying to do or tries to do until he backs off.Andrew Keen: You cheat a little bit in the book in the sense that you—everyone has their own chapter. We'll talk a little bit about Hayek and Smith and Lenin and Friedman. You do have one chapter on Marx, but you also have a chapter on Engels. So you kind of cheat. You combine the two. Is it possible, though, to do—and you've just written this book, so you know this as well as anyone. How do you write a book about capitalism and its critics and only really give one chapter to Marx, who is so dominant? I mean, you've got lots of Marxists in the book, including Lenin and Luxemburg. How fundamental is Marx to a criticism of capitalism? Is most criticism, especially from the left, from progressives, is it really just all a footnote to Marx?John Cassidy: I wouldn't go that far, but I think obviously on the left he is the central figure. But there's an element of sort of trying to rebuild Engels a bit in this. I mean, I think of Engels and Marx—I mean obviously Marx wrote the great classic "Capital," etc. But in the 1840s, when they both started writing about capitalism, Engels was sort of ahead of Marx in some ways. I mean, the sort of materialist concept, the idea that economics rules everything, Engels actually was the first one to come up with that in an essay in the 1840s which Marx then published in one of his—in the German newspaper he worked for at the time, radical newspaper, and he acknowledged openly that that was really what got him thinking seriously about economics, and even in the late—in 20, 25 years later when he wrote "Capital," all three volumes of it and the Grundrisse, just these enormous outpourings of analysis on capitalism.He acknowledged Engels's role in that and obviously Engels wrote the first draft of the Communist Manifesto in 1848 too, which Marx then topped and tailed and—he was a better writer obviously, Marx, and he gave it the dramatic language that we all know it for. So I think Engels and Marx together obviously are the central sort of figures in the sort of left-wing critique. But they didn't start out like that. I mean, they were very obscure, you've got to remember.You know, they were—when they were writing, Marx was writing "Capital" in London, it never even got published in English for another 20 years. It was just published in German. He was basically an expat. He had been thrown out of Germany, he had been thrown out of France, so England was last resort and the British didn't consider him a threat so they were happy to let him and the rest of the German sort of left in there. I think it became—it became the sort of epochal figure after his death really, I think, when he was picked up by the left-wing parties, which are especially the SPD in Germany, which was the first sort of socialist mass party and was officially Marxist until the First World War and there were great internal debates.And then of course, because Lenin and the Russians came out of that tradition too, Marxism then became the official doctrine of the Soviet Union when they adopted a version of it. And again there were massive internal arguments about what Marx really meant, and in fact, you know, one interpretation of the last 150 years of left-wing sort of intellectual development is as a sort of argument about what did Marx really mean and what are the important bits of it, what are the less essential bits of it. It's a bit like the "what did Keynes really mean" that you get in liberal circles.So yeah, Marx, obviously, this is basically an intellectual history of critiques of capitalism. In that frame, he is absolutely a central figure. Why didn't I give him more space than a chapter and a chapter and a half with Engels? There have been a million books written about Marx. I mean, it's not that—it's not that he's an unknown figure. You know, there's a best-selling book written in Britain about 20 years ago about him and then I was quoting, in my biographical research, I relied on some more recent, more scholarly biographies. So he's an endlessly fascinating figure but I didn't want him to dominate the book so I gave him basically the same space as everybody else.Andrew Keen: You've got, as I said, you've got a chapter on Adam Smith who's often considered the father of economics. You've got a chapter on Keynes. You've got a chapter on Friedman. And you've got a chapter on Hayek, all the great modern economists. Is it possible, John, to be a distinguished economist one way or the other and not be a critic of capitalism?John Cassidy: Well, I don't—I mean, I think history would suggest that the greatest economists have been critics of capitalism in their own time. People would say to me, what the hell have you got Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek in a book about critics of capitalism? They were great exponents, defenders of capitalism. They loved the system. That is perfectly true. But in the 1930s, 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s, middle of the 20th century, they were actually arch-critics of the ruling form of capitalism at the time, which was what I call managed capitalism. What some people call Keynesianism, what other people call European social democracy, whatever you call it, it was a model of a mixed economy in which the government played a large role both in propping up demand and in providing an extensive social safety net in the UK and providing public healthcare and public education. It was a sort of hybrid model.Most of the economy in terms of the businesses remained in private hands. So most production was capitalistic. It was a capitalist system. They didn't go to the Soviet model of nationalizing everything and Britain did nationalize some businesses, but most places didn't. The US of course didn't but it was a form of managed capitalism. And Hayek and Friedman were both great critics of that and wanted to sort of move back to 19th century laissez-faire model.Keynes was a—was actually a great, I view him anyway, as really a sort of late Victorian liberal and was trying to protect as much of the sort of J.S. Mill view of the world as he could, but he thought capitalism had one fatal flaw: that it tended to fall into recessions and then they can snowball and the whole system can collapse which is what had basically happened in the early 1930s until Keynesian policies were adopted. Keynes sort of differed from a lot of his followers—I have a chapter on Joan Robinson in there, who were pretty left-wing and wanted to sort of use Keynesianism as a way to shift the economy quite far to the left. Keynes didn't really believe in that. He has a famous quote that, you know, once you get to full employment, you can then rely on the free market to sort of take care of things. He was still a liberal at heart.Going back to Adam Smith, why is he in a book on criticism of capitalism? And again, it goes back to what I said at the beginning. He actually wrote "The Wealth of Nations"—he explains in the introduction—as a critique of mercantile capitalism. His argument was that he was a pro-free trader, pro-small business, free enterprise. His argument was if you get the government out of the way, we don't need these government-sponsored monopolies like the East India Company. If you just rely on the market, the sort of market forces and competition will produce a good outcome. So then he was seen as a great—you know, he is then seen as the apostle of free market capitalism. I mean when I started as a young reporter, when I used to report in Washington, all the conservatives used to wear Adam Smith badges. You don't see Donald Trump wearing an Adam Smith badge, but that was the case.He was also—the other aspect of Smith, which I highlight, which is not often remarked on—he's also a critic of big business. He has a famous section where he discusses the sort of tendency of any group of more than three businessmen when they get together to try and raise prices and conspire against consumers. And he was very suspicious of, as I say, large companies, monopolies. I think if Adam Smith existed today, I mean, I think he would be a big supporter of Lina Khan and the sort of antitrust movement, he would say capitalism is great as long as you have competition, but if you don't have competition it becomes, you know, exploitative.Andrew Keen: Yeah, if Smith came back to live today, you have a chapter on Thomas Piketty, maybe he may not be French, but he may be taking that position about how the rich benefit from the structure of investment. Piketty's core—I've never had Piketty on the show, but I've had some of his followers like Emmanuel Saez from Berkeley. Yeah. How powerful is Piketty's critique of capitalism within the context of the classical economic analysis from Hayek and Friedman? Yeah, it's a very good question.John Cassidy: It's a very good question. I mean, he's a very paradoxical figure, Piketty, in that he obviously shot to world fame and stardom with his book on capital in the 21st century, which in some ways he obviously used the capital as a way of linking himself to Marx, even though he said he never read Marx. But he was basically making the same argument that if you leave capitalism unrestrained and don't do anything about monopolies etc. or wealth, you're going to get massive inequality and he—I think his great contribution, Piketty and the school of people, one of them you mentioned, around him was we sort of had a vague idea that inequality was going up and that, you know, wages were stagnating, etc.What he and his colleagues did is they produced these sort of scientific empirical studies showing in very simple to understand terms how the sort of share of income and wealth of the top 10 percent, the top 5 percent, the top 1 percent and the top 0.1 percent basically skyrocketed from the 1970s to about 2010. And it was, you know, he was an MIT PhD. Saez, who you mentioned, is a Berkeley professor. They were schooled in neoclassical economics at Harvard and MIT and places like that. So the right couldn't dismiss them as sort of, you know, lefties or Trots or whatever who're just sort of making this stuff up. They had to acknowledge that this was actually an empirical reality.I think it did change the whole basis of the debate and it was sort of part of this reaction against capitalism in the 2010s. You know it was obviously linked to the sort of Sanders and the Occupy Wall Street movement at the time. It came out of the—you know, the financial crisis as well when Wall Street disgraced itself. I mean, I wrote a previous book on all that, but people have sort of, I think, forgotten the great reaction against that a decade ago, which I think even Trump sort of exploited, as I say, by using anti-banker rhetoric at the time.So, Piketty was a great figure, I think, from, you know, I was thinking, who are the most influential critics of capitalism in the 21st century? And I think you'd have to put him up there on the list. I'm not saying he's the only one or the most eminent one. But I think he is a central figure. Now, of course, you'd think, well, this is a really powerful critic of capitalism, and nobody's going to pick up, and Bernie's going to take off and everything. But here we are a decade later now. It seems to be what the backlash has produced is a swing to the right, not a swing to the left. So that's, again, a sort of paradox.Andrew Keen: One person I didn't expect to come up in the book, John, and I was fascinated with this chapter, is Silvia Federici. I've tried to get her on the show. We've had some books about her writing and her kind of—I don't know, you treat her critique as a feminist one. The role of women. Why did you choose to write a chapter about Federici and that feminist critique of capitalism?John Cassidy: Right, right. Well, I don't think it was just feminist. I'll explain what I think it was. Two reasons. Number one, I wanted to get more women into the book. I mean, it's in some sense, it is a history of economics and economic critiques. And they are overwhelmingly written by men and women were sort of written out of the narrative of capitalism for a very long time. So I tried to include as many sort of women as actual thinkers as I could and I have a couple of early socialist feminist thinkers, Anna Wheeler and Flora Tristan and then I cover some of the—I cover Rosa Luxemburg as the great sort of tribune of the left revolutionary socialist, communist whatever you want to call it. Anti-capitalist I think is probably also important to note about. Yeah, and then I also have Joan Robinson, but I wanted somebody to do something in the modern era, and I thought Federici, in the world of the Wages for Housework movement, is very interesting from two perspectives.Number one, Federici herself is a Marxist, and I think she probably would still consider herself a revolutionary. She's based in New York, as you know now. She lived in New York for 50 years, but she came from—she's originally Italian and came out of the Italian left in the 1960s, which was very radical. Do you know her? Did you talk to her? I didn't talk to her on this. No, she—I basically relied on, there has been a lot of, as you say, there's been a lot of stuff written about her over the years. She's written, you know, she's given various long interviews and she's written a book herself, a version, a history of housework, so I figured it was all there and it was just a matter of pulling it together.But I think the critique, why the critique is interesting, most of the book is a sort of critique of how capitalism works, you know, in the production or you know, in factories or in offices or you know, wherever capitalist operations are working, but her critique is sort of domestic reproduction, as she calls it, the role of unpaid labor in supporting capitalism. I mean it goes back a long way actually. There was this moment, I sort of trace it back to the 1940s and 1950s when there were feminists in America who were demonstrating outside factories and making the point that you know, the factory workers and the operations of the factory, it couldn't—there's one of the famous sort of tire factory in California demonstrations where the women made the argument, look this factory can't continue to operate unless we feed and clothe the workers and provide the next generation of workers. You know, that's domestic reproduction. So their argument was that housework should be paid and Federici took that idea and a couple of her colleagues, she founded the—it's a global movement, but she founded the most famous branch in New York City in the 1970s. In Park Slope near where I live actually.And they were—you call it feminists, they were feminists in a way, but they were rejected by the sort of mainstream feminist movement, the sort of Gloria Steinems of the world, who Federici was very critical of because she said they ignored, they really just wanted to get women ahead in the sort of capitalist economy and they ignored the sort of underlying from her perspective, the underlying sort of illegitimacy and exploitation of that system. So they were never accepted as part of the feminist movement. They're to the left of the Feminist Movement.Andrew Keen: You mentioned Keynes, of course, so central in all this, particularly his analysis of the role of automation in capitalism. We did a show recently with Robert Skidelsky and I'm sure you're familiar—John Cassidy: Yeah, yeah, great, great biography of Keynes.Andrew Keen: Yeah, the great biographer of Keynes, whose latest book is "Mindless: The Human Condition in the Age of AI." You yourself wrote a brilliant book on the last tech mania and dot-com capitalism. I used it in a lot of my writing and books. What's your analysis of AI in this latest mania and the role generally of manias in the history of capitalism and indeed in critiquing capitalism? Is AI just the next chapter of the dot-com boom?John Cassidy: I think it's a very deep question. I think I'd give two answers to it. In one sense it is just the latest mania the way—I mean, the way capitalism works is we have these, I go back to Kondratiev, one of my Russian economists who ended up being killed by Stalin. He was the sort of inventor of the long wave theory of capitalism. We have these short waves where you have sort of booms and busts driven by finance and debt etc. But we also have long waves driven by technology.And obviously, in the last 40, 50 years, the two big ones are the original deployment of the internet and microchip technology in the sort of 80s and 90s culminating in the dot-com boom of the late 90s, which as you say, I wrote about. Thanks very much for your kind comments on the book. If you just sort of compare it from a financial basis I think they are very similar just in terms of the sort of role of hype from Wall Street in hyping up these companies. The sort of FOMO aspect of it among investors that they you know, you can't miss out. So just buy the companies blindly. And the sort of lionization in the press and the media of, you know, of AI as the sort of great wave of the future.So if you take a sort of skeptical market based approach, I would say, yeah, this is just another sort of another mania which will eventually burst and it looked like it had burst for a few weeks when Trump put the tariffs up, now the market seemed to be recovering. But I think there is, there may be something new about it. I am not, I don't pretend to be a technical expert. I try to rely on the evidence of or the testimony of people who know the systems well and also economists who have studied it. It seems to me the closer you get to it the more alarming it is in terms of the potential shock value that there is there.I mean Trump and the sort of reaction to a larger extent can be traced back to the China shock where we had this global shock to American manufacturing and sort of hollowed out a lot of the industrial areas much of it, like industrial Britain was hollowed out in the 80s. If you, you know, even people like Altman and Elon Musk, they seem to think that this is going to be on a much larger scale than that and will basically, you know, get rid of the professions as they exist. Which would be a huge, huge shock. And I think a lot of the economists who studied this, who four or five years ago were relatively optimistic, people like Daron Acemoglu, David Autor—Andrew Keen: Simon Johnson, of course, who just won the Nobel Prize, and he's from England.John Cassidy: Simon, I did an event with Simon earlier this week. You know they've studied this a lot more closely than I have but I do interview them and I think five, six years ago they were sort of optimistic that you know this could just be a new steam engine or could be a microchip which would lead to sort of a lot more growth, rising productivity, rising productivity is usually associated with rising wages so sure there'd be short-term costs but ultimately it would be a good thing. Now, I think if you speak to them, they see since the, you know, obviously, the OpenAI—the original launch and now there's just this huge arms race with no government involvement at all I think they're coming to the conclusion that rather than being developed to sort of complement human labor, all these systems are just being rushed out to substitute for human labor. And it's just going, if current trends persist, it's going to be a China shock on an even bigger scale.You know what is going to, if that, if they're right, that is going to produce some huge political backlash at some point, that's inevitable. So I know—the thing when the dot-com bubble burst, it didn't really have that much long-term impact on the economy. People lost the sort of fake money they thought they'd made. And then the companies, obviously some of the companies like Amazon and you know Google were real genuine profit-making companies and if you bought them early you made a fortune. But AI does seem a sort of bigger, scarier phenomenon to me. I don't know. I mean, you're close to it. What do you think?Andrew Keen: Well, I'm waiting for a book, John, from you. I think you can combine dot-com and capitalism and its critics. We need you probably to cover it—you know more about it than me. Final question, I mean, it's a wonderful book and we haven't even scratched the surface everyone needs to get it. I enjoyed the chapter, for example, on Karl Polanyi and so much more. I mean, it's a big book. But my final question, John, is do you have any regrets about anyone you left out? The one person I would have liked to have been included was Rawls because of his sort of treatment of capitalism and luck as a kind of casino. I'm not sure whether you gave any thought to Rawls, but is there someone in retrospect you should have had a chapter on that you left out?John Cassidy: There are lots of people I left out. I mean, that's the problem. I mean there have been hundreds and hundreds of critics of capitalism. Rawls, of course, incredibly influential and his idea of the sort of, you know, the veil of ignorance that you should judge things not knowing where you are in the income distribution and then—Andrew Keen: And it's luck. I mean the idea of some people get lucky and some people don't.John Cassidy: It is the luck of the draw, obviously, what card you pull. I think that is a very powerful critique, but I just—because I am more of an expert on economics, I tended to leave out philosophers and sociologists. I mean, you know, you could say, where's Max Weber? Where are the anarchists? You know, where's Emma Goldman? Where's John Kenneth Galbraith, the sort of great mid-century critic of American industrial capitalism? There's so many people that you could include. I mean, I could have written 10 volumes. In fact, I refer in the book to, you know, there's always been a problem. G.D.H. Cole, a famous English historian, wrote a history of socialism back in the 1960s and 70s. You know, just getting to 1850 took him six volumes. So, you've got to pick and choose, and I don't claim this is the history of capitalism and its critics. That would be a ridiculous claim to make. I just claim it's a history written by me, and hopefully the people are interested in it, and they're sufficiently diverse that you can address all the big questions.Andrew Keen: Well it's certainly incredibly timely. Capitalism and its critics—more and more of them. Sometimes they don't even describe themselves as critics of capitalism when they're talking about oligarchs or billionaires, they're really criticizing capitalism. A must read from one of America's leading journalists. And would you call yourself a critic of capitalism, John?John Cassidy: Yeah, I guess I am, to some extent, sure. I mean, I'm not a—you know, I'm not on the far left, but I'd say I'm a center-left critic of capitalism. Yes, definitely, that would be fair.Andrew Keen: And does the left need to learn? Does everyone on the left need to read the book and learn the language of anti-capitalism in a more coherent and honest way?John Cassidy: I hope so. I mean, obviously, I'd be talking my own book there, as they say, but I hope that people on the left, but not just people on the left. I really did try to sort of be fair to the sort of right-wing critiques as well. I included the Carlyle chapter particularly, obviously, but in the later chapters, I also sort of refer to this emerging critique on the right, the sort of economic nationalist critique. So hopefully, I think people on the right could read it to understand the critiques from the left, and people on the left could read it to understand some of the critiques on the right as well.Andrew Keen: Well, it's a lovely book. It's enormously erudite and simultaneously readable. Anyone who likes John Cassidy's work from The New Yorker will love it. Congratulations, John, on the new book, and I'd love to get you back on the show as anti-capitalism in America picks up steam and perhaps manifests itself in the 2028 election. Thank you so much.John Cassidy: Thanks very much for inviting me on, it was fun.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

It's an Emma-jority Thursday and we got a great show for you. Emma talks to Historian and Author Greg Grandin about his new book America, América: A New History of the New World.  https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/747326/america-america-by-greg-grandin/ After that, writer Brian Merchant discusses his reporting on AI and it's encroachment on human jobs on his blog Blood in the Machine: https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/ After that we'll have Matt Binder and Brandon Sutton on, as is Thursday tradition. NYU Gallitan student Logan Rozos bravely recognized the Gaza genocide during his graduation speech, which has prompted the school to now withhold his diploma.  Joe Rogan defends X's decision to allow Ye to post his new blatantly antisemitic single, and Kristi Noem runs interference in Congress for Trump's child-like interpretation of a clearly photoshopped image of Kilmar Abrego Garcia's tattoos. Become a member at JoinTheMajorityReport.com: https://fans.fm/majority/join Follow us on TikTok here!: https://www.tiktok.com/@majorityreportfm Check us out on Twitch here!: https://www.twitch.tv/themajorityreport Find our Rumble stream here!: https://rumble.com/user/majorityreport Check out our alt YouTube channel here!: https://www.youtube.com/majorityreportlive Gift a Majority Report subscription here: https://fans.fm/majority/gift Subscribe to the ESVN YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/esvnshow Subscribe to the AMQuickie newsletter here: https://am-quickie.ghost.io/ Join the Majority Report Discord! https://majoritydiscord.com/ Get all your MR merch at our store: https://shop.majorityreportradio.com/ Get the free Majority Report App!: https://majority.fm/app Go to https://JustCoffee.coop and use coupon code majority to get 10% off your purchase! Check out today's sponsors: Mankura: Get $25 off your Starter Kit by going to manukora.com/majority  Express VPN: Get an extra 4 months free. Expressvpn.com/Majority  Follow the Majority Report crew on Twitter: @SamSeder @EmmaVigeland @MattLech @RussFinkelstein Check out Matt's show, Left Reckoning, on Youtube, and subscribe on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/leftreckoning Check out Matt Binder's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/mattbinder Subscribe to Brandon's show The Discourse on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/ExpandTheDiscourse Check out Ava Raiza's music here! https://avaraiza.bandcamp.com/ The Majority Report with Sam Seder – https://majorityreportradio.com/

AI is coming for our jobs, the environment, and is even starting to stand-in for human creativity. Derek Allen, Sam Kirchner and Varvara Pavlova are part of the newly formed direct action group Stop AI, which is particularly concerned about the existential threat of Artificial General Intelligence and the potential for robots to outsmart humans, which Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, says is coming this year. Stop AI https://www.stopai.info/ 
"Lavender: The AI machine directing Israel's bombing spree in Gaza" (Yuval Abraham, +972 Magazine) https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/ Brian Merchant's book "Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech" covers the history of the Luddite movement https://sfpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S93C5986948 Support us and find links to our past episodes: patreon.com/sadfrancisco  

The Politics of Air Pollution, Ozempic, and Luddism ft. Brian Merchant

Jason, Sam, and Blood in the Machine's Brian Merchant discuss how AI slop has taken over the internet, how it is a brute-force attack against the algorithms that control what we see on social media, and what we can do to fight back against it. This panel was held at Speakeasy in Austin, Texas at SXSW on March 10, 2025. Thanks to our friends at Flipboard for giving us the space and to DeleteMe for sponsoring the event. Use code "404Media" for 20% off an annual plan of DeleteMe: https://www.404media.co/r/5d94373c?m=e247fe06-53d6-4c05-9484-be3684d4f655 Find Brian's work at Blood in the Machine: https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/ Become a paid subscriber for access to bonus content: https://404media.co/membership Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Brian Merchant, author of the newsletter Blood in the Machine, returns to the show to talk about the newsletter, ai, tech oligarchs, the neoliberal "abundance" agenda, jobs, and pretty much everything else you want to know about the terrible, horrible, no good collusion between Trump, Tech billionaires, and ai. Fight the tech billionaires. Support Blood in the Machine!https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/ You can also check out Brian's previous appearance on his book about the luddites - also called Blood in the Machine: https://player.captivate.fm/episode/a05a3ed4-471c-4224-9ac6-4af204b7ff1d/ Oh, and you can find some of my work on ai here:https://aideas.captivate.fm/ https://www.aiedu.org/aiedu-blog/guest-author-ethics-culbertson-1

Today, we're diving head first into the AI art debate, which to be honest, is an absolute mess. If you've been on the internet this past week, you've seen the Studio Ghibli memes. These images are everywhere — and they've widened an already pretty stark rift between AI boosters and critics. Brian Merchant, author of the newsletter and book Blood in the Machine, wrote one of the best analyses of the Ghibli trend last week. So I invited him onto the show not only to discuss this particular situation, but also to help me dissect the ongoing AI art debate more broadly.  Links:  OpenAI's Studio Ghibli meme factory is an insult to art itself | Brian Merchant Seattle engineer's Ghibli-style image goes viral Seattle Times OpenAI just raised another $40 billion round from SoftBank | Verge ChatGPT “added one million users in the last hour.” | Verge ChatGPT's Ghibli filter is political now, but it always was | Verge OpenAI, Google ask the government to let them train on content they don't own | Verge Studio Ghibli in the age of A.I. reproduction | Max Read OpenAI has a Studio Ghibli problem | Vergecast AI slop is a brute force attack on the algorithms that control reality | 404 Media The New Aesthetics of Fascism | New Socialist Credits: Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Ursa Wright.  The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Send us a textWho knew that the breakthrough moment of AI sentience would come from interacting with an annoying neo-Luddite?After failing to raise a single dollar for PCI's newest initiative — the $350 billion Transdisciplinary Institute for Phalse Prophet Studies and Education (TIPPSE) —  Jason, Rob, and Asher devise the only profitable pitch for raising capital: using AI technology to cure the loneliness that technology itself causes. The only problem is that AI chatbots won't talk to us, as evidenced by Asher's experience of being blocked by an AI “friend.” So Asher turns to the flesh-and-blood author of Blood in the Machine, Brian Merchant, to discuss the rise of the neo-Luddite movement — the only people who might be able to stand your humble Crazy Town hosts. Brian Merchant is a writer, reporter, and author. He is currently reporter in residence at the AI Now Institute and publishes his own newsletter, Blood in the Machine, which has the same title as his 2023 book. Previously, Brian was the technology columnist at the Los Angeles Times and a senior editor at Motherboard.Originally recorded on 1/3/25 (warm-up conversation) and 3/24/25 (interview with Brian).Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.Sources/Links/Notes:Press Release announcing closure of TIPPSEFunding for FriendScreenshot of Asher's conversation with Friend's bot, FaithLyrics to “Not Going to Mars” by PyrrhonBrian Merchant's Substack, Blood in the MachineBrian's book, Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech  New York Times article on the Luddite Club: “‘Luddite' Teens Don't Want Your Likes”Crazy Town Episode 72: Sucking CO2 and Electrifying Everything: The Climate Movement's Desperate Dependence on Tenuous TechnologiesBrian's essay in The Atlantic, “The New Luddites Aren't Backing Down”Support the show

The New Abnormal host Andy Levy and guest host Jeb Lund think there's only one way to respond to President Donald Trump's talks of a third term and it isn't polite. Then, activist and author Sandy Hudson stops by to discuss her new book, Defund: Black Lives, Policing, and Safety for All. Plus! Tech journalist Brian Merchant joins the podcast to talk about all things propaganda and protest in America's new era. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, TechStuff teams up with Part-Time Genius for a special crossover episode. Oz and Mangesh Hattikudur, host of Part-Time Genius, discuss a largely misunderstood group of machine destroyers. The Luddites. Joining them is tech journalist Brian Merchant, author of Blood in the Machine, to dig into the history of humans fighting against job automation, why we equate Luddites with technophobes and what we can learn from these 19th century rebels in the age of AI.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Subscribe for $5.99 a month to get bonus content most Mondays, bonus episodes every month, ad-free listening, access to the entire 750-episode archive, Discord access, and more: https://axismundi.supercast.com/ Subscribe to One Nation, Indivisible with Andrew Seidel:  Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/one-nation-indivisible-with-andrew-seidel/id1791471198 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0w5Lb2ImPFPS1NWMG0DLrQ Brad is joined by author Brian Merchant to discuss his book, 'Blood in the Machine.' They explore how the historical Luddite movement in 19th century England provides critical insights into the current AI revolution and its impact on labor and society. Merchant draws parallels between past and present technological upheavals, examining how AI is being used today to automate labor, displace workers, and erode job quality. They also reflect on cultural works like Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein,' highlighting its relevance to modern concerns about technology. Through their conversation, they examine the role of technology in shaping human life and society, and what it means to resist dehumanizing technological developments. Linktree: https://linktr.ee/StraightWhiteJC Order Brad's book: https://bookshop.org/a/95982/9781506482163 Check out BetterHelp and use my code SWA for a great deal: www.betterhelp.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"The constant generation of novel and fantastic apocalyptic scenarios serves to extend the horizon for the arrival of the hellish conditions contained in dystopia - if oppression is a nebulous but ever-approaching threat, it's perpetually obscured, lifted away into a sub-fictional ether. It needs not be interrogated, not now, anyway. Which is how power prefers it." - Brian MerchantRESOURCE: https://onezero.medium.com/its-always-been-a-dystopia-858ef606832fANOTHER RESOURCE:https://medium.com/20minutesintothefuture/the-dystopia-is-already-here-4a4304807e2e ONE MORE RESOURCE: https://thefrailestthing.com/2017/11/09/the-dystopia-is-already-here/ OH THIS TOO: https://www.wired.com/story/dystopia-tips-prepare-fight-back/ AND FINALLY: https://communemag.com/dystopias-now/DONATE:www.pcrf.netGET AN OCCASIONAL PERSONAL EMAIL FROM ME: www.makeyourdamnbedpodcast.comTUNE IN ON INSTAGRAM FOR COOL CONTENT: www.instagram.com/mydbpodcastOR BE A REAL GEM + TUNE IN ON PATREON: www.patreon.com/MYDBpodcastOR WATCH ON YOUTUBE: www.youtube.com/juliemerica The opinions expressed by Julie Merica and Make Your Damn Bed Podcast are intended for entertainment purposes only. Make Your Damn Bed podcast is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Get bonus content on PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/make-your-damn-bed. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Paris Marx is joined by Molly White, Brian Merchant, and Eric Wickham to discuss the highs and lows (mostly lows) of this year in tech news.Molly White is the creator of Web3 is Going Just Great and Follow the Crypto. Brian Merchant is my co-host on System Crash, a new podcast we're hosting. He's also a longtime tech journalist and author of Blood in the Machine. Eric Wickham is the producer for Tech Won't Save Us, along with a bunch of other podcast, and an independent journalist.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 Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.Also mentioned in this episode:Molly joined Brian and Paris on System Crash.Peter Thiel made some dumb remarks about Luigi Mangione on the Piers Morgan show while looking very shiny.Apple sold fewer than half a million Vision Pro headsets this year.Support the show

Once upon a time, artificial general intelligence was the only business plan OpenAI seemed to have. Tech journalist Brian Merchant joins Emily and Alex for a time warp to the beginning of the current wave of AI hype, nearly a decade ago. And it sure seemed like Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and company were luring investor dollars to their newly-formed venture solely on the hand-wavy promise that someday, LLMs themselves would figure out how to turn a profit.Brian Merchant is an author, journalist in residence at the AI Now Institute, and co-host of the tech news podcast System Crash.References:Elon Musk and partners form nonprofit to stop AI from ruining the worldHow Elon Musk and Y Combinator Plan to Stop Computers From Taking OverElon Musk's Billion-Dollar AI Plan Is About Far More Than Saving the WorldBrian's recent report on the business model of AGI, for the AI Now Institute: AI Generated Business: The rise of AGI and the rush to find a working revenue modelPreviously on MAIHT3K: Episode 21: The True Meaning of 'Open Source' (feat. Sarah West and Andreas Liesenfeld)Fresh AI Hell:OpenAI explores advertising as it steps up revenue driveIf an AI company ran Campbell's Soup with the same practices they use to handle dataHumans are the new 'luxury item'Itching to write a book? AI publisher Spines wants to make a dealA company pitched Emily her own 'verified avatar'Don't upload your medical images to chatbotsA look at a pilot program in Georgia that uses 'jailbots' to track inmatesYou can check out future livestreams on Twitch.Our book, 'The AI Con,' comes out in May! Pre-order your copy now.Subscribe to our newsletter via Buttondown. Follow us!Emily Bluesky: emilymbender.bsky.social Mastodon: dair-community.social/@EmilyMBender Alex Bluesky: alexhanna.bsky.social Mastodon: dair-community.social/@alex Twitter: @alexhanna Music by Toby Menon.Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park. Production by Christie Taylor.

We bring ill tidings… a man with the physiognomy of Humpty Dumpty, except with billions of dollars and a grudge against Wokeness, has brought news of innocent venture capitalists being de-banked for the mere crime of committing securities fraud! That's right, Marc Andreessen is finally free to say the word even louder than before, and he joins fellow Web 1.0 robber barons in coalescing around Trump part 2. To discuss this, we're joined by friend of the show Brian Merchant (@bcmerchant), who has a new podcast with fellow friend of the show Paris Marx called System Crash that you should check out! Get access to more Trashfuture episodes each week on our Patreon! *MILO ALERT* Check out Milo's UK Tour here: https://miloedwards.co.uk/live-shows Trashfuture are: Riley (@raaleh), Milo (@Milo_Edwards), Hussein (@HKesvani), Nate (@inthesedeserts), and November (@postoctobrist)

Paris Marx is joined by Brian Merchant to discuss the fallout from the US election, what it means for the tech industry, and more importantly, what it might mean for all of us. They also celebrate the show hitting 250 episodes!Brian Merchant is a longtime tech writer and author of Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech.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 Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.Also mentioned in this episode:Brian wrote about the results of the election on his newsletter.Paris wrote about why we need to remember who enabled Elon Musk to obtain his power.There are already reports of advertisers returning to Twitter/X to gain favor with Musk and Trump.OpenAI is moving away from its original non-profit status.Uber chief legal officer Tony West told Kamala Harris to stop attacking big business.Support the show

On this episode of Tech Won't Save Us, Paris Marx is joined by Brian Merchant to discuss the fallout from the US election, what it means for the tech industry, and more importantly, what it might mean for all of us. They also celebrate the show hitting 250 episodes!Brian Merchant is a longtime tech writer and author of Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Activists are fighting back against generative AI and reclaiming a misunderstood label in the process, says Brian Merchant in a new piece for The Atlantic.Originally aired February 14, 2024.We Meet:Tech Journalist & Author Brian MerchantCredits:This episode of SHIFT was produced by Jennifer Strong and Emma Cillekens, and it was mixed by Garret Lang, with original music from him and Jacob Gorski. Art by Anthony Green.

As Elon Musk unveils his latest scheme, a proposed plan to give away $1 million each day to registered voters in battleground states, the co-hosts of The New Abnormal have just one question: Where is U.S Attorney General Merrick Garland? Plus! A talk with Brian Merchant, a former technology columnist for the Los Angeles Times. Merchant, the author of “Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech,” breaks down exactly how Musk's tech projects have become inseparable from his authoritarian aspirations. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

00:08 Brian Merchant, author of  Blood in the Machine: the origins of the rebellion against big tech, and purveyor of a Substack newsletter by the same name. [This is a holiday repeat of an interview originally recorded in December 2023, shortly before Merchant was unironically laid off from his tech columnist position at the LA Times.] The post Brian Merchant on Smashing the Machine [Labor Day Repeat] appeared first on KPFA.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit theculturejournalist.substack.comToday, we dive into the strange story of the California Journalism Preservation Act, a groundbreaking bill promising to making tech giants like Google and Facebook compensate news organizations with a small portion of the money they bring in when they host stories by California journalists on their platforms—and pointing to a potential path forward for a U.S. news industry on the brink of collapse. Today, Blood in the Machine author Brian Merchant joins us to discuss how a weird backroom meeting between Google, legislators, and major publishers transformed the legislation into a shadow of what it once was, including the proposed creation of a vague "AI accelerator." We dig into what this means for the future of the media industry, and how the deals publications have been striking with AI companies (and AI more generally) stand to impact journalists. Subscribe to The Culture Journalist to listen to the whole thing.Read Brian's article, “How a bill meant to save journalism from big tech ended up boosting AI and bailing out Google instead”Order Blood in the Machine Subscribe to Brian's Substack Follow Brian on X

We're joined by Brian Merchant to chat about his reporting on the frontlines of labor exploitations in video games development and animation studios where companies are using AI to replace and degrade jobs, fracture and disempower the workforce, and push the quality of artistic works down even further. When executives explicitly say they are going to use a technology to destroy your livelihoods, then you should believe them and act accordingly. The collective response by workers – especially in the highly unionized animation industry – has been strong and swift. Their message is clear: “AI can fuck right off.” ••• AI Is Already Taking Jobs in the Video Game Industry https://www.wired.com/story/ai-is-already-taking-jobs-in-the-video-game-industry/ ••• He Made a Movie About Humans Rising Up Against AI. Now He's Doing the Real Thing https://www.wired.com/story/hollywood-animators-fight-artificial-intelligence-labor-mike-rianda/ ••• Brian's newsletter: https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/ Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.x.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.x.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.x.com/braunestahl)

Brian Merchant (@bcmerchant) returns to discuss Elon Musk's frantic UK civil war wishposting, and the role of his particular personality in encouraging right wing insurrection around the globe. Then, we move on to discuss Brian's piece for Wired about what AI is already doing to the games industry—deskilling and displacing artists, and driving down quality. We end by asking: why on earth are we doomed to automate the arts? Check out Brian's article for WIRED about AI in the games industry: https://www.wired.com/story/ai-is-already-taking-jobs-in-the-video-game-industry/ And check out Brian's newsletter here: https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/ If you want access to our Patreon bonus episodes, early releases of free episodes, and powerful Discord server, sign up here: https://www.patreon.com/trashfuture Trashfuture are: Riley (@raaleh), Milo (@Milo_Edwards), Hussein (@HKesvani), Nate (@inthesedeserts), and November (@postoctobrist)

This one started as a soloflight, but the timing was good for Constellation's Liz Miller to crash the show as only she can do, and take a Google-cookie-backtrack victory lap, and make sense of the gen AI creativity debate from a CMO/marketing angle. There is a bit of a without-a-net vibe here until Liz shows up at the 11:00, but I recommend tracking this from the beginning to hear the context of the article on AI, creativity and job impact we will discuss. The podcast starts with the introduction of an important piece on gen AI and impact on creative jobs by journalism Brian Merchant. As I originally pitched the show: "One more notable article on gen AI creativity came out that we need to break down. I may get a couple guests to crash this session. Feel free to join and have your cam ready, maybe you'll be one of them." Stay to the end and get a cameo from Brent Leary as well, he goes off on Google's moves before heading into his own broadcast...

What could go wrong with Gemini AI being used in live coverage of the 2024 Paris Olympics? A new study using Fitbit data shows connections between sleep and diseases. What Samsung Galaxy AI features are worth using? And how AI's use in video game development is impacting the industry. The Paris Olympics will feature Google's Gemini AI during NBCUniversal's coverage. Emily Dreibelbis wonders, in Steve Gibson's great words, "What could possibly go wrong?" Mikah Sargent loves a good story about sleep coverage, so it's no surprise that he talks about a study using Fitbit data that uncovered connections between sleep and diseases. Lisa Eadicicco of CNET stops by to discuss Samsung's Galaxy AI features and her favorite ones. And finally, Brian Merchant of WIRED talks about how AI is impacting the video game industry. Hosts: Mikah Sargent and Emily Dreibelbis Guests: Lisa Eadicicco and Brian Merchant Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/tech-news-weekly. Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: Melissa.com/twit 1password.com/twit betterhelp.com/TNW panoptica.app

What could go wrong with Gemini AI being used in live coverage of the 2024 Paris Olympics? A new study using Fitbit data shows connections between sleep and diseases. What Samsung Galaxy AI features are worth using? And how AI's use in video game development is impacting the industry. The Paris Olympics will feature Google's Gemini AI during NBCUniversal's coverage. Emily Dreibelbis wonders, in Steve Gibson's great words, "What could possibly go wrong?" Mikah Sargent loves a good story about sleep coverage, so it's no surprise that he talks about a study using Fitbit data that uncovered connections between sleep and diseases. Lisa Eadicicco of CNET stops by to discuss Samsung's Galaxy AI features and her favorite ones. And finally, Brian Merchant of WIRED talks about how AI is impacting the video game industry. Hosts: Mikah Sargent and Emily Dreibelbis Guests: Lisa Eadicicco and Brian Merchant Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/tech-news-weekly. Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: Melissa.com/twit 1password.com/twit betterhelp.com/TNW panoptica.app

What could go wrong with Gemini AI being used in live coverage of the 2024 Paris Olympics? A new study using Fitbit data shows connections between sleep and diseases. What Samsung Galaxy AI features are worth using? And how AI's use in video game development is impacting the industry. The Paris Olympics will feature Google's Gemini AI during NBCUniversal's coverage. Emily Dreibelbis wonders, in Steve Gibson's great words, "What could possibly go wrong?" Mikah Sargent loves a good story about sleep coverage, so it's no surprise that he talks about a study using Fitbit data that uncovered connections between sleep and diseases. Lisa Eadicicco of CNET stops by to discuss Samsung's Galaxy AI features and her favorite ones. And finally, Brian Merchant of WIRED talks about how AI is impacting the video game industry. Hosts: Mikah Sargent and Emily Dreibelbis Guests: Lisa Eadicicco and Brian Merchant Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/tech-news-weekly. Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: Melissa.com/twit 1password.com/twit betterhelp.com/TNW panoptica.app

What could go wrong with Gemini AI being used in live coverage of the 2024 Paris Olympics? A new study using Fitbit data shows connections between sleep and diseases. What Samsung Galaxy AI features are worth using? And how AI's use in video game development is impacting the industry. The Paris Olympics will feature Google's Gemini AI during NBCUniversal's coverage. Emily Dreibelbis wonders, in Steve Gibson's great words, "What could possibly go wrong?" Mikah Sargent loves a good story about sleep coverage, so it's no surprise that he talks about a study using Fitbit data that uncovered connections between sleep and diseases. Lisa Eadicicco of CNET stops by to discuss Samsung's Galaxy AI features and her favorite ones. And finally, Brian Merchant of WIRED talks about how AI is impacting the video game industry. Hosts: Mikah Sargent and Emily Dreibelbis Guests: Lisa Eadicicco and Brian Merchant Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/tech-news-weekly. Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: Melissa.com/twit 1password.com/twit betterhelp.com/TNW panoptica.app

What could go wrong with Gemini AI being used in live coverage of the 2024 Paris Olympics? A new study using Fitbit data shows connections between sleep and diseases. What Samsung Galaxy AI features are worth using? And how AI's use in video game development is impacting the industry. The Paris Olympics will feature Google's Gemini AI during NBCUniversal's coverage. Emily Dreibelbis wonders, in Steve Gibson's great words, "What could possibly go wrong?" Mikah Sargent loves a good story about sleep coverage, so it's no surprise that he talks about a study using Fitbit data that uncovered connections between sleep and diseases. Lisa Eadicicco of CNET stops by to discuss Samsung's Galaxy AI features and her favorite ones. And finally, Brian Merchant of WIRED talks about how AI is impacting the video game industry. Hosts: Mikah Sargent and Emily Dreibelbis Guests: Lisa Eadicicco and Brian Merchant Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/tech-news-weekly. Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: Melissa.com/twit 1password.com/twit betterhelp.com/TNW panoptica.app

What could go wrong with Gemini AI being used in live coverage of the 2024 Paris Olympics? A new study using Fitbit data shows connections between sleep and diseases. What Samsung Galaxy AI features are worth using? And how AI's use in video game development is impacting the industry. The Paris Olympics will feature Google's Gemini AI during NBCUniversal's coverage. Emily Dreibelbis wonders, in Steve Gibson's great words, "What could possibly go wrong?" Mikah Sargent loves a good story about sleep coverage, so it's no surprise that he talks about a study using Fitbit data that uncovered connections between sleep and diseases. Lisa Eadicicco of CNET stops by to discuss Samsung's Galaxy AI features and her favorite ones. And finally, Brian Merchant of WIRED talks about how AI is impacting the video game industry. Hosts: Mikah Sargent and Emily Dreibelbis Guests: Lisa Eadicicco and Brian Merchant Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/tech-news-weekly. Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: Melissa.com/twit 1password.com/twit betterhelp.com/TNW panoptica.app

Brian Merchant, founder of the speculative fiction outlet Terraform, recently laid-off technology columnist for the LA Times, and author most recently of Blood in the Machine: the origins of the rebellion against big tech. [This is a repeat of an interview originally recorded in December 2023] The post Brian Merchant on Luddites and Luddism [repeat] appeared first on KPFA.

Has this pod saved America…from phone addiction?! We got Jon Lovett to take a rather extreme version of the Offline challenge in Fiji, AND America's top doctor and friend of the pod Vivek Murthy is now calling for a Surgeon General's warning label on social media platforms. Max and Jon bask in their success, then mourn the dismantling of the Stanford Internet Observatory, the nation's leading mis- and disinformation research organization. Then, Max sits down with longtime tech journalist Brian Merchant to talk about whether AI development is slowing down, why workers should organize against the technology, and what good AI use cases and centaurs have in common.

The Luddites, who smashed machines in the 19th century, in an organized effort to resist automation, are often portrayed as uneducated opponents of technology. But according to Blood in the Machine author Brian Merchant, “The Luddites were incredibly educated as to the harms of technology. They were very skilled technologists. So they understood exactly how new developments in machinery would affect the workplace, their industry, and their identities.” In this episode, Kelly talks with Brian about the history and legacy of the Luddite movement, and what workers who are being oppressed by the tech titans of our time can learn from the era of machine-breakers. Music: Son Monarcas & David Celeste You can find a transcript and show notes (including links to resources) here: truthout.org/audio/let-this-conversation-with-mariame-kaba-radicalize-you/ If you would like to support the show, you can donate here: bit.ly/TODonate If you would like to receive Truthout's newsletter, please sign up: bit.ly/TOnewsletter

Spike Jonze's 2013 movie Her is in the tech zeitgeist. Have tech leaders watched the whole thing?  Brian Merchant's piece on Her and Open AI is a must read: https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/why-is-sam-altman-so-obsessed-with?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web Bridget rocking Google Glass in 2013: https://www.instagram.com/p/Z1xL1OHw-Z/?igsh=MTR0OXU5aGV2Z3V3NA%3D%3D Listen to our summary of the Open AI Scarlett Johansson controversy here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/scarlett-johanssons-open-ai-voice-fight-shows-the/id1520715907?i=1000656338161See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Heritage Foundation's extreme Presidential Transition Project proposes sweeping changes to government and packing the next GOP administration with extreme loyalists to Trump. Plus! Tech journalist and author of Blood in the Machine, Brian Merchant, talks to Andy Levy about the tech industry's obsession with trying to create the dystopian futures portrayed in media. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

"I believe AI makes us more human," said Peter Deng of OpenAI at SXSW - which is just one of the responses that AI people have when people ask bizarre questions like "what does your product do," and "hey how did you get all that training data?" Technology writer Brian Merchant joins the gang to discuss this phenomenon, Amazon's foray into building a second generation human, and, of course, the AI app that aims to replace condoms. Like this episode? We've got a Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/trashfuture 

In a bonus episode, Paris Marx is joined by Ed Ongweso Jr. and Brian Merchant to share their thoughts on Dune: Part Two, how it relates to the modern tech industry, and whether today's Luddites can take anything from Dune's Butlerian Jihad.Ed Ongweso Jr is finance editor at Logic(s) Magazine and cohost of This Machine Kills. Brian Merchant is a technology journalist and the author of Blood In the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech.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 Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.Also mentioned in this episode:You can watch the entire livestream over on YouTube.For Disconnect, Paris wrote about how the digital revolution has failed.Support the show

Paris Marx is joined by Dharna Noor to discuss widely-held misconceptions about the effectiveness of plastic recycling and how industry lobbies invented them to protect the market for plastic products.Dharna Noor is the fossil fuels and climate reporter at The Guardian.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 Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.Also mentioned in this episode:On Friday, March 8, Paris will be speaking with Ed Ongweso Jr. and Brian Merchant about Dune: Part Two and its connection to the growing Luddite movement. Watch it on our YouTube channel at 11am PT / 2pm ET / 7pm GMT.Our conversation was based in part on the Center for Climate Integrity's new report called “The Fraud of Plastic Recycling.”Dharna reported on that report and has previously written about plastic materials ending up in landfills, fashion's use of plastic, and the problem with replacing plastics with other disposables.In 2018, Barack Obama said, “That whole ‘suddenly America's like the biggest oil producer and the biggest gas,' that was me, people.New research has found microplastics in the placentas of unborn babies. The science isn't settled on the effects on microplastics on human health, but there's reason to be concerned.Support the show

Paris Marx is joined by Ben Wray to discuss why the European Union's Platform Work Directive isn't moving forward, what hope remains for gig workers' rights in Europe, and what we should make of Uber's first annual profit.Ben Wray is the coordinator of the Gig Economy Project and the author of Scotland after Britain: The two souls of Scottish independence.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 Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.Also mentioned in this episode:On March 8, Paris will be doing a livestream about Dune 2 and Luddites with Ed Ongweso Jr and Brian Merchant. Get notified on YouTube.Ben wrote about the failure of the Platform Work Directive, the recent conferences on platform workers' rights in Brussels, and the Uber CEO's admission of using driver's “behavioral patterns” to influence pay rates.Paris wrote about the wider context of Uber's first annual profit.Delivery Hero's business isn't going well and its share price has been dropping.Glovo is facing serious legal trouble in Spain, and even as some fines have been suspended, others have been added.Food delivery workers in the UK have been on a major strike. Notes from Below have been publishing some dispatches from it.Support the show

Express skepticism about technology and you might be labeled a "Luddite." However, the true story of the historical Luddites offers a fascinating perspective on the relationship between workers and technology. In this episode, Adam chats with tech journalist Brian Merchant, author of Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech, about the historical Luddites and their fight against wealthy elites replacing the working class with machines—a struggle made only more relevant by the state of the tech industry today. Find Brian's book at at factuallypod.com/booksSUPPORT THE SHOW ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/adamconoverSEE ADAM ON TOUR: https://www.adamconover.net/tourdates/SUBSCRIBE to and RATE Factually! on:» Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/factually-with-adam-conover/id1463460577» Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0fK8WJw4ffMc2NWydBlDyJAbout Headgum: Headgum is an LA & NY-based podcast network creating premium podcasts with the funniest, most engaging voices in comedy to achieve one goal: Making our audience and ourselves laugh. Listen to our shows at https://www.headgum.com.» SUBSCRIBE to Headgum: https://www.youtube.com/c/HeadGum?sub_confirmation=1» FOLLOW us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/headgum» FOLLOW us on Instagram: https://instagram.com/headgum/» FOLLOW us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@headgum» Advertise on Factually! via Gumball.fmSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Author of The One Device and Blood In The Machine:: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech Brian Merchant shares the lessons learned by the luddites, not an anti-technology movement, but a worker's rebellion against the way automation was used to crush the underclass.

Air Date 2/20/2024 "Luddite" should never have become the epithet that it is as the Luddites were never afraid of or opposed to technological advancement, they only opposed the exploitation of workers and the degradation to society that came with the unfair distribution of the benefits of the targeted technology. Be part of the show! Leave us a message or text at 202-999-3991 or email Jay@BestOfTheLeft.com Transcript BestOfTheLeft.com/Support (Members Get Bonus Clips and Shows + No Ads!) Join our Discord community! SHOW NOTES Ch. 1: The New Luddites - SHIFT - Air Date 2-14-24 Activists are fighting back against generative AI and reclaiming a misunderstood label in the process, says Brian Merchant in a new piece for The Atlantic. Ch. 2: Being a Luddite Is Good, Actually ft. Jathan Sadowski - Left Reckoning - Air Date 5-29-21 Jathan Sadowski (@jathansadowski) of the This Machine Kills (@machinekillspod) podcast repairs our sabotaged understanding of the legacy of the Luddites. Ch. 3: Why this top AI guru thinks we might be in extinction-level trouble | The InnerView - TRT World - Air Date 1-22-24 Lauded for his groundbreaking work in reverse-engineering OpenAI's large language model, GPT-2, AI expert Connor Leahy tells Imran Garda why he is now sounding the alarm.   SEE FULL SHOW NOTES FINAL COMMENTS Ch. 12: Final comments on the fork in the road and a look at our options References: Rethinking the Luddites in the Age of A.I. A Scottish Jewish joke - Things Fall Apart - Air Date 1-25-22 MUSIC (Blue Dot Sessions) SHOW IMAGE:  Description: An 1812 block print of “The Leader of the Luddites” depicting a man in disheveled early 1800s clothing and missing one shoe leading other men up a hill while a building burns in the background.  Credit: “The Leader of the Luddites”, Messrs | Working Class Movement Library catalog | Public Domain   Produced by Jay! Tomlinson Visit us at BestOfTheLeft.com Listen Anywhere! BestOfTheLeft.com/Listen Listen Anywhere! Follow at Twitter.com/BestOfTheLeft Like at Facebook.com/BestOfTheLeft Contact me directly at Jay@BestOfTheLeft.com

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for February 10, 2024 is: callous • KAL-us • adjective Someone or something described as callous does not feel or show any concern about the problems or suffering of other people. // Several employees cringed at the callous remark their supervisor made about the team's performance. See the entry > Examples: "The tragedy of AI is not that it stands to replace good journalists but that it takes every gross, callous move made by management to degrade the production of content—and promises to accelerate it." — Brian Merchant, The Los Angeles Times, 1 Dec. 2023 Did you know? A callus is a hard, thickened area of skin that develops usually from friction or irritation over time. Such a hardened area often leaves one less sensitive to the touch, so it's no surprise that the adjective callous, in addition to describing skin that is hard and thick, can also be used as a synonym for harsh or insensitive. Both callus and callous come via Middle English from Latin. The figurative sense of callous entered English almost 300 years after the literal sense, and Robert Louis Stevenson used it aptly when he wrote in Treasure Island "But, indeed, from what I saw, all these buccaneers were as callous as the sea they sailed on."

On this week's show, Jamelle Bouie (Opinion columnist at The New York Times) sits in for Julia Turner. The hosts first begin with a trip to Ennis, a fictional Alaskan town at the heart of True Detective: Night Country, and review the fourth installment of the HBO Max anthology series. There's a new showrunner at the helm, Issa López, who brings a desperately needed fresh take on the Lovecraftian True Detective format, along with the series' two leads, played by Jodie Foster and Kali Reis. Then, the three dissect Origin, director Ava DuVernay's ambitious feature film adapted from the nonfiction book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by the American journalist Isabel Wilkerson. In the film, we accompany Wilkerson (played by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) as she develops her theory of formalized subordination based on race in America through the lens of the caste system. Finally, Pitchfork, the rockstar's digital paradise and essential music review site, announced that it would be laying off most of its senior staff and be folded into fellow Condé Nast publication, GQ. What does that mean for both Pitchfork and the future of music criticism? Slate's music critic, Carl Wilson, joins to discuss.  In the exclusive Slate Plus segment, it's the 25th anniversary of The Sopranos, and the panel discusses the series' incredible legacy along with what it means for the stories of Tony, Dr. Melfi, Carmela, and more, to hit a quarter of a century.  Email us at culturefest@slate.com.  Outro music: “Ruins” by Origo. Endorsements: Dana: Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech by Brian Merchant, a nonfiction book about the “all-but-forgotten class struggle that brought nineteenth-century England to its knees.” Jamelle: G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century, historian Beverly Gage's biography of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. Steve: Two reviews of Elon Musk, Walter Isaacson's biography of the SpaceX/Tesla CEO: “Ultra Hardcore” by Ben Tarnoff for The New York Review and “Very Ordinary Men” by Sam Kriss for The Point.  Podcast production by Cameron Drews. Production assistance by Kat Hong.  If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get an ad-free experience across the network and exclusive content on many shows. You'll also be supporting the work we do here on the Culture Gabfest. Sign up now at Slate.com/cultureplus to help support our work. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tech columnist Brian Merchant tells The New Abnormal the Luddites got a bad rap following the Industrial Revolution but all they were trying to do was hold big tech to account. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Happy Monday! Sam and Emma speak with Brian Merchant, tech columnist at the Los Angeles Times, to discuss his recent book Blood in the Machine:The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech. First, Sam runs through updates on Israeli operations in Gaza as 2 million Palestinians remain stuck in a terrorized blackout, external (and internal) calls for ceasefire, UAW's record contracts, and Donald Trump's candidacy, before watching Hunter Professor Rosalind Petchesky's reflections from Friday's Jewish Voices for Peace protest in Grand Central. Brian Merchant then joins, diving right into the misrepresentation of the Luddites in mass culture – largely expressing their aversion to technology as a problem of intelligence or conservatism, rather than their actual ideology, which objected to technology's role in increasing (rather than decreasing) labor exploitation in industrializing England. Stepping back, Merchant then contextualizes the rise of Luddism in the 18th Century, walking through the particularly rapid mechanization of the textile and cloth industries, bolstered by increasing cotton production from the slave trade in North America, and the complete alignment of the Crown with the Capitalists' decision to leverage technological development for themselves, and against labor, consumers, and community. Next, Merchant dives into the story of George Meller to paint a picture of the climax of the Luddite movement at the turn of the 19th Century, as, despite their best efforts, the 1800s see even more anti-labor automatization, pushing their tactics from disruption to destruction, only for violent pushback from the Crown and dwindling public support to eventually crush the movement. Wrapping up, Merchant explores the legacy of the Luddite movement, both as a foreshadowing of the role of the state in labor disputes, and in putting forward the blueprint for the militant unionism we see carried out by the most successful labor coalitions of today. And in the Fun Half: Sam and Emma watch Netanyahu update the public on Israel's ground operation in Gaza with an unsurprisingly genocidal allegory, and explore the diverse array of dehumanizing reactions to the conflict among Democratic figures – from Fetterman and Gottheimer to Jake Tapper. They also discuss Mike Pence's failure to hang with the GOP Presidential hopefuls, and DeSantis' attack on Pro-Palestine college voices, plus, your calls and IMs! Check out Brian's book here: https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/brian-merchant/blood-in-the-machine/9780316487740/?lens=lit Become a member at JoinTheMajorityReport.com: https://fans.fm/majority/join Subscribe to the ESVN YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/esvnshow Subscribe to the AMQuickie newsletter here: https://am-quickie.ghost.io/ Join the Majority Report Discord! http://majoritydiscord.com/ Get all your MR merch at our store: https://shop.majorityreportradio.com/ Get the free Majority Report App!: http://majority.fm/app Check out today's sponsors: Nuts.com: Right now, https://Nuts.com is offering new customers a free gift with purchase and free shipping on orders of $29 or more at https://Nuts.com/majority. So, go check out all of the delicious options at https://Nuts.com/majority. You'll receive a free gift and free shipping when you spend $29 or more! Stamps.com: Give your business the gift of https://Stamps.com so your mailing and shipping is covered this holiday season. Sign up with promo code MAJORITYREPORT for a special offer that includes a 4-week trial, plus free postage, and a digital scale. No long-term commitments or contracts. Just go to https://Stamps.com, click the microphone at the top of the page, and enter code MAJORITYREPORT. Blueland Cleaning Products: Blueland has a special offer for listeners. Right now, get 15% off your first order by going to https://Blueland.com/majority You won't want to miss this! https://Blueland.com/majority for 15% off. Follow the Majority Report crew on Twitter: @SamSeder @EmmaVigeland @MattBinder @MattLech @BF1nn @BradKAlsop Check out Matt's show, Left Reckoning, on Youtube, and subscribe on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/leftreckoning Subscribe to Brandon's show The Discourse on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/ExpandTheDiscourse Subscribe to Discourse Blog, a newsletter and website for progressive essays and related fun partly run by AM Quickie writer Jack Crosbie. https://discourseblog.com/ Check out Matt Binder's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/mattbinder Check out Ava Raiza's music here! https://avaraiza.bandcamp.com/ The Majority Report with Sam Seder - https://majorityreportradio.com/

Brian Merchant is a tech reporter, and he'd been covering the industry for years when he started to notice a term that kept coming up. When he wrote a story that was critical of tech, he'd be accused of being a "Luddite."Like most people, Brian knew at least vaguely what the term "Luddite" meant. But as time went on, and as Brian watched tech grow into the disruptive behemoth it is today, he started to get more curious about the actual Luddites. Who were they? And what did they really believe? Brian has a new book out about the Luddites called Blood in the Machine. And it explores how English textile workers in the 19th century rose up against the growing trend of automation and the machines that were threatening their livelihoods.Blood in the Machine