FUTURES Podcast Luke Robert Mason

Cultural  & Political Theorists Jeremy Gilbert, Alex Williams & Alison Winch share their insights on the societal impacts of technological innovation, the hegemonic power of the Silicon Valley tech billionaires, and re-engineering digital platforms for democratic purposes.
Jeremy Gilbert is Professor of Cultural & Political Theory at the University of East London. He is the author of Common Ground: Democracy and Collectivity in an Age of Individualism, Anticapitalism and Culture: Radical Theory and Popular Politics and Twenty-First Century Socialism. He writes regularly in the British press, is the current editor of the journal New Formations, and hosts three regular podcasts: #ACFM (on Novara Media); Love is the Message; Culture, Power, Politics.
Alex Williams is a political theorist and lecturer in digital media and society currently based at the University of East Anglia. His writings include Political Hegemony and Social Complexity, Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work (with Nick Srnicek), as well as numerous articles on the future of left politics and contemporary formations of digital power.

Alison Winch is a Lecturer in Promotional Media at Goldsmiths. She researches intimacy, power and sexual politics in a branded media culture. Her books include The New Patriarchs of Digital Capitalism: Celebrity Tech Founders and Networks of Power (Routledge 2021), which is co-authored with Ben Little. Her monograph Girlfriends and Postfeminist Sisterhood (Palgrave, 2013) looks at how the affect of friendship is harnessed in a media culture.
This episode was recorded in front of a live audience for an event in partnership with SPACE4 & Housmans Bookshop.
ABOUT THE HOST
Luke Robert Mason is a British-born futures theorist who is passionate about engaging the public with emerging scientific theories and technological developments.
He hosts documentaries for Futurism, and has contributed to BBC Radio, BBC One, The Guardian, Discovery Channel, VICE Motherboard and Wired Magazine.
CREDITS
Producer & Host: Luke Robert Mason
Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @FUTURESPodcast
Follow Luke Robert Mason on Twitter at @LukeRobertMason
Subscribe & Support the Podcast at http://futurespodcast.net

Mechanical Engineer Shini Somara shares her thoughts on why we need impactful storytelling in science communication, how diversity drives innovation in STEM, and why imagination is key to understanding new technologies.
Dr. Shini Somara is a Mechanical Engineer specialising in Computational Fluid Dynamics and an award-winning media broadcaster. She deep dives into all topics on science, technology and innovation to deliver easily accessible and relatable pearls of wisdom for all ages and abilities. Shini speaks to audiences on TV, radio, XR/VR and live events. She has published 7 young persons STEM books and runs a podcast for Women in STEM called eSTEAMd Women. As a TEDx Speaker and mentor to MEng/PhDs at Imperial College in London - Shini is passionate about making science & technology accessible to all, especially amongst under-represented groups in engineering and innovation.
This episode was recorded in front of a live audience for an event in partnership with Engage Works.
ABOUT THE HOST
Luke Robert Mason is a British-born futures theorist who is passionate about engaging the public with emerging scientific theories and technological developments.
He hosts documentaries for Futurism, and has contributed to BBC Radio, BBC One, The Guardian, Discovery Channel, VICE Motherboard and Wired Magazine.
CREDITS
Producer & Host: Luke Robert Mason
Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @FUTURESPodcast
Follow Luke Robert Mason on Twitter at @LukeRobertMason
Subscribe & Support the Podcast at http://futurespodcast.net

Blockchain Socialist Joshua Dávila shares his insights on using blockchain technology to challenge capitalism, why we should take a techno-probabalistic approach to crypto, and how to build a more equitable and decentralised world.
Joshua Dávila has been working in the blockchain space for the past five years in Europe and has been anonymously moonlighting as the one behind The Blockchain Socialist blog and podcast. He is also the co-director of the upcoming documentary Crypto Futures which explores the alternative economic imaginaries of the crypto ecosystem that the mainstream media doesn’t cover.
This episode was recorded in front of a live audience for an event in partnership with SPACE4 & Housmans Bookshop.
ABOUT THE HOST
Luke Robert Mason is a British-born futures theorist who is passionate about engaging the public with emerging scientific theories and technological developments.
He hosts documentaries for Futurism, and has contributed to BBC Radio, BBC One, The Guardian, Discovery Channel, VICE Motherboard and Wired Magazine.
CREDITS
Producer & Host: Luke Robert Mason
Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @FUTURESPodcast
Follow Luke Robert Mason on Twitter at @LukeRobertMason
Subscribe & Support the Podcast at http://futurespodcast.net

Futurist Ari Wallach shares his insights into why we need ethical long-term visions that prioritise humanity, the importance of transgenerational empathy, and how to co-construct inclusive stories that imagine better tomorrows.
Ari Wallach is a futurist and social systems strategist. He is the founder and Executive Director of Longpath Labs, an initiative focused on bringing long-term thinking and coordinated behavior to the individual, organizational, and societal realms in order to ensure humanity flourishes on an ecologically thriving planet Earth for centuries to come. Ari is the author of Longpath: Becoming the Great Ancestors Our Future Needs by HarperOne. Ari’s TED talk on Longpath has been viewed over 2.5 million times and translated into 19 languages. Wallach was also the founder and CEO of Synthesis Corp., a New York-based strategic innovation consultancy whose clients included CNN, Volkswagen Global, The UN Refugee Agency and the US State Department. Wallach was the co-founder of the 2008 presidential initiative “The Great Schlep with Sarah Silverman” and most previously hosted  Fast Company magazine's Fast Company Futures with Ari Wallach. He was most recently adjunct associate professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, lecturing on innovation, AI and the futures of governance and public policy.
ABOUT THE HOST
Luke Robert Mason is a British-born futures theorist who is passionate about engaging the public with emerging scientific theories and technological developments.
He hosts documentaries for Futurism, and has contributed to BBC Radio, BBC One, The Guardian, Discovery Channel, VICE Motherboard and Wired Magazine.
CREDITS
Producer & Host: Luke Robert Mason
Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @FUTURESPodcast
Follow Luke Robert Mason on Twitter at @LukeRobertMason
Subscribe & Support the Podcast at http://futurespodcast.net

Researchers Dr. Corinne Cath & Dr. Fieke Jansen share their insights into critical approaches to internet infrastructure, the environmental costs of data centres, and how to reimagine our relationship with digital technologies to ensure a more equitable and sustainable future.
Dr. Corinne Cath is a postdoc at the University of Delft, working with Dr. Seda Gürses and Prof Linnet Taylor. She is also a research affiliate at the Minderoo Centre at the University of Cambridge. Corinne is a cultural anthropologist who studies the politics of Internet infrastructure and cloud computing. Previously, Corinne was Vice President of Research at the Open Tech Fund, a US-based grantmaker focused on developing open-source technologies. She finished her PhD in 2021 at the Oxford Internet Institute (OII), University of Oxford). Her current research focuses on how cloud computing is eating the internet and the adequacy of existing EU technology policy efforts that touch on cloud computing. 

Dr. Fieke Jansen is a postdoc researcher at the University of Amsterdam and a co-principle investigator of the critical infrastructure lab. She did her PhD at the Data Justice Lab at Cardiff University, where she looked at the institutional and societal implications of data-driven risk scoring and biometric recognition in Brussels, Belgium, the Netherlands, and the UK. Fieke is a former Mozilla and Green Web Foundation fellow where she explored ways to frame the climate crisis as a core digital rights issue. Prior to starting her phd Fieke worked on human rights and technology at Hivos and Tactical Tech. Fieke's research interest is to understand how the material impact of expending infrastructures are shaping the management, distribution, and depletion of natural resources.
ABOUT THE HOST
Luke Robert Mason is a British-born futures theorist who is passionate about engaging the public with emerging scientific theories and technological developments.
He hosts documentaries for Futurism, and has contributed to BBC Radio, BBC One, The Guardian, Discovery Channel, VICE Motherboard and Wired Magazine.
CREDITS
Producer & Host: Luke Robert Mason
Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @FUTURESPodcast
Follow Luke Robert Mason on Twitter at @LukeRobertMason
Subscribe & Support the Podcast at http://futurespodcast.net

Authors Kelly Weinersmith & Zach Weinersmith share their insights into the challenge of building settlements on Mars, how extended periods in extra-terrestrial environments would impact our body and mind, and how international space law needs to be updated if we are to become a multi-planetary species.
Dr. Kelly Weinersmith received her PhD in Ecology at the University of California Davis, and is an adjunct faculty member in the BioSciences Department at Rice University. Kelly studies parasites that manipulate the behavior of their hosts, and her research has been featured in The Atlantic, National Geographic, BBC World, Science, and Nature. When she isn’t studying Nature’s creepiest wonders, Kelly is writing books with her husband, Zach Weinersmith (creator of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal Comics). Their first book, Soonish: Ten Emerging Technologies That’ll Improve and/or Ruin Everything, was a New York Times Bestseller.

Zach Weinersmith is the cartoonist behind the popular geek webcomic, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. He co-wrote the New York Times bestseller Soonish: Ten Emerging Technologies That’ll Improve and/or Ruin Everything and illustrated the New York Times-bestselling Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration. His work has been featured by The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, Slate, Forbes, Science Friday, Foreign Policy, PBS, Boingboing, the Freakonomics Blog, the RadioLab blog, Entertainment Weekly, Mother Jones, CNN, Discovery Magazine, Nautilus and more. He lives in Virginia with his wife/coauthor and his children/coauthors.
ABOUT THE HOST
Luke Robert Mason is a British-born futures theorist who is passionate about engaging the public with emerging scientific theories and technological developments.
He hosts documentaries for Futurism, and has contributed to BBC Radio, BBC One, The Guardian, Discovery Channel, VICE Motherboard and Wired Magazine.
CREDITS
Producer & Host: Luke Robert Mason
Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @FUTURESPodcast
Follow Luke Robert Mason on Twitter at @LukeRobertMason
Subscribe & Support the Podcast at http://futurespodcast.net