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  1. #43: The AI Bubble and Technological Revolutions

    1D AGO

    #43: The AI Bubble and Technological Revolutions

    For this week's episode, inspired by the much-discussed AI bubble in the American economy, we read Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital: The Dynamics of Bubbles and Golden Ages, written by Carlota Perez in 2002. Anton, Eric, Matt, and Max discuss Perez's historical schema of technological revolutions, first published in the immediate aftermath of the dot-com bubble, and consider its insights for our contemporary tech economy. We talk about the infrastructures required to power this new technology, the policy changes to facilitate the paradigm shift, and the new common sense being produced. British-Venezuelan researcher, lecturer and international consultant, Carlota Perez studies the mutual shaping of technical change and society and the lessons provided by the history of technological revolutions for economic growth and development. In Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital (Elgar 2002), she put forward her theory of the emergence and diffusion of technological revolutions and of the role of finance in the process. Her work has contributed to the present understanding of the relationship between technology, innovation and economic development; between technical and institutional change; and between finance and technological diffusion. READINGS: --"On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big?" - Bender, Gebru, McMillan-Major, Schmitchell, 2021: https://s10251.pcdn.co/pdf/2021-bender-parrots.pdf --The GenAI Divide - MIT NANDA, 2025: https://mlq.ai/media/quarterly_decks/v0.1_State_of_AI_in_Business_2025_Report.pdf --"How AI Destroys Institutions" - Woodrow Hartzog & Jessica M. Silbey, 2025: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5870623 --"Data Centers Are Military Targets Now" - Sam Biddle, 2026: https://theintercept.com/2026/03/20/ai-data-centers-military-targets-iran-war/ --"AI Is a Threat to Everything the American People Hold Dear" - Bernie Sanders, 2026: https://archive.ph/qs8Vw Please note, this episode was recorded earlier this winter, prior to the current news cycle.

    52 min
  2. #42: Molly Crabapple on the Jewish Labor Bund

    MAR 30

    #42: Molly Crabapple on the Jewish Labor Bund

    For this week's podcast episode we're joined by Molly Crabapple to discuss her new book, Here Where We Live Is Our Country: The Story of the Jewish Bund. We talk about the Bund's early debates and encounters with both the proto Bolsheviks and Zionists, and the alternate visions of both communism and Jewishness the group represented. We hear about the waves of Bundists that wound up in New York City, including members of Molly's family, and their concept of "hereness" as a radical vision of migrant solidarity in the face of various nationalisms. Finally, we reflect on the meanings for revolutionary movements of winning and losing, and the lessons the Jewish Bund offers us today. Here Where We Live is Our Country: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/646320/here-where-we-live-is-our-country-by-molly-crabapple/ April 13th Book Event in Brooklyn: https://www.bklynlibrary.org/calendar/molly-crabapple-discusses-central-library-dweck-20260413-0700pm READINGS: --"My Great-Grandfather the Bundist" - Molly Crabapple, 2018: https://archive.is/xsOxQ --"The War on Memory: Learning from the Jewish Labor Bund" - Molly Crabapple, 2024: https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/the-night/the-war-on-memory-learning-from-the-jewish-labor-bund Molly Crabapple is an artist and writer, and co-author of Brothers of the Gun (2018), an illustrated collaboration with Syrian war journalist Marwan Hisham. Her memoir, Drawing Blood (2017), received global praise and attention, and her animated films have won two Emmys and an Edward R. Murrow Award. Molly’s reportage has been published in the New York Times, New York Review of Books, The Paris Review, Vanity Fair, The Guardian, The New Yorker and Rolling Stone. Michael Simon is on the Organizing Committee of the NYC Jewish Labor Bund.

    50 min
  3. #41: Lifehouses and Power with Adam Greenfield & Maria Herron

    MAR 20

    #41: Lifehouses and Power with Adam Greenfield & Maria Herron

    For this week's episode we're joined by Adam Greenfield and Maria Herron in advance of the gathering Woodbine will host this May May, "Lifehouses, Resilience Hubs, and Dual Power". We discuss our evolving understandings and relationships to radical spaces, the meaning and importance of in-person encounters and relationship-building, and our expectations around crisis and emergency management. We end with a pitch for why you should join us in NYC this May. LINKS: Lifehouses, Resilience Hubs, and Dual Power: https://www.woodbine.nyc/lifehouses Lifepod: https://lifepod.transistor.fm/ Mil Mundos Books: https://www.milmundosbooks.com/ Mil Mundos En Común: https://milmundosencomun.org/ Bushwick Ayuda Mutua: https://bushwickayudamutua.com/ Adam Greenfield is a London-based writer and urbanist, who’s been involved with autonomous, self-organized movements from ACT UP to Occupy Sandy. He is the author of Lifehouse: Taking Care of Ourselves in a World On Fire (2024), as well as Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life (2017), and is currently Visiting Professor at the Sociology department of the London School of Economics. He’s the host of Lifepod, a podcast based on the book. Maria Herron is the founder & co-director of Mil Mundos Books, a bilingual bookstore that curates to celebrate Black, Latinx, and Indigenous heritage. In 2021 Maria co-founded Mil Mundos en Común, a nonprofit working to provide essential goods, digital connectivity, and literacy access to neighbors in Bushwick and beyond. Preceding en Común, Maria worked with other organizers in April 2020 to form Bushwick Ayuda Mutua, a mutual aid coalition providing framework for our community to access food, essential goods, and social services via individual & organization partner participation. Maria has been with Woodbine since 2017, using it as a coworking hub to launch many of her projects, and currently support with Operations at the new location. For her day job, Maria works as a camera technician. READINGS: --Beyond Hope - Adam Greenfield, 2024: https://illwill.com/beyond-hope --This Spanglish Bookstore In New York Is Reclaiming Bushwick’s Sense Of Latinidad - Victoria Mortimer, 2025: https://nacla.org/spanglish-bookstore-new-york-reclaiming-bushwicks-sense-latinidad/ --The Tetrad: Value in a More-than-Human World [excerpt] - Adam Greenfield, 2026: https://www.patreon.com/posts/dispatch-for-14-153024519 --From Churches to Lifehouses - Adam Greenfield, 2023: https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/news/from-churches-to-lifehouses

    59 min
  4. #39: Communitarian Anarchism with John Clark

    FEB 20

    #39: Communitarian Anarchism with John Clark

    The Woodbine Podcast returns with a new episode featuring John Clark, author of The Impossible Community: Realizing Communitarian Anarchism (2013) and Between Earth and Empire: From the Necrocene to the Beloved Community (2019). We discuss why anarchist movements have trailed religious communities, or have relied on disasters, to build deep communal forms of life. We talk about some neglected thinkers and histories, from Élisée Reclus (1830-1905) and Gustav Landauer (1870-1919) to the Sarvodaya movement. We hear about John's long-term research project on a "dialectical social ecology", as well as his experiences as a teacher in both university and autonomous settings. John P. Clark is a philosopher, activist, writer, and educator. He lives in New Orleans, where his family has been for thirteen generations. He is Director of La Terre Institute for Community and Ecology, and Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Loyola University, where he taught for 44 years. His books include Max Stirner’s Egoism (1976), The Philosophical Anarchism of William Godwin (1977), The Anarchist Moment (1984), The Tragedy of Common Sense (2016), and he is at work on Awakening Earth Community, a dialectical social ecology. In recent years he has worked with such activist groups as No Bayou Bridge, No New Leases, 350 NOLA, and Earth First. He does educational and organizational work with La Terre Institute, both in New Orleans and at Bayou La Terre Woodland Center, an 88-acre site on Bayou La Terre, near Dedeaux, MS in the coastal forest on the Gulf of Mexico. For many years he was active in the alternative education and cooperative movements, and he is a member of the Education and Research Workers’ Industrial Union 620 of the Industrial Workers of the World. LINKS: John Clark's Writings: https://loyno.academia.edu/JohnClark Dialectical Social Ecology: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1298373847207629/ La Terre Institute for Community and Ecology: https://www.laterreinstitute.org/ READINGS: --"Élisée Reclus: The Making of a Communard" - John P. Clark, 2021: https://web.archive.org/web/20220222160826/https://roarmag.org/essays/elisee-reclus-paris-commune/ --"Living Our Lives: The Communal Basis of Social Transformation" - John Clark, 2020: https://www.academia.edu/50699717/Living_Our_Lives_The_Communal_Basis_of_Social_Transformation --"What is eco-anarchism?" - John Clark, 2020: https://www.ecologicalcitizen.net/pdfs/v03sc-02.pdf

    54 min
  5. #37: George Katsiaficas on Eros, Revolution, and Gen Z

    12/26/2025

    #37: George Katsiaficas on Eros, Revolution, and Gen Z

    For this week's podcast we're joined by George Katsiaficas, author of the classic texts The Imagination of the New Left: A Global Analysis of 1968 (1987) and The Subversion of Politics: European Autonomous Social Movements and the Decolonization of Everyday Life (1997), as well as the more recent collections Gen Z Makes History (2025) and Eros and Revolution (2024). We discuss his idea of the eros effect and what we can learn from following global waves of uprisings. We think together about where both radical consciousness and self-organization comes from, as well as the danger of a Thanatos effect, where we see a contagion of confusion, depression, and nihilism. LINKS: --Gen Z Makes History: https://www.eroseffect.com/gen-z-makes-history --George Katsiaficas's Website: https://www.eroseffect.com/ George Katsiaficas is a social theorist who is known for his many writings on social movements, 1968, and Asian uprisings. A longtime activist for peace and justice, he was a student of Herbert Marcuse. Together with Kathleen Cleaver, he coedited Liberation, Imagination and the Black Panther Party. He was a professor of humanities and sociology at the Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston for more than three decades. Katsiaficas is a militant researcher, who lives amongst and collaborates with the people he writes about and sees his research as advancing global activism, not simply describing or analyzing it.

    50 min

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