Ep. 29 - The Swarm The Relentless Picnic

This week it’s fourteen conversations about one thing. We do a little research on the symptoms of fascism and begin to feel like an expendable character in the first act of a horror film. Plus: TED talks are blindfolds at the museum, why you must laminate the best parts of your body, and the moral arc of the universe bends toward destruction, but also hope? Q.E.D., friends.

SOURCES:
- Umberto Eco, "Ur-Fascism" (NYRB, June 1995): https://bit.ly/1mXBPS6 ;
- Plato's Meno, 72a ;
- "How we can build AI to help humans, not hurt us," a TED talk by Margaret Mitchell (03/12/2018): https://youtu.be/twWkGt33X_k ;
- "How to win at evolution and survive a mass extinction," a TED talk by Lauren Sallan (11/21/2017): https://youtu.be/rtcrqLWZr_0 ;
- "Capitalism isn't an ideology -- it's an operating system," a TED talk by Bhu Srinivasan (03/06/2018): https://youtu.be/Y0UB6g8Rsyw ;
- clip from George Carlin, "Doin' it Again" (1990): https://youtu.be/hNd_x3w-yNo ;
- Masha Gessen, "Autocracy: Rules for Survival" (NYRB, Nov. 2016): https://bit.ly/2fGj4PY ;
- Reggie Watts at TEDx Berlin (12/05/2013): https://youtu.be/Y7IxzpB-UMM ;
- episode cover image: "Ministers Meeting, Rome, Italy, 1940" by Carl Mydans ;
- music from the episode: https://bit.ly/2KCdI8R .