Month: December 2022

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Tech Won't Save Us - Tech Billionaires Are Coming for Workers w/ Wendy Liu

Paris Marx is joined by Wendy Liu to discuss what it was like to work in tech in the 2010s and why structural changes in the industry are empowering an increasingly reactionary capitalist class to strike back at workers and upend the expectations of the boom period.

Wendy Liu is a writer and the author of Abolish Silicon Valley: How to Liberate Technology from Capitalism. You can follow her on Twitter at @dellsystem.

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. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

  • Casey Newton and Zoe Schiffer wrote about how tech CEOs are inspired by what Musk is doing at Twitter
  • Mel Krantzler and Patricia Krantzler wrote Down and Out in Silicon Valley: The High Cost of the High-tech Dream
  • Jacob Silverman wrote about David Sacks and the reactionary turn of tech billionaires
  • Paris wrote about how longtermism is designed to justify the position of billionaires in society
  • Julia Black wrote about the embrace of pronatalism within the tech industry

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Slate Books - Working Overtime: Write a Bad Novel!

For this week’s episode of Working Overtime, host June Thomas and co-host Isaac Butler speak to Slate contributor and author of Praying with Jane Eyre, Vanessa Zoltan, about jumping into the month-long writing exercise called NaNoWriMo. NaNoWriMo or National Novel Writing Month, is when a writer commits to writing a 50,000 word novel in the span of the month of November. As Vanessa explains, this can be an exercise in creative freedom that does away with the typical structure and hang-ups that come with producing “good writing.”


Do you have a question about creative work? Call us and leave a message at (304) 933-9675 or email us at working@slate.com. 

 

Podcast production by Kevin Bendis and Cameron Drews.

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What Next | Daily News and Analysis - Germany Cribs From the QAnon Playbook

The Reichsbürger movement is the group behind the plot to overthrow the German government that was disrupted last week. Their grievances are both specific to their country—that the German government is illegitimate and the Reich needs to be reestablished—and familiar to right-wing extremist watchers in the U.S.. They have been radicalized by lockdowns, vaccine requirements, and Qanon. How is this American conspiracy exporting itself? 


Guest: Josh Keating, global security reporter at Grid focused on conflict, diplomacy, and foreign policy.


If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get benefits like zero ads on any Slate podcast, bonus episodes of shows like Slow Burn and Amicus—and you’ll be supporting the work we do here on What Next. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to help support our work.


Sponsored by Saks.com. Check out the Holiday Gift Guide on saks.com

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Short Wave - A Step Closer To Nuclear Fusion Energy

On Dec. 5 at 1 o'clock in the morning local time, researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California used lasers to zap a tiny pellet of hydrogen fuel. The lasers hit their target with 2.05 megajoules of energy, and the pellet released roughly 3.15 megajoules. It's a major milestone, and one that the field of fusion science has struggled to reach for more than half a century: producing a fusion reaction that generates more energy than it consumes. While progress, the technology is still a ways off from its promise to produce energy without creating greenhouse gases. Today on the show, Regina G. Barber brings us two NPR stories that explain what this experiment showed and what else needs to happen to make fusion a practical energy source.

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NPR's Book of the Day - ‘We Deserve Monuments’ highlights a queer, Black love story amidst a family mystery

In Jas Hammonds' YA novel, We Deserve Monuments, high school senior Avery is faced with moving from Washington, D.C. to her mom's small hometown in Georgia to be closer to Mama Letty, her aging grandma. But as she grapples with her new surroundings and with a dark, family secret, she also falls in love with the girl next door. In this episode, Hammonds talks to NPR's Juana Summers about the themes of family and identity in their debut book – and why they kind of think of it as "Gilmore Girls, but make it Black and gay."
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It Could Happen Here - The Tenacious Unicorn Ranch: How to Build a Haven, Part 3: The Unicorns

Gare and James talk about the background of some of the unicorns and their lives in the valley since the siege

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Planet Money - Spam call bounty hunter

Telemarketing calls are not only annoying; in some cases, they are illegal. Congress even gives you the right to sue scofflaw telemarketers for $500 a call. Today, the story of one man who collected a surprising amount of money bringing telemarketers to justice.

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