Dystopia Now

In this week's episode, we explore a question no one has ever thought of before: "What is violence?"
We unpack the recent Molotov cocktail attack on Sam Altman's home and how his own rhetoric about (checks notes), "killing every human on earth with AI", may be leading people who take him seriously to act in extreme ways. We explore Altman's vision for the future and the violence inherent within it.
Further Reading
"The Merge" essay by Sam Altman, December 2017: https://blog.samaltman.com/the-merge

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/04/13/sam-altman-may-control-our-future-can-he-be-trusted

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/apr/18/sam-altman-house-attack-ai

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/21/opinion/sam-altman-attack-ai-silicon-valley.html

https://www.wired.com/story/sam-altman-home-attack-openai-san-franisco-office-threat/

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Quinn Slobodian, historian of neoliberalism, and Ben Tarnoff, internet and technology writer, join us to unpack how Musk's fears and fantasies are shaping our world. 
Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed is available now in the United States (Harper) and UK (Penguin).
Quinn Slobodian is professor of international history at Boston University, and the author or editor of seven books translated into ten languages including, Hayek's Bastards: Race (winner of the NBCC award for criticism), Gold, IQ and the Capitalism of the Far Right, Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World without Democracy, and Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism. In 2024, the Prospect Magazine (UK) named him one of the World's 25 Top Thinkers.
Ben Tarnoff is a writer and technologist based in Massachusetts and is the author of Internet for the People and the co-author of Voices from the Valley: Tech Workers Talk About What They Do—And How They Do It. He is a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books, and has also written for the New York Times, The New Yorker, and the New Republic, among other publications.

Prof. Emily M. Bender, linguist, and Dr. Alex Hanna, sociologist join us to discuss their 2025 book The AI Con and how Big Tech spun marketing around "stochastic parrots".

Find lots more from Emily and Alex on their podcast Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 from the Distributed AI Research Institute!
Books Mentioned
Emily Bender & Alex Hanna, The AI Con

Rua M. Williams, Disabling Intelligences: Legacies of Eugenics and How We are Wrong about AI

Further Reading
Bender, et. al, "On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big?", https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3442188.3445922

Journalist Taylor Lorenz joins us to discuss Section 230, how Big Tech is already tracking everything from eye movements to finger presses, the ongoing erosion of online privacy through right-wing tech policy and identity verification.
Find Taylor on YouTube @TaylorLorenz and her publication UserMag on Substack.
Further Reading
Taylor Lorenz, Usermag, The Media Lied About the Social Media Addiction Trial

Taylor Lorenz, The Biggest Lies About Section 230

Mick Masnick, TechDirt, Everyone Cheering The Social Media Addiction Verdicts Against Meta Should Understand What They're Actually Cheering For

KWCH, AI-powered cameras on Wichita school buses raise privacy concerns for one driver

WBAL, 'Just holding a Doritos bag': Student handcuffed after AI system mistook bag of chips for weapon

David Ramírez Álvarez, secretary at the embassy of Cuba in the US, joins us to understand the escalating blockade on Cuba.