Dystopia Now

Could a populist, independent candidate win an election in the most Republican part of Nebraska's 1st Congressional District? In a time when the Republican and Democratic Party are both notoriously corrupt, Austin Ahlman is making the call to "Take Back Nebraska."
This week we talk with Austin about his run for office, antimonopoly, Abundance, and how tech companies are undermining Nebraska's public power system through regulatory carve-outs.
Find Austin's campaign at ahlmanfornebraska.com or takebacknebraska.com.
Further Reading
Austin Ahlman for The Intercept: https://theintercept.com/staff/austin-ahlman/

Austin Ahlman Launches Insurgent Independent Campaign in Nebraska https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYE10gacxiE

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Oliver Larkin, activist, union organizer, and Democratic Socialist, joins us this week to discuss his run for election to the U.S. House as a Florida representative.
We talk about Oliver's campaign, how South Florida and Greater Miami are becoming new headquarters for tech companies including Palantir, and what we can do electorally to support working people instead of billionaires.
Further Reading
Find Oliver's campaign at https://www.oliverforcongress.com

https://theintercept.com/2026/02/26/iran-war-powers-vote-democrats-gottheimer-moskowitz

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On this special Patreon episode, we talked to antitrust hero and Fordham University law professor Zephyr Teachout about surveillance pricing and surveillance wages.
From airlines charging us more to fly home if they see we've recently searched "funeral arrangements" to rideshare companies paying less per ride if your bank account is low, we explored the present and future possibilities of data as a tool for economic and labor exploitation.
Book Mentioned
Karen Levy, Data Driven: Truckers, Technology, and the New Workplace Surveillance

Further Reading
FTC Report, https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2025/01/ftc-surveillance-pricing-study-indicates-wide-range-personal-data-used-set-individualized-consumer

ACLU Report, https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/surveillance-pricing

Electronic Frontier Foundation on surveillance pricing, https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/08/fight-surveillance-pricing-we-need-privacy-first

Maryland ban on surveillance pricing, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/apr/29/maryland-grocery-stores-ban-surveillance-pricing

New York legislation, https://spectrumlocalnews.com/nys/central-ny/politics/2026/05/19/surveillance-pricing-

Cory Doctorow on surveillance wages, https://doctorow.medium.com/https-pluralistic-net-2026-04-06-empiricism-washing-veena-dubal-d63fef485503

In this week's episode we begin to go into the philosophy around consciousness and AI as New Atheist relic Richard Dawkins recently claimed "Claudia" was conscious. What are the merits and issues of thinking about consciousness in the context of AI? Later we discuss a recent piece in Jacobin arguing against data center resistance.
Further Reading
Richard Dawkins in Unherd, https://unherd.com/2026/05/when-claudia-met-claudius

Holly Buck in Jacobin, https://jacobin.com/2026/04/ai-data-center-moratorium-democracy 

Émile in Salon, https://www.salon.com/2017/07/29/from-the-enlightenment-to-the-dark-ages-how-new-atheism-slid-into-the-alt-right/

Taylor Lorenz podcast episode, https://sites.libsyn.com/566555/site/big-tech-is-watching-you-with-taylor-lorenz 

Brian Merchant on Substack, https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/the-data-center-rebellion-is-only

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/