The Anti-Dystopians

In this episode, Alina Utrata talks to Dr Kate Sammler, a geographer who looks at the intersection of science and politics in the oceans, atmospheres, and outer space. They discussed how colonialism and scientific exploration have long been entangled, from building telescopes on sacred indigenous land in Hawaii to James Cook claiming islands in the Pacific while following a star. They also talked...

In this episode of the Anti-Dystopians, Alina Utrata talks to Casey Lynch, the Ramon y Cajal researcher in the Department of Geography at the University of Girona. Casey is a human geographer with interests in digital, political, urban, and labour geographies, as well as geographic thought and critical theory. They discussed that SNL skit about “Just Walk Out” Amazon Go stores, and why automated s...

On this episode, Alina Utrata talks to Olivier Jutel, a lecturer at the University of Otago and an expert in cyberlibertarianism. They discuss the ideology of many technology industry elites and the strange political ideas permeating through Silicon Valley. What makes these Sand Hill Road venture capitalists different from the East Coast banking establishment? Why are they imagining a world of ven...

Alina Utrata talks to Dr Jenny Carla Moran, a Postdoctoral Research Fellow based at the Trinity Long Room Hub and a faculty member at TCD-TU Dublin Joint Centre for the Sociology of Humans and Machines. They discuss Jenny's research about robots and loveability. Why are so many people falling in love with ChatGPT partners? What does the trope of "true love's first kiss" show us about which ro...

FROM THE ARCHIVE: In this episode, Alina Utrata talks to Dr Trishant Simlai, a conservation researcher studying the politics and geographies of wildlife conservation in India, who just received his PhD in the Department of Geography at Cambridge. They discuss wildlife surveillance in the Corbett Tiger Reserve, as well as conservation’s colonial origins, how camera traps can be used to uphold the p...

On this episode, Alina Utrata talks to Connor O'Brien, a PhD Candidate at University of Cambridge researching a conceptual history of good governance and sovereign debt. They discussed a little-known tool for climate finance called "debt for nature swaps". While they might sound nice, they're actually an insidious tactic of finance guys taking control of government policies amidst the green e...

FROM THE ARCHIVE: Alina Utrata talks with Josh Lappen, a fellow Californian and environmental historian researching at Oxford University, who studies some of the most important technology there is: critical infrastructure. They discuss why hundreds of Elon Musks can’t (and won’t) solve climate change, the government funding and politics behind many technology entrepreneurs’ businesses, why low-tec...

This week, the Anti-Dystopians talks to an expert in dystopia! Matthew Cole is a scholar of political theory and an Assistant Professor of Humanities and Social Sciences Binghamton University. His book “Fear the Future: Dystopia and Political Imagination in the 20th century” explores the history of dystopian thinking and why so many dystopian books have captured our political imagination (or indee...

In this episode, Alina Utrata interviews Amira Moeding, a PhD Candidate in History at the University of Cambridge where they held fellowships with Cambridge Digital Humanities and the Cluster of Excellence “Matters of Activity” at Humboldt Universität zu Berlin. They talked all about Amira’s research on the intellectual history of Large Language Models, and other types of AI. They began by asking:...

On this episode of the Anti-Dystopians, Alina Utrata talks to Dan McQuillan, a senior lecturer in Critical AI at Goldsmiths University and the author of "Resisting AI: An Anti-Fascist Approach to Artificial Intelligence.” They talk about the state of AI adoption in the UK since our last conversation (spoiler alert: it’s bad), why the Starmer government so obsessed with AI, how AI is harming the en...

This week, Alina Utrata talks to Swati Srivastava, an Associate Professor of Political Science at Purdue University and a Faculty Associate at Harvard University's Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. They discussed Swati’s work on hybrid sovereignty, private actors in global governance — and, yes, of course, Elon Musk. Listen to hear about why the classic distinctions between pub...

In this episode, Alina Utrata talks to Andrew Dougall, a departmental lecturer in international relations at DPIR and associate member at St Antony’s college at Oxford University. They discuss Andrew’s work on global infrastructures and corporate control in the international system, from DOGE to subsea cables. What are global infrastructures? Who, historically, has built them? Are platform compani...

In this episode, Alina Utrata talks to Rowena Squires, a PhD Candidate in Children’s Literature at Cambridge University. They discuss the strange legacy of the depiction of outer space in children’s animation. From the (not-so-cute-after-all) robot and the consumerist environmental collapse of Earth in WALL-E, the re-telling of colonial narratives of the frontier in Treasure Planet and Lightyear,...

In this episode, Alina Utrata talks to Dr. Tim Karayiannides, a junior research fellow at Emmanuel College, about his recent article about the similarities and connections between South Africa and Silicon Valley. While Elon Musk’s childhood in apartheid in South Africa is sometimes cited as an explanation for his far-right views, there is in fact a much deeper history of connection between Califor...

On this week’s podcast, Alina Utrata talks to Jan Eijking, a William Golding Junior Research Fellow and Martin Fellow at Oxford University. Jan’s work is based in international relations, and focuses on expertise, empire, capitalism and the history and theory of international organizations. They talked about everything from the Suez Canal Company to SpaceX — and how thinking about “experts,” exper...

On this episode of the Anti-Dystopians, your usual host is in the hot seat! Guest host Benjamin Tan, PhD Candidate at Cambridge, asks Alina Utrata about her recent publication in the American Political Science Review about Silicon Valley's outer space colonization projects. They discuss what Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are up to in space, why terrestrial and celestial colonization are not as differen...

In this episode of the Anti-Dystopians, Alina Utrata speaks with Julia Slupska, Olivia Andrews and Hilary Watson about a recent report by Glitch UK entitled "Digital Misogynoir: Ending the dehumanising of Black women on social media." They discuss why Black women are uniquely targeted and harmed online, the importance of centering intersectionality in discussing digital harms, the difficulties of...

For this episode of the Anti-Dystopians, Alina Utrata spoke with Catriona Gray, a PhD at the University of Bath working at the intersection of sociology, politics, and law on the adoption of AI technologies. They discussed the political economy of data and whether frameworks like ‘data is the new oil’ are helpful to understanding these relationships; what is new about the technological structures...

For this episode of the Anti-Dystopians, Alina Utrata talks to Dr Matt Mahmoudi, the lead researcher on the Amnesty International report "Automating Apartheid" examining the deployment of facial recognition technology in Palestine. They discuss the report's findings, including how this facial recognition technology is being deployed against Palestinians in the Occupied Territories and consolidates...

On this week’s episode of The Anti-Dystopians, Alina Utrata spoke to Paola Ricurate, an associate professor in the Department of Media and Digital Culture at Tecnológico de Monterrey and faculty associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University and the co-founder of the Tierra Comun Network, and Sebastián Leheude, a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Centre of Governa...

On this episode of the Anti-Dystopians, Maha Atal is back to discuss feminism, reproductive rights and technology. Host Alina Utrata asks her: how has the legal landscape of abortion and reproductive rights changed since the overturning of Roe v Wade, and what are technology companies doing about it? Does your GP know who their cloud computing provider is (and do they have access to your sensitive...

In this episode, Alina Utrata talks Mary-Jane Rubenstein, a professor of Religion and Science in Society at Wesleyan University and the author of the new book Astrotopia: The Dangerous Religion of the Corporate Space Race . They discuss whether Elon Musk acts like a religious leader, how imperial Christianity set the stage for capitalism, the ways science fiction has acted as a mythology for space...

In this episode, Alina Utrata talks to Raymond Craib, professor of American History and a Latin Americanist at Cornell University, about his most recent book Adventure Capitalism, A History of Libertarian Exit from the Era of Decolonization to the Digital Age. They discuss the history of libertarian exit and the case of Michael Oliver's Republic of Minerva, why these exit projects seem to hav...

On this episode of the podcast, Alina Utrata speaks with Emile Torres, a PhD candidate at Leibniz University Hannover and the author of the forthcoming book Human Extinction: A history of the Science and Ethics of Annihilation . They discuss their research into Elon Musk’s favorite philosophy, longtermism, and answer all your questions about the philosophy like: do longtermists really want to colo...

In this episode, Alina Utrata talks to Julia Slupska, a DPhil Candidate at the Oxford Internet Institute researching feminist approaches to cybersecurity, and Stefanie Felsberger, a PhD Candidate in Gender Studies at Cambridge University studying surveillance, data capitalism and period tracking apps. They discuss whether you should be worried about your period tracking apps, how reproductive just...