The Digital Void Podcast

Artist, curator, and author of Glitch Feminism , Legacy Russell explores the relationship between gender, technology, and identity, finding liberation through the glitch, the complex history of virality, and her forthcoming book, Black Meme . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Cultural theorist, CyberPsychologist, and marketing strategist Matt Klein discusses the most frequently reported cultural trends for 2021, explores how the momfluencer aesthetic is being used as a gateway to QAnon and other widely believed conspiracies, and calls for a Rosetta Stone for Generation Z to help different generations understand the emotionally affective features of memes. Hosted on Aca...

Creative, futurist, and mad scientist Lucas Rizzotto explains how he's building the future through augmented and virtual reality, looks at how people can get started creating their own AR, VR, and MR projects, and explores how AR helps us reclaim what we already possessed as children. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Educator, musician, Classics PhD and first-year law student, Brett Wisniewski joins us to discuss how our language isn’t always able to meet the challenge of describing our social reality, the difficulties pre-digital institutions face in a digital media environment, and the forms of human expression that lay outside of commodified spaces. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more informatio...

All Tech is Human founder, TikTok Content Advisory Council member, speaker, and writer David Ryan Polgar explores how he’s connecting the dots between individuals, industries, and universities to build the responsible tech pipeline. Polgar explains how we can create a diverse, inclusive, and healthy tech ecosystem to tackle the thorniest issues facing us today. From Section 230 to the storming of...

Principal of Bread and Roses Digital and Executive Council at Campaign Workers Guild Aidan King shares his journey as a digital strategist from founding r/SandersforPresident in 2013 to launching Bread and Roses Digital, a democratically-owned digital agency working to support leftist causes, organizations, candidates, and nonprofits. King explores productive ways to battle conspiracy theories tha...

Intelligent Mischief Founder and Creative Director Terry Marshall and Artistic Director Aisha Shillingford explain how they've successfully integrated satire into their civic media projects. How can we begin to address institutional injustice and tragedy when reality is absurd? Further, Marshall and Shillingford explain Nation X, their massive multi-platform immersive story world, and show how fic...

How does QAnon evolve after President Biden's inauguration? What does the GOP's embrace of QAnon supporters mean for the future of the party? How did YouTube's algorithm change in 2014 create a community of pseudo-experts that altered objective reality? Jamie and Josh explore how a lack of agency is central to conspiracy theories, the commodification of extremism and nostalgia, and the fictions th...

Director of Curiouoser Institute and writer of, " A Game Designer's Analysis of QAnon ," Reed Berkowitz explains how QAnon is similar to an experience fiction (XF) game — and how the designers of QAnon created a game that plays people. Further, Berkowitz explains his experience designing XF games, how people look for patterns where patterns don't exist, and how Q evolves from one platform to anoth...

Journalist and author of " Red Pill, Blue Pill: How to Counteract the Conspiracy Theories That Are Killing Us ," David Neiwert explains how the process of learning on digital platforms enables people to become radicalized and fall into conspiracy thinking, the limits of conspiracies, and how we can begin to address a national crisis. In his opening monologue, Jamie explains how the insurrectionist...

Media theorist Raphael Zaki and Dr. Jamie Cohen discuss whether each generation discusses the same memes in different cultural environments. From the Satanic Panic of the 1980s to Qanon today, Raphael and Jamie explore fascism, memes, and the occult. Resources: QAnon, Blood Libel, and the Satanic Panic Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Author of " The Circle of the Snake: Nostalgia and Utopia in the Age of Big Tech ," Grafton Tanner explains how big tech’s predictive algorithms are locking us in nostalgic feedback loops and envisions a more radical nostalgia that serves the needs of the many, not just the privileged. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Investor, start-up advisor, yoga instructor, and host of the “Look Up!” Podcast, Marc Weinstein shares strategies for us to consider how to balance a digital environment with mindfulness and spirituality, looks at the empowering potential of cryptocurrency and digital art, and the importance of true gratitude for others. This conversation was recorded a day before the 2020 US Presidential Election...

Dr. Jamie Cohen explains how QANON tricks people into believing they are participating in civic behavior, why The Grover House explains the internet's structural issues, and how to have conversations with people who have been radicalized. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

CEO & Founder of The Plug Sherrell Dorsey joins us to discuss how understanding traditionally marginalized histories helps bring people closer together, the importance in finding joy in work and its centrality to our collective success, and what we can all do to help support each other during our current crises. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Anthony Padilla joins us to discuss his evolution from Smosh to creating his hit YouTube series, "I spent a day with..." Here, Padilla reveals how he learned to take conversations with misunderstood and misrepresented communities seriously and describes how he's contributing to a positive change in how YouTube's algorithm works. Plus, Dr. Jamie Cohen and Josh Chapdelaine discuss the early-YouTube...

Gunn Enli is the author of Mediated Authenticity: How the Media Constructs Reality and a professor of media studies at the University of Oslo. Enli discusses the paradox of mediated authenticity, why anti-establishment attitudes can appear to be more authentic than attitudes that align with accepted standards of a particular time, and challenges moralistic stances about how populism spreads. Hoste...

How have Instagram's corporate decisions changed the way people interact with the world? What are the ways Instagram serves as a lens into contemporary society? What's behind the social media platform's battle for attention? How can we weigh the decisions of a corporation to better understand the environment is creates? Sarah Frier   is the author of  "No Filter: The Inside Story of Inst...

Where are occult themes hidden in everyday discourse, culture, and media? How did writers like Norman Vincent Peale influence President Donald Trump? Which famous esoteric and occult writers influence contemporary political strategies? Mitch Horowitz is a historian of alternative spirituality and one of today’s most literate voices of esoterica, mysticism, and the occult. He is a 2020 writer-in-re...

New York Assemblyman Ron Kim discusses how he's working to create a decentralized, equitable, and secure way for people to exchange value that has gone untapped for centuries. How would the Inclusive Value Ledger empower people during this moment? Plus, Kim looks at effective ways for an elected official to communicate with the public in a media environment that favors disinformation. Follow Ron K...

Joining the Digital Void Podcast today, NYU Vice Provost, Professor of Media Studies, and author of " Black Software: The Internet & Racial Justice, from the AfroNet to Black Lives Matter ," Dr. Charlton McIlwain . How did big tech become an engine for inequality? What are the limits and possibilities for using technology to push racial justice? This discussion was recorded live on Wednesday,...

Joining the Digital Void Podcast Today, BEACON  founder and author of “ Automating Humanity”  Joe Toscano. Joe and Dr. Jamie Cohen look at how people protect themselves and their data. What are ways technology can work for human interest, instead of against it? How can we imagine a better future through technology? Joe Toscano is an award-winning experience designer, international speake...

Dr. André Brock Jr, author of Distributed Blackness , discusses how issues of race and ethnicity are inextricable from and formative of contemporary digital culture in the United States and how digital media have reconfigured the meanings and performances of African American identity. This discussion was  streamed live on YouTube  on Wednesday, May 6, 2020. Dr. André Brock, Jr   is...

ReadUp CEO & Co-Founder Bill Loundy discusses how ReadUp incentivizes deep reading in order to create a healthy digital community. How can a social media platform can work for humans, instead of humans working to serve the needs of a platform? This discussion was  streamed live on YouTube  on Wednesday, April 29, 2020. Bill Loundy  is the CEO and co-founder of   Readup , th...

This week, Real Life Mag editor in chief & author of Verso Books' "The Social Photo" Nathan Jurgenson and Dr. Jamie Cohen explore identity during a pandemic. How do we view our physical selves in relation to our digital identities? What effect does Covid-19 have on the convergence of the two? What ethical considerations should we account for when migrating the majority of our work to digital s...