The Good Robot

In this episode, we talked to Jill Walker Rettberg, Professor of Digital Culture at the University of Bergen in Norway. In this wide-ranging conversation, we talk about machine vision's origins in polished volcanic glass, whether or not we'll actually have self-driving cars, and that famous photo-shopped Mother's Day Photo released by Kate Middleton in March, 2024. 

In this episode, we talk to Yasmine Boudiaf, a researcher, artist and creative technologist who uses technology in beautiful and interesting ways to challenge and redefine what we think of as 'good'. We discuss her wide-ranging art projects, from using AI to create a library of Mediterranean hand gestures through to her project Ways of Machine Seeing, which explored how machine vision systems are being taught to 'see'. Throughout the episode, we explore how Yasmine creatively uses technology to challenge the colonial gaze and the predominance of Western European ideas and concepts in ethics. Note: this episode was recorded in Summer 2023

In this episode we talk to Elizabeth Wilson, a professor of gender, sexuality and women's studies at Emory University, a leading scholar on the intersections between feminism and biology, and the author of Gut Feminism. We talk about everything from what feminism can learn from biology to TERFs (trans exclusionary radical feminists), penises, Freud and technology. Note: this episode was recorded in Spring 2023. 

In this episode, we speak to Janneke Parrish, who's one of the co founders of Apple Together, a solidarity union at Apple. Apple fired Parrish on the 14th of October 2021.  Since she's written an incredible book, continues to be an advisor to Apple together, and is now studying law.  We talk about how Apple's culture of silence underlies its aim to surprise and delight the customer, how companies should listen to their workers, and how to be diplomatic and dignified in the face of an institution that is trying to crush you at work.