Best Alix Dunn Podcasts (2025)

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Unlearning in the AI Era w/ Nabiha Syed at Mozilla Foundation 45:59

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3d ago45:59

45:59

Mozilla Foundation wants to chart a new path in the AI era. But what is its role now and how can it help reshape the impacts and opportunities of technology for… everyone? More like this: Defying Datafication w/ Abeba Birhane Alix sat down with Nabiha Syed to chat through her first year as the new leader of Mozilla Foundation. How does she think ab…

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You Seem Lonely. Have a Robot w/ Stevie Chancellor 52:58

10d ago52:58

52:58

Loneliness and mental health illnesses are rising in the US, while access to care dwindles — so a lot of people are turning to chatbots. Do chatbots work for therapy? More like this: The Collective Intelligence Project w/ Divya Siddarth and Zarinah Agnew Why are individuals are confiding in chatbots over qualified human therapists? Stevie Chancello…

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Legacy Leaders | Commissioner Eileen Higgins: City of Miami Mayor Race & Key Community Issues 28:31

9d ago28:31

28:31

M•I•A MEDIA GROUP presents Legacy Leaders, a weekly talk show with local and national thought leaders on issues impacting the Black South Florida community. Hosted by Ann Marie Sorrell.

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Local Laws for Global Technologies w/ Hillary Ronen 58:54

17d ago58:54

58:54

What’s it like working as a local representative when you live next door to Silicon Valley? More like this: Chasing Away Sidewalk Labs w/ Bianca Wylie When Hilary Ronen was on the board of supervisors for San Francisco, she had to make lots of decisions about technology. She felt unprepared. Now she sees local policymakers on the frontlines of a ba…

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Gotcha! Enshittification w/ Cory Doctorow 55:50

24d ago55:50

55:50

Welcome to the final boss of scams in the age of technology: Enshittification More like this: Nodestar: The Eternal September w/ Mike Masnick This is our final episode of Gotcha! — our series on scams, how they work, and how technology both amplifies and obscures them. For this final instalment we have Cory Doctorow on to chat about his new book En…

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Gotcha! ScamGPT w/ Lana Swartz & Alice Marwick 54:31

1M ago54:31

54:31

Thought we were at peak scam? Well, ScamGPT just entered the chat. More like this: Gotcha! The Crypto Grift w/ Mark Hays This is part three of Gotcha! — our series on scams, how they work, and how technology is supercharging them. This week Lana Swartz and Alice Marwick join Alix to discuss their primer on how generative AI is automating fraud. We …

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Legacy Leaders | Nicole Van Valen: Keane Insights 28:31

1M ago28:31

28:31

M•I•A MEDIA GROUP presents Legacy Leaders, a weekly talk show with local and national thought leaders on issues impacting the Black South Florida community. Hosted by Ann Marie Sorrell.

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NYC Live: Let Them Eat Compute 52:34

1M ago52:34

52:34

This just in with data centers: Energy grids are strained, water is scarce, utility costs are through the roof — ah well, let them eat compute, I guess! More like this: AI Thirst in a Water-Scarce World w/ Julie McCarthy It was just climate week in NYC and we did a live show on data centers with four amazing guests from around the US… Thank you to …

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Are AI Companies Cooking the Books? w/ Sarah Myers West 39:54

1M ago39:54

39:54

OpenAI just secured a bizarre financial deal with Nvidia — but the math is not mathing. Is the AI sector an actual market, or a series of high-profile announcements of circular relationships between a tiny number of companies? More like this: Making Myths to Make Money w/ AI Now Alix sat down with Sarah Myers-West to go through the particulars of t…

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Gotcha! How MLMs Ate the Economy w/ Bridget Read 50:11

1M ago50:11

50:11

Multi-level marketing schemes have built an empire by enticing people with promises of self-realisation and economic freedom. The cost is simple: exploit and be exploited. More like this: Worker Power & Big Tech Bossmen w/ David Seligman This is part two of Gotcha! Our series on scams, how they work, and how technology is super-charging them. This …

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Gotcha! The Crypto Grift w/ Mark Hays 55:33

1M ago55:33

55:33

Hey you! Do you want some free internet money? If this sounds too good to be true, that’s because it is! More like this: Making Myths to Make Money w/ AI Now This is Gotcha! A four-part series on scams, how they work, and how technology is supercharging them. We start with Mark Hays from Americans for Financial Reform (AFR), and get into one of the…

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Gotcha! 1:28

1M ago1:28

1:28

Gotcha! is a four-part series on scams, how they work, and how technology is supercharging them — running through to October 10. In the series we look at: Crypto: Mark Hays on how a thing touting financial freedom ended up being a kind of fin-cult, rife with scamming Multi-Level Marketing : Bridget Read on the history of the biggest and most succes…

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Nodestar: Turning Networks into Knowledge w/ Andrew Trask 43:15

2M ago43:15

43:15

What if you could listen to multiple people at once, and actually understand them? More like this: **The Age of Noise w/ Eryk Salvaggio** In our final instalment (for now!) of Nodestar, Andrew Trask shares his vision for a world where we can assembly understanding from data everywhere. But not in a way that requires corporate control of our world. …

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Nodestar: Building Blacksky w/ Rudy Fraser 41:46

2M ago41:46

41:46

Social media isn’t really social anymore. But that might be changing. Rudy Fraser over at Blacksky Algorithms has built something new. He has built the infrastructure to provide a safe online space for the black community, and in the process challenges the ideas of hierarchical, centralised networks. His work — even outside the very cool developmen…

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Nodestar: The Eternal September w/ Mike Masnick 52:43

2M ago52:43

52:43

How did the internet become three companies in a trenchcoat? It wasn’t always that way! It used to be fun, and weird, and full of opportunity. To set the scene for the series, we spoke to a stalwart advocate of decentratilsation, Mike Masnick. More like this: Big Tech’s Bogus Vision for the Future w/ Paris Marx This is part one of Nodestar, a three…

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Big Tech’s Bogus Vision for the Future w/ Paris Marx 41:12

2M ago41:12

41:12

What’s the deal with Silicon Valley selling imagined futures and never delivering on them. What are the consequences of an industry all-in on AI? What if we thought more deeply than just ‘more compute’? More like this: Big Dirty Data Centres with Boxi Wu and Jenna Ruddock This week, Paris Marx (host of Tech Won’t Save Us) joined Alix to chat about …

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Short: UK Groups Sue To Block Data Center Expansion 13:56

2M ago13:56

13:56

Foxglove and Global Action Plan have just sued the UK government over their YOLO hyperscale data center plans. More like this: Net0++: Data Centre Sprawl Local government rejected the data center. But Starmer’s administration overruled them. They want to force the development of a water-guzzling, energy draining data center on a local community who…

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Consciously Uncoupling from Silicon Valley w/ Cori Crider 53:45

3M ago53:45

53:45

How do we yank power out of tech oligarch hands without handing it over to someone else? More like this: Is Digitisation Killing Democracy? w/ Marietje Schaake Cori Crider is a fearless litigator turned market-shaping advocate. She started litigating during many years at leading human rights organisation Reprieve, and then moved on to co-founding F…

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After the FAccT: Labour and Misrepresentation 50:54

3M ago50:54

50:54

Did you miss FAccT? We interviewed some of our favourite session organisers! More like this: Part One of our FAccT roundup: Materiality and Militarisation. Georgia, Soizic, and Hanna from The Maybe team just went to FAccT. Georgia and Soizic interviewed a bunch of amazing researchers, practitioners, and artists to give you a taste of what the confe…

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Short: Musk: Reanimating Apartheid w/ Nic Dawes 14:20

3M ago14:20

14:20

In May, Grok couldn’t stop talking about white genocide. This injection of right-wing South African politics triggered a conversation with a Musk contemporary, Nic Dawes. In this short Nic shares his perspective on how post-apartheid white communities have dealt with apartheid’s end. And how Musk is basically seeking out an information environment …

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After the FAccT: Materiality and Militarisation 1:04:20

4M ago1:04:20

1:04:20

Georgia, Soizic, and Hanna from The Maybe team just went to FAccT. Georgia and Soizic interviewed a bunch of amazing researchers, practitioners, and artists to give you a taste of what the conference was like if you didn’t get to go. Alix missed it too — you’ll learn along with her! In part one we explore the depth of AI’s hidden material impacts, …

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Making Myths to Make Money w/ AI Now 38:08

4M ago38:08

38:08

AI Now have just released their 2025 AI Landscape report — Artificial Power. Alix sat down with two of it’s authors, Amba Kak and Sarah Myers-West for a light unpacking of the themes within. This report isn’t a boring survey of what AI Now have been doing this year; it’s a comprehensive view of the state of AI, and the concentrated powers that prop…

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Is Computer Science Made for Dudes? w/ Felienne Hermans 54:41

4M ago54:41

54:41

Felienne Hermans calls herself an ‘involuntary ethnographer of computer science’. She studies the culture behind programming, and challenges the dominant idea that learning to program has to be painful. Alix and Felienne chat about the history of programming and how it went from multidisciplinary and inclusive, to masochistic and exclusive. They al…

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The Elephant in the Algorithm: Live from ZEG Fest in Tbilisi 46:15

4M ago46:15

46:15

Smart people focused on technology politics issues get it. We trade high level helpful concepts like surveillance capitalism, automated inequality, and enshittification. And even as some of these ideas are making it more mainstream, normies aren’t getting the message. We need stories for that. But how? How do we take the technical jargon and high-l…

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Is Digitisation Killing Democracy? w/ Marietje Schaake 37:56

5M ago37:56

37:56

There has been an intentional and systematic narrative push that tells governments they are not good enough to provide their own public infrastructure or regulate tech companies that provide it for them. Shocking: these narratives stem from large tech companies, and this represents what Marietje Schaake refers to as a Tech Coup — which is the title…

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Legacy Leaders | Colbourne, Wilson & Dunn: Trailblazing Public Servants 28:31

5M ago28:31

28:31

M•I•A MEDIA GROUP presents Legacy Leaders, a weekly talk show with local and national thought leaders on issues impacting the Black South Florida community. Hosted by Ann Marie Sorrell.By M•I•A Media Group

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AI in Gaza: Live from Mexico City 1:00:02

5M ago1:00:02

1:00:02

This episode contains some descriptions of torture methods, automated human targeting by machines, and psychological warfare throughout Last week Alix hosted a live show in Mexico City right after REAL ML. Four panellists discussed a huge important topic, which has been wrongfully deemed as taboo by other conferences: the use of AI and other techno…

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Logging Off w/ Adele Walton 43:57

5M ago43:57

43:57

Adele Walton’s new book *Logging Off: The Human Cost of our Digital World* is out NOW — for this week’s episode Alix sat down with her to discuss the book, and what pushed her to write it. Adele shares her experiences of using social media from age ten, and growing up only ever feeling ‘understood’ by her followers. And now, the constant ‘how can I…

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Short: Sam Altman’s World w/ Billy Perrigo 20:53

5M ago20:53

20:53

Sam Altman is doing another big infrastructure push with World (previously Worldcoin) — the universal human verification system. We had journalist Billy Perrigo on to chat what’s what with World. Is Sam Altman just providing a solution to a problem that he himself caused with OpenAI? Do we really need human verification, or is this just a way to si…

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The Collective Intelligence Project w/ Divya Siddarth and Zarinah Agnew 54:31

5M ago54:31

54:31

Most of the time we interview people who say No to AI. In this interview, Georgia and Alix talk to two people who look at AI and ask How and For What. And lots of other questions too. Divya Siddarth and Zarinah Agnew from the Collective Intelligence Project share CIP’s work using AI systems to explore more consultative democratic governance, how to…

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Legacy Leaders | Thema Campbell: Girl Power Rocks 28:31

5M ago28:31

28:31

M•I•A MEDIA GROUP presents Legacy Leaders, a weekly talk show with local and national thought leaders on issues impacting the Black South Florida community. Hosted by Ann Marie Sorrell.By M•I•A Media Group

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Net0++: Data Center Sprawl | NEW Research from The Maybe 54:09

5M ago54:09

54:09

We’re excited to finally share our report on data center expansion and resistance around the world. It’s been a labor of love, but also showcases the amazing work of many organisations, activists, and journalists around the world that are working to create space for meaningful consultation about hugely consequential decisions. Download it here. In …

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Net 0++: AI Thirst in a Water-Scarce World w/ Julie McCarthy 53:29

6M ago53:29

53:29

Last year, Elon Musk’s xAI built a data centre in Memphis in 19 days — and the local government only found out about it on the 20th day. How? Julie McCarthy and her team at NatureFinance have just released a report about the nature-related impacts of data center development globally. There are some pretty dire statistics in there: 55% of data cente…

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Short: Open AI for...Countries? w/ Marietje Schaake 13:52

6M ago13:52

13:52

This is another Computer Says Maybe short, this time with Marietje Schaake (author of The Tech Coup), to discuss OpenAI’s recent announcement: they want to partner with governments all around the world to build ‘democratic AI rails’ — sounds bad! Computer Says Maybe Shorts bring in experts to give their ten-minute take on recent news. If there’s ev…

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Short: What Just Happened to 23andMe? w/ Jenny Reardon 14:58

6M ago14:58

14:58

Personalised genotyping company 23andMe just went bankrupt — what’s gonna happen to all that genetic data? We brought back genomics professor Jenny Reardon to discuss the crushing void that was 23andMe’s business model — and that many companies like it have failed before. This is a Computer Says Maybe Short, where we bring in an expert to give thei…

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Terra Nullius: Who Owns the Skies? w/ Julia Powles 52:48

6M ago52:48

52:48

This is our second Terra Nullius episode. As a reminder this means ‘Nobody’s Land’ — an infamous legal fiction from the age of Empire. In this episode we ask: who owns the skies? We get into it with law professor Julia Powles, who shares her research and perspective on the accelerating prospect of drone delivery companies taking over the skies. Wha…

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Terra Nullius: Who Owns Outer Space? w/ Heather Allansdottir 48:57

6M ago48:57

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This is our first in a series called Terra Nullius. Huh? It’s Latin for ‘Nobody’s Land’. We will be exploring how rules are made for contested territory. If a land belongs to no one, does that mean it’s just up for grabs? This week we’re starting with outer space, speaking with an expert in space law, Heather Allansdottir. But why should we care ab…

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How to (Actually) Keep Kids Safe Online w/ Kate Sim 48:29

6M ago48:29

48:29

Child safety is a fuzzy catch-all concept for our broader social anxieties that seems to be everywhere in our conversations about the internet. But child safety isn’t a new concept, and the way our politics focuses on the spectacle isn’t new either. To help us unpack this is Kate Sim, who has over a decade of experience in sexual violence preventio…

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Worker Power & Big Tech Bossmen w/ David Seligman 46:08

7M ago46:08

46:08

This week Alix interviewed David Seligman, Executive Director of Towards Justice, to tell us more about how big tech companies act brazenly as legal bullies to extract wealth and power from the working class in the US. He makes a compelling case for the urgent need to re-orient our thinking about political power and organise against it. We talk abo…

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Legacy Leaders: Mayors Veronica Edwards Phillips & Alix Desulme in Focus 28:30

7M ago28:30

28:30

M•I•A MEDIA GROUP presents Legacy Leaders, a weekly talk show with local and national thought leaders on issues impacting the Black South Florida community. Hosted by Ann Marie Sorrell.By M•I•A Media Group

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AI Can’t Fix This: Live in London 1:15:58

7M ago1:15:58

1:15:58

Last week Alix was in London to talk UK politics and broligarchy with four amazing guests: Martha Dark from Foxglove gave us the history and implications of the NHS/Palantir partnership of horror Matt Mahmoudi outlined the UK’s push to amp up facial recognition surveillance and to outlaw protests (seems good) Seyi Akiwowo shared a retrospective of …

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Technology Nationalism in India w/ Divij Joshi 50:24

7M ago50:24

50:24

Amidst the scrambling of geopolitics, there is increasing conversation and momentum for the concept of tech sovereignty. It basically means that countries should build their own technology rather than rely on Silicon Valley. India Stack! Euro Stack! Everyone wants a stack. In this episode we explore India’s work over the last 20 years to build ‘dig…

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AI Assistant or AI Boss? w/ Data & Society 43:01

7M ago43:01

43:01

Two years ago, we were told that ‘prompt engineer’ would be a real job — well, it’s not. Is generative AI actually going to replace and transform human labour, or is this just another shallow marketing narrative? This week Alix speaks with Aiha Nguyen and Alexandra Mateescu, who recently authored Generative AI and Labor: Power, Hype, and Value at W…

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Legacy Leaders: Tara Rumph at Miramar’s 2nd Coffee, Chocolate &Culture Expo 28:30

7M ago28:30

28:30

M•I•A MEDIA GROUP presents Legacy Leaders, a weekly talk show with local and national thought leaders on issues impacting the Black South Florida community. Hosted by Ann Marie Sorrell.By M•I•A Media Group

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Regulating Privacy in an AI Era w/ Carly Kind 1:00:47

8M ago1:00:47

1:00:47

This week Alix is speaking with her long-time friend and collaborator Carly Kind, who is now the privacy commissioner of Australia. Here’s something you may be embarrassed to ask: what does a privacy commissioner even do? We got you… Alix and Carly will discuss how privacy regs bump up against current trends in AI, how to incentivise compliance, an…

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Dogwhistles: Networked Transphobia Online 52:41

8M ago52:41

52:41

This week producer Georgia joins Alix to discuss something huge that we’ve yet to go deep on: the prevalence of trans misogyny online. This episode is jam-packed with four amazing guests to guide us through this rough terrain: Shivani Dave is a journalist and commentator who uses social media for their career and income. They share their experience…

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VCs Are World Eaters w/ Catherine Bracy 47:30

8M ago47:30

47:30

This week Alix interviewed Catherine Bracy on her book World Eaters: How Venture Capital is Cannibalising the Economy. Support Catherine’s work and buy it NOW. Venture capital wasn’t always how it is today. But now it’s a driver of inequality, political and economic instability, and insufferable personalities. How did we get here and what might com…

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Power Over Precision w/ Jenny Reardon 1:02:43

8M ago1:02:43

1:02:43

Alix’s conversation this week is with Jenny Reardon, who shares with us the history of genomics — and the absolutely mind-melting parallels it has with the trajectory of the AI industry. Jenny describes genomics as the industrialisation of genetics; it’s not just about understanding the genetic properties of humans, but mapping out every last inch …

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The Taiwan Bottleneck w/ Brian Chen 37:10

8M ago37:10

37:10

Do you ever wonder how semiconductors (AKA chips) get made? Or why most of them are made in Taiwan? Or what this means for geopolitics? Luckily, this is a podcast for nerds like you. Alix was joined this week by Brian Chen from Data & Society, who systematically explains the process of advanced chip manufacture, how its thoroughly entangled in US e…

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AI Safety’s Spiral of Urgency w/ Shazeda Ahmed 55:55

9M ago55:55

55:55

Are you tired of hearing the phrase ‘AI Safety’ and rolling your eyes? Do you also sometimes think… okay but what is technically wrong with advocating for ‘safer’ AI systems? Do you also wish we could have more nuanced conversations about China and AI? In this episode Shazeda Ahmed goes deep on the field of AI Safety, explaining that it is a commun…