A podcast about the world Amazon is building and the writers, workers and communities fighting for different futures

The Workers' Speculative Society

This 10-episode podcast series  explores how games and gamification have moved from the margin to the centre of the weird capitalist economy. It jumps beyond the commonplace and largely uninteresting observation that video games have become a major entertainment industry. It also takes for granted that tech and speculative capital have invested heavily in technologies of gamification as a means to gain and hook new users. Instead, it looks to the deeper sociological roots and effects of these trends and the way they are reshaping many spheres of life, from economics to sexuality. And it meditates on what this means for resistance… the good, the bad and the ugly.
Join us for episodes on the gamification of love, on the playfulness of conspiracism, on the myth of the “cheating other,” on the tyrannical rise and rule of game theory, on the appeal of the Hunger Games… and much more!

The Exploits of Play

The World After Amazon is a collection of 9 short speculative stories, written by rank-and-file workers at the corporation that has transformed the way we read and so much more.

Amazon's sci-fi propaganda tells the story of a company using cutting-edge technology to deliver a utopia of cheap consumer convenience. But its workers pay the price, toiling in dystopian conditions to create a future that will exclude them. 

What happens when those workers reclaim the radical imagination and their power to tell their own stories?

The World After Amazon can be ordered in print or read or downloaded online for free, and is also available as a podcast and audiobook.

For more information, visit http://afteramazon.world.   

Book editors: Xenia Benivolksi, Max Haiven, Sarah Olutola and Graeme Webb
Narrator: Sook-Yin Lee
Editing and music: Robert Steenkamer
Illustrations: Amanda Priebe

Publisher: RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab

Read or download

The World After Amazon: Stories from Amazon Workers

What Do We Want? Is a podcast about the weird, wild and wonderful things that draw social movements together… and drive them apart. We ask the tough and uncomfortable questions that keep organizers for ecological, economic, social, gender and racial justice awake at night!
Drawing on co-host Sarah Stein Lubrano’s specialization in politics and the cognitive sciences and co-host Max Haiven’s writing on activism and the radical imagination, each episode shares research, stories and insights to help social movements and the people who care about them change the world.
The podcasts’ first season’s six episodes focus on heartbreak, conspiracy, despair, fantasy, shame and pleasure and special guests include Rachel Donald, Lola Olufemi, Brent Lee and Sophie Lewis.
What Do We Want is an initiative of Max and Sarah’s project Sense & Solidarity, a platform for radical social movements and their protagonists ot learn about ideology, psychology and how to change hearts and minds. For more information about that project, including the online and in-person workshops they offer, visit http://senseandsolidarity.org
What Do We Want is written and hosted by Sarah Stein Lubrano and Max Haiven and produced and edited by Alastair Elphick. Music and sound mastering is by Daniel Gouly. The project has been supported by ​RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab and our many crowdfunding supporters whose names can be found on our website.

What Do We Want? A Podcast about what draws movements together... and drives them apart

Against the Fascist Game is the second season of The Exploits of Play, a podcast about games and capitalism. Join host Max Haiven and producer Faye Harvey as they interview game designers, critical theorists and grassroots activists struggling with games to understand, confront and abolish the rising threat of fascism in our times. We ask questions including: how is the far-right around the world using games as platforms for ideology, recruiting and violence, both close to home and around the world? How have vicious reactionary politics emerged from a form of capitalism where most people feel trapped in an unwinnable game? What do fascism and antifascism mean today? And what role, if any do play and games have in confronting the fascist threat and creating a new world? The Exploits of Play is a production of Weird Economies, a platform for exploring the intricacies and excesses of our economic imaginaries, in cooperation with RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab.

Against the Fascist Game (Exploits of Play, season 2)

In the first of our two-part interview, Wu Ming collective member 1 discusses his new book La Q di Qomplotto (The Q in Qonspiracy: How Conspiracy Fantasies Defend the System).

Wu Ming 1 is an original and ongoing member of the Wu Ming collective, which was founded in Bologna in 2000 and has, since that time, published several collaboratively written novels including 54, Manituana, Altai, The Army of Sleepwalkers, and The Invisible Everywhere, which have been translated into many languages. Wu Ming evolved out of the experimental collective project Luther Blisset whose famous 1999 novel Q  focused on conspiracies of liberation and of repression during the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century. More recently, that novel and the Wu Ming Collective have been the subject of a great deal of speculation around the rise of the QAnon conspiracy fantasy. Regarding that, Wu Ming 1 has just published a book in Italian, La Q di Qomplotto (The Q in Qonspiracy: How Conspiracy Fantasies Defend the System), which presents a highly original and important analysis of the genesis and dangers of this strange hallucination.

Conspiracy Games and Countergames is a podcast exploring the rise of conspiratorial thinking in a gamified, capitalist world hosted by Max Haiven, A.T. Kingsmith and Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou. For more information, visit http://conspiracy.games

The Q in Qonspiracy - Interview with Wu Ming 1, part 1 (CGCG01)

With game designer and professor Paolo Pedercini we explore the possibility of anti-capitalist games and what's behind today's conspiracy movements.

Paolo Pedercini is a game developer, curator and educator. He teaches digital media production and experimental game design at the School of Art at Carnegie Mellon University. Since 2003 he works under the project name “Molleindustria” producing provocative games addressing issues of social and environmental justice, religion, and labor and sexuality.
Paolo is the director of LIKELIKE, a neo-arcade devoted to independent games and playful art in Pittsburgh, PA.

Anti-capitalist games and other creative conspiracies - with Paolo Pedercini (CGCG016)

For 15 years Brent Lee not only believed in conspiracy theories but helped produce and popularize them. Today, he warns others about both the danger and the appeal of conspiratorial world-building. We have been taught to imagine that people fall into the proverbial "rabbit hole" because of isolation, idiocy and paranoia. But in this interview, Brent explains how he and many others came to it from through critical thinking, skepticism towards the operations of social power and empathy with those who were suffering. We explore with him why he stayed in the conspiracy world thanks, in part, to the sense of righteous community  it provided.  And we cover how the right-wing weaponization of conspiracy theories in the mid-2010s triggered Brent's exit from the community. Today, motivated by contrition for what he helped create and compassion for those who, like him, are taken in, he dedicates his time to helping those inside and outside conspiracy worlds understand and challenge them.

Brent Lee, a former conspiracist who now seeks to challenge and reveal the lures and dangers of conspiracism, maintains a blog (http://brentleetv.blogspot.com/) and a YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/c/BrentLeeTV) and can often be found on Twitter (https://twitter.com/BrentLeeSDCIC). His new podcast Some Dare Call it Conspiracy, dedicated to reverse-engineering conspiracy theories, launched in June 2022 (https://anchor.fm/somedarecallitconspiracy)

An interview with an (ex)conspiracist - with Brent Lee (CGCG20)

Amazon's exploitation of data, robotics, and workers has created a breathtaking global empire. Charmaine Chua, a labour organizer with Amazonians United and an assistant professor at University of California Santa Barbara's Department of Global Studies, is uniquely well qualified to guide us through what that means, for workers and for the world. Her work focuses on the ways working people resist and build solidarity against what can seem like insurmountable odds.

* https://www.charmainechua.com/
* https://www.amazoniansunited.org/
* https://www.global.ucsb.edu/people/charmaine-chua

The Workers' Speculative Society is a research podcast about the world Amazon is trying to build and the workers, writers, and communities that are demanding a different future. It is part of the Worker as Futurist Project, which supports rank-and-file Amazon workers to write speculative fiction about "The World After Amazon." It is hosted by Xenia Benivolski, Max Haiven, Sarah Olutola, and Graeme Webb and is an initiative of RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab, with support from the Social Sciences a Humanities Research Council of Canada. Editing and theme music by Robert Steenkamer.

* https://soundcloud.com/reimaginevalue/sets/the-workers-speculative
* http://workersspeculativesociety.org
* http://reimaginingvalue.ca

Logistics and Labour - Charmaine Chua on Amazon's supply chains and workers' resistance (WSS02)

How has writing been part of the coming-to-consciousness of the working class and our ability to imagine and fight for different futures? We speak with Jamie Woodcock, senior lecturer of management at the University of Essex about the history of Workers' Inquiry, a method where intellectuals and workers collaborate to learn about the changing nature of capitalism and his own project, Notes From Below, which supports workers to write about their experiences. We also discuss his initiative Red Futures, a magazine of Marxist and radical science fiction.

https://www.jamiewoodcock.net/
https://notesfrombelow.org/
https://www.redfuturesmag.com/

The Workers' Speculative Society is a research podcast about the world Amazon is building and the workers, writers and communities that are demanding a different future. It is part of the Worker as Futurist Project, which supports rank-and-file Amazon workers to write speculative fiction about "The World After Amazon. It is hosted by Xenia Benivolski, Max Haiven, Sarah Olutola, and Graeme Webb and is an initiative of RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab, with support from the Social Sciences a Humanities Research Council of Canada. Editing and theme music by Robert Steenkamer.

* soundcloud.com/reimaginevalue/sets/the-workers-speculative
* workersspeculativesociety.org
* reimaginingvalue.ca

Workers' Writing as Revolutionary Praxis - Jamie Woodcock on Workers' Inquiry and SF (WSS09)

Since 2011, the poet Mark Nowak has been facilitating rank-and-file workers' writing through the Workers Writers School. In collaboration with PEN, trade unions and other organizations, the WSS's workshops "create a space for participants to re-imagine their working lives, nurture new literary voices directly from the global working class, and produce new tactics and imagine new futures for working class social change." On this episode, Mark joins us along with long-time participant Lorraine Garnett, who reads several of her poems and discusses the School's impact on her life. 

https://www.workerwriters.org/
https://pen.org/worker-writers-school/

The Workers' Speculative Society is a research podcast about the world Amazon is building and the workers, writers and communities that are demanding a different future. It is part of the Worker as Futurist Project, which supports rank-and-file Amazon workers to write speculative fiction about "The World After Amazon. It is hosted by Xenia Benivolski, Max Haiven, Sarah Olutola, and Graeme Webb and is an initiative of RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab, with support from the Social Sciences a Humanities Research Council of Canada. Editing and theme music by Robert Steenkamer.

* soundcloud.com/reimaginevalue/sets/the-workers-speculative
* workersspeculativesociety.org
* reimaginingvalue.ca

Poetry By and For Workers - The Worker Writers School (WSS010)

Heike Geissler is a prominent German novelist and writer who lives and works in Leipzig, once a major city in communist  former "East Germany." Today, it is a major logistics hub for Amazon and site of the "reunified" country's first strike against the American corporation in 2013.

In her 2014 memoir Saisonarbeit (published in English in 2018 as Seasonal Associate), Geissler meditates on the months she spent working at an Amazon fulfillment centre in 2010 and what it tells us about work under capitalism today.

* https://www.heikegeissler.de/
* https://spectorbooks.com/de/buch/saisonarbeit
* https://mitpress.mit.edu/9781635900439/seasonal-associate/

The Workers' Speculative Society is a research podcast about the world Amazon is building and the workers, writers and communities that are demanding a different future. It is part of the Worker as Futurist Project, which supports rank-and-file Amazon workers to write speculative fiction about "The World After Amazon. It is hosted by Xenia Benivolski, Max Haiven, Sarah Olutola, and Graeme Webb and is an initiative of RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab, with support from the Social Sciences a Humanities Research Council of Canada. Editing and theme music by Robert Steenkamer.

* soundcloud.com/reimaginevalue/sets/the-workers-speculative
* workersspeculativesociety.org
* reimaginingvalue.ca

Portrait of the Author as Amazon Worker​ - Heike Geissler on work and writing (WSS011)

Steven Shaviro is a cultural critic and leading theorist of the social roles of science fiction and author of many books, including The Universe of Things: On Speculative Realism (2014) and Discognition (2016). His book on science fiction, Fluid Futures, will be published in 2024. In this interview, he helps us understand the history of science fiction and its potentials to critique dominant power relations.

*http://www.shaviro.com/

The Workers' Speculative Society is a research podcast about the world Amazon is building and the workers, writers and communities that are demanding a different future. It is part of the Worker as Futurist Project, which supports rank-and-file Amazon workers to write speculative fiction about "The World After Amazon. It is hosted by Xenia Benivolski, Max Haiven, Sarah Olutola, and Graeme Webb and is an initiative of RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab, with support from the Social Sciences a Humanities Research Council of Canada. Editing and theme music by Robert Steenkamer.

* soundcloud.com/reimaginevalue/sets/the-workers-speculative
* workersspeculativesociety.org
* reimaginingvalue.ca

Extrapolation, Speculation, Fabulation - Steven Shaviro on the work of science fiction (WSS013)

In the thick of the pandemic, Montreal-based writer and organizer Mostafa Henaway worked at an Amazon fulfillment centre to learn how "essential" workers were made disposable in the name of corporate profits. In this episode, he shares stories and critical reflections on the sci-fi nature of Amazon's brand of capitalism, and the implications for workers' organizing and resistance. He concludes with vital thoughts on how this is connected to a broader story of imperialism that also encompasses the ongoing nightmare in Gaza.

Mostafa Henaway, a Canadian-born Egyptian, is a long-time community organizer at the Immigrant Workers Centre in Montreal, where he has been organizing for justice for immigrant/migrant workers for over two decades. He is also a researcher and PhD candidate at Concordia University. His book Essential Work, Disposable Workers: Migration, Capitalism and Class was published in 2023.

* https://fernwoodpublishing.ca/book/essential-work-disposable-workers

The Workers' Speculative Society is a research podcast about the world Amazon is building and the workers, writers and communities that are demanding a different future. It is part of the Worker as Futurist Project, which supports rank-and-file Amazon workers to write speculative fiction about "The World After Amazon. It is hosted by Xenia Benivolski, Max Haiven, Sarah Olutola, and Graeme Webb and is an initiative of RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab, with support from the Social Sciences a Humanities Research Council of Canada. Editing and theme music by Robert Steenkamer.

* http://soundcloud.com/reimaginevalue/sets/the-workers-speculative
* http://workersspeculativesociety.org
* http://reimaginingvalue.ca

No Worker is Disposable, from Amazon to Gaza - with Mostafa Henaway (WSS012)

On this first episode of THE EXPLOITS OF PLAY we speak with Hugh Davies about alternate reality games and gaming and the paranoid world of conspiracism.

More information: https://weirdeconomies.com/podcasts/exploits-of-play

THE EXPLOITS OF PLAY is a 10-episode podcast about how games and play have moved from the margin to the centre of global capitalism. It is produced by Weird Economies and hosted by Max Haiven.

Dr. Hugh Davies is an artist, curator, and researcher. Working across digital media, academic scholarship, and creative practice, he explores the social, cultural, and political dimensions of art and technology. He’s written two books on game culture and ethnographies of play and is currently a research fellow with a focus on Chinese Platform Studies at RMIT in Melbourne.

Max Haiven is a writer and teacher and Canada Research Chair in the Radical Imagination. His most recent books are Palm Oil: The Grease of Empire (2022), Revenge Capitalism: The Ghosts of Empire, the Demons of Capital, and the Settling of Unpayable Debts (2020) and Art after Money, Money after Art: Creative Strategies Against Financialization (2018). Haiven is editor of VAGABONDS, a series of short, radical books from Pluto Press. He teaches at Lakehead University, where he directs the ReImagining Value Action Lab (RiVAL).

Weird Economies's podcast

Conspiracy Plays - Hugh Davies on the temptations of alternate reality (EoP01)

From military strategy to the corporate imaginary, from public policy to the worldview of Big Tech, game theory has dramatically reshaped power and the way live. On this second episode of THE EXPLOITS OF PLAY we speak with S. L. Amadae about how game theory and its elemental puzzle, the prisoner's dilemma, won the war for our hearts and minds, and the dire consequences for our world. 

More information: weirdeconomies.com/podcasts/exploits-of-play

THE EXPLOITS OF PLAY is a 10-episode podcast about how games and play have moved from the margin to the centre of global capitalism. It is produced by Weird Economies and hosted by Max Haiven.

Dr. Sonja Amadae teaches in the Department of Political Science at the University of Helsinki and works as a research affiliate at MIT. Dr. Amadae writes on the foundations of liberalism and the philosophy and history of political economy. Her 2016 book, Prisoners of Reason: Game Theory and Neoliberal Political Economy as well as an earlier book, Rationalizing Capitalist Democracy: The Cold War Origins of Rational Choice Liberalism shows us the world that game theory built and how this model of human behavior became so prevalent.

Max Haiven is a writer and teacher and Canada Research Chair in the Radical Imagination. His most recent books are Palm Oil: The Grease of Empire (2022), Revenge Capitalism: The Ghosts of Empire, the Demons of Capital, and the Settling of Unpayable Debts (2020) and Art after Money, Money after Art: Creative Strategies Against Financialization (2018). Haiven is editor of VAGABONDS, a series of short, radical books from Pluto Press. He teaches at Lakehead University, where he directs the ReImagining Value Action Lab (RiVAL).

The Game at War with the World- S.M. Amadae on the powers behind the prisoners' dilemma (EoP02)

From Squid Game to Hunger Games to Fortnite, how did the trope of  cruel, inescapable games become so central to the stories that animate 21st century neoliberal capitalism? With tom Boland We explore how the game changes the player and how this fits into western literature's beloved 'character arc', as well as the new-age obsession with personal transformation. 

More information: weirdeconomies.com/podcasts/exploits-of-play

THE EXPLOITS OF PLAY is a 10-episode podcast about how games and play have moved from the margin to the centre of global capitalism. It is produced by Weird Economies and hosted by Max Haiven.

Tom Boland is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Criminology at the University College Cork. His main research interests are in critique, culture, unemployment and welfare though recently Dr. Boland has been interested in the proliferance of dystopian games media such as The Hunger Games and “Squid Game”.

All Against All - Tom Boland on our modern gladiators and the real-world hunger games (EoP03)

Leading game scholar, game designer and game company impresario Mary Flanagan joins us to talk about themes in her new book (co-authoered with Mikael Jakobsson) Playing Oppression: The Legacy of Conquest and Empire in Colonialist Board Games. Along the way we speak about the yet fully realized potential of games to transform society.

Mary Flanagan is an artist, author, educator, and designer who pioneered the field of game research with her ideas on critical play. She is the founding director of the research laboratory and design studio Tiltfactor Lab, a professor of Digital Humanities at Dartmouth College and the CEO of the board game company Resonym which publishes original games and goods for social innovation.

Frontiers of Play - Mary Flanagan on games, colonialism, and imagination (EoP04)

Race and capitalism have always shaped one another, but what do we make of their relationship in an age when both systems increasingly toy with our lives in apocalyptic ways? How has the rhetoric of the cheat become part of a vicious racist reactionary politics, and what's the role of humour and fun in the struggle for a better world?

Gargi Bhattacharyya lives and works in London. She writes on issues of systemic injustice, racial capitalism, social reproduction, climate crisis and collective survival and is the author of The Futures of Racial Capitalism (2024), Rethinking Racial Capitalism (2018) and Dangerous Brown Men (2008).

THE EXPLOITS OF PLAY is a 10-episode podcast about how games and play have moved from the margin to the centre of global capitalism. It is produced by Weird Economies and hosted by Max Haiven. For full transcript and show notes please visit weirdeconomies.com.

Credits:
Founder and organizer of Weird Economies: Bahar Noorizadeh
Host: Max Haiven
Producer: Halle Frost
Sound editor: Faye Harvey
Sponsor: Canada Council for the Arts

The Cheating Other - Gargi Bhattacharyya on how racial capitalism scams us twice (EoP05)

On the blockbuster "reality" tv show "Love Island," an even number of conventionally attractive cis men and women compete to partner up and win the audience's affection in a spectacle that, like most of its kind, sees producers push heteronormative cliches to their absurd and humiliating limits. On this episode, theorist and author Sophie Lewis joins us to explore the show's popularity in a late capitalism era marked by pervasive "heteropessimism" and the relentless gamification of romance.

Sophie Lewis is an ex-academic, freelance writer, and independent scholar with teaching affiliations at Center for Research in Feminist, Queer, and Transgender Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research. In 2022, they published Abolish the Family: A Manifesto for Care and Liberation from Verso and they have an upcoming book called Enemy Feminisms set to be published in 2025 from Haymarket Books.

For full transcript and show notes please visit weirdeconomies.com.

Credits:
Founder and organizer of Weird Economies: Bahar Noorizadeh
Host: Max Haiven
Producer: Halle Frost
Sound editor: Faye Harvey
Sponsor: Canada Council for the Arts

"It Is What It Is" - Sophie Lewis on Love Island and the banality of capitalist eros (EoP07)

Read and download

ANYBODY HOME?, by Pearl Cecil Sigur Ramsey

Life After Amazon, by Anneth Chepkoech

Relentless, by Dartagnan

Thalia In Albios, by Cory Gluck

The Iron Uprising By Ibrahim Alsahary

What can speculative fiction offer today's movements for collective liberation?
On this panel, assembled to celebrate the launch of The World After Amazon: Stories from Amazon Workers (http://afteramazon.world), four activist writing facilitators share their perspectives: Max Haiven (editor of the collection), Lola Olufemi, Phil Crockett Thomas, Sarah E. Truman, and Jamie Woodcock.

This is a recording of an event that took place on 15 September 2024 at London’s Pelican House. 

This event is presented by RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab, Red Futures and Notes from Below.

Max Haiven is a writer and teacher and Canada Research Chair in the Radical Imagination. His most recent books are Palm Oil: The Grease of Empire (2022) and Revenge Capitalism: The Ghosts of Empire, the Demons of Capital, and the Settling of Unpayable Debts (2020). He is editor of VAGABONDS, a series of short, radical books from Pluto Press. He teaches at Lakehead University, where he directs the ReImagining Value Action Lab (RiVAL).

Lola Olufemi is a black feminist writer and Stuart Hall Foundation researcher from London based in the Centre for Research and Education in Art and Media at the University of Westminster. Her work focuses on the uses of the political imagination and its relationship to cultural production, political demands and futurity. She is author of Feminism Interrupted: Disrupting Power (Pluto Press, 2020), Experiments in Imagining Otherwise (Hajar Press, 2021) and a member of ‘bare minimum’, an interdisciplinary anti-work arts collective. 

Phil Crockett Thomas writes fiction and poetry, and teaches sociology and criminology at the University of Stirling. Her research focuses on social harm, justice, and creative and collaborative methods. Her fiction has appeared in Granta and on BBC Radio 4. She is the editor of Abolition Science Fiction (2022) a collection of creative writing by activists and scholars involved in the movement for prison abolition in the U.K, and of The Moon Spins the Dead Prison (2022) with Thomas Abercromby and Rosie Roberts.

Associate Professor Sarah E. Truman is a trans-disciplinary scholar in literary education, cultural studies, and the arts, and co-director the Literary Education Lab at University of Melbourne. From 2022-2025, Dr. Truman is an ARC DECRA Fellow, their project ‘Speculative Futures’ focuses on speculative fiction as an interdisciplinary method for thinking about the world and mode of literary engagement in diverse pedagogical settings (high schools, universities, and interdisciplinary scholarship). Truman is also PI on the ARC Linkage Grant ‘Reading Climate’ (2024-2026) which focuses on the relationship between Indigenous climate fictions, literary education, and climate justice. 

Jamie Woodcock is a senior lecturer in digital economy at King’s College London. He is the author of various books, including the recent Star Wars Andor collection. He is an editor of Red Futures, Notes from Below, and Historical Materialism.

Cooperative Speculative Fiction Writing as Activism

In this trailer, Max and Sarah discuss what motivated them to produce WHAT DO WE WANT? (a podcast about what draws movements together... and drives them apart) and what they're looking forward to in season 1, with episodes on heartbreak, conspiracy, despair, fantasy, shame and pleasure and special guests including Rachel Donald, Lola Olufemi, Brent Lee and Sophie Lewis.
For more information, visit http://senseandsolidarity.org/podcast

Wait... what DO we want? (trailer s01)

“Heartbreak is at the heart of revolutionary consciousness” writes Gargi Bhattacharyya. So let’s get used to it! 
In this episode of What Do We Want? (a podcast about what brings social movements together and drives them apart), Sarah and Max ask the tear-jerking questions about movement breakups, wounded hearts and petty revenge fantasies.

Should we try and hit on (recruit) everyone?
How can we keep our movement romance alive (or should we fight about the kitchen)?
And should we utter goblins have more schisms (and can we even help it)?
Then, thank god, Black feminist writer and activist Lola Olufemi joins us to set the record queer.
It’s podcasting that hits you like cheap wine and a romcom. Get back out there, tiger.
For more information, visit: https://senseandsolidarity.org/podcast/

Heartbreak (What Do We Want? S1E1)

Unless you are a lizard person hiding under a tin-foil rock, you, dear activist, have met your fair share of conspiracists.What the f*ck is wrong with these people? And why are they so damn successful in attracting others when their stories are so implausible?
In this episode of What Do We Want? (a podcast about what brings social movements together and drives them apart), Max and Sarah sail to the farthest reaches of our beautiful flat earth to answer questions about CONSPIRACY like…
What actually separates us radical malcontents from conspiracy theorists?
Should movements have better enemies?
And should we bother trying to drag people out of the rabbit-hole?
Then ex-conspiracist and anti-conspiracy podcaster Brent Lee of Some Dare Call it Conspiracy patiently explains all the things we got wrong.It’s podcasting that wakes up the sheeple.
For more information, visit: https://senseandsolidarity.org/podcast/

Conspiracy (What Do We Want? S1E2)

Do you sometimes feel like a little cartoon dog, surrounded by flames? 
Is the dog also our movements for justice? 
Are the flames systems of domination? 
Is nothing, in fact, at all “fine”?
Then break out the marshmallows and join us for an episode of What Do We Want? (a podcast about what brings social movements together and drives them apart) about despair!
This time Sarah and Max go deep and dark with questions like... 
Should we just give up hope? 
Should we embrace nostalgia?
And should we stop being sad and… just do something?
But wait! Who is that on the bleak horizon? It’s climate-corruption journalist Rachel Donald of the Planet Critical podcast, joining us to deliver the tough love and a shot of common courage!
It’s podcasting that will make you feel cruelly optimistic or your money back (it’s also free).  
Fore more information, visit https://senseandsolidarity.org/podcast/#despair

Despair (What Do We Want? S1E3)

We, an unnamed collective, must sanctimoniously inform would-be listeners that the SHAME episode of WHAT DO WE WANT? (a podcast about what brings social movements together and drives them apart) has been summarily cancelled. 
The hosts, Sarah and Max, have been found preemptively guilty of causing grievous harms to the left by asking questions including: Is pride enough? Should we wield shame? And should we cancel ourselves? 
(Also, did you hear that they invited a response from the scandalous radical writer Sophie Lewis, author of Abolish the Family and Enemy Feminisms? OMG!). 
...And by the way, “comrade,”… what made you want to listen to this f*cked up podcast anyway? Don’t you think that kind of behaviour is a little… problematic? 
To learn more about the many things we do and support us financially or otherwise, visit us at senseandsolidarity.org

Shame (What Do We Want S01E05)

Why do so many people insist on believing in systems that hurt them? 
Why do so many of us dwell in fantasy, rather than facing reality? 
(Wait, is dwelling in fantasy an option? Why weren’t we told?) 
In this episode of WHAT DO WE WANT? (a podcast about what brings social movements together and drives them apart) Max and Sarah dive deep into the murky waters of FANTASY, desire and illusion to ask questions like: 
How do we break through destructive ideologies? 
How can we win arguments (and when should we)? 
And should we just abandon activism? 
Then we’re joined by veteran Toronto-based activist, movement trainer and editor Sharmeen Khan, who tells us about the state repression that broke her fantasies and what she dreams of now. 
It's podcasting that accompanies you right to the precipice of Mount Doom and helps you throw away your Precious.

ACTION ALERT! Our guest, Sharmeen, is facing outrageous, repressive charges for standing up for Palestinian human rights. Read Naomi Klein’s summary of the case (https://breachmedia.ca/naomi-klein-calls-on-heather-reisman-drop-charges-indigo-11/), and please consider donating to the legal defence fund (https://www.tcjf.ca) or signing the letter demanding the charges be dropped (https://www.cjpme.org/drop_the_charges). 

To learn more about the many things we do and support us financially or otherwise, visit us at Sense and Solidarity .org

Fantasy (What Do We Want S1E4)

Live, in front of a seductive studio audience, Sarah and Max bring to a climax the first intoxicating season of What Do We Want? (a podcast about what brings social movements together and drives them apart) with an episode on PLEASURE.

They are joined by dazzling special guests Sita Balani and Zrinka Balo, to explore salacious questions including: 
Should we prioritize activism being pleasurable? 
In a world of work and worry, is taking pleasure itself an important form of activism? 
And in our quest for collective liberation, what kinds of sacrifices can and should we expect of ourselves and others?
It’s podcasting that goes beyond the pleasure principle and puts its finger right on the most sensitive questions.
For more information, visit https://senseandsolidarity.org/

Pleasure (What Do We Want? S1E6)

The world is giving fascism in 2025, so we’ve been away writing, reading and getting ready to serve up more on that topic. 

Meanwhile, here’s a chattier, less-structured version of our usual schtick - recorded over the holidays, live in front of a studio (well, living room) audience. 

Tune in to hear:
* Sarah talk about why we shouldn’t argue with our relatives and why fascists are much like guys who send dick pics.
* Max explain how games influenced fascists like Steve Bannon and why he’s obsessed with a rat.
We also get asked questions from the living-room-and-online-studio audience. 

For more information, visit: https://senseandsolidarity.org/


Fascists, Rats, and Dick Pics: Holiday Special (What Do We Want S1E7)

In this episode we talked with Luce about her latest work on digitalised tyranny. About how private property structures the terms of the contract and gives rise to ever more terms; how the far right are both breaking the rules and playing by the rules to break the game; and about the overall structure of desire across society and what it’d mean to exit the transsexual contract of libidinal intelligibility, towards a horizon of hospitality and indeterminacy, driven by joy.

Luce deLire is a ship with eight sails and she lies down by the quay. As a philosopher, she publishes on the metaphysics of infinity and early modern philosophy but also on art, queer theory, anti-racism, postcolonialism, and political theory. In her performances, she embodies figures of the collective imaginary. She is currently an assistant professor at the department of philosophy at Humboldt University, Berlin. For more (including booking), see getaphilosopher.com and IG :@Luce_deLire 

Against the Fascist Game is the second season of The Exploits of Play, a podcast about games and capitalism. Join host Max Haiven and producer Faye Harvey as they interview game designers, critical theorists and grassroots activists struggling with games to understand, confront and abolish the rising threat of fascism in our times. We ask questions including: how is the far-right around the world using games as platforms for ideology, recruiting and violence, both close to home and around the world? How have vicious reactionary politics emerged from a form of capitalism where most people feel trapped in an unwinnable game? What do fascism and antifascism mean today? And what role, if any do play and games have in confronting the fascist threat and creating a new world? The Exploits of Play is a production of Weird Economies, a platform for exploring the intricacies and excesses of our economic imaginaries, in cooperation with RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab.

Property Pieties - Luce deLire on digital tyrants, trans panics, and revolutionary hospitalities

On 28 April 2025, Max Haiven presented an outline of his forthcoming book "The Player and the Played: Gamification, Financialization and (anti-)Fascism" at Brussels' Au JUS space.
If fascism names a form of tyranny that incubates within capitalism and bears its' traces, what kind of 21st century fascism emerges from financialized capitalism? 
1. Why do we feel trapped in an unwinnable game?
2. How can we think about fasicsm?
3. What is financialization?
4. What is gamification?
5. What is "derivative" and what  is new about today's fascism?
6. How can we make sense of gamified fascist violence?
7. Why do fascist cheats succeed (and why is cheating so central to their rhetoric?)
8. What is fascist worldbuilding (and worldrazing)?
9. What is the antifascist game?


From financialized capitalism to gamified fascism

In this episode, we talked about how fascism transforms itself in and across different historical conjunctures; how the far right uses race and gender as key points of articulation and why we should be engaging with psychoanalytic theories of fascism alongside radical anti-fascist thinkers; our current moment of transition as one of systemic instability, uncertainty and reorientation; and how in the contemporary moment of resurgent fascism, migration must be thought together with carcerality, especially when deportation has become the emblem of the Trump administration.

Alberto Toscano is the author of Fanaticism: On the Uses of an Idea (Verso, 2010; 2017, 2nd ed.), Cartographies of the Absolute (with Jeff Kinkle, Zero Books, 2015), La abstracción real. Filosofia, estética y capital (Palinodia, 2021), Terms of Disorder: Keywords for an Interregnum (Seagull, 2023), Late Fascism: Race, Capitalism and the Politics of Crisis (Verso, 2023), and Communism in Philosophy: Essays on Alain Badiou and Toni Negri (Brill, 2025). He is the co-editor of the 3-volume The SAGE Handbook of Marxism (with Sara Farris, Bev Skeggs and Svenja Bromberg, SAGE, 2022), Ruth Wilson Gilmore's Abolition Geography: Essays in Liberation (with Brenna Bhandar, Verso, 2022), and Georges Bataille's Critical Essays, vols. I and II (with Benjamin Noys, Seagull, 2023 and 2025). He is series editor of Seagull Essays and The Italian List for Seagull Books, and a columnist for the magazine In These Times. He has also translated the work of Antonio Negri, Alain Badiou, Franco Fortini, and Furio Jesi.

Against the Fascist Game is the second season of The Exploits of Play, a podcast about games and capitalism. Join host Max Haiven and producer Faye Harvey as they interview game designers, critical theorists and grassroots activists struggling with games to understand, confront and abolish the rising threat of fascism in our times. We ask questions including: how is the far-right around the world using games as platforms for ideology, recruiting and violence, both close to home and around the world? How have vicious reactionary politics emerged from a form of capitalism where most people feel trapped in an unwinnable game? What do fascism and antifascism mean today? And what role, if any do play and games have in confronting the fascist threat and creating a new world? The Exploits of Play is a production of Weird Economies, a platform for exploring the intricacies and excesses of our economic imaginaries, in cooperation with RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab.

Foul Freedoms - Alberto Toscano on fascist rule making/breaking (Exploits of Play S2E02)

On 21 May 2025, Sarah Stein Lubrano, author of Don't Talk About Politics: How to Change 21st-Century Minds sat down with Max Haiven at Berlin's Shakespeare and Sons bookshop.

"Democracy is dying because we are clinging to a dangerous and outdated myth: talking about politics can change people's minds. It doesn't.

This provocative debut from a bold new voice combines a fascinating range of research to show us the psychological and sociological factors that really shape our politics.

Drawing from ancient philosophy to modern neuroscience and social science, Dr Sarah Stein Lubrano reveals the surprising truth about how people think and behave politically. From friendship to community organizing and social infrastructure, she explores the actions that actually do change minds.

In a world where politics keeps getting more irrational, dishonest, violent and chaotic, it's getting much harder to reach people with words alone. So people who really care about democracy must ask: how can we stop arguing and do the deep work to build stronger foundations for political life, and a better world for us all?"

Buy from Bloomsbury

Don't Talk about Politics: Changing 21st Century Minds - Berlin launch

This episode was recorded as part of a live panel event at Pelican House on the 13 April 2025 celebrating the London launch of Max’s board game Billionaires and Guillotines, published by Pluto Press. In this episode we talked about the role of games and play in the coming revolution; the game mechanics of Billionaires & Guillotines and what its format might offer players; why Max chose the guillotine as the instrument of abolition; and we even played a game role-playing a war profiteer, an aristocrat and a tech overlord.

Danny Dorling is Oxford geography professor and bestselling author of books including Seven Children: Inequality and Britain's Next Generation and Peak Injustice: Solving Britain’s Inequality Crisis.

Meg Jayanth is an award-winning narrative and game designer whose credits include 80 Days, Sunless Sea and Horizon Zero Dawn.

Max Haiven is Canada Research Chair in the Radical Imagination, writer of books including Palm Oil: The Grease of Empire and Revenge Capitalism: The Ghosts of Empire, the Demons of Capital, and the Settling of Unpayable Debts.

Against the Fascist Game is the second season of The Exploits of Play, a podcast about games and capitalism. Join host Max Haiven and producer Faye Harvey as they interview game designers, critical theorists and grassroots activists struggling with games to understand, confront and abolish the rising threat of fascism in our times. We ask questions including: how is the far-right around the world using games as platforms for ideology, recruiting and violence, both close to home and around the world? How have vicious reactionary politics emerged from a form of capitalism where most people feel trapped in an unwinnable game? What do fascism and antifascism mean today? And what role, if any do play and games have in confronting the fascist threat and creating a new world? The Exploits of Play is a production of Weird Economies, a platform for exploring the intricacies and excesses of our economic imaginaries, in cooperation with RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab.

Played by Plutocrats -  with Danny Dorling, Meghna Jayanth and Max Haiven

A short selection from Max Haiven's forthcoming book The Player and the Played:  How Gamified Capitalism led to 21st Century Fascism in which he goes over why it's fruitful for antifascists to keep three meanings of fascism in mind. For more information, visit http://maxhaiven.com

The riddle of the fascist sphinx

In this episode we talked about how we got from Gamergate to the far right fascist politics we’re seeing unleashed today. Gamergate refers to a strange phenomenon that occurred in 2014, where a group of video game fans used online platforms - from Reddit to 4Chan to Craigslist - to create a harassment campaign against feminist gamemakers and critics, making tactics like doxxing and shitposting widespread. Gamergate is a signature moment in the ascendency of the new far right. We spoke with Adrienne about how Silicon Valley and its economic framework gave rise to the platforms implicated in fascist movements like Gamergate; whether we are embroiled in the normalisation of dark play; and what the Left should be doing in the face of our servitude to privatised digital infrastructure.

Adrienne Massanari is an Associate Professor at the School of Communication at American University and affiliate faculty with the AU Games Center. Her research interests include digital culture, platform politics, game studies, pop culture, and gender and race online. Her most recent book, "Gaming Democracy: How Silicon Valley Leveled Up the Far Right" (MIT Press, 2024), discusses the connections between the far right, Silicon Valley, and gaming culture. She is also the author of "Participatory Culture, Community, and Play: Learning from Reddit" (Peter Lang, 2015).

Against the Fascist Game is the second season of The Exploits of Play, a podcast about games and capitalism. Join host Max Haiven and producer Faye Harvey as they interview game designers, critical theorists and grassroots activists struggling with games to understand, confront and abolish the rising threat of fascism in our times. We ask questions including: how is the far-right around the world using games as platforms for ideology, recruiting and violence, both close to home and around the world? How have vicious reactionary politics emerged from a form of capitalism where most people feel trapped in an unwinnable game? What do fascism and antifascism mean today? And what role, if any do play and games have in confronting the fascist threat and creating a new world? The Exploits of Play is a production of Weird Economies, a platform for exploring the intricacies and excesses of our economic imaginaries, in cooperation with RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab.

Fanatical Fun - Adrienne Massanari on the path from #Gamergate to Trump II

In this episode, we discussed the concept of microfascism, which refers to everyday life practices, and intersubjective relations that establish power dynamics and form the organisation of desire. The yearning for and supplication to power is at work in everyone and must constantly be guarded against, for these are easily amenable to fascist organisations and movements. As the saying goes: “Kill the cop in your head!” We also discussed martial masculinity as it manifests in combat sports such as Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) and Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), as well as figures of such franchises such as Dana White, who is a close associate of Trump and many other fascist personalities.

Jack Z. Bratich writes about the intersection of popular culture and political culture. He applies social and political theory to such topics as social movements, craft culture, patriarchal subjectivities, and the cultures of secrecy. He is professor of journalism and media studies at Rutgers University and author of On Microfascism: Gender, War, Death (Common Notions, 2022) and Conspiracy Panics: Political Rationality and Popular Culture (2008). His latest publication is “What Can a Body Do(om)?: Fratriarchy’s Affects and the Capacities to Break Together” (2025) in Capacities to: Affect Up Against Fascism.

Against the Fascist Game is the second season of The Exploits of Play, a podcast about games and capitalism. Join Max Haiven and Faye Harvey as they interview game designers, critical theorists and grassroots activists struggling with games to understand, confront and abolish the rising threat of fascism in our times. We ask questions including: how is the far-right using games as platforms for ideology, recruiting and violence, both close to home and around the world? How have vicious reactionary politics emerged from a form of capitalism where most people feel trapped in an unwinnable game? What do fascism and antifascism mean today? And what role, if any do play and games have in confronting the fascist threat and creating a new world? The Exploits of Play is a production of Weird Economies, a platform for exploring the intricacies and excesses of our economic imaginaries, in cooperation with RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab.

Fight Fight Fight - Jack Bratich on fascist masculinities, micro and macro (Exploits of Play S2E05)

Max and Sarah sketch a framework for understanding three core fascist motivations, based on Max's forthcoming book The Player and the Played: From Gamified Capitalism to 21st Century Fascism.
- An OPPORTUNIST motivation to personally benefit from authoritarianism
- A PARANOID fear that the "natural" order is collapsing
- A PSYCHEDELIC infatuation with the power to bend and break reality

THOUGHT SNACK is an occasional podcast from Sense & Solidarity where Sarah Stein Lubrano and Max Haiven explore the big ideas that make and break our world.

Sense & Solidarity is a platform where people who want to radically change the world can learn together and build individual and collective capacity. https://senseandsolidarity.org/

Sarah Stein Lubrano is a writer and researcher who specializes in the social psychology of politics. She is the author of Don't Talk About Politics: How to Change 21st-Century Minds (2025). https://www.sarahsteinlubrano.com

Max Haiven is an researcher and educator who uses writing, teaching, games, podcasts and other techniques for the radical imagination. His latest book is Palm Oil: The Grease of Empire (2022). https://maxhaiven.com/

Music by Dan Gouly.

What Motivates Fascists?: Opportunism, Paranoia and Psychedelic Power (THOUGHTSNACK 01)

Sarah and Max try and figure out why everyone is so obsessed with (mis)counting babies. Of course, we talk about capitalism, imperialism, patriarchy and much more.

Here's what set us off:

"The Birth-Rate Crisis Isn’t as Bad as You’ve Heard—It’s Worse" in The Atlantic.
"How does Low Fertility Affect Economic Growth, Worldwide?" in Rocking our Priors podcast

****

THOUGHTSNACK is an occasional podcast from Sense & Solidarity where Sarah Stein Lubrano and Max Haiven explore the big ideas that make and break our world.

Sense & Solidarity is a platform where people who want to radically change the world can learn together and build individual and collective capacity.
http://senseandsolidarity.org/

Sarah Stein Lubrano is a writer and researcher who specializes in the social psychology of politics. She is the author of Don't Talk About Politics: How to Change 21st-Century Minds (2025).
http://www.sarahsteinlubrano.com

Max Haiven is an researcher and educator who uses writing, teaching, games, podcasts and other techniques for the radical imagination. His latest book is Palm Oil: The Grease of Empire (2022).
http://maxhaiven.com/

Music by Dan Gouly

Have more and/or fewer babies (THOUGHTSNACK02)

In this episode we discuss the contradiction within games between gender play and fantasies to control and order; video games as reproductive technology; the playfulness of the far right which could be characterised as play without pleasure; how rulebreaking and gamebreaking play out in liberal democracy and fascism; and the possibilities of play and protest in antifascist practices and riotous revolution.

Vicky Osterweil is a writer, worker and agitator based in Philadelphia. She is a founding member of the anarchist writing collective CAW, which can be found at cawshinythings.com She is the author of In Defense of Looting and the forthcoming book The Extended Universe: How Disney Destroyed the Movies and Took Over the World.

Against the Fascist Game is the second season of The Exploits of Play, a podcast about games and capitalism. Join Max Haiven and Faye Harvey as they interview game designers, critical theorists and grassroots activists struggling with games to understand, confront and abolish the rising threat of fascism in our times. We ask questions including: how is the far-right using games as platforms for ideology, recruiting and violence, both close to home and around the world? How have vicious reactionary politics emerged from a form of capitalism where most people feel trapped in an unwinnable game? What do fascism and antifascism mean today? And what role, if any do play and games have in confronting the fascist threat and creating a new world? The Exploits of Play is a production of Weird Economies, a platform for exploring the intricacies and excesses of our economic imaginaries, in cooperation with RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab.

Rulemakers and Rulebreakers - Vicky Osterweil on fascist games and and antifascist play

In this inaugural episode of The Order of Unmanagable Risks we talk with artist and writer James Bridle, about the politics of algorithmic opacity, populist technologies, and new ways of seeing through capitalism’s darkness.

James' artworks have been commissioned by galleries and institutions and exhibited worldwide and on the internet. Their writing on literature, culture and networks has appeared in magazines and newspapers including Wired, the Atlantic, the New Statesman, the Guardian, and the Observer. "New Dark Age", their book about technology, knowledge, and the end of the future, was published by Verso (UK & US) in 2018, and they wrote and presented "New Ways of Seeing" for BBC Radio 4 in 2019 (https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000458m). Their work can be found at http://jamesbridle.com.

The Order of Unmanagable Risks is an occasional podcast hosted by Dr. Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou and Max Haiven about capitalism, anxiety and points inbetween. It is produce by the Common Anxieties Research Project (http://anxious.community) and supported by the ReImagining Value Action Lab (RiVAL) and UCL's Institute for Advanced Study.

"The gifts of darkness?" with James Bridle (OUR001)

The ReImagining Value Action Lab (RiVAL) is a research and creativity workshop for the radical imagination active around the world and locally in Thunder Bay, Canada.

The ReImagining Value Action Lab

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