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Oliver Larkin, activist, union organizer, and Democratic Socialist, joins us this week to discuss his run for election to the U.S. House as a Florida representative.

We talk about Oliver's campaign, how South Florida and Greater Miami are becoming new headquarters for tech companies including Palantir, and what we can do electorally to support working people instead of billionaires.

Further Reading

• Find Oliver's campaign at https://www.oliverforcongress.com

• https://theintercept.com/2026/02/26/iran-war-powers-vote-democrats-gottheimer-moskowitz

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On this special Patreon episode, we talked to antitrust hero and Fordham University law professor Zephyr Teachout about surveillance pricing and surveillance wages.

From airlines charging us more to fly home if they see we've recently searched "funeral arrangements" to rideshare companies paying less per ride if your bank account is low, we explored the present and future possibilities of data as a tool for economic and labor exploitation.

Book Mentioned

• Karen Levy, Data Driven: Truckers, Technology, and the New Workplace Surveillance

Further Reading

• FTC Report, https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2025/01/ftc-surveillance-pricing-study-indicates-wide-range-personal-data-used-set-individualized-consumer

• ACLU Report, https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/surveillance-pricing

• Electronic Frontier Foundation on surveillance pricing, https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/08/fight-surveillance-pricing-we-need-privacy-first

• Maryland ban on surveillance pricing, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/apr/29/maryland-grocery-stores-ban-surveillance-pricing

• New York legislation, https://spectrumlocalnews.com/nys/central-ny/politics/2026/05/19/surveillance-pricing-

• Cory Doctorow on surveillance wages, https://doctorow.medium.com/https-pluralistic-net-2026-04-06-empiricism-washing-veena-dubal-d63fef485503

In this week's episode we begin to go into the philosophy around consciousness and AI as New Atheist relic Richard Dawkins recently claimed "Claudia" was conscious. What are the merits and issues of thinking about consciousness in the context of AI? Later we discuss a recent piece in Jacobin arguing against data center resistance.

Further Reading

• Richard Dawkins in Unherd, https://unherd.com/2026/05/when-claudia-met-claudius

• Holly Buck in Jacobin, https://jacobin.com/2026/04/ai-data-center-moratorium-democracy

• Émile in Salon, https://www.salon.com/2017/07/29/from-the-enlightenment-to-the-dark-ages-how-new-atheism-slid-into-the-alt-right/

• Taylor Lorenz podcast episode, https://sites.libsyn.com/566555/site/big-tech-is-watching-you-with-taylor-lorenz

• Brian Merchant on Substack, https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/the-data-center-rebellion-is-only