In the 1960s, artists, writers, and activists prefigured the wider discourse around automation and made it a central concern of their politics. Drawing upon James and Grace Lee Boggs’s notion of the cybercultural era, and examining the works of Martin Luther King Jr., Noah Purifoy, and the Black Panthers, Brian Bartell provides a crucial key to understanding the historical dynamics responsible for our technocapitalist, AI-driven present. Here, Bartell is joined in conversation with John Elrick.

Brian Bartell teaches courses on politics and aesthetics, media studies, and race and technology studies at Occidental College in Los Angeles and at the California Institute of Technology. Bartell is author of On the Eve of the Cybercultural Revolution: Black Power and Capitalism in the 1960s.

John Elrick is visiting assistant professor of geography at Vassar College.

EPISODE REFERENCES:

-From Counterculture to Cyberculture / Fred Turner

-“The Negro and Cybernation,” James Boggs, speech delivered at the First Annual Conference on the Cybercultural Revolution, 1964.

-Ad Hoc Committee on the Triple Revolution (AHC), The Triple Revolution (pamphlet), 1964.

-National Commission on Technology, Automation, and Economic Progress, Report Vol. 1: Technology and the American Economy, 1966

-Revolution and Evolution in the Twentieth Century / Grace Lee Boggs

-Club of Rome, The Limits to Growth, 1972

-Ten Point Program, 1966 and 1972 (presented at Community Survival Conference, Oakland, CA); particularly, “People’s Community Control of Modern Technology” and Huey P. Newton’s “The Technology Question” within.

-The Chosen Place, the Timeless People / Paule Marshall

PRAISE FOR THE BOOK:
"Incisive, original, and beautifully written, On the Eve of the Cybercultural Revolution exposes the interconnections between race, technology, and capitalism. Brian Bartell shows that the cybercultural revolution was central to the Black Power movement as it opened up avenues for envisioning freedom from the conditions of reproduction and labor under racial capitalism."
—Neda Atanasoski

"Highly relevant to the present moment, On the Eve of the Cybercultural Revolution presents a vital argument about the Black Power movement’s insights into the relationship between capitalism, technology, and racism. In so doing, Brian Bartell makes a fascinatingly original contribution to conversations about the role of automation in the ‘technocapitalist present.’"
—Jonathan Flatley

On the Eve of the Cybercultural Revolution: Black Power and Capitalism in the 1960s by Brian Bartell is available from University of Minnesota Press. Thank you for listening.

Far from being unrealistic, abolition is an indispensable part of a realist politics. In the book Prison Abolition for Realists, Anna Terwiel examines the work of abolitionist thinkers and activists since the 1960s—Michel Foucault, Liat Ben-Moshe, Angela Y. Davis, and more—to argue that prison abolition is a realist political project. Terwiel is joined here in conversation with Kirstine Taylor. This conversation took place in late 2025.

Anna Terwiel is assistant professor of political science at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, and codirector of Trinity’s Prison Education Project. Terwiel is author of Prison Abolition for Realists.

Kirstine Taylor is associate professor of political science and the Center for Law, Justice & Culture at Ohio University. Taylor is author of Sunbelt Capitalism and the Making of the Carceral State.

EPISODE REFERENCES:

Foucault / Discipline and Punish

Prison Information Group

Prison+Neighborhood Arts/Education Project

Nils Christie

Louk Hulsman

Angela Davis

Liat Ben-Moshe / Decarcerating Disability

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick

Thomas Mathiesen

W. E. B. Du Bois

Mariame Kaba

Erin R. Pineda / Seeing Like an Activist

Communities Against Rape and Abuse (CARA)

Praise for the book:

“Both clearly written and timely in its subject matter, Prison Abolition for Realists offers a cogent way of thinking about abolition. Anna Terwiel intervenes in the debate over whether abolition is utopian in its aims and excellently frames her argument in the tradition of political realism.”

—Ali Aslam, coauthor of Earthborn Democracy: A Political Theory of Entangled Life

Prison Abolition for Realists by Anna Terwiel is available from University of Minnesota Press. Thank you for listening.

During the late 1950s through the early 1970s, Helen Hoover’s stories and essays of life in the wilderness on northern Minnesota’s Gunflint Lake, published in popular magazines and several bestselling books (including The Gift of the Deer in 1966 and A Place in the Woods in 1969), found millions of fans and earned her accolades alongside nature writers like Sigurd Olson, Rachel Carson, Sally Carrighar, and Calvin Rutstrum. Hoover’s own unlikely history of leaving a corporate career in Chicago for a small cabin without electricity or running water is just one chapter of the remarkable life that David Hakensen describes in Her Place in the Woods: The Life of Helen Hoover. This first complete biography illuminates how Helen Hoover (1910–1984) made a place for herself and for countless readers in, as she put it, the world of her time. On October 20, 2025, Hakensen was joined in conversation with Annette Atkins at the Minnesota Historical Society. This is the full audio of their conversation.

David Hakensen is an award-winning public relations executive with more than forty years of experience. He has served on several nonprofit boards and was president of the executive council of the Minnesota Historical Society from 2018-2023.

Annette Atkins is a scholar, teacher, public historian, and professor emerita at Saint John's University and the College of Saint Benedict in Collegeville, Minnesota. Atkins is author of Creating Minnesota: A History from the Inside Out.

Praise for the book:

"None of it was easy. None of it was a straight line. Much was laced with human paradox and contradiction and courage. David tells Helen’s remarkable story with grace and understanding, helping readers to discover the real woman behind the myth and why her place in the woods is still the stuff of dreams."
—Douglas Wood, author of A Wild Path

"A compelling portrait of an uncompromising artist. It is an excellent companion to her works and will surely assist a long-overdue Helen Hoover revival."
—Ann McCutchan, author of The Life She Wished to Live

Her Place in the Woods: The Life of Helen Hoover is available from University of Minnesota Press.
Thank you for listening.