Representation for the Natural World (An Earth Month Episode)
With Earth Day coming up, we wanted to share a classic TLA episode about the climate crisis. Jill Lepore proposes an alternate reality in which Americans ratified an environmental rights amendment to the U.S. Constitution granting representation to the natural world. That never happened... but what would the world look like if it had? For more episodes of The Last Archive about the environment, check out For the Birds and Parakeet Panic. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
--------
41:25
The Terminator from X Man: The Elon Musk Origin Story
Elon Musk has claimed that AI is humanity’s “biggest existential threat.” Paradoxically, Musk is also working to create artificial intelligence. Why? Jill Lepore tours through a century of imagined robot rebellions, and argues that these stories are never only about robots. So what’s Elon Musk really afraid of when he wrings his hands over AI? In this final episode, Lepore argues that while Musk may be a visionary, “every piece of Muskism has origins in a future foretold in science fiction, long, long ago, as a cautionary tale.”See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
--------
27:47
Body Snatchers from X Man: The Elon Musk Origin Story
In 2022, Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion, and renamed it X. When asked why he wanted to own the social media network, Musk talked a lot about something he called the “woke mind virus.” Where does the idea of a mind virus come from? Jill Lepore looks to Cold War science fiction and the recently uncovered writings of Elon Musk’s grandfather in South Africa.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
--------
27:24
Baby X from X Man: The Elon Musk Origin Story
The science fiction that Silicon Valley techno-billionaires like Elon Musk adore concerns gleaming futures in which fantastically powerful, immensely rich men colonize other planets. In this episode, Jill Lepore looks at some of the science fiction that’s usually left out of this vision — science fiction by and about women.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
--------
27:52
The Dogefather from X Man: The Elon Musk Origin Story
In 2021, Elon Musk started calling himself The Dogefather to signal his support for Dogecoin, a cryptocurrency based on a joke meme about a dog. That dog is now wagging the tail of the world’s economy. In this episode, Jill Lepore looks at Silicon Valley's cryptocurrency craze through the lens of some very old science fiction. Like everything else about Muskism that purports to be futuristic, this idea is a relic, whose history serves as a warning.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
The Last Archive is a show about the history of truth, and the historical context for our current fake news, post-truth moment. It’s a show about how we know what we know, and why it seems, these days, as if we don’t know anything at all anymore. The show is written & hosted by Ben Naddaff-Hafrey, and was created by the historian Jill Lepore. iHeartMedia is the exclusive podcast partner of Pushkin Industries.
UK