Episode 227: SSG The Games of Our Lives

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Yes, we humans are obsessed with playing games. They’re harmless fun, giving winners some bragging rights; in that way they resemble the most important game we play, the Status Game. I discuss this Greatest Game in Episode 227: The Games of Our Lives.

In this episode, I read from: Will Storr's book The Status Game: On Human Life and How to Play It; Franz de Waal's book Our Inner Ape: a Leading Primatologist Explains Why We Are Who We Are (available online here in PDF format); Tim Wu's book The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads; and two academic papers de Waal used to support his book. I also relay from memory detail about those without mouths—infants—from The History of English Podcast.

I'll also link to an interview with Will Storr on the You Are Not So Smart podcast. It's a good introduction to his work.

Musically, I play Lance Strate in the opening commenting on our complete inability to deal with lots and lots of anything, backed by KMFDM's "Attack"; Julie & Rolf and The Campfire Gang sing us out.

Episode 226: Categorization & Confirmation

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For almost a decade now, I've shared intrusive surveillance crap with you done in the name of advertising and marketing. Worse, today I need to revisit that crap to show that it's now a probable reality. Thus, Episode 226: Categorization & Confirmation.

In this episode, I read from: an article from The Markup called "From “Heavy Purchasers” of Pregnancy Tests to the Depression-Prone: We Found 650,000 Ways Advertisers Label You"; Shoshana Zuboff's book, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight For a Human Future At The New Frontier of Power; Antonio Garciá Martínez's book, Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley; An article about the Frootie Fone's invisible face reader from ITechPost called "Is Your iPhone Spying on You by Taking Invisible Photos? Apple Explains Infrared Camera"; and a Frootie support page filled with very specific and disturbing language.

I play: A tikki tokker named Brie who showed with an infrared camera all that darned flashing every five seconds. Musically, KMFDM backs Shoshana Zuboff herself in the intro; and I close today with Mistle Thrush.