Europarama
30 episodes - English - Latest episode: over 2 years ago -Europarama is a podcast series about science fiction and the future of Europe brought to you by the Are We Europe podcasting family.
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Episodes
Another Now with Yanis Varoufakis
January 20, 2022 06:00 - 27 minutes - 25.3 MBThe "other now" described by Varoufakis could exist somewhere in a fissure of the time-space continuum. In this dimension, capitalism (as we know it) is dead, but a liberal and democratic society is thriving. Yanis Varoufakis is an economist, politician and a former Minister of Finance of Greece, member of the Greek Parliament, co-founder of the European Transnational Party "DiEM25", and science fiction writer. This episode is hosted by Giuseppe Porcaro, and co-hosted with Alberto Cottica,...
History of Witness
August 13, 2021 04:00 - 36 minutes - 33.1 MBIn this final episode, Giuseppe Porcaro, Alberto Cottica, and the Architect of Witness, Yudhanjaya Wijeratne, talk about to the history of Witness, and wrap up the whole season. For this season, Europarama joins forces with Edgeryders and their Science Fiction Economics Lab as they had an incredible idea. Instead of writing academic papers, they decided to channel out-of-the box economic research by building the world of Witness. Witness is a fictional city floating in a post-climate cha...
Aethnography
July 30, 2021 04:00 - 27 minutes - 25.3 MBWe explore the fictional academic discipline of aethnography - the study of the behavior of humans engaged in mutual interaction - which has a solid tradition in the universe of Witness. Giuseppe and Alberto are joined by Amelia Hassoun, senior researcher and lead ethnographer at Edgeryders. For this season, Europarama joins forces with Edgeryders and their Science Fiction Economics Lab as they had an incredible idea. Instead of writing academic papers, they decided to channel out-of-the...
Avantgrid
July 16, 2021 04:00 - 24 minutes - 22.8 MBIn this episode, Giuseppe and Alberto, together with guest Hugi Ásgeirsson, sail through a sector of the fictional world Witness known as Avantgrid. Hugi is one of the co-directors of Edgeryders and director of blivande - a participatory culture hub in Stockholm. For this season, Europarama joins forces with Edgeryders and their Science Fiction Economics Lab as they had an incredible idea. Instead of writing academic papers, they decided to channel out-of-the box economic research by buildi...
The Covenant
July 02, 2021 04:00 - 27 minutes - 25.3 MBThe Covenant is religious institution Distrikt of Witness, tracing its history back to the grand powers of Roman Catholicism. For this season, Europarama joins forces with Edgeryders and their Science Fiction Economics Lab as they had an incredible idea. Instead of writing academic papers, they decided to channel out-of-the box economic research by building the world of Witness. Witness is a fictional city floating in a post-climate change Planet Earth, where people are organised by distr...
Hygge
June 18, 2021 04:00 - 21 minutes - 19.9 MBHygge is the first Distrikt of Witness. It was initially meant to be the " nervous system of Witness." The political history of Hygge begins with the founding of Witness itself. For this season, Europarama joins forces with Edgeryders and their Science Fiction Economics Lab as they had an incredible idea. Instead of writing academic papers, they decided to channel out-of-the box economic research by building the world of Witness. Witness is a fictional city floating in a post-climate c...
Sailing to Witness
June 04, 2021 04:00 - 32 minutes - 29.7 MBIn this episode, we sail to the Witness - an open-source fictional world exploring the future of economy. Giuseppe Porcaro and Alberto Cottica, your guides for the season, along with Yudhanjaya Wijeratne, a science fiction author and Architect of Witness, take you there. For this season, Europarama joins forces with Edgeryders and their Science Fiction Economics Lab as they had an incredible idea. Instead of writing academic papers, they decided to channel out-of-the box economic research b...
Season 2: Witness - Trailer
May 28, 2021 10:56 - 1 minute - 1.59 MBFor this season, Europarama joins forces with Edgeryders and their Science Fiction Economics Lab by building the world of Witness - a fictional city floating in a post-climate change Planet Earth. On Witness, people are organised by districts, each experimenting a different social contract and economic model. Witness is an open-source fictional world. You are encouraged to contribute to its making or to freely use it for your artistic or research projects. Join in: https://scifieconomics.wor...
Kármán line
May 18, 2020 07:08 - 35 minutes - 32.2 MBIn this episode we explore, with Julijonas Urbonas, the boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and outer space, the so-called Karman Line, at 100 Km above us. What new politics, culture, and art can be conceived when the law of physics as we know them get completely subverted? This episode was originally foreseen to be recorded live, in the frame of the Culture Forum of Kaunas, European Capital of Culture 2022. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic the Forum has been moved online. It takes place on 20...
TWENTYFORTY
May 07, 2020 07:00 - 36 minutes - 33.6 MBWhy should it be unscientific to think about the future? Why shouldn’t we be allowed to take a critical scientific stance in thinking about the future? There is no contradiction in being scientific and turning towards the future—towards what is not yet known. Wouldn’t it be scientific, in the best sense of the word, if researchers examined utopias and investigated, with the best available knowledge, why they cannot become true? The Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Societ...
Pandemics, science fiction, and the future of Europe
April 13, 2020 11:11 - 1 hour - 57.2 MBPandemics have been a running theme throughout science fiction and many cross-genre movies, from zombies to aliens. But what happens when Europe (and the world) has become a huge set of a pandemic, and it is not a science fiction, even if it closely looks like it? Giuseppe Porcaro is in conversation with Anthony Straeger, the director of the Berlin Sci-fi Film Festival, and Isabella Hermann, political scientist and expert of A.I. and ethics. A (partial) watch list of the movies we speak a...
The Barefoot Emperor
March 04, 2020 05:46 - 45 minutes - 41.9 MBDiscover how the last King of the Belgians becomes the first Emperor of Europe. Giuseppe Porcaro meets film director Jessica Woodworth to discuss her latest movie, The Barefoot Emperor. After suffering a gunshot wound to the ear during an unfortunate incident in Sarajevo, the King of the Belgians wakes up on a Croatian island, once Tito’s famed summer residence. While he tries to escape from the island to save his Kingdom, an envoy arrives announcing that the King has been chosen to become ...
The Science Fiction Economic Lab' Special
November 03, 2019 16:05 - 23 minutes - 21.9 MBIn this special episode Giuseppe Porcaro, Alberto Cottica and Nadia EN discuss the Science Fiction Economics Lab on November 11th from 14:30 to 19:00 (with after party) in Brussels, Belgium. Be among the first 4 people to share this episode from the Europarama Facebook page and win a free ticket for the keynote of Cory Doctorow. ______________________________________________________ The Science Fiction Economics Lab will bring together SF authors, economists, technologists, activists and ...
The future is now (Bonus episode)
July 25, 2019 07:05 - 35 minutes - 32.8 MBIn this season finale, Giuseppe Porcaro looks back at the experiment of Europarama together with a stellar line-up of contributors that join in to explore the value of science fiction as a method to dive into Europe's futures. Cory Doctorow is a Canadian-British blogger, journalist, and science fiction author who serves as co-editor of the blog Boing Boing. He is an activist in favour of liberalising copyright laws and a proponent of the Creative Commons organization, using some of their l...
Skywalkers (Feat. Gabriel Richard-Molard)
July 18, 2019 10:52 - 27 minutes - 22.2 MBWe are around the time when we celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Moon landing. And it is not a coincidence that for this latest space time exploration of europarama we would like to take you all in an interplanetary journey. And imagine a Europe that expands towards the outer space. After all, the science fiction dreams of going to the other sky objects started here in Europe, in 1865 with Jules Verne’s "From the Earth to the Moon". Even if even Jules Verne imagined that the first bulle...
Infomocracy (feat. Malka Older)
July 11, 2019 06:51 - 37 minutes - 34.8 MBWhere politics and democracy are heading into the future? It is a theme that has run throughout the history of science fiction. Something that already in 1921, Yevgeny Zamyatin tried to imagine in his novel “We”, for example, and later developed in different directions by Orwell, Huxley and the likes. The following quote from “We” recalls the tone and the imagery of these reflections about the future of democracy, back in the past. A sort of archeology of the Future. *It goes without sayin...
Troll (feat. Michal Hvorecky)
July 04, 2019 06:34 - 33 minutes - 31 MBThis episode of Europarama has been recorded at the University of Roskilde in Denmark, during the workshop fEUtures: science fiction and the future of Europe on 4th June 2019. During the workshop academics and science fiction authors discussed science fiction as a methodological tool in European Studies. Giuseppe Porcaro had the chance to have a long conversation with Michal Hvorecky and discuss the Europe of the future described in his latest novel, Troll (2017), where trolling fa...
Troll (feat. Michal Hvorecky)
July 04, 2019 06:34 - 33 minutes - 31 MBThis episode of Europarama has been recorded at the University of Roskilde in Denmark, during the workshop fEUtures: science fiction and the future of Europe on 4th June 2019. During the workshop academics and science fiction authors discussed science fiction as a methodological tool in European Studies. Giuseppe Porcaro had the chance to have a long conversation with Michal Hvorecky and discuss the Europe of the future described in his latest novel, Troll (2017), where trolling factories b...
The Europa Project (feat. Andrei Ivanov)
June 27, 2019 06:49 - 34 minutes - 32 MBJacque Fresco was an American futurist and self-described social engineerb he directed the Venus Project and advocated global implementation of a socioeconomic system which he referred to as a "resource-based economy". The Venus Project proposes an alternative vision of what the future can be if we apply what we already know in order to achieve a sustainable new world civilization. It calls for a straightforward redesign of our culture in which the age-old inadequacies of war, poverty, hunge...
Schwarzenbergs on the Moon (feat. Julie Novakova & Vilma Kadlečková)
June 20, 2019 07:02 - 32 minutes - 29.5 MBUchronia refers to a hypothetical or fictional time-period of our world, in contrast to altogether fictional lands or worlds. A concept similar to alternate history but different in the manner that uchronic times are not easily defined, mainly placed in some distant or unspecified point in time, sometimes reminiscent of a constructed world. In this episode Giuseppe Porcaro , Julie Novakova and Vilma Kadlečková experiment with the genre and they explore a universe where noble families still ...
A Rhizome Flower (feat. Sabrina Calvo)
June 13, 2019 05:54 - 39 minutes - 36.5 MBPeople who do a lot of gardening probably know what “rhizome” is in botanical terms. It is a kind of plant that pops out of the ground over an expanding area, giving the impression that many separate plants are emerging in close proximity to one another, but in fact these ostensibly individual “plants” are parts of one big plant, and are interconnected under the ground. It has a distinct philosophical meaning, too, which is associated with the famous French duo, Felix Guattari and Gilles De...
A Rhizome Flower (feat. Sabrina Calvo)
June 13, 2019 05:54 - 39 minutes - 36.5 MBPeople who do a lot of gardening probably know what “rhizome” is in botanical terms. It is a kind of plant that pops out of the ground over an expanding area, giving the impression that many separate plants are emerging in close proximity to one another, but in fact these ostensibly individual “plants” are parts of one big plant, and are interconnected under the ground. It has a distinct philosophical meaning, too, which is associated with the famous French duo, Felix Guattari and ...
Disco Sour (feat. Giuseppe Porcaro)
May 30, 2019 09:10 - 37 minutes - 34.4 MBIn the era of political bots, fake news, and digital propaganda, what would happen if a Tinder-like app replaced elections? Is it possible to automate democracy or would policies become sellable outcomes? In this episode we dwelve into DISCO SOUR, a novel by Giuseppe Porcaro where a dating app addicted politician embarks on an existential odyssey to save democracy from tinderpolitics. Bastian Balthazar Bux is a space-lover, a smartphone addict and a leading member of The Federation®, the E...
A tale of two Europes (feat. Anja Kümmel)
May 23, 2019 05:57 - 32 minutes - 73.3 MBFor the time-space exploration of today, We reflect on the fact a lot of science fiction worldbuilding results in scenarios that are both dystopian and utopian, depending on the viewpoint. Margaret Atwoods said: "Better never means better for everyone. It always means worse, for some." Somehow, this reminds the latest novel of the guest author of this episode, which is an experimental work set on different time levels, narrated from two perspectives, and revolving around the themes of iden...
Waterworld (feat. Joana Bértholo)
May 16, 2019 05:09 - 37 minutesA growing number of science fiction authors are talking about global warming overtly, imagining futures full of flooded cities, droughts, melting icecaps, and other disasters. There is even a new label used for this, climate fiction or "cli-fi". Shelley Streeby, a professor from the University of California recently published an extensive analysis of the role of speculative fiction in imagining the future of climate change. She reviewed the various activists, artists, and science fiction w...
Europe at Dawn (feat. Dave Hutchinson)
May 08, 2019 15:52 - 26 minutes - 60.4 MBThe Fractured Europe series is inspired by Cold War spy fiction: bleak, powerful stories which often rely on national borders for political and narrative tension. Once the Iron Curtain fell, Dave says, the spy genre lost its way. He realised that writing the thriller that he really wanted would mean reintroducing borders. But where would the barriers lie? For some time, he had been thinking about a family of uncanny map-makers. Eventually he had them create different versions of England to o...
Bruxhell (feat. Joost Vandecasteele)
May 02, 2019 07:02 - 35 minutes - 81.4 MBScience fiction cityscapes have awed audiences since Metropolis debuted in Germany in 1927. Steve Graham, a professor of cities and society in the Global Urban Research Unit at Newcastle University has highlighted such reciprocal relationship between science fiction and reality. Think, for example, that the future Los Angeles of Blade Runner implies the end of nationalism. The flooded New York of Spielberg’s Artificial Intelligence implies climate change and loss. The upper middle class ve...
Baubotanik (feat. Emmi Itäranta)
April 24, 2019 13:27 - 30 minutes - 68.9 MB*Europarama is a podcast series about science fiction and the future of Europe brought to you by the Are We Europe podcasting family. * In “The Principle of Hope” Ernst Bloch lays out the many ways in which hope and the human desire for liberation and fulfillment appear in our everyday lives. Amidst Europe’s post-war reconstruction, in 1954, Bloch restored honour to the idea of utopia by seeing it not as a pre-existing programmatic state which had to be reached under wise and all-knowing l...
Europe 2064 (feat. Loranne Vella)
April 15, 2019 11:06 - 33 minutes - 76.6 MBIn 1964, Isaac Asimov wrote a piece for the New York Times, after visiting the World’s Fair in New York. In his piece, he wondered what life would be like in 2014. He got a lot of stuff right--from the development of computers, to transportation, and even demographics. So in the shadow of Asimov, Giuseppe Porcaro and Loranne Vella imagine a fictional Europe in 2064. What does that fictional, future Europe look like? Loranne Vella is a Maltese writer, translator and performer. She co-wrote ...
Europe 2064 (feat. Loranne Vella)
April 15, 2019 11:06 - 33 minutes - 76.6 MBIn 1964, Isaac Asimov wrote a piece for the New York Times, after visiting the World’s Fair in New York. In his piece, he wondered what life would be like in 2014. He got a lot of stuff right--from the development of computers, to transportation, and even demographics. So in the shadow of Asimov, Giuseppe Porcaro and Loranne Vella imagine a fictional Europe in 2064. What does that fictional, future Europe look like? Loranne Vella is a Maltese writer, translator and performer. She ...