Hi, I’m Alexandra Juhasz and this is Episode 5 of We Need Gentle Truths for Now. The podcast engages in radical digital media literacy by enjoying a bite of education and a bit of poetry, creating humane responses to fake news and social media in the era of Covid-19.

For this episode, we will consider the relations between digital tools, their corporate overlords, and the power we retain in our own bodies. Even as we stay isolated, we will listen to a beautiful uncoiling of ideas from Natalie Bookchin, a media artist based in New York, to Molly Astley, a British poetry student. Together they will consider HardTruth Number 59: “silicon valley’s entrepreneurial capitalism leaves rubble in its wake.” It was written by Natalie in 2017  for my online primmer on digital media literacy. She reads it for us now, while sheltered upstate. The place of her body today presses against the fantastical claims of silicon valley’s plans for escape.

See this original hardtruth:

See the poetic response to hardtruth #59:

Hear the response to the poetic response to hardtruth #59: