Disintegrator

Roberto Alonso Trillo, Marek Poliks, and Helena McFadzean

68 episodes listed below

Listen to the show on

Theory for the age of computation.

The gist

Disintegrator treats AI as a philosophical, cultural, and infrastructural problem rather than a gadget story. Its conversations move from data centers and digital theory to post-humanism, memes, embodiment, and the strange politics of scale.

PRESS PLAY

Find your next episode

All episodes

About Disintegrator

Disintegrator is a podcast of theory under pressure. Its central concern is AI, but the show rarely treats artificial intelligence as a self-contained technical object. Instead, it follows computation outward into bodies, materials, platforms, energy systems, financial incentives, art worlds, and online mythologies. Episodes often begin from a precise question. What does it mean for AI to seem alive to a user? What is digital theory if the digital is not reduced to platforms or culture? How should data centers be discussed when environmental concern, local fear, and industry self-justification all distort the picture? The show gives those questions room. It prefers accumulation to simplification, and its best exchanges sharpen concepts by testing them against infrastructure, politics, and lived conditions. A conversation with Laura Tripaldi moves through material intelligence, spiders, alchemy, interface, and the capacity of matter to transform itself. Episodes with N. Katherine Hayles and Rosi Braidotti place cognition, embodiment, post-humanism, and ethics into a wider history of theory. The discussion with no.investigues brings Spanish-language internet culture and Mexican memetic experience into contact with global-north theory without treating either side as decorative. The data-center episode with Molly Taft is more concrete, but it keeps the same ethic: name the material stakes, resist bad narratives, and ask who benefits from confusion. Disintegrator can be severe. It can also be funny in a dry, unsentimental way. Its editorial center is not optimism or doom, but literacy: a demand to know what systems are made of before assigning them meaning. The show suits listeners who can handle abstraction when it is anchored to actual technological and political conditions. It rewards patience. It also rewards skepticism toward both tech boosterism and shallow anti-tech posture.

Made for: For listeners who want AI criticism with philosophy, media theory, political economy, and material detail in the same frame. Best suited to people comfortable with dense arguments, long conversations, and minimal handholding.

What sets it apart: Disintegrator stands apart by treating AI as infrastructure, ontology, culture, and political economy at once. It is less interested in quick takes than in building concepts sturdy enough to describe computation at scale.

In their own words

What does it mean to be human in an age where experience and behavior are mediated and regulated by algorithms? The Disintegrator Podcast is a limited series exploring how Artificial Intelligence affects who we are and how we express ourselves. Join Roberto Alonso Trillo, Marek Poliks, and Helena McFadzean as they speak to the artists, philosophers, scientists, and social theorists at the forefront of human-AI relations. Disintegrator is produced by Rubén Bañuelos.

As heard by us

Based on 5 episodes we listened to · September 2026

Disintegrator connects AI theory to bodies, infrastructure, political power, and culture without flattening the questions into familiar technology commentary.

Disintegrator treats AI as a philosophical and material problem, moving between guest conversations and solo lectures that test what computation means for bodies, culture, and collective life.

Read our full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

A hypothetical spider enters the philosophy of AI; your neat definition of intelligence may not survive.

Press play if you want

  • to test your AI intuitions against the idea that intelligence depends on what it is made of
  • to hear someone question data center water claims without dismissing the people worried about them
Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →
AI and subjectivitydigital theorypost-humanismdata centers and energy politicsmaterial intelligencelarge language modelsonline memeticsart and computation

Talks about

Best episodes of Disintegrator

Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.

[NECROLECTURE] The Excarnated Angel: On AI and the Impossibility of TouchApr 28, 2026

A severe, lucid argument about AI, touch, and the limits of scale.

This episode makes a severe, lucid case about AI, touch, and scale, and it keeps circling the gap between what AI can simulate and what it can actually change.

45. El Apocalipsis Ya Está Aquí (w/ no.investigues)Apr 23, 2026

A dense Spanish conversation where theory, irony, and ordinary life keep pulling against each other.

Disintegrator’s conversation with No Investigues moves through memetics, Instagram, web 2.0, and daily life without pretending those things sit in separate boxes.

44. The Grid (w/ Molly Taft)Apr 8, 2026

A sharp data-center conversation about AI, water fears, and the politics that gather around both.

The episode looks at data centers, AI, and the stories that gather around both, with the host and Molly Taft, senior writer for Wired, moving through water fears, misinformation, and the politics that follow a project once it reaches a neighborhood or state-level fight.

43. The Soft (w/ Laura Tripaldi)Mar 11, 2026

A theory-heavy conversation about matter, interfaces, and how intelligence takes shape.

Laura Tripaldi's visit to Disintegrator makes a focused case for intelligence as something inseparable from the matter that carries it. The discussion moves from Parallel Minds and Discovering the Intelligence of Materials to Donna Haraway's cyborg, then through spiders,…

42. The Cut (w/ M. Beatrice Fazi, Alexander Galloway, Matthew Handelman, and Leif Weatherby)Feb 4, 2026

A focused argument for treating digital theory as a question about what the digital is, not just how it appears.

The episode frames digital theory as a question of definition rather than a label for a department, a scene, or a citation cluster. Centered on Digital Theory, the recent MESO and University of Minnesota Press book, it brings Beatriz Sefaci, Alexander Galloway, Matthew…

Podcasts like Disintegrator

Episodes

  1. 1

    50. The Infinite Company (w/ Dave Wright and Brian Solis)

    Aug 27, 2026·43m
  2. 2

    49. Garden (w/ Anna Greenspan)

    Aug 12, 2026·52m
  3. 3

    48. Indifference Engine (w/ Wassim Alsindi & Paul Dylan-Ennis)

    Jul 22, 2026·57m
  4. 4

    47. Invocation (w/ E. Elias Merhige and Gavin Gamboa)

    Jul 8, 2026·1h
  5. 5

    46. Building Doors (w/ Yancey Strickler)

    Jun 29, 2026·1h 3m
  6. 6

    [LIVE AT INDEX] The Datacenter Does Not Exist (Q&A w/ Dena Yago)

    Jun 9, 2026·1h 15m
  7. 7

    [NECROLECTURE] The Excarnated Angel: On AI and the Impossibility of Touch

    Hidden gem

    It starts by circling back to solo form.

    Apr 28, 2026·41m·4 clips
  8. 8

    45. El Apocalipsis Ya Está Aquí (w/ no.investigues)

    Hidden gem

    Roberto and the host speak with No Investigues, an anonymous online memetic research cluster whose name translates roughly to "do not research." The conversation is entirely in Spanish, with a translated transcript available in the description.

    Apr 23, 2026·1h 14m·5 clips
  9. 9

    44. The Grid (w/ Molly Taft)

    Hidden gem

    The host opens by framing the conversation around data centers, AI, and the financial forces gathering around both.

    Apr 8, 2026·1h·2 clips
  10. 10

    43. The Soft (w/ Laura Tripaldi)

    Hidden gem

    Laura Tripaldi joins Disintegrator.

    Mar 11, 2026·56m·4 clips
  11. 11

    The Teachings of Salesforce Child

    This episode contrasts a pretentious academic art talk with the insightful and meme-driven approach of Salesforce Child, who effectively conveys the ideas from the book Exo-Capitalism about AI and modern culture.

    Mar 2, 2026·44m
  12. 12

    LONGUE DURÉE II Pt. 2 (w/ Rosi Braidotti)

    This episode explores post-humanism as a philosophical project with guest Rosi Braidotti, examining how biotechnology, ecology, and technology reshape human subjectivity and ethics beyond anthropocentric models.

    Feb 18, 2026·1h 10m
  13. 13

    LONGUE DURÉE II Pt. 1 (w/ N. Katherine Hayles)

    This episode features an interview with N.

    Feb 18, 2026·59m
  14. 14

    42. The Cut (w/ M. Beatrice Fazi, Alexander Galloway, Matthew Handelman, and Leif Weatherby)

    Hidden gem

    The episode asks what digital theory means when the digital itself becomes the problem.

    Feb 4, 2026·1h 5m·2 clips
  15. 15

    HOTHOUSE 2: Evidence (w/ Forensic Architecture's Júlia Nueno Guitart)

    Jan 21, 2026·53m
  16. 16

    41. Tactics (w/ Bogna Konior)

    Dec 22, 2025·51m
  17. 17

    40. Liturgy (w/ Haela Ravenna Hunt-Hendrix)

    Dec 9, 2025·55m
  18. 18

    39. Dissociation (w/ McKenzie Wark)

    Dec 2, 2025·52m
  19. 19

    Hito Steyerl & Simon Denny on Exocapitalism

    Nov 17, 2025·52m
  20. 20

    Πάμε Βενετία! (w/ Becoming Press)

    Nov 3, 2025·49m
  21. 21

    HOTHOUSE: The Future of Demonstration (w/ Sylvia Eckermann & Gerald Nestler)

    Oct 28, 2025·45m
  22. 22

    38. Natural Language (w/ Leif Weatherby)

    Sep 24, 2025·1h 6m
  23. 23

    37. Center (w/ Mohammad Salemy)

    Sep 17, 2025·57m
  24. 24

    36. Violence (w/ Fred Moten and Stefano Harney)

    Sep 3, 2025·54m
  25. 25

    35. The Pre-Individual (w/ Ramon Amaro)

    Aug 19, 2025·1h 15m
  26. 26

    34. Spirit (w/ Catherine Malabou)

    Aug 8, 2025·46m
  27. 27

    **EXOCAPITALISM** (w. Charles Mudede & Becoming Press)

    Jul 31, 2025·49m
  28. 28

    33. After Us (w/ Émile P. Torres)

    Jun 30, 2025·50m
  29. 29

    VESPERS Pt. 2 (w/ Millaze)

    Jun 12, 2025·1h 26m
  30. 30

    VESPERS Pt. 1 (w/ RayonBase)

    May 27, 2025·48m
  31. 31

    32. I Put a Post on You (w/ Dana Dawud, feat. Open Secret)

    This episode explores Open Secret, an experimental screening series and artist network founded by Dana Dawud, focusing on internet cinema, its logics, and its role in contemporary media and attention scarcity.

    May 20, 2025·1h 22m
  32. 32

    31. Incarnation (w/ Pete Wolfendale)

    May 1, 2025·1h 5m
  33. 33

    An Announcement :)

    Apr 23, 2025·2m
  34. 34

    LONGUE DURÉE Pt. 2 (w/ Timothy Morton)

    Apr 7, 2025·1h 16m
  35. 35

    LONGUE DURÉE Pt. 1 (w/ Ray Brassier)

    Apr 7, 2025·1h 8m
  36. 36

    28. Imperative Pythagoreanism (w/ Giuseppe Longo)

    Mar 18, 2025·1h
  37. 37

    27. Critique as Commodity (w/ Morgane Billuart)

    Mar 4, 2025·59m
  38. 38

    26. The Great Outdoors (w/ Gordon White)

    Feb 19, 2025·1h 1m
  39. 39

    25. CRIT (w/ Avocado Ibuprofen)

    Feb 4, 2025·47m
  40. 40

    24. A Girl is a Gun (w/ Alex Quicho)

    Jan 23, 2025·1h 9m
  41. 41

    [Superlecture]: Nobody Listens to Music Anymore (Marek)

    Dec 30, 2024·53m
  42. 42

    23. The Club (w/ Li Zhenhua)

    Dec 11, 2024·51m
  43. 43

    22. Janky (w/ Daniel Felstead and Jenn Leung)

    Nov 25, 2024·55m
  44. 44

    21. LIFE (w/ Blaise Agüera y Arcas)

    Nov 14, 2024·1h 3m
  45. 45

    20. Low-Power Mode (w/ Tega Brain)

    Oct 31, 2024·51m
  46. 46

    19. Anamnesis & Prosthetic Imagination (w/ Jonathan Impett)

    Sep 16, 2024·37m
  47. 47

    18. What is a World? (w/ Patricia Reed)

    Sep 5, 2024·1h 12m
  48. 48

    17. Computation is Computation (w/ M. Beatrice Fazi)

    This episode features philosopher M.

    Aug 19, 2024·51m
  49. 49

    𝑑𝑒𝑠𝑢𝑏𝑗𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑒 ℎ𝑒𝑎𝑣𝑒𝑛 (𝑤/ 𝑎𝑛𝑔𝑒𝑙𝑖𝑐𝑖𝑠𝑚01)

    Aug 10, 2024·55m
  50. 50

    16. Sh*tshow Theory (w/ Mattin & Inigo Wilkins)

    Jul 30, 2024·50m
  51. 51

    15. Systems (w/ Georgina Voss)

    Jul 8, 2024·55m
  52. 52

    [Hyperlecture] Marek & Roberto: Non-Player Dynamics: Agency Fetish in Game-World

    Jun 11, 2024·1h 44m
  53. 53

    14. Deathcare for the End of the World (w/ Patricia MacCormack)

    Patricia MacCormack discusses her A-Human Manifesto, advocating for human extinction as a radical ethical response to the Anthropocene to promote the flourishing of all life through compassion beyond human-centered frameworks.

    May 28, 2024·54m
  54. 54

    13. Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Creative Production (Marek Solo Ep.)

    May 13, 2024·26m
  55. 55

    12. Piles (w/ Alex Reisner)

    This episode explores how big tech systems are actually messy, arbitrary, and contingent rather than the sanitized, strategic entities people imagine, using Alex Reisner's work to examine these unexpected realities.

    Apr 30, 2024·41m
  56. 56

    11. Reinventing the Surface (w/ Refik Anadol)

    Apr 10, 2024·37m
  57. 57

    10. Voice (w/ Jennifer Walshe)

    This episode features an interview with composer Jennifer Walshe, discussing her innovative works at the intersection of contemporary music, technology, and AI, including pieces like 'Ghost of the Hidden Lair' and '13 Ways of Looking at Art and Music'.

    Mar 26, 2024·50m
  58. 58

    [Bonus] Non-Player Dynamics (Teaser)

    Mar 6, 2024·6m
  59. 59

    9. Alignment (w/ Benjamin Bratton)

    Feb 27, 2024·54m
  60. 60

    8. World Models (w/ Anil Bawa-Cavia)

    Feb 14, 2024·59m
  61. 61

    7. Protocols of Encounter (w/ Sofian Audry)

    Jan 17, 2024·43m
  62. 62

    6. Autolinguistics & Autopoetics (w/ Sasha Stiles)

    Jan 2, 2024·45m
  63. 63

    [Bonus] Choreomata Launch Panel (w/ Foreign Objekt)

    Dec 26, 2023·1h 22m
  64. 64

    5. The Unknown X (w/ Luciana Parisi)

    Dec 18, 2023·50m
  65. 65

    4. Capital Sticks to Itself (Marek Solo Ep.)

    Dec 3, 2023·27m
  66. 66

    3. Deep Learning as Parasite (w/ Jon McCormack)

    Nov 22, 2023·43m
  67. 67

    2. Free Labor, Hidden Labor (w/ Tiziana Terranova)

    Nov 22, 2023·47m
  68. 68

    1. Human is Not a Thing (w/ Reza Negarestani)

    Nov 13, 2023·58m