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The monsters we create have always given us insight into what we're scared of in the world around us. Aleks Krotoski asks what those born of tech tell us about our fears today.

The monsters we create have always given us insight into what we're scared of in the world around us. Whether that's zombies igniting fears around racial tensions in the United States of the nineteen sixties or Dracula articulating a fear of the other and of immigration at the end of nineteenth century.

Aleks Krotoski asks what those monsters born in tech tell us about our fears today.

Producer: Peter McManus

Available now

30 minutes

Last on

Sun 1 May 2022 21:30

Linnie Blake

Linnie Blake
Dr Linnie Blake is Head of the Manchester Centre for Gothic Studies and Reader in Gothic Literature and Film at Manchester Metropolitan University. She explains the importance of monsters to both society and personally.

Vivian Asimos

Vivian Asimos

Vivian Asimos is the author of Digital Monsters, a book exploring the world of online monstrosity. She received her PhD from Durham University in the study of virtual narratives and digital monsters. She is the co-founder of alt-ac.uk, an organisation dedicated to breaking the boundaries of traditional institutionalised academia and the world outside it. Visit her website

Jonathan Myers

Jonathan Myers
Dr Jonathan Myers is a psychologist specializing in human perception and its effects on behaviour in a variety of everyday areas. His interests focus on individuals as well as on organizations and their managers, and more broadly on financial markets. He is formally of the University of Hertfordshire and has been a visiting research scholar at Columbia University in New York. 
Besides academic research Dr Myers has written popular articles and is the author of two published books for a general readership: Helping Your Child To Read, in the educational field and written for parents, and Profits Without Panic, focusing on investor behavior. Dr Myers has been a guest on radio and TV shows including Fox News and Sky News.

Travis Brown

Travis Brown

Travis Brown spends his days working in public affairs and nights doing his best to scare the Internet with short horror stories. He's been posting to Reddit's r/NoSleep subreddit for the past year. Most recently, he's been writing for SpookBrain.com, a new horror website that launched on Halloween of this year. Travis will be publishing two books, including his first novel, with Velox Books in 2021. You can find Travis trying to make new monsters at TravisBrownWriting.com

Robert White

Robert White

Dr. Robert White is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst in private practice in New Haven.  He teaches at both Yale University and the local psychoanalytic institute.  He became reacquainted with fairy tales when a patient used a Grimm’s tale as an extended metaphor of her own trauma.  Since then, he has researched and written about the use of fairy tales in psychoanalytic theory and practice.

John Herman

John Herman

John Herrman writes about technology and culture for The New York Times. Previously, he wrote and edited for The Awl, BuzzFeed, Gizmodo and Popular Mechanics. His focus is on the great digital platforms of this era, and how they change and create our material and social conditions. He lives in Brooklyn, New York. 

Broadcasts

  • Mon 9 Nov 2020 16:30
  • Sun 1 May 2022 21:30

Podcast