Uploaded January 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago

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“Thinking requires action and passion,” says feminist philosopher and scholar, Donna Haraway in this unique conversation. In her 1985 essay “A Cyborg Manifesto” and 2003 work, “The Companion Species Manifesto”, Haraway challenged patriarchal, capitalist, binary, species-ist ways of looking at the world. It’s no surprise that people are looking to her work again now. Generative thinking, she tells Laura, requires “taking the risk to try a new pattern; to invent something that may very well fall apart in your collective hands but leaves threads to be picked up again.” In this episode, Haraway and Flanders sit down for an expansive conversation about what it means to be human in an age of AI and resisting what she calls authoritarian “mono-thought.” Plus, a commentary from Laura on staying in the present and “staying with the trouble.”

“An individual is embedded deeply in worlds with other people, with other organisms, with living and non-living parts of the world. To be a self is to come to a thicker appreciation and accountability for the way we're embedded in the world and act in the world. That's what I mean by being a proper self.” - Donna Haraway

Guest:
Donna Haraway: Distinguished Professor Emerita, University of California Santa Cruz, History of Consciousness Department; Author, A Cyborg Manifesto, When Species Meet, Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene

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“The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness” by Donna Haraway: bookshop.org/a/22992/9780971757585
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CREDITS:
Executive Producer: Laura Flanders
Supervising Producer: Sabrina Artel
Senior Producer: Jeremiah Cothren
Senior Consulting Producer: Rory O’Connor
Senior Video Editor: David Neumann
Video Editor: Veronica Delgado
Audio Director: Jeannie Hopper
Development Director: Sarah Miller
Communications Director: Janet Hernandez

Thumbnail photo courtesy of Donna Haraway.

0:00 - Rethinking Binaries and Technology
5:09 - Resisting Authoritarianism
10:39 - Response-ability & Odd Kin
20:36 - How to stay with the trouble