This episode of ACFM was made possible by your donations, just like everything else we

do in a foreign media.

If you can, please consider donating one hour's wage per month, or whatever you can afford,

and help us build people-powered media.

Just go to nvara.media-support to set up a regulation of any size.

We couldn't do it without you.

So thank you.

This is acid, man.

Hello and welcome to ACFM, the home of the weird left.

My name's Keir Mildbinn, and for this very special microdose I'm joined by author

Markham Harris to talk about his spectacularly new book, Pano Alto, a history of California,

capitalism and the world.

And just to explain that title, one of the Theses put forward in the book is that what

Markham calls the Palo Alto system is basically hegemonic, it's like the leading edge of capitalism,

you could even say it's conquered the world.

Hi Markham, thanks so much for coming on.

Hey Keir, thanks so much for chatting with me again.

So Markham, you grew up in Palo Alto, and I'm wondering if you briefly just want to introduce

yourself and talk a little bit about the motivations for writing the book.

Yeah, so I spent years 8 to 18 in Palo Alto, California, and so when I was looking at what

to do for my third book project, I was talking with Render Mind about what I was going to

write about, and I told her, the one book I really don't want to write about is a history

...