Summary: There are two guests this week: the University Student Zanda Knight and my son Benjamin Lain. We talk about Karl Marx's Capital and try to answer the question "Why can't a robot make value?" We discuss Data, Cherry 2000, and Marx's notion of abstract labor time and exchange value. After this conversation you'll hear the soundtrack for Brendan Cooney's latest video from his Law of Value series. Brendan Cooney will be the guest next week. Couple of announcements. First, I'm going to cancel the Podomatic feed for Diet Soap. Instead I'll be hosting Diet Soap at douglaslain.com and using Blubrry. If you subscribe to podcast through Podomatic you'll need to change over to the new feed by the end of the month and I'll be posting instructions and talking about how to do that in the weeks to come. Second, I'm going to restart the Diet Soap Philosophy Workshop and add a new twist. While we'll continue on discussing Hegel once a month, I've decided to open expand the workshop to a weekly format. That is, after each Diet Soap episode subscribers to the podcast will get a chance to participate in a conversation about it. So, yes, once a month there will be a Hegel episode, but subscribers will also get a chance to discuss all the different subjects that we cover or bring up their own ideas. The people at the Partially Examined Life are doing something similar for each of their podcasts and I thought it would be a good idea for Diet Soap. Finally, this month is when I'll be starting a second podcast with C. Derick Varn called Pop the Left. That'll be a monthly podcast that takes a critical look at the politics of the Left from a Leftist perspective. You've probably noticed that Diet Soap has slipped into a biweekly schedule. I will be rectifying that and returning to a regular weekly schedule this month. Diet Soap should come out on Thursday, every Thursday. I should also mention that I've started blogging for the Partially Examined Life, and that I'm continuing to blog for the Right Where You're Sitting Now site and for Tor.com. I hope to include collaged readings of those blog entries in future episodes. The music you're listening to is Hindemith's Kammermusik No. 5, but in just a moment you'll be listening to Zanda, Ben, and we discuss Marx and the Robots.
