8.6 Solarpunk Presents: The Protopian Prize

8.6 Solarpunk Presents: The Protopian Prize

From Solarpunk Presents by Solarpunk Presents

June 8, 2026 · 1h 27m · Season 8 · Episode 6

About this episode

Ariel discusses the Protopian Prize with judges Ruthanna Emrys and Gideon Lichfield, exploring the prize categories and ideas for submissions.

This episode, Ariel talks to Ruthanna Emrys and Gideon Lichfield, two of the judges of the inaugural Protopian Prize. Ruthanna will be judging the Democratic Futures prize, and Gideon will be judging the Public AI prize. We discuss just what each of those means, how they got involved with the Protopian Prize in the first place, and ideas and concepts that they would like to see submitted. The winners of each category will be published in a forthcoming MIT press anthology, which will be edited by Ruthanna and Gideon. Aleya and Ariel then discuss the results of the past month's Patreon poll, what is your ideal political organization method? To shape the next poll discussion, vote on our Patreon linked below, it's free! Links: The Protopian Prize website: https://protopianprize.com/ The Public AI network: https://publicai.network/ The Protagonist Problem: https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/the-protagonist-problem/ Solarpunk Presents Patreon: https://patreon.com/solarpunkpresents Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

People in this episode

Host: Ariel

Guests: Ruthanna Emrys, Gideon Lichfield

Topics covered

  • Protopian Prize
  • political organization
  • Patreon poll
  • Democratic Futures
  • Public AI

Keywords

  • Protopian Prize
  • Ruthanna Emrys
  • Gideon Lichfield
  • Democratic Futures
  • Public AI
  • Patreon poll
  • political organization

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: MIT press, Protopian Prize, Public AI, Solarpunk Presents

Books & works: The Protagonist Problem

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