[teaser] Millennial Canon: Napoleon Dynamite, Juno, and Scott Pilgrim

September 30th, 2022  |  15 mins 7 secs

Kat Dee joins Emmet to talk about movies they couldn't stop texting each other about which they think define, in part, the millennial vibe. They talk about movies that give a shit that you're watching them, what happened to music as part of identity formation, the sexual weirdness of all three movies, being awkward as an early millennial meme, what millennials did to language, and more!

[teaser] Shock of the New: The Future That War

September 26th, 2022  |  15 mins 9 secs

Emmet and Josh wrap up their series on the Shock of the New.

They discuss the modern art museum, Hughes's sick burns on everyone and everything, Superbowl Commericals as art appreciation ritual, Don Draper, and mourning the death of painting.

Episode 88: Oceania Has Always Been At Culture War With Eastasia ft. Michael Cuenco

September 23rd, 2022  |  1 hr 13 mins

conspiracy theory, culture war, end of history, marshall mccluhan, neoliberalism, oligarchy, populism, trump

Essayist Michael Cuenco joins Emmet to talk about the totalizing permanence of the culture war. They talk about Ross Perot, Pat Buchanan, liberty, republicanism, oligarchy, living in a post-literate tribal world, and more!

[teaser] Shock of the New: From Munch to Warhol

September 5th, 2022  |  50 mins 14 secs

Josh and Emmet talk over episodes 6 and 7 of Robert Hughes's The Shock of the New. They get into Van Gogh, Edvard Munch, Rothko, and the dawn of the Weak Universal Forms.

They discuss art as a window into the past and the schizo-world of television. And if painting can't matter in the way it used to, why did Hughes bother with the series?

Episode 87: The King and the Duke: So Long, Vince McMahon ft. Oliver Bateman

August 19th, 2022  |  58 mins 11 secs

con artist, huck finn, kayfabe, pro wrestling, scandal, trump, vince mcmahon, wrestling, wwe

King of The Work and co-host of What's Left, Oliver Bateman joins Emmet to talk about the illustrious career of pro-wrestling mogul Vince McMahon after he stepped down from WWE. They talk about the hustler and con man as American architects, the intimacy of kayfabe, what people get wrong about their stale "politics as pro wrestling" takes, and more!

[teaser] The End of History and the Last Man: The Old Age of Mankind

August 15th, 2022  |  1 hr 41 mins

Matt Kelly rejoins the boys to talk about Fukuyama's weird liberalism, econ theory, the triumphalism of the 90s, Fukuyama as an OG anti-Islamic type, and more!

[teaser] The End of History and the Last Man: Our Pessimism

July 28th, 2022  |  16 mins 13 secs

Emmet and John begin their series on Fukuyama's seminal The End of History and the Last Man. They talk through its context, Fukuyama's background, trouble some of his assumptions, and kick the tires of his liberal triumphalism in the opening 50 pages.

Episode 86: California Uber Alles ft. Robert. Bryce

July 24th, 2022  |  58 mins 50 secs

california, climate change, electricity, energy crisis, gavin newsom, homelessness, nuclear energy

6-time author and host of the Power Hungry Podcast Robert Bryce sits down with Emmet to talk about the downfall of California and its war on the poor, his time covering the Branch Davidian trials, our troubled electric grid, the balkanization of America, and more!

[teaser] The Boys Are Back In Town Bull Sesh

July 1st, 2022  |  22 mins 11 secs

We're back!

This one opens with some housekeeping, then we move on to talk about the energy crisis, regionalism, localism, PMC intermediation, American political tradition, and more!

Episode 85: School Shooters, Nihilism, and Child Sacrifice ft. Geoff Shullenberger and Default Friend

June 29th, 2022  |  1 hr 6 mins

Emmet sits Geoff Shullenberger and Default Friend to talk about their respective articles on the Uvalde shooting, school shootings in general, "zeitgeist killers," the spiritual hole in our society, and more!

[teaser] Don't Say Disney ft. Geoff Shullenberger

April 30th, 2022  |  11 mins 49 secs

chris rufo, disney, don't say gay, family, florida, ideology, lasch

Geoff came onto the pod to talk about what's going on with conservatives and Disney, though it's really a conversation about cultural power, Lasch, the family, ideology, political anemia, and more.

This will also be our last Patreon episode until July. Don't worry, we've paused your payments. You won't be getting charged.

We're going to come back in the summer with gusto.

Episode 84: Why Do Movies Suck Now? ft. Will Tavlin

March 29th, 2022  |  55 mins 11 secs

celluloid, dasha, david fincher, democracy, digital film, film, george lucas, hollywood, marvel, monopoly, movie theaters, netflix, star wars

Will Tavlin joins Emmet to talk about how the democratic promise of digital filmmaking turned into the current top-down Marvel hellscape we all live in. They talk about the insanity of the original multiplex model of screening, why digital is so hard to archive, the deadness of major blockbuster films, the importance of forming aesthetic communities to preserve cultural memory, and more!

Episode 83: The Dying Bird of Authentic Humanness ft. Default Friend

March 23rd, 2022  |  54 mins 46 secs

911, agamben, cancel culture, covid, crisis, energy crisis, gen z, phillip k dick, pkd, posthuman, science fiction, scifi, silicon valley, totalitarianism, tumblr

DF and Emmet take a look at Phillip K Dick's 1972 lecture "The Android and the Human." They dive into his idea that we can learn about our inner lives by looking at the world of machines, the integration of man and machine, empathy, rebellion, totalitarianism, and weirdly hanging out with teenage girls getting late term abortions.

Episode 82: A time to build, but what? And how? (cross-post with the Ryan Research podcast)

March 15th, 2022  |  1 hr 6 mins

america, energy politics, fracking, history, ireland, new left, nuclear, pipelines, standing rock

Recording times got bungled to do travel constraints, but here's an hour-long preview of Emmet's appearance on the Ryan Research podcast. Peter Ryan invited him on to talk about nuclear energy, why nothing feels possible, what happened to the left, financial brain poisoning, and more!

Episode 81: The Religious Cult of Fandom ft. Monia Ali

March 8th, 2022  |  1 hr 5 mins

bts, comicon, cult, cults, fandom, gilmore girls, k-pop, marketing, marvel, mcu, one direction, religion, supernatural, the cw, tumblr

Monia Ali of the Exiled Fan Substack sits down with Emmet to talk about the cultic aspects of fandom, how marketers think about hijacking our need for love, attention, and community, what the world of fandom means for our future and much, much more.

[teaser] Futures Past: On the Relation of Past and Future in Modern History p. I

March 6th, 2022  |  15 mins 36 secs

apocalypse, carl schmitt, christianity, heidegger, history, leo strauss, philosophy, politics, religion

Emmet and John began their reading of Koselleck's Futures Past. They situate his context, layout his questions and method, and then open the first essay. They discuss the transition into modernity, the nature of historical time, the waning of eschaton, the secularization of the political and thus the future, and medieval eschatological tradition, and way more.