Episode 43: American Hardball: Scorsese's GoodFellas and McKay's Vice

June 15th, 2021  |  1 hr 2 mins

american politics, culture, dick cheney, film, goodfellas, history, iraq war, martin scorsese, politics, the big short, wall street

Emmet and John talk about America's delight in self-serving, cruel narcissists via the movies Vice and GoodFellas in addition to an essay by Jim Shepard.

Episode 42: "It All Ends in Pizza": Brazilianization and Life in the Undeveloping World ft. Alex Hochuli

June 8th, 2021  |  1 hr 4 mins

bolsonaro, brazil, development, history, lula, modernism, neoliberalism, socialism, zizek

Writer and co-host of the Aufhebungabunga podcast Alex Hochuli joins Emmet and John to talk about his latest article in American Affairs: "The Brazilianization of the World."

[teaser] After Virtue III: WTF Is a Fact?

June 6th, 2021  |  3 mins 30 secs

John and Emmet talk about facts, bureaucracy, science as a social process, the social telos of internet moderation as a culture, and more.

Episode 41: A Brief History of the American Electricity Grid From the 1920s to Closure of Indian Point ft. Edgardo Sepulveda

June 1st, 2021  |  1 hr 7 mins

american history, electricity grid, electricity markets, indian point, infrastructure, monetarism, neoliberalism, new deal, nuclear energy

Emmet sits down with Edgardo Sepulveda to talk about the history of the electrical grid in America and why certain infrastructure projects no longer feel possible anymore.

Episode 40: "We all saw that idea come home": The Imperial Vampire Castle and Its Fixed Ideas

May 25th, 2021  |  1 hr 6 mins

911, afghanistan, cancel culture, cia, cold war, empire, iraq war, joan didion, liberalism, mark fisher, mujahideen, neoconservatism, woke

Emmet and John use three articles to talk about our woke empire and how much it feels like the neocon heyday of the early 2000s.

Episode 39: Energiewendon't and the Nordstream Connection ft. Mark Nelson

May 18th, 2021  |  1 hr 4 mins

angela merkel, biden, carbon emissions, climate change, cold war, eu, european union, france, fukushima, germany, ipcc, nordstream, nuclear energy, renewable energy, russia

Mark Nelson returns to the pod to explain Germany's Energiwende policy and its dependence on Nordstream 2 pipeline from Russia.

[teaser] Life and Death at Jasper Mall

May 16th, 2021  |  2 mins 12 secs

We discuss the movie Jasper Mall, which follows the small-town Alabama mall's decline over the course of a year. This is a teaser for the full Patreon episode.

Episode 38: The Culture of Confession ft. Default Friend

May 11th, 2021  |  1 hr 3 mins

alt lit, cancel culture, millennial culture, myspace, paris hilton, sjw, tao lin, tumblr, woke, xo jane, zoomers

Emmet sits down with Default Friend to talk about the culture of confession, the emotional history of the internet, millenial blues, and more.

Episode 37: Based and Nukepilled ft. Madison Czerwinski

May 4th, 2021  |  54 mins 13 secs

aoc, bernie sanders, byron, climate change, diablo canyon, dresden, electrical grid, environmentalism, green new deal, green nuclear deal, indian point, indisutrial policy, nrdc, nuclear energy, renewable energy, sierra club, texas

Founder of the Campaign for a Green Nuclear Deal, Madison Czerwinski, sits down with Emmet to talk about the closure of the Indian Point nuclear plant in New York, the status of the US nuclear fleet, and what a nuclear future could look like.

[teaser] American Canon: TS Eliot's "Tradition and Individual Talent"

May 2nd, 2021  |  2 mins 19 secs

Emmet and John talk about Eliot's essay on what it means for a writer to fit into a tradition.

Episode 36: I Went Down to the Piraeus Yesterday with Robert Downey Jr.: Watching RDJ's Cocaine '92 Election Doc ft. Josh Bregman

April 27th, 2021  |  1 hr 37 mins

american politics, bill clinton, clinton, culture, democratic party, george bush, history, hollywood, mike ruppert, oliver stone, pat buchanan, politics, rdj, robert downey jr

Token Gen-Xer Josh Bregman joins Emmet to discuss Robert Downey Jr.'s documentary about the '92 election, The Last Party. They discuss what has and hasn't changed in the last thirty years.

Episode 35: Two-Piece: Gentry Elites, Dead WASPs, and the End of Fair Play Culture

April 20th, 2021  |  1 hr 9 mins

america, american politics, elites, political history, politics, populism, wasp culture

Emmet and John discuss two articles and try to fine-tune their understanding of who the American elites are and how they've changed over time.

[teaser] Bull Sesh: Decline, Decadence, and the Aesthetic Education of the Soul w/ Canada Mike

April 18th, 2021  |  3 mins 48 secs

Canada Mike swings by the pod to talk about decadence, decline, and the aesthetic education of the soul. This is a brief clip from the episode.

Episode 34: Long Live the New Flesh!: Getting Videodromed with Geoff Shullenberger

April 14th, 2021  |  1 hr 29 mins

1980s, body horror, cold war, david cronenberg, leo strauss, marshall mcluhan, media theory, neoconservatism, paranoia, parapolitics, peter thiel, videodrome, viderodrome

Emmet and Geoff Shullenberger talk about a mutual favorite film: Cronenberg's Videodrome. They talk about how it presaged our fractured digital lives and the inscrutable, parapolitical world we inhabit.

Episode 33: Shorting the Grid: The Hidden Fragility of the American Electric Grid ft. Meredith Angwin

April 6th, 2021  |  1 hr 7 mins

Emmet and John sit down to speak with Meredith Angwin about her new book on America's fragile electric grid.

[teaser] After Virtue II: The Waning of Telos and the Problem of Human Rights

April 4th, 2021  |  5 mins 3 secs

John and Emmet discuss the failure of the Enlightenment's ethical project and highlight MacIntyre's skepticism of human rights.