Musician, writer, and therapist Matt Baldwin joins filmmaker Ben Schecter for a conversation on Matt’s cult-classic How to Play Guitar zine series— a collection of sharp, philosophical reflections on creativity, learning, relationships, and survival in a modern world. Self-taught artistry, the roots of autodidact culture, V. Vale and ReSearch, the strange corporate creep into psychedelic therapy, Joun Fahey, Blake, Blue Cheer Preorder the book here...
Jul 24, 2025•1 hr 41 min•Season 6Ep. 216
Poet and musician (ex Silver Jews) Chris Stroffolino comes on to talk about the life and work of Sylvester “Sly” Stone as we try to trace parallels of his time to our current social climate - from his optimistic, utopian Family Stone days to his dark masterpiece “There’s a Riot Going On” through his withdrawal into disenchantment and drugs + stagflation, the dawn of hope, and more. Also David Berman tales, Shakespeare, Ishmael Reed, teaching, Oakland, CA, overcoming disabilities, the impossible ...
Jul 18, 2025•18 min•Season 6Ep. 215
For full episode and all deep dive episodes please subscribe Part one of a two-part deep dive into the grid and how it has quietly shaped our personal and social realities throughout history. From the invention of the brick to the birth of the spreadsheet, tracing the grid’s influence across architecture, urban planning, culture, and technology.Starting with the brick-“equal parts mortar and module,” tied to the proportions of the human hand—and follow its logic through systems like the tablet, ...
Jul 07, 2025•6 min•Season 6Ep. 212
Calvin LeCompte (The Uline Catalog on NTS) comes on to give an expert primer on 60's psych folk, lo fi, and outsider garage and talk about the making of his excellent upcoming record Yankee Doodle Foxtrot Pietro Scaruffi, deep Youtube gem digging, human index projects, rejecting soulseek, The Haunted, analog tape hiss, the best 4 track cassette recorder, Yamaha MT8X, Korg CR4, writers block, trot EP, breakup music, the unknown Bicentennial, AI, hypnogogic pop: revisited, James Ferraro, Ferris Wh...
Jul 07, 2025•43 min•Season 6Ep. 213
Full episode, support, and archive: patreon.com/contain Influences episode, raw and recorded over a month on a phone about stuff that we love, one being Gary Stewart's trembling country classic Out of Hand, + what makes music have soul, and why no one can play like Chuck Berry anymore, noise-canceling tech, Graphic design traps, Pontiac Firebird interiors, Xavier Le Pichon (RIP), Geophysical fragility, Kojeve and tariffs + more
May 23, 2025•8 min•Season 6Ep. 211
Barrett and Alex open Season 6 and talk about how the project is shifting, how to make a life out of the things you produce, and offer some guidance based on our experience of running a weird, uncompromising project Music interspersed and a duo mix at the end For all episodes and more please visit: patreon.com/contain ZeeoRYc8U39n7uDd5fgE
May 21, 2025•2 hr 3 min•Season 6Ep. 210
The City Writes Back: Tunnels, Tattoos, and the Sociology of Graffiti w/ Klub 2020 For full episode, general support, and more please visit patreon.com/contain
May 21, 2025•10 min•Season 6Ep. 209
Full episode up on Patreon n this episode, philosophy professor and AI safety researcher Vincent Lê joins us to explore the strange philosophical roots of Effective Altruism, the Z1zians, and Silicon Valley's culture at large. Rather than rehashing the usual narratives around EA, E/Acc, and AI alignment, we dig into their shared intellectual DNA—from the cringeworthy utilitarianism of Peter Singer to the mimetic theories of René Girard, and even The Office as an unlikely ideological text. We als...
May 21, 2025•1 hr 2 min•Season 6Ep. 208
Full episode, archive, and support: Patreon.com/contain Experimental episode on two controversial but relevant fiction books: House of Hunger by Dambudzo Marechera (1978) and Harry Crews' A Feast of Snakes. They explore grotesquerie, madness, and Dark Psychedelia through the lens of Rhodesian Zimbabwe and Rural American South (Mystic, Georgia), along with Dostoyevsky's The Idiot, Catherine Malabou: Reawakening: Différence + how to look at nothing, morality, transformation, Kool Keith's 98 year o...
May 12, 2025•39 min•Season 6Ep. 207
Full episode available on Patreon: patreon.com/contain Interview with Anthony Darnell, aka Darnell the Artist , known for his daily social media posts of cryptic and hallucinatory artwork based on conspiracy theories, politics, and his military experience. He shares his experiences in the US Marine Corps, using art as therapy, PTSD, the GI Bill, conspiracy theories, and more. This is Anthony's first spoken interview....
May 12, 2025•2 min•Season 6Ep. 206
The state of right to repair and how corporations try to undermine consumers with legendary activist and electronics technician Louis Rossmann . patreon.com/contain 2/24/25
May 10, 2025•1 hr 23 min•Season 6Ep. 205
Full Premium Episode on Patreon On the upending political/structural/technological situation, maintaining faith in strange times, broken dreams, etc. Archive, 1/28/25
May 10, 2025•4 min•Season 6Ep. 204
Originally posted Jan 1, 2025, first part only bc of Spotify Music AI takedown BS Episode about cartoons and how they shape the world around us with Mike Bilandic + his article How Fred Flintstone Became One of America’s Greatest Cultural Exports Eurodance music with Smurfs and Flintstones, the purpose and legacy of Dexter's Lab, Hanah Barbera, Casimir Spaulding aka Glo Mula, Glo Jean-Charles de Castelbajac and Iceberg: Fred infiltrating fashion, loukos_por_trenzinhos_ofc , cartoon imagery on le...
May 10, 2025•35 min•Season 6Ep. 202
This New Year we're going in on all things space-relevant and the weird development of libertarian Network States with Fred Scharmen , author of Space Forces. Topics: Biocosmism in Russia, the project Concept Country , Bitcoin City, Nick Land Acknowledgement, mini singularities in the 1970's, astral exploration, lines by decade, science beyond earth, van stripes of the 1970's as cultural signifier, the broken future of Elon and Cyberpunk, why there is no libertarianism in outer space, Title V, T...
Mar 01, 2025•1 hr 30 min•Season 6Ep. 201
Full episode on the ideas and sociology of Megalopolis, his hypothesis on the Long 2014, the past decade of slop, and why utopian thinking is good David Graeber, Elective Affinities by Goethe, The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions (1899), by Thorstein Veblen, The Chalice and the Blade by Riane Eisler, Nixon shock/OPEC crisis, Axial Age, The Lord of the Rings - Boris Groys , Sports Gambling, Linux, Creative Commons movement, "This was made for me"...
Mar 01, 2025•3 min•Season 5Ep. 198
200th episode special on the history and future of abstraction in social life, art, and more. For full 4hr20 minute episode: Part A Part B Patreon.com/Contain...
Jan 08, 2025•36 min•Season 6Ep. 200
Ok this is a big one: Professor Emeritus of Leisure Studies and author of Free Time and Age of Experiences Benjamin Kline Hunnicutt joins for a lively discussion on the possibility of leisure and freedom in the age of experience. Other subjects: Jeffersonian Democracy, taking Eugene McCarthy to the airport, the spark of poetic creativity, Frank Lloyd Wright, UBI, the heart of the work ethic destroyed, work as religion, the future of work and automation, craftsmanship, the history of shortening l...
Dec 05, 2024•1 hr 34 min•Season 5Ep. 199
3hr30 min tribute to the non-philosophical thought of François Lauruelle... full episode Francois Laruelle was a French philosopher who developed the concept of "non-philosophy." His work influenced facets of the project (particularly The Spectre of Finance Punk ) through his critiques of traditional philosophical systems that prioritized the material and empirical over abstract theorizations + his non-historical/non-mystical encounters with science, art, and spirituality through his mediations ...
Dec 05, 2024•25 min•Season 5Ep. 198
What happens when two experimental music veterans go full Smashmouth? Callahan and Witscher's new album Think Differently answers just that-full of wry introspection on the conditions of music, it's value, and despite misreads by music journalists as being "irony poisoned"-comes across as uniquely sincere in a way most things don't. We talk about the album, what is the value of a critique? flexing on critics with pure musical chops, nu-fluxus, low-brow messaging, the rise of "tastecels", the val...
Oct 21, 2024•1 hr 50 min•Season 5Ep. 197
For full full episode, music, and to support the project subscribe Here Architect/author Matt Shaw comes on to discuss his new book American Modern on the anomaly of Columbus, Indiana: a futuristic small town designed by a who's who of architects (Saarinen, Pei, Robert Venturi, Girard) almost entirely bankrolled by progressive Christian industrialist J. Irwin Miller. This is a history of that town and the rise and fall of independent-funded public works in America Music from the new release by D...
Oct 11, 2024•32 min•Season 5Ep. 196
For full 6 hour episode and more deep research excursions subscribe to our Patreon Part two of the experience economy episode, this one focused on the history of experience design, the combinatorial arts, and independent value creation in order to advance some solutions to the problems politics can only scratch the surface of. Topics: the rise of Kill Tony and interactive cringe comedy, Baby Invasion/Edglrd by Harmony Korine movie review, first person shooter w/ Burial Soundtrack, John Ruskin’s ...
Oct 11, 2024•36 min•Season 5Ep. 195
This is a preview, for full 3 hour episode: patreon.com/contain Writer/journalist James Pogue comes on to discuss his recent stint in central Africa as it undergoes one of the biggest gold rushes in human history plus: contracting Malaria in a CAR prison and your hotel getting shot up, diamond heists, geiger counters, JD Vance and the Anti-American NatCon right, the Wagner groups activities in the Sahel, the strange reconfiguration of the political spectrum, the return of gold, pastoral industri...
Aug 16, 2024•43 min•Season 5Ep. 194
This is a preview, full episode: patreon.com/contain Episode all about oil, maybe the most important and controversial substance in the world and how it came to dominate our history and take over our planet Abiotic oil theory, climate change, is oil fake, the origin of the term fossil fuels, did Dinosaurs even exist, artificial scarcity, Reza Negarestani's Cyclonopedia, 'sentient oil', Soviet Neft Dashlari city built on water, wildcatters, creation of new cities, the history of fracking/new carb...
Aug 16, 2024•16 min•Season 5Ep. 193
Up now on Patreon (3hr20h) 3 months in the making, we get into a century of Dropping Out, DIY, and the conditions of self-preservation featuring mathematician Alexander Groethendieck, artist Lee Lozano, Cormac McCarthy, Shelly Duvall, and Sarah Records. As public life become further cauterized some will declout, some join the Santa Fe institute, and some refuse to speak to other woman for 27 years. Time to find out why Groethendieck’s reasons for leaving the mathematics community, abstract finan...
Jul 16, 2024•6 min•Season 5Ep. 192
Full episode here Ex Guns N' Roses/Poison manager and OG Pawn Star Howie Hubberman comes on to talk about LA in the 1980's, antiquing, Hair Metal, Power Ballads, doing 1000 pushups a day while battling cancer, Slash’s Appetite for Destruction guitar, weird music industry shenanigans, the mafia, mud wresting competitions in the valley, hustling, and more. “There’s more vehicles, but less with actual engines in them” PRACTICAL stuff, also hilarious…topping off the interview series...
Jun 21, 2024•6 min•Season 5Ep. 191
Continuing down the "I ain't reading all of that" interview series with a very special guest bound to be a cult household classic Dan Spencer is a musician and songwriter who released my favorite album of the year Return To Your Dark Master. He’s also a longtime Contain listener (to my surprise) and a very knowledgable and thoughtful guy who went from Mortuary school to playing the CMA country fest and Bonnaroo. We talk Nouveau Roman literature, Peter Greenaway, and slipping obscure interests in...
Jun 21, 2024•2 hr 12 min•Season 5Ep. 190
First Half, full 2 hr+ episode here ...on LARPing with artists Maggie Dunlap and Ben Werther and his recent show When You Can No Longer Speak, Sing Me A Song documenting mock high stakes environments of Military Simulation (MilSim) culture. Other topics: identity construction and the fraying of the American cultural fabric, the anonymous 14th century Christian mystical text The Cloud Of Unknowing, total sculpture, non pedantic art, soft black stars, the end of intellectuals and words, readymades...
Jun 15, 2024•1 hr 2 min•Season 5Ep. 189
For full episode and more subscribe here
Jun 15, 2024•10 min•Season 5Ep. 188
Preview, for full episodes and more subscribe here 2.5 hour rundown of one of the worlds most treasured resources—the Internet Archive—with digital archive legend Jason Scott of Internet Archive . We go in on the ins and outs of the collection and why preserving pre-online digital media matters now more than ever We discuss ripping VHS tapes of Tuvalu in the 1980’s, Rick Prelinger: saving old government films, Brewster Kahle and the foundation of the archive, origins and history of the Wayback M...
Jun 15, 2024•28 min•Season 5Ep. 186
In this collaborative episode between Contain and Rave New World, Michelle and Barrett make it to the UCLA student protest encampment just hours before it was violently shut down by the authorities. Slipping past plywood barricades into the graffiti-bombed "liberated zone," they discover an anxious scene of protestors gearing up for a confrontation with the police, as snipers prowl the roof and police helicopters whirr overhead. Through conversations with a contrasting cast of characters--from a...
May 07, 2024•58 min•Season 5Ep. 187
