We spoke with activist, educator, macroeconomics/politics podcast host, and founder of Real Progressives, Steven Grumbine. We discuss Modern Monetary Theory in both theoretical and historical broad strokes and in more specified real world scenarios. We discuss how this macroeconomic theory is a valuable lens to view the world through but also needs to be utilized in conjunction with effective political and social movements behind it to bring it to its fullest potential. We discuss some of the co...
May 24, 2021•2 hr 13 min
We talk about the disastrous CDC guidelines about no longer needing masks if fully vaccinated, then jump into the human rights abuses, pillaging and conquests around the world committed by the harmless-seeming, sentient sweater vest and khaki combo, Bill Gates. General Recommendations JD's Recommendation: Halt and Catch Fire JNM's Recommendation: A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines by Janna Levin Further Reading, Viewing, Listening End of CDC masking guidelines aimed at “normalizing” death Why th...
May 18, 2021•1 hr 48 min
The night before recording our episode about Bill Gates we watched the dull as dirt, yet somehow still overdramatized, 1999 made-for-TV biopic, Pirates of Silicon Valley . Bear witness to our great becoming. Locationless Locations heatdeathpod.com Every show-related link is corralled and available here . Heat Death of the Universe - @heatdeathpod Please send all Letters of Derision, Indifference, Inquiry, Mild Elation, et cetera to: heatdeathoftheuniversepodcast@gmail.com Send us a text Support ...
May 17, 2021•1 hr 44 min
We're joined by Weston Pagano, the creator of Waiting on Biden , and author of some notable pieces written about the 2020 Democratic Primaries. We discuss Biden's first 100 days in office via his thorough compilation of the current administration's trail of broken promises, extensions of failed policies from previous administrations, determination to keep the imperial nation lumbering along, and so forth. We discuss how to carry out good faith criticism, and a huge bulk of topics related to the ...
May 10, 2021•2 hr 39 min
We have a State of the Corona Virus update, then move onto smash open the ol' news piñata and free a disparate collection of novel news items in an attempt to alleviate the psychic damage accumulated simply from living. Mysterious holes behind mirrors. Mummified cult leader wrapped in Christmas lights. Balloon Boy Update. Burning Man steals money from people. Cicadas return. A man scams all 35 of his girlfriends simultaneously. Crime doesn't pay--or does it? Thank god the royals are building a n...
May 05, 2021•1 hr 32 min
We talk about the history of self-help movements and gilded gurus that proselytize their cure-all tonics, wish-fulfillment effects, et cetera, and find something interesting in their modern roots (socialism). We also lay out a taxonomy of the various subspecies of contemporary self-help/life coach/guru figures, from OG kings of the grift like Tony Robbins to the humanoid slugs in the Pickup Artist underbelly to the deranged infomercial doom-pastor Jim Bakker and his reasonably priced buckets of ...
Apr 28, 2021•2 hr 14 min
Biden requests the largest defense budget since WWII so we take a look at the imperialism, incompetence, the profound bloat and corruption of the military machine that receives more than half of all US federal discretionary spending and whose budget dwarfs all other nations by several orders of magnitude. We review a surprisingly truthful editorial segment from none other than CNN and read selections from Matt Taibbi's thoroughly incisive 2019 piece The Pentagon’s Bottomless Money Pit . General ...
Apr 26, 2021•1 hr 22 min
Immediately after recording our commentary, we talk about the 1995 climate disaster message movie, Kevin Costner ego-stroke, and infamous financial flop, Waterworld . Further Reading, Viewing, Listening The Story of Waterworld (1995) - Review & Retrospective [WATCH] What if all the Earth's ice melted overnight? 'Waterworld' Isn’t a Good Movie, But I Can’t Stop Watching It Waterworld at 25: Reappraising cinema’s biggest flop Waterworld – The Ulysses Cut Locationless Locations heatdeathpod.com...
Apr 23, 2021•1 hr 1 min
Is dry land a myth? Further Reading, Viewing, Listening The Story of Waterworld (1995) - Review & Retrospective [WATCH] What if all the Earth's ice melted overnight? 'Waterworld' Isn’t a Good Movie, But I Can’t Stop Watching It Waterworld at 25: Reappraising cinema’s biggest flop Waterworld – The Ulysses Cut Locationless Locations heatdeathpod.com Every show-related link is corralled and available here . Heat Death of the Universe - @heatdeathpod JD Newland - @jdnewland Joshua Nomen-Mutatio ...
Apr 23, 2021•2 hr 13 min
The plain chaos of existence put a last minute kibosh on our planned episode (with a secret special guest) so we decided, also at the last minute, to just record ourselves talking without any particular agenda. We'll complete our planned episode in a week from now, secret special guest and all. General Recommendations JNM's Recommendation: Enon - Believo! [LISTEN] JD's Recommendations: 1) Hollow Knight 2) Wanting to see the new Bob Odenkirk movie Joint Recommendation: Katamari Damacy Further Rea...
Apr 21, 2021•1 hr 34 min
The Sewol ferry disaster happened exactly 7 years ago to the day, on the morning of April 16th, 2014. Of the 476 passengers and crew, 304 died in this immensely tragic event, 250 of them were the students from Danwon High School. This tragedy wasn’t like some horrible but unavoidable disaster, like a hurricane or a volcanic eruption, instead, from beginning to end this horrifying disaster is causally connected to the inherit greed that is part and parcel of neoliberal policies of “market-based s...
Apr 16, 2021•2 hr
We discuss the 2019 college admissions bribery scandal as portrayed by the documentary Operation Varsity Blues: The College Admissions Scandal as well as a broader view of education in the utterly commodified environment of the United States, ever-saturated with purely transactional relationships in virtually every crack and crevice of life. General Recommendations JD's Recommendation: SKY Castle JNM's Recommendations: 1) Escape from Pretoria 2) The Gray Zone Further Reading, Viewing, Listening ...
Apr 12, 2021•1 hr 29 min
Biden Builds Back (Border Wall) Better! Daniel Hale remains an unjustly persecuted whistleblower who exposed large segments of the US military drone warfare and assassination programs developed during the Obama administration. Even while facing a possible 50 years in prison, he still tried to organize the kitchen staff at a restaurant where he was washing dishes and was fired for these efforts. We give some updates and further thoughts on the situation. Later, we dig into the repugnant, pseudo-i...
Apr 09, 2021•2 hr
We discuss the morally dubious existence of the booming Rehab Industry and the pyramid schemes, dangerous misinformation, primordial greed, and reckless incompetence that lies at its heart. General Recommendations JNM's Recommendation: Celebrity Rehab JD's Recommendation: Vincenzo Further Reading, Viewing, Listening From Rehab to a Body Bag | Dying for Treatment: VICE Reports (VIDEO) As Addiction Deaths Surge, Profit-Driven Rehab Industry Faces 'Severe Ethical Crisis' “Mom, When They Look at Me,...
Apr 07, 2021•1 hr 14 min
A historical view of the National Rifle Association. A grappling with the unique and slippery beast of USA Gun Culture. A peek at the socialist prescription for how to deal with the American Exceptionalism of gun ownership, mass shootings and a ceaseless governmental allergy to nearly all forms of weapons regulation. General Recommendations JD's Recommendations: Lil Nas X - MONTERO (Call Me By Your Name) JNM's Recommendations: The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson Further Reading, Viewing, Lis...
Apr 02, 2021•2 hr 3 min
Reading about various luxury underground bunkers from the inverted condo to the even more decadent fortresses in the Hobbit lands of New Zealand built by Silicon Valley caricatures like the founder of Reddit, eventually led to begin watching the 2012-2014 reality show, Doomsday Preppers, since it was mentioned as an example of survivalism in mainstream culture…and it turned out to be fairly interesting and illuminating with regards to the way people express anxieties about socio-cultural, econom...
Mar 31, 2021•2 hr 5 min
It's a late night double feature. First up, why and how the Senate should be abolished, razed down passed the roots. Next, third parties and why they're generally banished to the netherworld. General Recommendations JD's Recommendations: 1) what if the Banana was the same distance as the ISS 2) Titus JNM's Recommendations: 1) Don Hertzfeld's entire filmography 2) Happiness Further Reading, Viewing, Listening Abolish the Senate by Thomas Geoghegan, author of Only One Thing Can Save Us: Why Americ...
Mar 25, 2021•2 hr 36 min
We watched and discussed the largely unseen, deal-with-the-devil thriller about the aftermath of the 2008 housing crisis, 99 Homes, directed by Ramin Bahrani, starring Michael Shannon, Andrew Garfield, Laura Dern and Clancy Brown. A desperate construction worker (Andrew Garfield) reluctantly accepts a job with the ruthless real-estate broker (Michael Shannon) who evicted him and his family from their home. General Recommendations JNM's Recommendations: 1) 99 Homes 2) Dark Crimes JD's Recommendat...
Mar 19, 2021•2 hr 19 min
Come for the gripes about imperialism, the judicial system, the plentitude of hopeless stupidity in the declining USA, and stay for the aside about carceral v. non-cerceral justice in a deterministic universe, the tale of a man turned himself into 100,000 shares at $1 apiece and the trends that followed in his wake, and then Andrew "Caused 15,000 Deaths" Cuomo almost makes me (Josh) punch a hole through my computer. General Recommendations JNM's Recommendations: 1) The Master 2) Freeway JD's Rec...
Mar 15, 2021•1 hr 37 min
We embarked on our third intentional overdose of an American Movie Franchise. Unlike The Fast & the Furious and the Transformers franchise, one of these movies is genuinely great. We consumed 10+ hours of the Jurassic Park franchise in a non-stop fashion and it was a much less mind-shattering experience than the previous two marathons. As usual, commentary tracks will be subsequently released alongside a roundup episode of reflection upon the experience and the franchise overall, its place a...
Mar 10, 2021•2 hr 5 min
We embarked on our third intentional overdose of an American Movie Franchise. Unlike The Fast & the Furious and the Transformers franchise, one of these movies is genuinely great. We consumed 10+ hours of the Jurassic Park franchise in a non-stop fashion and it was a much less mind-shattering experience than the previous two marathons. As usual, commentary tracks will be subsequently released alongside a roundup episode of reflection upon the experience and the franchise overall, its place a...
Mar 10, 2021•2 hr 3 min
We embarked on our third intentional overdose of an American Movie Franchise. Unlike The Fast & the Furious and the Transformers franchise, one of these movies is genuinely great. We consumed 10+ hours of the Jurassic Park franchise in a non-stop fashion and it was a much less mind-shattering experience than the previous two marathons. As usual, commentary tracks will be subsequently released alongside a roundup episode of reflection upon the experience and the franchise overall, its place a...
Mar 10, 2021•1 hr 29 min
We embarked on our third intentional overdose of an American Movie Franchise. Unlike The Fast & the Furious and the Transformers franchise, one of these movies is genuinely great. We consumed 10+ hours of the Jurassic Park franchise in a non-stop fashion and it was a much less mind-shattering experience than the previous two marathons. As usual, commentary tracks will be subsequently released alongside a roundup episode of reflection upon the experience and the franchise overall, its place a...
Mar 10, 2021•2 hr 10 min
We embarked on our third intentional overdose of an American Movie Franchise. Unlike The Fast & the Furious and the Transformers franchise, one of these movies is genuinely great. We consumed 10+ hours of the Jurassic Park franchise in a non-stop fashion and it was a much less mind-shattering experience than the previous two marathons. As usual, commentary tracks will be subsequently released alongside a roundup episode of reflection upon the experience and the franchise overall, its place a...
Mar 10, 2021•2 hr 5 min
We embarked on our third intentional overdose of an American Movie Franchise. Unlike The Fast & the Furious and the Transformers franchise, one of these movies is genuinely great. We consumed 10+ hours of the Jurassic Park franchise in a non-stop fashion and it was a much less mind-shattering experience than the previous two marathons. As usual, commentary tracks will be subsequently released alongside a roundup episode of reflection upon the experience and the franchise overall, its place a...
Mar 10, 2021•1 hr 10 min
Amazon changes traffic light patterns as union busting. Biden bombs better. Kamala cages comfortably. The Parliamentarian has entered all our lives, now and forever. Kids wear tents. Kids sell lemonade to fight terminal brain cancer. Everything's fucked, so maybe just watch a good movie or two and soon enough you can sell your skin to robots. General Recommendations JD's Recommendation: 30 Coins JNM's Recommendation: The Vengeance Trilogy Locationless Locations heatdeathpod.com Every show-relate...
Mar 02, 2021•1 hr 21 min
Biden admin gets predictably worse and worse. Texas freezes. Textbook disaster capitalism. Cruz, Tanden, Manchin distractions. Prisons find new ways to exploit. Big tech gets bigger, tech-ier. General Recommendations JD's Recommendations: WandaVision JNM's Recommendation: We Need to Talk About Kevin (2003 Novel and 2011 Film) Locationless Locations heatdeathpod.com Every show-related link is corralled and available here . Heat Death of the Universe - @heatdeathpod JD Newland - @jdnewland Joshua ...
Feb 22, 2021•1 hr 22 min
We continue to talk about the new Adam Curtis documentary, Can't Get You Out of My Head, and discussed the final three installments. Further Reading, Viewing, Listening WATCH: Can't Get You Out of My Head: An Emotional History of the Modern World WATCH: HyperNormalisation WATCH: The Century of the Self The Reverse Marxism of Adam Curtis’s ‘Can’t Get You Out Of My Head’ Can’t Get You Out of My Head review – Adam Curtis's 'emotional history' is dazzling Can’t Get You Out of My Head, BBC iPlayer, r...
Feb 16, 2021•2 hr 7 min
We decided to watch the masterful and brand new Adam Curtis documentary, Can't Get You Out of My Head, and discussed the first three installments in this episode today. Tune in next Monday for our thoughts on the final three. Further Reading, Viewing, Listening WATCH: Can't Get You Out of My Head: An Emotional History of the Modern World WATCH: Hypernormalisation WATCH: The Century of the Self Locationless Locations heatdeathpod.com Every show-related link is corralled and available here . Heat ...
Feb 13, 2021•1 hr 34 min
Sleep deprivation. News detritus scattered in the wind. Super Bowl Spreader Event. Poisoned cultural discourse about a guitar. People continue to shepherd themselves into the the great grinding mechanism. Political landscape continues to rot. And more! It's pretty freeform today, folks. General Recommendations JD's Recommendation: Space Sweepers JNM's Recommendation: Black Moth Super Rainbow Locationless Locations heatdeathpod.com Heat Death of the Universe - @heatdeathpod Please send all Letter...
Feb 09, 2021•1 hr 32 min
