My guest is Amber A'Lee Frost, a writer, organizer, co-host of the Chapo Trap House podcast and the author of Dirtbag (2023). We discuss today's dysfunctional left, elite overproduction, online political subcultures and the emergence of “youth” as a counter-cultural and consumer demographic. Is the New Right support for labor real? What does it mean for American workers?
My guest is musician Matty Healy of The 1975. He joins me to discuss internet culture and the strange aesthetics of our time. We explore the inspirations behind his work, including the writing of cultural theorist Mark Fisher. Matty describes the "slow cancellation of the future" by comparing distinct styles of pop music across various decades. Fisher links these cultural moments to larger economic shifts that are often felt but rarely seen.
Yung Chomsky is the producer of the TrueAnon podcast, creator of the mobile app Phomo, and a natural athlete with 16 years of experience. We discuss his personal journey of learning to lift online while exploring exercise subcultures via forums and message boards. We sort the facts from fictions and discuss the tenuous connections between weight lifting and far right politics. This is the lifting episode. We’re all gonna make it.
My guest is comedian Peter James Fowler. He joins me to discuss his political meme account that he ran at age 11. I’ve spent the last few years interviewing young people who make radical posts online. Peter shares his journey from growing up in evangelical Christianity, to new atheism, and from Trump to Bernie.
My guest is artist and geographer Trevor Paglen. His groundbreaking work links new technological developments to larger political issues that are often secret or unseen. We discuss the emerging paradigm of "psyops capitalism", the history of the CIA's MK Ultra psychological operations and how magic shapes our perception of reality. These technologies culminate to form a new economic order of private surveillance, manipulation and financial extraction.
My guest is JJ McCullough a YouTuber who was previously a TV political commentator and columnist at the Washington Post. We discuss generational shifts from the political left to right, explore the state of alternative media and debate the origins of right-wing populism. While we disagree on some core issues, we always grant each other the space to fully argue an idea. My analysis and understanding is strengthened through our on-going dialogues.
My guest is Jreg or Greg Guevara as he is known offline. Jreg is a popular YouTube creator who explores online radical politics. He joins me to discuss our shared fascination with incredibly niche ideologies that only exist online. We explore social atomization as a political project and agree that taking the friend pill is the best advice you can find.
My guest is Catherine Liu, professor of film and media studies at UC Irvine. She is the author of 'Virtue Hoarders: the Case Against the Professional Managerial Class'. We discuss the origin of trauma studies, self branding on social media and the ideology of the professional class. Liu has an unwavering commitment to historical materialism and a fierce critique of elitist academies. She explores the intense moralism of our times as it relates to the Freudian super-ego.
My guest is Brace Belden, an organizer, an infamous shitposter and co-host of the TrueAnon podcast. I’ve spent the last few years interviewing young people who make radical posts online and later find their way into real world politics. Irony and humor play a huge role in this process. For the first episode, I wanted to talk to one of my favorite posters who has also lived his politics in the real world. https://www.patreon.com/joshuacitarella
Max Read joins me to discuss "the Zynternet", a newly emergent youth subculture online. We explore the For-You-Pagification of social media, the revenge of the normies and the future of online subcultures. Follow: https://maxread.substack.com/
This week’s guest is a 17 year old Left Communist from the Bay Area. He was a right-wing troll at age 13. We explore niche political subcultures, generational posting styles and the value of electoral politics.
Alex Hochuli is a co-host of the Aufhebunga Bunga podcast and a co-author of "The End of the End of History: Politics in the 21st Century". He joins me to discuss universalisms, organization and the difficult way forward. Follow: https://x.com/bungacast https://x.com/Alex__1789
Otherworld presents Deep Research. This week, we’re covering “Tartaria”. Tartaria is a conspiracy theory that suggests the existence of a vast, advanced civilization that supposedly existed in ancient times but has been intentionally erased from historical records. Proponents of this theory often claim that Tartaria was a highly developed and technologically advanced empire with a global influence, surpassing the conventional understanding of history. They argue that evidence of Tartaria's exist...
I sat down with Catherine Liu, author of Virtue Hoarders (2021), professor of Film & Media Studies at UC Irvine, for her new series at Montez Press Radio. Catherine writes, “This series, Workers of the Culture Industry Unite! (LOL) tries to address the problems of artists' work in the age of finance capitalism… At a time when the corporations and institutions that support artists are suffering from endless crises of legitimacy, how can we have better conversations about what artistic and aes...
Ruby Thelot is a designer, cyber-ethnographer and artist. He is a professor of Design and Media Theory at NYU. We discuss his new book: A Cyber Archeology of Checkpoints (2024) a poignant tribute to a vanished online community. Get the book: https://www.irrelevantpress.com/store/pre-sale-a-cyberarchaeology-of-checkpoints-ruby-thelot Follow: https://www.instagram.com/being_on_line/?hl=en https://x.com/being_on_line?lang=en
My guest is a Post-Marxist. We explore political subcultures such as Post-left Anarchy, Unconditional Accelerationism, Anarcho-Primitivism and more.
Towards a Philosophy of Photography by Vilem Flusser (1984) https://dis.art/obama-baroque https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000007785730/facebook-news-feed-zuckerberg.html https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liLGhXv76dg
Get the book: https://darkforest.metalabel.com/dfa2 Yancey and I visit Montez Press Radio in downtown NYC to discuss The Dark Forest Anthology of the Internet. Follow: https://www.instagram.com/montezpressradio https://www.instagram.com/ystrickler https://twitter.com/ystrickler https://www.instagram.com/metalabel__/ https://twitter.com/metalabel_
Austin Robey, co-founder of Metalabel, joins me to discuss alternative models for the internet. We explore “Ampled”, a cooperative platform for musicians that existed from 2018-2023 and theorize about the next generation of platforms. Follow: https://twitter.com/austinrobey_ https://www.instagram.com/michaelcoors/ https://twitter.com/metalabel_ https://www.instagram.com/metalabel__/ Read: https://austinrobey.xyz/
Get the game: https://joshuacitarella.metalabel.com/class-fantasy Class Fantasy is an action RPG card game that pairs fantasy character classes with political ideologies. Your goal is to defeat other players in battle and achieve utopia. Inspired by games like Dungeons & Dragons, Magic: The Gathering and World of Warcraft, Class Fantasy explores the essential role playing and world building process that links the game space and the real world. Finally, a game that unites the whole political ...
Exploring the political arc of the social media decade. Get the books: https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/vincent-bevins/if-we-burn/9781541788985/?lens=publicaffairs https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374610326/doppelganger Links: https://youtu.be/6FCYcfiVqYQ https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/mar/05/leftwing-vulkan-group-claim-responsibility-tesla-factory-pylon-arson-attack-berlin https://www.dissentmagazine.org/blog/the-anarcho-liberal/ https://www.youtube.com/live/cI7iyo2wv18?s...
Simon Denny's Metaverse Landscapes unpack historical resonances between territory, abstraction and financialization. Links: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/06/arts/design/simon-denny-art-computers-gaming-review-musk-grimes.html https://www.instagram.com/sden023/ https://www.instagram.com/juliaxgulia/ https://www.instagram.com/joshuacitarella/ https://www.instagram.com/dunkunsthalle/ https://www.instagram.com/petzelgallery/ https://www.instagram.com/sorry_press/ https://www.sorry-press.com/landsc...
Artist Paige K.B. calls into the stream to discuss three major exhibitions: “Cute” at Somerset House in London, “Poetics of Encryption” at KW Institute of Contemporary Art in Berlin, and Simon Denny’s shows in New York. Follow: https://www.instagram.com/guiltgroupe/ Exhibitions: https://www.somersethouse.org.uk/whats-on/cute https://poeticsofencryption.kw-berlin.de/src/html/Exibition.html https://www.petzel.com/exhibitions/simon-denny5 https://www.petzel.com/exhibitions/multi-user-dungeon-mud ht...
My guest is a 20 year old Marxist. At age 12, he began exploring niche circles of Tumblr, YouTube and Wikipedia.
@dnlklr joins me to discuss the For-You-Pagification of the internet, hyper polarization online, network states, AI vs. climate and building new institutions. https://twitter.com/DnlKlr https://www.instagram.com/dnlklr https://twitter.com/__vaporware__
My guest ran a collaborative role-playing game that turned political meme accounts on Instagram into an MMO for fantasy nation-states.
Her new book is out now from MacMillan Press: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250269621/dirtbag Amber A'Lee Frost is a writer and co-host of Chapo Trap House. Find her writing in Jacobin Magazine, Catalyst, Damage Magazine, The Baffler, American Affairs and many others. IG: https://instagram.com/amberaleefrost
Philosopher of technology, Benjamin Bratton, joins me to discuss AI and planetary scale computation. Read his work and learn more about Antikythera in the links below: twitter.com/bratton antikythera.org/ mitpress.mit.edu/9780262029575/the-stack/ www.versobooks.com/products/2749-t…nge-of-the-real Trust: Inhumanism Rising - Benjamin Bratton mitpress.mit.edu/9781913029999/ma…on-is-not-final/
Philosopher of technology, Benjamin Bratton, joins me to discuss AI, terraforming, geopolitics and planetary scale computation. Read his work and learn more about Antikythera in the links below: https://twitter.com/bratton https://antikythera.org/ https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262029575/the-stack/ https://www.versobooks.com/products/2749-the-revenge-of-the-real Trust: Inhumanism Rising - Benjamin Bratton https://mitpress.mit.edu/9781913029999/machine-decision-is-not-final/ https://autocatallaxy.c...
My guest is a 22 year old from the Middle East. She has spent the last few years immersed in political meme culture and radical content online.
