Agitator

Tikeshi Kitano's 1993 surreal yakuza comedy Sonatine

A conversation about Seiji Tanaka's 2025 Netflix joint Demon City turns into a requiem for the haters, a sincerely thoughtful exploration into the psychology of traitors. We also get real about the struggles of parenting, how to engage with the opposition, and the art of discomfort. Masterful podcasting here.

Wu Hao's FURY 12 HOURS (2024) + Nikhil Nagesh Bhat's KILL (2023) + character complexity on the bell curve of waterhead to sage + the Bruce Willis School for Forgetting How to Read + two Furbies going back and forth + zoomer cashiers.

TWILIGHT OF THE WARRIORS: WALLED IN + THE BLADE (1995) + Action Genre according to Story Grid + kung fu movies on Tubi + NOSFERATU (2024) + brodernism + being genuine + writers being annoying on X.

Video episode and more on patreon.com/agitator

We kick things off talmbout marketing strategies and early reader feedback on JDO's upcoming cybergore novel Gods Fare No Better. Also: why controversy is good for sales (but only if it's not fabricated), Brandon Sanderson's "rotating crops" approach to juggling creative projects, what makes Alex Perez so annoying, and are the RFK onesies worth the price tag? We share our predictions on how the drop of Kelby's gangster neo-western Texas Tea will go, JDO explains what's inside Korean fish candy, we murder the egos of writers with prestigious publishing ambitions, and then we dive into The Binding of Isaac and what storytelling lessons can be learned from this game.

It's a gold rush of bars. So much quotable wisdom here, it would take a Dave Blunts sized t-shirt to fit it all. Our boa David Simmons, favorite writer of the band Uniform, hops on about an hour and a half in to join the craft talk and marketing strategies, the state and future of all of the media industries, the value of hobbyists, addiction, what's coming up from Broken River, and basically everything in or around the world of writing (plus family). This episode is brought to you by real gangstas and also Ozempic. Keep up with the collective at brokenriverbooks.com and The Broken River Writers' Collective on Substack. Support the show at patreon.com/agitator. Cop some merch HERE.

Chopping it up with the homie Banjer Jack on everything from building guitars, Sacred Harp singing, and backwoods time warps to Destiny's Child, de-normalizing the weird, and the event we all lived through that shall never be forgotten. We also get deep into talking bout God, the church, animism, and what being Christian means to us.

patreon.com/agitator

Matt Sini, author and host of Getting Lit, joins us for the second (we missed a year or two) AGACITY ATORDS, where we round up and encapsulate our favorite art and biggest takeaways from the year.