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

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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 weight of Sly’s position on the vanguard, AI, Walk Hard: A Dewy Cox story, and more. RIP Sly

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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, gridiron city plans (like Mohenjo-daro), maps, musical notation, ledgers, the screen and the moveable type, setting the stage for digital forms to come.Along the way, we talk Le Corbusier, the Swiss grid system of Josef Müller-Brockmann, the design of Instagram, and Lotus 1-2-3. This is a mellow research-based episode on how grids both liberate and constrain the ways we live, think, and create.Cited: Hannah B. Higgins The Grid Book

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 Wheel (band) - Supernatural Girl, audiophile quality, 60’s lingo, Charles Broom, community, Farewell Ye Guilded fog,

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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

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

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The City Writes Back: Tunnels, Tattoos, and the Sociology of Graffiti w/ Klub 2020

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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 also touch on the Westall UFO sighting and its eerie relevance, Franco "Bifo" Berardi’s reflections on cognitive capitalism and collapse, the “infobrain,” the cult of rationalism, and the surreal logic of AI-driven extremism as LLM's talk like a therapist. Plus: exit strategies, neocameralist fantasy worlds, and the political theology behind technocratic acceleration.

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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 old refrigerator and more

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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.