In this episode Barry and Mike take up Stuart Hall's 1980 essay, Encoding and Decoding. They discuss how his arguments hold up after 40+ years and what our participation in the current media landscape mean for not only consumption, but the production of meaning as well.

Barry and Mike discuss Wendy Chun's book, "Updating to Remain the Same"

and discuss the political and social implications of her arguments.

They begin by deconstructing the terms of her argument that Crisis +

Habit = Update and pay particular attention to the role that Chun

assigns neoliberalism in defining the perpetually shifting nature of our

networked selves.

This one gets a little messy.

Barry and Mike discuss the main ideas in Michael Miller's article. They

specifically hone in on three of his main arguments:

1. That as it is often utilized on social media, (T)heory functions

more as a means of accruing social capital than as a foundation for

debate

2. That what he calls "weak theory" becomes anti-intellectual" in its

attempt to create moral superiority

3. About the public value of "progressive punitivism" as a means of

achieving a moral high ground.

In addition to playing with the way that these ideas work on social

media, Barry and Mike look at how these ideas work in our analog

existences as well.

As a follow up to their previous discussion on Deleuze, Barry and Mike look at William Burroughs' 1975 essay, "the Limits of Control" and discuss how his arguments hold up, nearly 50 years later in a (much more) digital world.

Barry and Mike discuss Deleuze's "Postscript on the Society of Control"

to investigate all of the ways that he argues societies have been kept

in line. As Deleuze argues that we currently inhabit two separate but

related control rubrics simultaneously, there is a bit to tease out.

The guys trace the history of social control according to Foucalt and

Deleuze with the aim of understanding what our technologically enabled

freedoms actually cost and why the freedom to do what we'd like might

not be much of a freedom at all.

In this episode Barry and Mike discuss the idea of Techno-Fatalism as it pertains to Robert Christgau's response to the Ted Gioia article from The Atlantic where Gioia posited that the streaming of old music was killing new music. As both Barry and Mike are lovers of music (though not all of it "good"), this one has a bit of a personal feel to it. As such, there are new terms coined, ideas for t-shirts, and maybe* a bit of optimism. This was a fun episode. We think you'll enjoy it.

In this episode Barry and Mike discuss Baudrillard's 1985 essay "The Implosion of the Social in the Media", in which he offers a very thought-provoking thesis. Baudrillard asks what if, rather than enslaving and manipulating the masses, the media actually empowers, or emancipates them? What if all of the freedom and choice and desire that we fear might be manipulated or taken from us were the problems in the first place? These, and other "What If's", are the subject of this episode. We hope you enjoy!

In this episode Barry and Mike look at Roland Barthes' 1964 Essay "Rhetoric of the Image" and discuss his theories of advertising against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine. Spread across multiple foci, the discussion touches on the ways that images, despite their obvious curation, create manufactured senses of what is natural or authentic and are then used to send and sustain powerful rhetorical appeals.

In this episode Barry and Mike take on a follow up to Marshall McLuhan's famous 1967 book, The Medium is the Massage. Here, they dig into what exactly a media environment looks like and how this environment impacts the lives we live. If you liked (or hated) the first take on McLuhan, you'll love (or really hate) this conversation!

In this episode Barry and Mike take a look at the top 10 albums of all time according to Wikipedia. As with virtually all Top 10 lists, they take issue with what the numbers seem to say, noting some curious omissions and inclusions. However, rather than trying to rewrite history, they take a shot at explaining how and why the list looks the way that it does.