Canada Mike joins Emmet to talk about the second to last chapter of Lasch's book. They talk about how liberalism went from a political position to an alleged psychological framework and culture. And how HL Mencken was a pioneer of lectureporn.

Special Guest: Mike.

DF and Emmet had such a good time talking about early internet history they decided to do it again. This time, they're looking at humdog's seminal but half-forgotten essay "pandora's vox." DF and Emmet try to work through the internet as a form, it's incredible liquidity, how physical space has transubstantiated into the internet, things like the Slaves of Gor fandom as a substructure of the internet, what it means that humdog seems to have committed suicide over exactly the kind of relationship she warned about and more!

"pandora's vox: on community in cyberspace" by humdog.

Default Friend returns to talk with Emmet about Julian Dibbel's famous essay, A Rape in Cybserpace, which presaged our digital social experience back in 1993. DF and Emmet talk about etiquette, digital governance, the weirdness of online life, the "distributed self," what it would mean to take the internet seriously, and more!

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Closing Song: The End of Love by Wimeanancas Cambodian Band.

Emmet and John begin their new series on Robert Hughes's documentary series The Shock of the New. This first installment takes on early modernism. The lads contemplate the impact of WWI, think on what really separates the modern experience from previous eras, and what makes our era different from early modernism.

Shock of the New.

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Nuclear Barbarians.

Closing Song: Chlorine by Buffalo Buffalo.

Anton Jager sits down with Emmet to talk about how we moved from the post-political age of technocratic consensus to the noisy stasis of our current hyper-political present. They talk about whether the right and left descriptors handed down from French parliament hold today, politics as fandom, the death of political responsibility, and more!

How the World Went from Post-Politics to Hyper-Politics by Anton Jaegar, Tribune.

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Check out Emmet's new Substack, Nuclear Barbarians.

Closing Song: Parasocial Contract by Future Nauseous.

Emmet and John take on the ideas of Reinhold Niebuhr and his impact on neocons and MLK. Then they look at Lasch's interpretation of MLK's intellectual life and political career. They compare the Southern and Northern Civil Rights campaigns and contemplate the deadlock, in part created by King himself, left in his wake. They close by discussing resentment and its politics.

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Luke Thompson returns to talk with Emmet about Joan Didion, who recently passed. They focus on her essay "Insider Baseball," her coverage of the 1988 presidential primary season, and discuss the nature of American presidential campaigns, the campaign press, the nature of Didion's insights, what made 2016 so weird, and more!

Insider Baseball by Joan Didion.

Closing Song: "Journey to the Darkened Empires" by Forlorn Kingdom.

Emmet and Mike discuss medieval techniques of memory and forgetting. They discuss Cornelius Agrippa's assault on those techniques as an assault on the corrupted scholastic world. In Agrippa's thought we see the germs of modernity. The discuss opens up into a contemplation of ancient science and tech, the propaganda of the Enlightenment, the disciplining of the mind and the gaze, recovering tradition, and more.

Feel free to email or DM us for pdfs of the sources we used for this episode.

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Closing song: Habit Necessity by TAD.

Emmet and John work through questions of the democratization of work and culture in the era of mass production and mass culture. They also trace the relationship between cultural bohemians and elites with the workers' movement, including the forgotten legacy of Mabel Dodge Luhan. The close by talking about national loyalty, the repeat of debates from 100 years ago, another look at property as a political concern, and more!

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Emmet and returning guest Josh Bregman sit down to talk about the movie Looper. They look back at what makes it such a successful film, but also what it captured about the year it was released, 2012. They talk about Mark Fisher, life before social media, "the slow cancellation of the future," what kind of interregnum we're in, and what Looper had to tell us about our future.

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Closing Song: Free Nation - Naked Raygun.