This week Justin Rogers-Cooper joins us to celebrate our 200th episode with a deep dive into the political, economic, and cultural significance of the "Joker" character. What are the origins of the Joker image and mythology? How has the character evolved over time? And what does this archetype's ubiquitous presence tell us about our historical moment? This episode is dedicated in loving, living memory of Laszlo Scott Kehoe.

Asad Haider is a founding editor at Viewpoint Magazine and the author of Mistaken Identity: Race and Class in the Age of Trump. In this conversation he explains how the history of anti-racist struggle in the United States provides a compelling set of ideas for a dynamic, anti-capitalist emancipatory practice. Along the way, we discuss the value of reading Marx in 2020, our distorted view of 1960s and 1970s radicalism, the significance of the Black Lives Matter moment, and much more.

Paul Renfro is a professor of history at Florida State University and the author of Stranger Danger: Family Values, Childhood, and the American Carceral State. In this conversation he explains how fears of child abduction fueled a hysterical campaign in the 1970s and 1980s that produced a wave of new laws, structures of punishment, and ideas about family, security, and sexuality that continue to haunt American life.

Ken Layne is the creator of Desert Oracle, a magazine and radio show/podcast all about the strange inhabitants and culture of the Mojave Desert. Layne's trajectory through the world of alternative media winds through the 1990s and 2000s, when he was present at the creation of the Gawker media empire and subsequently took the reins of their influential politics outlet Wonkette. In this conversation, we talk about the evolution of underground culture through layers of toxic capitalism, as we trace Layne's path from the fast lane of LA/New York/DC digital media to the burgeoning psychedelic scene in the California desert.

Our series on the rapidly evolving politics of COVID-19 continues this week, with Justin Rogers-Cooper warning that the logic of finance capital may force a premature "re-opening" on the American public in the summer of 2020. In this conversation we talk about recent armed anti-lockdown protests, the movie Parasite as a window into the cultural zeitgeist around class inequality, and the potential for social violence as America plunges into an unprecedented depression.