The Carousel Podcast

Today we have Inez Stepman, a thinker I discovered recently and am incredibly impressed by. Her gender analysis is rooted in Red Pill theory—she admittedly came up reading Chateau Heartiste—and she’s the first woman I’ve ever heard bring up the concept of hypergamy.

She joins Peachy Keenan and Aimee Therese on the Mount Rushmore of Female Dissident Right (FDR), although I’m not sure she would agree with this characterization. She’s got a JD from UVA and now works for the Independent Women’s Forum, a right-leaning think tank which recently filed an amicus brief arguing against the U.S. Women’s Soccer absurd pay discrimination lawsuit.

Stepman can cover an immense amount of ground very quickly. Our convo covers Biden’s recent pro-ESG veto, Lochner v. New York’s impact on feminism, John Calhoun’s Beautiful Ones experiment, and how school choice can serve as a patronage system for the contemporary right.

Inez on Twitter

Her podcast High Noon

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Two important legal stories (besides the Trump indictment) came to the fore this week, and no one better to explain them than bodybuilder, Twitter anon, and high-powered attorney Ash.

First, the political prosecution of of Douglas Mackey (AKA Ricky Vaughn) reached its third day of deliberations, with the jury receiving an Allen Charge—intense pressure from the judge to reach a verdict—on Wednesday. Mackey is on trial for sharing a joke meme encouraging Hillary Clinton supporters to “vote by text” during 2016 election. Despite many Dems making the exact same joke, encouraging Trump supporters to vote by text, Mackey faces prosecution in federal court while no Democrats face the same.

****UPDATE: Just moments ago, the news broke that Mackey has been found guilty.

Second, text of the RESTRICT Act (Senate Bill 686) has been released to widespread accusations of government overreach. It gives the state unprecedented power to control online speech via prosecution of private citizens—which is why Ash and others describe it as Gen Z’s Patriot Act.

The bill, backed by both parties, ostensibly seeks to gird national security against the looming TikTok threat. In practice, however, the bill will provide a regime now known for political prosecutions with carte blanche to pursue more rebel speakers like Mackey.

Here’s a viral thread from Grill Time clearly and simply explaining the provisions of SB 686, and why they amount to obvious overreach.

Follow Ash on Twitter

Support the cause, now more than ever

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Welcome filmmaker Daniel Algarin to The Carousel. A working Hollywood creative director/editor, Algarin came up under David Fincher at Rock, Paper, Scissors, and has found great success cutting trailers for major film releases.

But, unlike your typical Hollywood hack, Algarin actually has something to say. His viral YouTube hit Dread Pirate Roberts depicts Silk Road-founder Ross Ulbricht in his own words in the moments before his arrest. It’s the perfect short. Incisive, cinematic, perfectly-crafted, thematically-complex—a successful attempt to bring filmic quality to the small screen.

If you haven’t watched it yet, I can’t think of a better way to spend four minutes of your time:

Check out Algarin’s Substack Thoughtcrime for more of his work.

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Last Things takes a spin on The Carousel for episode 39.

Fantastic video essayist, podcaster, and conversationalist, Last Things analyzes our broken culture via popular movies and TV. His beliefs that "horror is fundamentally right wing" and that "the left can't see, the right can't speak," have become insightful memes.

We cover much, but our conversation focuses on one key theme: how critical art, in the form of works like The Boys and Black Mirror, is captured and converted into propaganda by the very regime it seeks to critique. Deleuze labels a variation of this process "Deterritorialization" and "Reterritorialization"—how anything genuine is hollowed out and sold back to us with nothing more than the mask of what it used to represent.

Last Things on Twitter

Last Things on YouTube

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YouTuber Scott Mannion hops on the Carousel for Episode 38.

Mannion specializes in Anglo Saxon symbology and meaning—his video essays and Substacks combine historical analysis with beautiful prose to unearth the roots that ground individuals in their cultures, and cultures in their lands. He digs deep into the littlest elements of being, the origins of materials of the Barbour jacket for example, to reveal the essence of our ancestries. His organization Greenwood encourages members to rediscover metaphysical hierarchies and become reacquainted with deep connections they probably never knew they had.

We talk about the Queen’s burial ceremony, the U.S. Constitution, Daseins, and the role of the based brand maker in the modern world.

Scott on YouTube

Scott on Twitter

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Meet Yuri Bezmenov, an ambitious new anon Substacking up a storm. His namesake, a KGB defector from the 1980s, recently re-rose to prominence via this eerily prescient video about the process of demoralization.

The current Yuri is a native New Yorker, the son of Chinese immigrants, which gives him a unique perspective on ideological subversion. His beat covers the signs and symbols of subversion in places like Austin, New York, and Karenland FUPAZ (his word for the network of American cities run by zombie Progressives). We talk about Red Guards, struggle sessions, urban male-female dynamics, and of course how to subvert the subversion that’s become the norm.

Yuri Bezmenov on Twitter

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Please welcome Asher Penn to The Carousel.

Asher is founder of Sex Magazine and the man behind the Delicious Tacos short film that Curtis Yarvin can’t stop blogging about.

Asher and I discuss the genesis of the project, Peter Vack, the quality of Tacos’ writing, and the state of sex in film and advertising.

As one of Tacos’ biggest fans, I fully support this project, and gave $100 to the Kickstarter. The trailer captures the essence of Tacos in a way I didn’t think was possible on-screen.

Why is this project so important? Yarvin puts it better than I ever could,

“[Untitled Delicious Tacos Short Film] is nothing less than a kind of supergroup counterculture event…Tacos is the Hemingway, the Raymond Carver, of our scene. It needs film. Peter Vack is a badass veteran of the NY underground film scene and famous for the infamous Mike Crumplar struggle session. It needs provocative underground magazines—Asher Penn is well-known for his SEX Magazine. It needs dangerous music—I can’t even mention the former name of musician Negative XP.”

Check out the trailer and give to the Kickstarter here. There are only a few days left!

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Please welcome journalist Ryan Zickgraf to The Carousel.

Zickgraf writes for Compact and Jacobin from a leftist perspective, and occupies the leftward fork of the horsehoe directly across from me, and from whence I came.

I found him via his interesting NFL article in Compact, “It’s Not Your Grandaddy’s NFL,” which I see as a companion piece to my “The NFL’s Eggshell PR Problem.”

We also share in common a background in city journalism, him with The Chicago Reader and WaPo as an Atlanta correspondent. He was cancelled(ish) from the Reader after a woke takeover.

We talk about Perry Abbasi’s attempted cancellation by the Reader, sports gambling, Mobile, Alabama, and why and how corporations woke wash labor abuses away.

Ryan on Twitter

Ryan’s Substack The Third Rail

Ryan on Authory

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Today we’ve got Gio.

Visual artist, writer, and YouTuber Gio Pennachietti is the consummate taxonomist of online dissident spheres. His Content Minded Corner provides a vast perspective on the opposing ideologies and idiosyncrasies of our digital ocean.

We chat about the definition of “content,” the meaning of counterculture, and why he uses so many euphemisms.

Content Minded Corner Substack

Gio on YouTube

Gio on Twitter

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SPECIAL EPISODE

Magdalene Taylor's OpEd for the New York Times, "Have Most Sex Please," went viral this week—titillating incels and upsetting asexuals across the land.

While many will disagree, I see Magdalene as a bridge between the mainstream and heretical spheres—that rare journalist who still approaches her material with clear, open eyes. It's not often, after all, that we see a NYT piece that's positive about sex without being "sex positive" (a boner-killing academic term that paints sex as an elaborate and exhausting project to undertake).

In this episode, Magdalene diagnoses our sexless society and provides the perspective of "26 year old living in Brooklyn." We talk about attraction, female sexuality, and the depolarization of the sexes. Maybe, just maybe, she's a genuine whitepill.

Her article

Her Substack "Many Such Cases"

Her Twitter

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This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thecarousel.substack.com/subscribe