The Chatterbox

CUJO is a podcast about culture in the age of platforms. Episodes drop every other week, but if you want the full experience, we recommend signing up for a paid subscription. Paid subscribers also get access to our CUJOPLEX Discord and The Weather Report, a monthly episode series where we take stock of where the cultural winds are blowing and tell you what’s rained into our brains.

If you were on the music internet at all during the 2010s, you’re probably familiar with vaporwave. You know, that archival-obsessed musical microgenre based on synthy, hypnotic samples paired with aesthetics like classical sculptures, retro corporate imagery, and Japanese kanji.

It’s almost a meme at this point, but vaporwave was one the first internet-born genres and art movements created entirely using digital tools, plundered from online archives. And beneath the placid, detached surface of vaporwave—somehow both nostalgic and ironic—there was a passionate community of musicians and fans creating something that in retrospect was actually quite political and subversive—if not in subject matter, then in form.

A new documentary called Nobody Here: The Story of Vaporwave captures the evolution and cultural impact of vaporwave, told from the perspective of more than 50 artists, producers, and other key figures from across the scene, including Daniel Lopatin, 猫 シ Corp. (Cat System Corp.), Luxury Elite, George Clanton, Saint Pepsi. In keeping with the spirit of the movement, you can watch it for free on YouTube.

Director Christian Britten and producer and artist Enzo Van Baelen, who’s also co-founder of the label My Pet Flamingo, join us to talk about the genre’s origins, including as an outgrowth of noise music, the role of anonymity in the scene, and how its use of meme-able visual iconography foreshadowed visual communication on the internet today. Plus, we discuss what we can learn from the story of a musical movement that was by definition unmonetizable (unless you’re creating your own samples, that is).

Watch Nobody Here: The Story of Vaporwave for free on YouTube.

Download the film here.

Check out the Nobody Here companion sampler over at Bandcamp.

The uncritical adoption of 'humane', 'cage-free', 'free-range', and lab-grown meat by animal advocates, funded by effective altruism philanthropy and the animal agriculture industry, not only reproduces the myth that meat is normal, natural, and necessary, it represents an ultimate defeat for animals. Vasile Stănescu, animal liberation scholar exposes the 'humane' hoax and explains why the failure of many animal advocates to frame veganism as a social justice movement in solidarity with other social justice movements is sustaining and reproducing systems of oppression and exploitation of humans, animals, and nature. Highlights include:

• How parents and society teach us to repress the childhood trauma that's triggered when we learn about the animal suffering and death from eating animal products;
• Why the so-called 'humane', 'cage free', and 'free range' agriculture practices are a hoax funded by the animal agriculture industry that are even more harmful for the animals — both wild and domesticated — and the planet than the conventional factory farming systems they claim to replace;
• Moral philosopher Peter Singer's complicity in perpetuating these 'humane' myths, and the growing shift from liberation to welfarism within the animal advocacy movement through Singer-supported effective altruism philanthropy;
• The relevance of Jevon's paradox to animal advocacy and how new categories such as 'cage-free' or 'free-range' do not replace the old system, but rather expand it, and why animal advocates must reject market-based or technology-based 'solutions' as they sustain and reproduce the current system of speciesism, exploitation, and growthism;
• How the slaughterhouse and its dis-assembly line of animals' bodies became the template for the manufacturing assembly line of modern capitalism;
• How western governments historically promoted 'cheap meat' to keep the laboring classes content with their low wages and help them continue feeling superior to the 'effeminate' and 'weak' rice and corn eaters of colonized Asia and South America;
• How vegetarian and vegan eating are pathologized in a way that diets with animal products are not — even though large consumption of animal products is in no way 'natural' in much of the world or through the majority of human history;
• Why lab-grown meat — still in its experimental phase — is not vegan, as its growth medium relies on the blood of unborn cows, not environmentally beneficial, as it requires huge amounts of energy, and is exorbitantly expensive; meanwhile, in collaborating with the animal agriculture industry for its creation, proponents of lab-grown meat are throwing animals — and animal advocacy — under the bus;
• Why some animal rights activists turn to effective altruists and the money they offer to placate their despair and see short-term 'faux wins' - while not appreciating that successful social justice movements have always taken time and persistence;
• Why veganism should be framed not as a consumerist diet lifestyle option but as a social justice movement in solidarity with other social justice movements.

See episode website for show notes, links, and transcript:

https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/vasile-stanescu

OVERSHOOT | Shrink Toward Abundance

OVERSHOOT tackles today's interlocked social and ecological crises driven by humanity's excessive population and consumption. The podcast explores needed narrative, behavioral, and system shifts for recreating human life in balance with all life on Earth. With expert guests from wide-ranging disciplines, we examine the forces underlying overshoot: from patriarchal pronatalism that is fueling overpopulation, to growth-biased economic systems that lead to consumerism and social injustice, to the dominant worldview of human supremacy that subjugates animals and nature. Our vision of shrinking toward abundance inspires us to seek pathways of transformation that go beyond technological fixes toward a new humanity that honors our interconnectedness with all beings.

Hosted by Nandita Bajaj and Alan Ware. Brought to you by Population Balance.

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The late Jeffrey Epstein was friends with all sorts of elite figures in the US and many other countries. This extensive network is now sometimes described as “the Epstein class.” The question is, was this class held together merely by the opportunistic trading of favors or did it have a coherent worldview and agenda?

Branko Marcetic has written a series of articles in Jacobin that clarify this issue by looking at relationships Epstein had with the billionaire Peter Thiel and the political operative Steve Bannon. 

The AI “cloud” sounds weightless. But behind every chat bot, every prompt, and every promise of a coming AI revolution is a massive physical footprint: hyperscale data centers consuming enormous amounts of land, electricity, water, and public subsidies.

This week, Nick and Goldy talk with Tim Murphy, national correspondent at Mother Jones, about his cover story on how the American oligarchy went hyperscale in the age of AI. Murphy has been reporting from communities across the country where residents are watching enormous data centers rise in their backyards, often with little transparency, few long-term jobs, and huge demands on local infrastructure.

The result is a familiar story: public risk, private reward. Tech billionaires get the profits. Communities get higher utility costs, depleted resources, tax breaks they may never recoup, and facilities that could become tomorrow’s stranded assets when the AI bubble bursts.

AI may be new. But the economic model behind this boom is very old: extract from communities, concentrate power at the top, and call it progress.

Tim Murphy is a national correspondent at Mother Jones.

Social Media:

@timothypmurphy.bsky.social

@timothypmurphy

@motherjones.com

@MotherJones

Further reading: 

Mother Jones - How the American Oligarchy Went Hyperscale

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Interviewer: RAFAEL KHACHATURIAN. Political theorist MICHAEL GORUP joins the podcast to discuss the intertwined histories of race, democracy, and popular sovereignty in the United States. Drawing on themes from Gorup's book The Counterrevolutionary Shadow: Race, Democracy, and the Making of the American People, the conversation ranges from Jefferson and Reconstruction to Black Power and the contemporary crises of neoliberalism, examining how democratic ideals and racial domination have evolved together across American history.

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Danny and Derek speak with David Sirota, founder and EIC of The Lever, about journalism, independent media, and the consolidation of presidential power. They discuss the difference between journalism and media, the attention economy, capitalist media, audience capture, the decline of local news, the Powell Memo, the unitary executive theory, war powers, and Donald Trump’s use of executive power.

Be sure to listen to The Kingmakers, the second season of David’s investigative podcast Master Plan.

Don’t forget that AP’s new, weekly livestream is back this Wednesday at 8pm ET on our YouTube channel.

And keep your eyes peeled for Season 2 of Welcome to the Crusades.

Recorded 4/27/26

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In this episode, in front of a live audience at Carleton University for their "The Ends of AI: A symposium on technopolitics and intellectual culture", I spoke about strategies and outlooks on environment justice with policy expert, Sonja Solomun. Recorded Apr 2, 2026. Released May 11, 2026.

The end of accountability: How autonomous AI could supercharge climate disinformation

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2026/02/27/opinion/ai-conspiracies-climate-disinformation

Polarization as the technological goal – not the error

https://www.mediatechdemocracy.com/all-work/polarization-as-the-technological-goal-not-the-error

From Tech to Justice: A Call for Environmental Justice in AI

https://ainowinstitute.org/publications/collection/a-new-ai-lexicon-sustainability

Beyond Technology: The Role of Information Interference in Climate and Election Obstruction

https://www.mediatechdemocracy.com/all-work/beyond-technology-the-role-of-information-interference-in-climate-and-election-obstruction

“You will be in positions that matter. Positions in which you can decide the

nature and quality of other people’s lives. Your errors may be irrevocable.

So when you enter those places of trust, or power, dream a little before you

think, so your thoughts, your solutions, your directions, your choices about

who lives and who doesn’t, about who flourishes and who doesn’t will be

worth the very sacred life you have chosen to live. You are not helpless.

You are not heartless. And you have time.”

― Toni Morrison, The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations

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For as long as we’ve known, humans have revered ancient trees. We have also destroyed them, especially since the advent of colonialism and fossil fuel capitalism. Historian Jared Farmer reflects on what trees illuminate about our past and potential future.

The post Fund Drive Special: Fossil Capitalism and Trees appeared first on KPFA.