This week we are discussing Mary Harron's adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis' novel American Psycho in light of Stu's recent article on the film's resonance with a cybernetic conception of the environment. We discuss whether the crimes depicted in the film should be understood literally or as hallucinations, and how regardless of their reality they offer us telling insights on the nature of the neoliberal turn in American life and the commodification of everything. 

Check out Stu's article on his substack, Cybernetic Observations.

This episode contains spoilers for American Psycho. 

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This week we are discussing José Saramago's 1995 novel Blindness. We consider what the central theme of the novel, a world in which virtually everyone suddenly goes blind, says about the way society is set up and how quickly it might descend into chaos were such an event to occur. We also compare Saramago's style with that of Thomas Bernhard, whose prose we determine to be "even more exhausting" than that of Saramago. Michael also offers up one of his patented hypotheticals about a key moment in the book. It's all here!

This episode contains spoilers for Blindness.

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This week we're finally talking about The Matrix, which is arguably the most culturally influential film of the last 30 years. We discuss the various ways the "red pill/blue pill" moment has been ingested by the culture, and we also get into the film's undeniable influence on the now widespread belief in "simulation theory." Despite the heavy handedness of some of the metaphors here, we both agree that the film is still, after 27 years, completely awesome. 

This episode contains spoilers for The Matrix.

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This week we are delving into Stu's new article on Ray Kurzweil and the Singularity. What are some of the consequences of the potential merger of our brains with superintelligent AI? Are they good? Are there any downsides? What about immortality? Should we want to live forever? 

We get into all this, while also making a comparison to a vision of a kind of immortality expressed in Mark Frost's and David Lynch's brilliant series, Twin Peaks.

Subscribe to Stu's new substack, Cybernetic Observations. 

"Ray Kurzweil's Intimations of Immortality" by Stu Watson

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This week we are covering the 1993 film, Alive, directed by Frank Marshall and starring Ethan Hawke and Josh Hamilton. A sort of apocalypse in miniature, the movie depicts the miraculous survival of sixteen members of a Uruguayan rugby team whose plane crashed in the middle of the Andes mountains in 1972. 

We talk about the film's reputation, which perhaps surpasses its dramatic merits, while also considering the choices one would be forced to consider making were one to find oneself in such a scenario, specifically, cannibalism. We make comparisons to the situation the crew members of the  famous whaling ship Essex made in a somewhat similar scenario, oddly also while en route to Chile. 

The episode opens with a conversation about another, more recent plane crash, this one seemingly caused by a test of a newly developed GPS jammer. 

This film contains spoilers for Alive.

Futurism on the New Mexico plane crash caused by a GPS jammer

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This week we are tackling The Odyssey, both the ancient Greek epic and the recent adaptation directed by Christopher Nolan. We go over the context of the poem's composition and dissemination, its significance to the Greeks, and give a broad outline of the major incidents in the poem. Fear not, Zeus's Law is mentioned!

We discuss how the film compresses the twenty-four book epic into a three hour movie, as well as Nolan's use of Vergil's Aeneid as a kind of narrative supplement. We also touch on Emily Wilson's review of the film in the London Review of Books and consider how profoundly stupid the "Emily Wilson is Woke" reading of her translations has always been, even while taking some issue with her critique of Nolan. 

Lastly we consider how Nolan superimposes contemporary historical understandings of the Bronze Age Collapse onto a narrative set in the period when that collapse was occurring, and how this leads to some of the film's most unsatisfying, clunkiest dialogue. 

Emily Wilson's Review of Nolan's The Odyssey in LRB

Our Episode on the Ancient Greek Afterlife

Our Episode on The Bronze Age Collapse

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This week we have a two pronged episode. We open up discussing the suit four states have brought against Meta, alleging the company has knowingly caused irreparable damage to millions of teens in promoting its harmful and addictive products to them. 

The bulk of the episode then looks at a recent, brilliant essay by Mathias Fuelling from Cosmonaut magazine on three works of non-fiction, Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West by Alex C. Karp and Nicholas W. Zamiska, and If Anyone Builds it, Everyone Dies by Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares. Fuelling points out how all three works, despite superficially different ideological shadings, share a certain technocratic DNA that points in the same, dispiriting direction: a techno-fascist elite born out of Silicon Valley commandeering control of the United States government in the name of a renewed nationalism in opposition to the so called "Chinese Century." 

The essay also makes a strong case for the way AI serves as a "cop out mechanism" that allows these authors to avoid addressing the pressing questions of climate change and wealth stratification. It's a really excellent essay that we enjoyed discussing and that helped us to refine some of our own previously discussed ideas on these matters.

"A Thesis on the History of the 21st Century: Technocracy, AI, and the End of the World" by Mathias Fuelling in Cosmonaut

Reuters on the Four States suing Meta over Youth Safety

Our previous episode on Abundance , Ep 62, on Apple Podcasts

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We're going back to where it all began; that's right, it's aliens, this time those friendly aliens from Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind. We talk about the general optimism and lack of paranoia in the film, contrasting it with more recent "first contact" narratives. We also get into the grittiness of Spielberg's early films, a texture he seems to have mostly outgrown by his 1990s blockbuster era. While the movie may have less to say about politics and the hard realities of apocalyptic cultural moments than we would have liked, perhaps that very absence is in itself a lesson for us all.

This episode contains spoilers for Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

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In honor of America's 250th birthday we are covering one of the landmark events in the nation's history, namely the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. We discuss why the assassination was so significant, the context of the recently concluded Civil War, and the precise nature of the conspiracy led by famous actor John Wilkes Booth. We detail Booth's outrageous actions after shooting President Lincoln, his attempts to flee "to Mexico" on a broken leg, and his eventual killing by the unforgettably strange Boston Corbett in the burning barn at Garrett's Farm. 

Dave Taylor's presentation on Booth's flight after the assassination

The Abraham Lincoln Memorial Library and Museum's YouTube page (home of many interesting presentations on Lincoln's presidency and the assassination)

The Rest is History Podcast on the Lincoln Assassination

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This week we are using a novel format to explore recent Supreme Court decisions. Stu presents Michael with a brief sketch of the case, Michael decides how he would rule, and Stu then reveals the actual decision arrived at by the justices. Topics covered include: gun rights, pollution, temporary protected status, immigration, transgender athletes in school sports, birthright citizenship, and internet age verification. Is Michael in step with the court, or is he just a bleeding heart liberal? To find out, you must listen!

NPR on Trump's Immigration Policy and Population Decline

The Guardian on Temporary Protective Status

The Hill on Supreme Court Immigration Decisions

SCOTUS Blog on Transgender Athletes in School Sports

SCOTUS Blog on Birthright Citizenship

Politico on 2019 on FDR and Court-Packing

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