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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This week we are discussing the recent New York congressional primaries which have announced Zohran Mamdani's arrival as a new political "kingmaker" in the Democratic Party. We discuss the three candidates, Brad Lander, Claire Valdez, and Darializa Avila Chevalier, go over the politics, and then chart the response from the centrist wing of the party, as led by Hakeem Jeffries. Is this a sign of hope for a more progressive moment in American politics? Perhaps!

Stu also gives a brief overview of his recent month long jury duty service in Brooklyn Criminal Court.

Democracy Now! on the New York Congressional Primaries

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This week we are talking about the so-called utopian promise of the internet, the "information superhighway" as it was once known, and how it has, over the last thirty years, transformed into an information superhighway...to HELL. 

We look at some predictions and early ideas about the internet from the 90s before considering the critiques brought by Astra Taylor in the 2010s regarding the way the internet had been subverted by corporate interests. We also look at Lawrence Lessig's analysis of a "free culture" vs. a "permission culture" and how the internet has very much been made to resemble the latter. We conclude with a brief discussion of John Perry Barlow's "A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace" from 1996 and what it perhaps fails to consider.

Lastly we think about the implications of all of this as we experience the rise of a similarly transformative new technological paradigm, AI and Large Language Models.

Clinton Administration plans for the "Peace Dividend" in 1992

Time Magazine in 1993 predicts the future of the internet

Astra Taylor at Democracy Now on the Subversion of the Internet by Advertising

Lawrence Lessig's Free Culture

A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace by John Perry Barlow

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This week we are discussing the Challenger space shuttle disaster, looking at what caused the shuttle to explode and how the aftermath specifically affected the psyche of the United States in the late 1980s. We also share personal recollections from the disaster, both as it happened and as a feature of our lives growing up as elder millennials. 

Challenger: The Last Flight on Netflix

Major Malfunction: A Recap of the Challenger Disaster on Youtube

"High Flight" by John Gillespie Magee, Jr.

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This week we're discussing the April 28, 1986 disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Soviet Union and its aftermath. We use the 2019 HBO mini-series Chernobyl as our guide, despite some of its historical inaccuracies and acts of dramatic compression. We note, in particular, how those very acts of dramatic compression in fact work as a metonymy for the residual Cold War ideology that animates much of the show, which seems very concerned with depicting the ways that Soviet bureaucracy contributed to the disaster while failing to adequately acknowledge how that same bureaucracy contributed to containing what could have been a much graver disaster. 

This episode contains spoilers for Chernobyl.

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We're back covering a film that is directly in our wheelhouse this week, namely 2020's ridiculous apocalypse movie, Greenland, a Gerard Butler vehicle that explores what it's like to negotiate the aftermath of infidelity as the world around you is literally destroyed by fragments of a murderous comet. We get into all the timely news broadcasts, the Hobbesian AND Rousseauvian responses different people have to the end of the world scenario (interestingly it is the authority figures who behave well and the mere peons who turn into unbridled animals), as well as the ludicrous time wasting that occurs as a "planet killer" comet bears down on the earth. Classic stuff!

This episode contains spoilers for Greenland. 

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This week we are going over some recent news, including word of an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the hypothetical "end" of the Iran War, the Pope's powerful statement warning against the hazards of AI for human dignity, and China's minor interventions in Cuba as that country comes more squarely into the sights of the United States. 

New York Times on the Ebola Outbreak

New York Times on the Iran War "Ending"

Time Magazine on the Pope's Encyclical

The Text of the Pope's Encyclical  

Al Jazeera on China and Cuba

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We're concluding our coverage of The Leftovers, going over the final season in detail. We debate the series' ending, entertain the hypotheticals offered within the show itself (Michael didn't have to think of one this week), and consider the parallels between the "sudden departure" and its aftermath and Covid-19 and its impacts on contemporary society. 

This episode contains spoilers for all three seasons of The Leftovers. 

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