The Relentless Picnic

Despite wafting our fans we still get the vapours during Jeff Sessions's recusal announcement. Plus: we plunge the dipstick into thinkovator Jeff Jarvis & Blort seeks someone to take them post-business.

"Here's a blueprint for radical innovation in journalism education," Jeff Jarvis (Sept. 2012): http://bit.ly/2mV2PTJ

Art as the material excrement produced when you self-transcend, selling your self in a buyer's market, 10,001 strategies for leveraging your friendship with a reclusive poet.

- “The Culture of Celebrity,” Joseph Epstein (Oct. 2005): http://tws.io/2l86EaU

- “Jean Cocteau, The Art of Fiction No. 34.” Interview by Joseph Fifield (1964): http://bit.ly/2m38bOV

- “What Is Art?” by Leo Tolstoy (1897): http://bit.ly/2mGLZXU

- “A Hunger Artist” by Franz Kafka (1922; tr. Ian Johnston, 2009): https://records.viu.ca/~Johnstoi/kafka/hungerartist.htm

- "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote" by Jorge Luis Borges (1941): http://hispanlit.qwriting.qc.cuny.edu/files/2011/06/Borges-Pierre-Menard.pdf

A free-form, Saul-into-Paul hour-long lightning round. With a white-knuckle tour of Mark Zuckerberg's babyteaching, shirtshooting, A.I.-in-the-home. Plus: a deep scan of Paul Ryan's cowardice and a meditation on the Court's Snuggie addict supreme, Sam Alito.

We take a freedive into American culture's most unlikely and prophetic artefact. No supplemental oxygen allowed. First in a series.

Her♂es gather to hammer out the discourse-swords and talk about their feelings. Remember to order meatballs at Papa John's to contact your congressperson.

Cover image: Lavinia Schulz robot costume for the Walter Holdt production of Skírnismál, photographed by Minya Diez-Dührkoop.

The definitive moral posture re: punching Nazis. Plus, we examine fact-chefs Conway and Spicer, expose their snake hearts and x-ray their snake hearts to see whose snake heart beats with greater fidelity to the party anthem.

- "What happens when you tie your career to Donald Trump? Ask Sean Spicer in a few months." (This is an actual WaPo headline from a few months ago): http://wpo.st/FOtT2

We send three virtual humans to the Consumer Electronics Show to sample the gadgets of the destructor class.

- "To save books, librarians create fake 'reader' to check out titles" (Dec. '16): http://bit.ly/2iB2Dtr

Battling the swarm of political messaging, a quick zip into the abyss with Vladislav Surkov, and bets are placed on the shape of the new American fascism.

- "Without Sky" by "Natan Dubovitsky" (trans. Bill Bowler): http://www.bewilderingstories.com/issue582/without_sky.html

Are we rooting for a plutocratic coup d'etat? Plus— the futility of generation labels, Game of Thrones as the deadest political metaphor, and the flagrant violation of US Fish and Wildlife regulations inside Aaron Sorkin's pants.

Today on Radiolab: Should knowledge be taxed, and is poverty good for you? A team of neuro-economists weigh in.

- "Podcast Out" by David A. Banks: http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/podcast-out/