As promised, we follow up our prior episode on the forced retreat into the mental cave by explaining how the new social control scheme of no narrative at all is rapidly taking the place of the narrative/counter-narrative dichotomy that has been in place for nearly a century. Incapacitatingly stupid solutions are being supplanted by incapacitatingly stupid "noticing". All the wild opinions, conspiracies, and everything previously kept carefully outside the Overton Window - are now not just being allowed back in, but are being blasted at society like a bukkake fire hose - rendering people completely unable to function or organize due to total lack of agreement on the facts of reality itself.

If "God is dead" defined the 20th century, "consensus reality is dead" will define the 21st century.

As a bonus, you can hear out of touch with the kids Gen X'er Joel mix up Roblox and Discord.

This episode is an old (6/12/25), unpublished recording brought back from the dead, due to its high applicability to the aftermath of the Charlie Kirk assassination. This was originally intended to be episode 33, but is now released as episode 35.

In this episode we talk about information overload and mental focus limiting, using the video game based concept of "view distance". We cover both how these things occur naturally - and, of course, how they're used as part of the social control scheme. These ideas are more relevant than ever in the context of current events.

We plan to do a follow up on this episode, directly tying these concepts to what we're seeing in the wake of the Charlie Kirk assassination.

“That a belief, however necessary it may be for the preservation of a creature, has nothing to do with truth, one can see, for example, in the fact that we have to believe in time, space, and motion, but without feeling constrained to grant them absolute reality.”

― Friedrich Nietzsche

Far be it from us to bring back a topic everyone else has predictably forgot about after saying they never would... but here we are, because here is where we must be.

In this episode that's been far too long in the making, we use good old Jeff Epstein as an example to talk about people who understand morality as an illusory construct and those whose don't - and why it results in those who don't failing to correctly comprehend and contextualize the behavior of those who do. Equally importantly, we also cover the facts and fictions around the historically recurring popular belief that the world is run by "evil people".

In this talk, we make a lot of ties back to prior discussions on morality and prior oft used analogies like the Snowpiercer train (with no additional recap or explanation), so it's important to be caught up on the rest of the podcast before jumping into this episode.

“One must shed the bad taste of wanting to agree with many. 'Good' is no longer good when one's neighbor mouths it. And how should there be a 'common good'! The term contradicts itself: whatever can be common always has little value. In the end it must be as it is and always has been: great things remain for the great, abysses for the profound, nuances and shudders for the refined, and, in brief, all that is rare for the rare.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

We finally conclude our "accepting the world as it is" multi episode discussion by addressing a question from a listener wondering what the purpose and benefit of this outlook actually is. From toasting Teslas to war in Gaza, we examine how people avoid working on themselves by latching onto large scale causes and boogeymen - permanently delaying fixing their own lives until the rest of the world operates the way they think it should. Focusing on changing the world first is merely a feel-good guise for a deep desire to avoid the one thing that actually might change the world: self-improvement.

We're back after a long travel hiatus to keep talking on the recent theme of accepting the world as it is - this time focused on Ted Kaczynski's ideas around self-propagating systems and the inevitable race to doomsday created by unrestrained technological advancement. We begin with a rather lengthy discussion of the nothing burger of the first Epstein release and what the purpose might actually have been - and conclude with an uncomfortable truth about the reality of the Epstein blackmail operation.

Episode notes:

Price inflation by good type:

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/inflation-chart-tracks-price-changes-us-goods-services/

Uncle Ted's paper on self-propagating systems:

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/ted-kaczynski-why-the-technological-system-will-destroy-itself

Finally getting back to our philosophy roots - the third episode in this recent series of crash-landed conversations picks right up where we left off, using Snowpiercer as framing to discuss the philosophical implications of the current events we talked about in the prior two episodes.

Learning to accept the world as it is means two things can be true at once: our current group of elites are garbage, but also, what's actually necessary to keep society functioning isn't pretty, fair, or easy.

Failing to get back to recording fast enough to continue with part two of the prior episode, we once again feel the need to address a host of current events including the "terror" attacks, MAGA's H1B in-fighting, and Lugi again. Conveniently, these events are all relevant to the continuing conversation; so we use our analysis of them to bring us full circle back to the conclusions of prior episode - now yet again ready to move forward on the discussion of Snow Piercer and the issues with populism as a "solution" to the issues we've spent the entire podcast discussing.

We're finally back to talk Luigi Mangione and the reactions to the UHC CEO murder as a major signal of a captured shift in the national zeitgeist. This episode is intended to tee up foundational ideas for next episode, namely: the importance of maintaining a minimum functional trust level in society, systematized bad behavior as protection from idiosyncratic bad behavior, and the intended (or claimed) purpose of institutions versus what they're currently, actually delivering.

After too much enjoyment of the circus of cabinet appointments in the last episode, we address a listener comment (quoted below) from the same episode that we felt was a good opportunity to clarify our position on Trump.

As mentioned in this episode, anyone interested in coming on the show and discussing some of these topics without the 500 character comment limit - feel free to DM me on Reddit u/awdstylez

Comment from Xan on the prior episode:

"Beyond the obvious bad faith talking points, is there anything you would find objectionable about Trump? The narcissistic rage, his explicit desire to use the government for revenge against his "enemies", and his plan to deport millions, and Project 2025? Is your support of Trump just vibes deep down or is there some motive behind it?"