This Place is Weird

It's election day and abortion rights are on the ballot in Idaho. I touch briefly on the history of structuralism, poststructuralism, and the New Left in response to a conversation with my wife and her friends about "blue jobs" and "pink jobs" which are a dangerous notion for a group of self-ascribed feminists. I'm not doing woke scolding or trivializing the importance of women's rights, but this...

In light of some thoughts about longevity and aging being bizarrely inflected with a lingering sense of aesthetic priority-- not to mention the aesthetic function of our identities, politics, society writ large-- I wanted to talk a little about the extent to which reducing our aesthetic sensibilities and styles of thinking may open the door to substantive action in important arenas. And may make y...

A short episode in which I discuss the notion that gambling is a symptom of a much more serious and much more insidious disease rather than a pathology in its own right. The disease is simple: a failure of stability, politics, and imaginations for the future. This isn't about gambling addiction as a mental health pathology, but about a socio-cultural analysis of why gambling is everywhere. The sho...

Many feel like owning a home is a key part of the American Dream. Why is this? From Thomas Jefferson's yeoman farmer to a functional buyoff of a frustrated middle class, I trace some of the history of this phenomenon. Importantly, it is now a nexus of massive industries and complex webs of incentives and material interests, leaving the homeowner totally responsible for their home while also curtai...

Inspired in part by Jodi Dean's essay on neofeudalism, I wanted to spend some time discussing the feudal elements of our society, including ownership concentrated into hereditary hands and systems of obligation predicated not on divine right but on debt. Enjoy! The show is fully self-funded. I do no monetization, no slop, no grind culture nonsense. If you’d like to support the show and/or encourag...

Today, I have a somewhat ranty episode about the internal versus external politics of consumption. We've been told time and again to vote with our wallets to such a degree that we now sublimate our political frustration more or less completely into consumerism. We shop for brands that allegedly share our values, we rail about issues on platforms, and we do absolutely nothing to exert political wil...

With the realization, at a total removal thanks to Modern systems of distance and security, that today is the autumnal equinox, I had to give a shoutout to one of my favorite questions from students: is there a new religion coming? We discuss the equinox, cyclical living, the difference between material independence from nature and subjective independence from nature, the possibility of a surge in...

After spending days with my wife hospitalized watching the Weber-style bureaucracy busy itself around her, I consider the cost of recertification in a moment of immense labor strain and burnout. I offer two concrete options: employer-sponsored onboarding OR free at the point of purchase college education and certification processes. I discuss briefly why this is so hotly opposed, but consider both...

Inundated with (market-mediated) offers to help me reduce my tech exhaustion, including everything from dumb phones to journaling to rigorous and vigorous grass touching, I reflect on the strange fact that absolutely NONE of this discourse touches on the political economy behind the fact that people are so incredibly fed up with technological intrusion, and yet unable to opt out of the same. There...

In light of a few trends (different freshman attitudes on campus, my relentless urge to throw my iPhone into the shadow realm, constant advice to get on TikTok and Instagram to grow the show, a market report about declining interest in brain rot and growing interest in long-form content), I sit down (outside!) to talk about brain rot, the boring tedium of an AI world, the void left by ambient soci...

When general competence is widely available, what value is there around expertise? When economic and sociological value conflict, which wins? Will eccentric politics be our future? Will human-generated content be a luxury? Will any of this change anything? Let's chat about competence versus character. As always, this show is not monetized. If you'd like to support it, please subscribe, leave a pos...

In this episode, we take a look at sugar from a political economic perspective. Sugar isn't unique, but it does have an existing book about it: Sweetness and Power by Sidney Mintz. How does a rare and labor-intensive commodity become so ubiquitous as to have avoiding it become a status signal? And what does this tell us about the visibility (or invisibility) of systems?   As always, thanks for lis...

Today we're discussing the strange paradox of frictionless consumption robbing you of one of the key pleasures of consumption: fantasy. Hence, the title. It turns out, having a few days to fantasize may actually be better for your consuming pleasure than same-day delivery. If you're listening to this in audio format, here's a link to Fantin-Latour's La Lecture.  https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Le...

Here we're discussing the algorithm and its effect on our perceived sense of desire. To clarify things, we use some Lacan, Žižek, and a touch of Greenfield to organize the topic. As always, this is not monetized, and I have placed no ads here. If you're hearing them, they don't benefit me at all. Thanks for listening.

Consumer responsibilization, or why it's not your fault we're catastrophically wrecking our habitat. This podcast is not monetized. I receive nothing for it. If you're hearing ads, I didn't put them there and I get nothing from them.

Here I have a little auto-ethnography about the ways in which platform architecture forecloses choice and forces us to prioritize different things in the content creation process. Thanks for listening! This podcast is not monetized. I do not receive anything for it. If you're hearing ads, they're not mine and they don't benefit me.

A discussion of the weird parallel between gym pricing structures and the logic of public lands. Thanks for listening.   This podcast is not monetized. I receive nothing for it. If you're hearing ads, I didn't put them there and I get nothing from them.

A frank discussion (without dismissing the reasons) of what deglobalization would look like.  I don't get paid, nothing is sponsored, this podcast is not monetized. If you're hearing ads, it's not from me and it doesn't benefit me. All views are my own. Thanks for listening!

I don't get paid, nothing is sponsored, this video is not monetized. If you're hearing ads, it's not from me and it doesn't benefit me. All views are my own. Thanks for listening!

With the World Cup afoot, I work through the implications of making nationalism a consumer choice and bringing civic responsibility into the realm of consumer culture. Baudrillard and Bourdieu are our guides.

While avoiding liberal and conservative cliches, I discuss the masculinity crisis and try to unpack why the manosphere is so appealing.

Inspired by some weird news out of the New York Fed and ongoing conversations about AI, I ponder why the future looks grim when we're apparently on the doorstep of automation.

What happens when relationships are commodities? What happens when dating feels the same as looking through pictures or changing your music? What happens when you're supposed to be yolo pilled enjoymaxxers and ONE PERSON has to meet all your needs?

With the scammer established and college as a commodity analyzed, we look to the future of college and the question of enjoyment. Alfie Bown's "Enjoying It" https://www.collectiveinkbooks.com/zer0-books/our-books/enjoying-it

Following up on last week's discussion of the scammer, we spend some time with the theoretical implications of college as a commodity as well as a brief discussion of why this thing got so expensive with regard to both policy and resource allocation within and among universities.