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Mike Pepi is the author of “Against Platforms”, a bold critique of the hidden costs of digital life – and a manifesto for a better future. He is also one of my best friends and someone I have been in conversation with for over a decade. In this episode, we discuss our shared history in working to develop a new institutionalist critique of emerging technologies and platforms. The vast expansion of...

My guest is Daniel Keller, an artist whose work and research has inspired me for over a decade. We discuss tech monopolies and their cozy relationship to state power, the artificial intelligence race, the chips war, network states and geopolitical competition between the US and China. These are the defining conflicts of the 21st century.

My guest is Jack Wagner, a writer & director, host of the Otherworld podcast and one of my all time favorite posters. We discuss his experience of creative life on the internet and explore the many esoteric belief systems that have grown out of social media. We see a trend of increasing irrationality in a complex world. At the end we pay homage to one of the greatest memes ever made.

My guest is Caleb Cain or Faraday Speaks as he is known online. In 2019, Caleb Cain posted a video on YouTube called “My Descent into the Alt-Right Pipeline”. In the video, he described his first person experience of online radicalization. It quickly went viral. Soon after, Cain was profiled in The New York Times in a piece titled “The Making of a YouTube Radical”. In 2020, he was featured again b...

In part due to the rise of AI-enabled systems, we are witnessing a shift in where and how the creative act takes place. It is a phenomenon that artists Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst have been grappling with for more than a decade through their music and their work with machine learning and its governance. With their exhibition “ The Call ” on view at the Serpentine in London through February 2nd...

My guest is Amber A'Lee Frost, a writer, organizer, co-host of the Chapo Trap House podcast and the author of Dirtbag (2023). We discuss today's dysfunctional left, elite overproduction, online political subcultures and the emergence of “youth” as a counter-cultural and consumer demographic. Is the New Right support for labor real? What does it mean for American workers?

My guest is musician Matty Healy of The 1975. He joins me to discuss internet culture and the strange aesthetics of our time. We explore the inspirations behind his work, including the writing of cultural theorist Mark Fisher. Matty describes the "slow cancellation of the future" by comparing distinct styles of pop music across various decades. Fisher links these cultural moments to larger economi...

My guest is musician Matty Healy of The 1975. He joins me to discuss internet culture and the strange aesthetics of our time. We explore the inspirations behind his work, including the writing of cultural theorist Mark Fisher. Matty describes the "slow cancellation of the future" by comparing distinct styles of pop music across various decades. Fisher links these cultural moments to larger economi...

NYC filmmaker-actor-sibling-duo Betsey Brown and Peter Vack join NM to reflect on the making and reception of their own and each other’s films, Actors  (Brown, 2021) and www. RachelOrmont.com  (Vack, 2024). Deliberately tuned to the affective frequency of the internet (desire, desperation, outrage), both works proceeded to inflame online channels to the point of being overshadowed by con...

Yung Chomsky is the producer of the TrueAnon podcast, creator of the mobile app Phomo, and a natural athlete with 16 years of experience. We discuss his personal journey of learning to lift online while exploring exercise subcultures via forums and message boards. We sort the facts from fictions and discuss the tenuous connections between weight lifting and far right politics. This is the lifting...

My guest is comedian Peter James Fowler. He joins me to discuss his political meme account that he ran at age 11. I’ve spent the last few years interviewing young people who make radical posts online. Peter shares his journey from growing up in evangelical Christianity, to new atheism, and from Trump to Bernie.

Writer Gideon Jacobs joins NM the day after the US election to discuss his essay “ Trump l’Oeil ,” ( LA Review of Books , Nov. 3, 2024). Opening with the images of Trump working at McDonalds, the piece explores what happens when images start conveying a realness that is untethered from reality; images that are generated (rather than taken) and, like Trump, succeed by claiming truths rather than du...

My guest is artist and geographer Trevor Paglen. His groundbreaking work links new technological developments to larger political issues that are often secret or unseen. We discuss the emerging paradigm of "psyops capitalism", the history of the CIA's MK Ultra psychological operations and how magic shapes our perception of reality. These technologies culminate to form a new economic order of priva...

My guest is ‪JJ McCullough a YouTuber who was previously a TV political commentator and columnist at the Washington Post. We discuss generational shifts from the political left to right, explore the state of alternative media and debate the origins of right-wing populism. While we disagree on some core issues, we always grant each other the space to fully argue an idea. My analysis and understandi...

My guest is Jreg or Greg Guevara as he is known offline. Jreg is a popular YouTube creator who explores online radical politics. He joins me to discuss our shared fascination with incredibly niche ideologies that only exist online. We explore social atomization as a political project and agree that taking the friend pill is the best advice you can find.

Jay Springett is a writer, researcher, consultant, musician, podcaster, Royal Society of Arts Fellow, New Centre instructor, and decade long admin of solarpunks.net. Currently at work on a book exploring the history of Dungeons & Dragons (the so-called metaverse), Jay joins New Models to speak about the proliferation of “worlds” (perhaps in lieu of the 20th century public sphere) and strategie...

My guest is Catherine Liu, professor of film and media studies at UC Irvine. She is the author of 'Virtue Hoarders: the Case Against the Professional Managerial Class'. We discuss the origin of trauma studies, self branding on social media and the ideology of the professional class. Liu has an unwavering commitment to historical materialism and a fierce critique of elitist academies. She explores...

Remilia Corporation , founded in 2021 by Charlotte Fang, describes itself as an institution, a lifestyle brand, and an artist’s colony, among other things. As the group behind the influential and infamous Milady NFT project, Remilia also exemplifies a particularly contemporary artistic practice—one in which an online swarm algorithm-hacks certain language, images, and aesthetics into relevance, th...

My guest is Brace Belden, an organizer, an infamous shitposter and co-host of the TrueAnon podcast. I’ve spent the last few years interviewing young people who make radical posts online and later find their way into real world politics. Irony and humor play a huge role in this process. For the first episode, I wanted to talk to one of my favorite posters who has also lived his politics in the real...

This NM Dispatch is not about a physical place but a region of the internet: the increasingly adversarial realm of online shopping. As an accompaniment, we are also posting this Product Shortlist (The Baby Edit) , which we hope those new to (or curious about) early parenthood might appreciate.

You may know Filip Kostic  from his series of endurance livestreams and the custom “ Bed PC ” sculptures he built to facilitate them; or from a version of Fortnite  he made in order to reconstruct his childhood neighborhood in Belgrade, Serbia so you too can explore the city at various points in time, including NATO’s 1999 bombing from the perspective of, say, a Rick and Morty character....

With this first episode of NM Talkcore we speak with Alex Kazemi, author of New Millennium Boyz   (2023). In doing so, we bring back the format of NM TopSoil, a freeform conversation about things that are mutually top-of-mind. For this ep, that includes, among other items: personal branding and the book publishing industry, Paramount wiping the MTV News archives, y2k masculinity, history in a...

A morning stroll through the BWI Business District Every summer, we return to the land of our youth, the Mid-Atlantic USA and, as has become tradition, relay our impressions of it to you. With this episode — Part 2 of the August 2024 NM America Diaries, Carly wanders an aging office park in suburban Maryland finding far more than its drab facades and sidewalks to nowhere suggest.   See also:...

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Max Read joins me to discuss "the Zynternet", a newly emergent youth subculture online. We explore the For-You-Pagification of social media, the revenge of the normies and the future of online subcultures. Follow: maxread.substack.com/