Amos and Ex: Living in the End Times

The first of your hosts' two episodes on the significance and genius of David Fincher's 1999 masterpiece Fight Club. In this episode: experiencing the film, neoliberal political economy, the Left, and punk rock.

To all of our friends and family living in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area: we love you. But yr city is just ok. A&E explain why.

The gents chat Paul Schrader's First Reformed (2017), Taxi Driver (1976), and The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) as a way into the poverty of the contemporary Christian church, Zizek, and "apocalypse" as the object of late capitalism.

Time to chat the greatest film of the 1990s: Kathryn Bigelow's Point Break , which serves as our case study for why dialectical (and theological) materialism remains the best way of approaching not only film but the current political and cultural moment. Plus: Blade Runner 2049 . Vaya con Dios, friends.

Shortly before the collapse of the condo in Miami, Fla., A&E discussed at great length the degree to which Florida is the future. In so doing we focused on two Florida-based films making radical/theological arguments -- Harmony Korine's Spring Breakers and Sean Baker's The Florida Project -- in an effort to examine the horrors of the political economy we'd been discussing elsewhere.

Part 2 of our discussion of French philosopher Michel Foucault's late "neoliberal" thought and Dean's and Zamora's book The Last Man takes LSD.

A&E begin reading Dean's and Zamora's latest on Michel Foucault, The Last Man Takes LSD , and unpack the French philosopher's last decade, in which he abandoned Leftist politics proper to advocate for neoliberal capitalism as the solution to the problem of state.

A&E discuss the latest feature-length entry into the exhausting debate over the collegiate use of American Indian traditions for athletics, in this case the long-retired "Fighting Sioux" nickname and logo from North Dakota's flagship college, which is the focus of the film "Fighting over Sioux."

A&E examine Shaka King's Fred Hampton biopic Judas and the Black Messiah as Easter and Passover loom, wondering not only where the filmmaker got his information, but why, despite the film's title, theology is nowhere in the film or in any other Left-Liberal analyses of it.

Speaking of one of the Indiana Jones films, Richard Corliss somewhere wrote that we shouldn't fault a theme park for not being a cathedral. With this critique in mind, A&E discuss the latest from filmmaker Adam Curtis -- the six-part BBC series "Can't get you out of my head: An emotional history of the modern world."

The second half of our discussion of the new Andreas Malm book on pipelines, the climate movement, and violence. Spoiler: the climate fatalism current among some Western elites is the new Malthusianism.

Who needs cops when you have anarchists around?

So, like, a bunch of gamers almost crashed the U.S. economy, yes? And this is bad or something? A&E discuss. And speaking of stopping games, we begin our reading of the new Andreas Malm book on pipelines, climate change, and violence. 

Riot? Insurrection? Gathering of the Juggalos? We're still trying to figure out what exactly happened at the Capitol building in Washington, which feels, after the fact, less like a riot and more like a psyop. Plus: Social media bans not only Trump but many voices on the left and right. And you're next.

It's a New Year and yr handsome hosts kick it off with a discussion of aesthetics and the "autistic" character of America's culture industry. Topics covered include Fred Jameson, Banksy, Michel Foucault, the Marvel and DC universe films, the Mandalorian, and Cormac McCarthy.

A&E muse on the election of Joseph R. Biden as American President and wonder the degree to which his administration will be as uncool as we expect.

A&E get in one more show before the 2020 election, when things are likely to get REAL. Topics include: polling, the astrological tone of things, pre-vote fascism, and the coming socialist wave (thanks to the zoomers).

A&E pay their respects to Edward Van Halen and ponder the ways in which reality has begun lapping us on the track of spacetime. Also: Donald John has the COVID, Amy Coney Barrett is a handmaid, and the Left remains inept. Our response? Dispense with Western philosophy, and maybe civilization, in its entirety. It's obsolete, like Van Halen, so let's move on.

Starting with a discussion of Tyler Childers's "Long Violent History," A&E speculate on the prospects for civil conflict in the United States. Other discussion topics include the guaranteed anemia of a Biden presidency, the burning planet, and life on Venus.

From injunctions to "be mindful" to armies of yogis sent into office buildings to help overworked staffers relax, the U.S. has for decades been caught in a trap of what we are now beginning to recognize as "toxic" positivity. The intention of these programs: to both distract you from what's really going on and shift the blame for your mental exhaustion, depression, and abuse from the culprits (whi...

In his 2016 film  Hypernormalization , Adam Curtis uses the Soviet Union of the late 1970s–a society that everyone knew was crumbling but for which no one could imagine an alternative, forcing politicians and citizens alike to maintain the pretense of management–as a model for the West today. In the wake of the horror unfolding across the U.S., where no one knows how or has the political will...

Reminiscing about the good old days with Ice-T, A&E recall also the genius of the Black Panthers and the new Fred Hampton biopic on its way: Shaka King's Judas and the Black Messiah . Plus: Frantz Fanon and indigenous resistance in the face of police violence.

COVID-19 has laid bare what was already apparent to many of us: America is the Bizarro World of the DC Comics universe. "Me want pandemic get worse. Me no want people get health care. Government confirm UFO." There is no modern precedent for any of this, and no framework for how any of us can or should respond. At the same time, there is no significant intellectual or media culture on the Left to...

Much as it abandoned working class politics at least a generation ago, the political left abandoned theology to the detriment of not only itself but America as a project. So let's pick it up again. And what better place to start than the only Christian theology that matters in the 21st Century: Liberation Theology. A&E discuss, referencing James H. Cone, Homebrewed Christianity , Kanye West, a...

As Jean Genet once noted, the only way to escape horror is to dive into it. Head-first. Or, as Zizek and others have argued, there is a hopelessness to the present situation that might be just what the world needs. A&E discuss, using Cuaron’s  Children of Men  and Orwell’s  1984  as points of reference.