Culture and Barbarism

In Culture & Barbarism 12,  Media Scholar Toby Miller from Mexico and Media Critic Dennis Broe from Paris look at the AI phenomenon, from a potentially bursting bubble to "To big to Fail." Market valuation is skyrocketing even as the service continues a massive drive toward job loss—with Amazon's "Fulfillment Centers now being converted into Unemployment Centers—a more tota...

On Culture and Barbarism 11, Media Analyst Dennis Broe is joined by Hollywood Reporter Chief TV Critic Daniel Feinberg to discuss changes in the TV Series industry involving Mergers, Ai and YouTube. We cover not only the threat each poses to creativity in the industry but also how each of these are influencing the form and content of television series. The threats include: mass layoffs; writers in...

In this special edition of Culture & Barbarism, titled "Shakespeare's Language As Social Barometer," culture critic Dennis Broe talks about Shakespeare's contribution to the language, his critique of power and incorporation of ordinary language, the imperial use of his work as colonial soft power and its contestation and, finally, how one phrase "Unsex Me Here" by...

In this interview with Pacifica Radio and WBAI's Jack Shalom, Dennis Broe takes us into the world of Pornocopia in the latest Harry Palmer LA Mystery Thriller. We talk about how that world intersects with Iran in a blowback onto Harry's case, the way the porn and gambling industries have now seeped into every aspect of American life and about the false intimacy porn promises and the fals...

In Culture and Barbarism 10 Dennis Broe and Toby Miller discuss Broe's new Harry Palmer novel  Pornocopia  while Toby recounts the atmosphere in Mexico in the wake of the American-gun-fueled narco attacks. We recount the many similarities between the above ground Hollywood industry and the now more popular porn industry and we look at the beginnings of Vegas, fueled by mob drug money, the Hoo...

Has AI come to save the world, to destroy it or to destroy it in the guise of saving it?   Is AII, which supposedly enriches all our lives, a gigantic boon to humanity and/or a monstrous con where creators’ own work is fed back to them, a market bubble ready to burst as the last desperate gasp of Western capitalism and a devourer of water, electricity, oil and rare earth metals that threatens loca...

Trump who had once proclaimed the U.S. was in Syria for the oil, now claims to have returned Venezuela's oil to its rightful owners, the American oil companies Like George Bush before him in Iraq, Donald Trump proclaimed that with Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro in chains, the U.S. has secured Venezuela’s oil. In this special episode of Culture & Barbarism Dennis Broe and Jack Shalom...

In this episode with Dennis Broe and Special Guest Lee Camp, we discuss the new concentration and consolidation of right-wing media as it moves to capture mainstream (or center-right) media with the new dominance of Larry Ellison's proxy ownership of Paramount +, Tik Tok and attempted takeover of Warners. Lee Camp, who hosted his own weekly comedy news show for 8 years Redacted Tonight (and n...

Of Alternative Radio, Trumpian "Affordability" and a new Robin Hood who taxes the poor and gives tax breaks to the rich.  This episode, also a plea for listener-sponsored radio, features Dennis Broe and WBAI’s Jack Shalom discussing the takeover of mainstream media by right-wing and Zionist owners, AI’s restarting of Three Mile Island, and why the alien extermination of the earth is look...

Dennis on Steven Knights' House of Guinness and its challenge to the genre of "wealth porn." Toby on some surprising trends in Higher Education that indicate that though under fire in the Trump era the field is still prosperous. Plus, fashion and Peaky Blinders, Liverpool as Dublin and Gambling and College Sports.  Support the show

In this episode Toby and Dennis discuss the cuts in public television and radio; how they are dis-servicing local Indigenous Media and how Alternative Media is countering Public Media’s Washington Consensus. Also on the agenda is a conversation about past cultural funding and in particular the Ford Foundation and the continual way the Pentagon finances and dictates film scripts and practices. We t...

In this episode, Dennis Broe and Toby Miller look at the significance of the LA Protests against Trump’s “invasion” of California, the class and racial meaning of the burning of the Waymo cars, the U.S. Treasury assault on Mexican banks and the Los Angeles Dodgers’ “Mexican problem.” With independent journalist Jalyssa Dugrot and an up-close view of the demonstrations as both coasts, with the New...

In this episode Toby Miller and Dennis Broe discuss Trump's tariffs and their effect on the European and American audiovisual industry as well as the ways the American streamers continue to colonize European public television while seemingly, as Trump might say, "making nice," or appearing to cooperate.   Our guest is France 24 presenter Marjorie Paillon, a French analyst whose area...

Of Miriam Adelson, The Book of Trump, Mahmoud Kalil and Roger Angell and... Why is Luca Doncic A Laker? In the second episode of Culture & Barbarism Toby Miller and Dennis Broe explore the expansion of sports and sports reporting, the wrecking of the Dallas Mavericks, Trump’s tariffs on Mexico thwarted by BRICS and we welcome our first guest Layan Fuleihan, educator, scholar and activist who t...

Toby Miller is a Cultural Studies and Global Media Raconteur. Dennis Broe is a journalist, novelist and broadcaster. In our pilot episode we recount Steven Knight's mapping of the cruelty of 19th and 20th century British capitalism, Trump's unfair characterization of Mexico's people's government as a narco state as well as where the guns are coming from that fuel the violence i...