Doomscroll with Joshua Citarella

My guest is ‪ Tim Heidecker, a comedian, musician and actor. He is a host of Office Hours. You can find him performing live music as 'Tim Heidecker and The Very Good Band'. His video work pioneered the style, affect, and genre of new media alt-comedy. We discuss how online irony became today's real world politics. We explore the shift from legacy TV to streaming platforms. How did our media ecosys...

My guest is Aella. We discuss the psychological and social origins of sexual fetishes, the dark side of internet pornography, and we bring clarity to the online debates around race and IQ. Due to TOS, some of these topics can’t be included on the YouTube episode. Other topics are better kept off of public channels.

My guest is Aella, a writer, blogger and sex worker. She writes the highly popular blog Knowingless. She is a member of the online community LessWrong. We discuss the emergence of AI, the sex industry (online and offline), robot gfs and libertarian transhumanism. Aella describes her evangelical religious upbringing and how she learned to navigate the secular world. We explore the overlap of niche...

My guest is Francis Fukuyama. We discuss the research background of Doomscroll and competition between the United States vs China in the 21st century. You can get access to the full catalog for Doomscroll and more by becoming a paid supporter: www.patreon.com/joshuacitarella

My guest is Francis Fukuyama, a scholar and political scientist. He is the author of many books. He is most well known for his 1992 work, "The End of History & the Last Man". Drawing on Hegel and Marx, Fukuyama explores the concept of teleology — the idea that history is a linear process where human societies progress through sequential socioeconomic forms. As Marx famously wrote, Feudalism wa...

We recap Hasan’s upbringing in Turkey and his early origins at The Young Turks network. Later, he talks me off the ledge as I complain about how much it sucks to be on camera lol. We discuss media strategy, online debate and class consciousness. We both admit to mirin’ Yung Chomsky’s peak physique. (This is not gay.) Finally, Hasan drops some revealing streamer drama that I did not yet know — yike...

My guest is Hasan Piker‬, a live streamer and political commentator. We discuss the state of the online left and the massive rightward shift of young men toward Donald Trump and the Republican party. I sat down with Hasan during his suspension from Twitch. He reads a misleading headline published in the New York Post. Later, we discuss the strategic possibilities of a two party system and explore...

My returning guest is Catherine Liu. We discuss the crisis of elite academies, the influence of Foucault, a certain Twitter controversy, Thomas Piketty’s concept of the Merchant Right, the transformation of the artworld under neoliberalism and much more. You can get access to the full catalog for Doomscroll and more by becoming a paid supporter: www.patreon.com/joshuacitarella

My returning guest is Catherine Liu,‬ a professor of film and media studies at UC Irvine. She is the author of "Virtue Hoarders: the Case Against the Professional Managerial Class". We explore the psychological significance of “trauma” and “care” within the liberal discourse today. Liu describes a moral panic among elites where the language of personal therapy attempts to right social and historic...

This is a subscribers only episode. My guest is Jen Pan , the author of Selling Social Justice (2025). Jen and I breakdown these topics further and speak candidly about our frustration with elite institutions. I also share one of the more ridiculous political horseshoe stories from my social media research… You can get access to the full catalog for Doomscroll and more by becoming a paid supporter...

My guest is Jen Pan, formerly a host of The Jacobin Show and a staff writer at the New Republic. She is the author of “Selling Social Justice” — out now from Verso Books. We discuss the DEI industry, the New Deal, American inequality and why the rich love anti-racism. Her writing has appeared in The Nation, The Atlantic, Dissent, and Damage Magazine. You can get access to the full catalog for Doom...

My guest is Anthony Fantano. We dive deeper into the ethics of criticism, the role of politics in “good art” and the extractive economic model of Spotify. Where did subculture go after platforms took over the internet? You can get access to the full catalog for Doomscroll and more by becoming a paid supporter: www.patreon.com/joshuacitarella

My guest is Anthony Fantano, a music critic and the voice behind The Needle Drop. We discuss the role of politics in art and music, his origins in the anti-war punk scene and the strange state of American counter-culture today. Music scenes used to serve as a gateway to anti-establishment politics. It was once common to find DIY anarchist zines at the local punk show. Now these political subcultur...

This is a subscriber’s only episode. Professor Chibber and I dive deep into the history of the left and explore its transformation over the course of the 20th century. After the cultural turn, the march through institutions, and our current media environment, we ask — where did things go wrong? You can get access to the full catalog for Doomscroll and more by becoming a paid supporter: www.patreon...

My guest is Vivek Chibber, a professor of sociology at New York University. He is the author of Confronting Capitalism, The Class Matrix and Postcolonial Theory & the Specter of Capital. Chibber is the editor of Catalyst Journal and the host of the Confronting Capitalism podcast. We discuss the cultural turn, the rise of identity politics and the crisis of academia. Chibber is deeply committed...

This is a subscribers only episode. My guest is Andrew Callaghan. We explore Andrew’s background in music and online subcultures, the ethics of publishing or "risk-for-harm", and his plans for the future of Channel 5 and more. Plus a few behind the scenes and personal stories that we could not include in the public version. You can get access to the full catalog for Doomscroll and more by becoming...

My guest is Andrew Callaghan, a documentary filmmaker and the host of Channel 5. He is the director of This Place Rules (2022) and Dear Kelly (2025), an in-depth portrait of a man he met at a ‘White Lives Matter' rally. We discuss the breakdown of consensus reality and how deplatforming can often lead to greater political extremism. Andrew describes his early origins in the anarchist movement and...

This is a subscribers only episode. My guest is Ezra Klein. We discuss the emerging political faction known as Degrowth, the carbon crisis and the policy arc of the neoliberal period. You can get access to the full catalog for Doomscroll and more by becoming a paid supporter: www.patreon.com/joshuacitarella

I recently spoke with documentary filmmaker and host of Channel 5, Andrew Callaghan on Doomscroll #19 . In the episode, we discuss “Andrew’s Theory of Radicalization” which he outlines in the introduction of his new film Dear Kelly  (2025). Briefly summarized, Callaghan argues that political radicalization occurs when individuals lose access to three core needs: Security  — material safety such as...

My guest is Ezra Klein, an opinion columnist at the New York Times, the host of The Ezra Klein Show, and a co-founder of Vox Media. Klein is a co-author, along with Derek Thompson, of a new book titled Abundance . We discuss his promethean, energy-rich vision for the future, polarization in the attention economy and the end of the neoliberal consensus. The authors propose a policy platform for env...

This is a subscribers only episode. My guest is Adam Friedland. We discuss the ethics of platforming and the art of the talk show interview.

My guest is Adam Friedland, a stand up comedian and podcaster. He is the host of The Adam Friedland Show. We discuss the influence of alt-media, a farewell to Cumtown (RIP), the ideas & inspiration behind The Adam Friedland Show and his many social media controversies. How did comedians become recast as public intellectuals for the digital age? You can get access to the full catalog for Doomsc...

This is a subscriber’s only episode. My guest is Briahna Joy gray. We discuss irony politics, the alt-media to organization pipeline, and our shared admiration for Star Trek utopia.

My guest is Briahna Joy Gray, a lawyer, journalist and political commentator. She is the host of the Bad Faith podcast. We discuss the crisis of the Democratic party, online fact checkers vs. freedom of speech on social media, the mixed politics of populism and third parties in the USA.

I’ll be honest — I wasn’t going to publish this part but I’m just a huge JC Dentun  fan and this has got to be the some of the greatest 13 minutes of podcasting that absolutely blows my mind. Check out JC’s podcast: Pneumatic Materials .