The Culture We Deserve

With the expansion of ICE and the flood of untrained, unprepared, un-uniformed officers on the street, things are likely to get confusing and potentially violent. Nico and Jessa discuss the Trump admin's embrace of militia culture, why Colombia doesn't have militias, and what Jessa's weird obsession with Timothy McVeigh is all about. Shownotes and references: http://theculturewedeserve.substack.co...

It's summer, the time of year each nation flings its most obnoxious and provincial citizenry into the rest of the world on cruise ships and discount airlines. And the rest of the world responds to the binge drinking, the clacking of roller suitcases, and public displays of ignorance with, "Why are these people my problem exactly?" It's the annual Gringos On the Move episode, this time covering mas...

Why is everyone so worried about the Antichrist again? After 9/11, the Evangelicals were afraid the Antichrist would take over the United Nations. Now Peter Thiel thinks this demon of destruction might be Greta Thunberg, but it's possible he just took psychedelics while watching Constantine and got scared. Jessa and Nico discuss why we're afraid of the apocalypse again, and whether Trump will ever...

America doesn't really make things. Even in its financial system, the highest rewards go to those who speculate, making bets on things that other people have created but creating nothing real or tangible in itself. Jessa and Nico discuss the difficulty in reversing the trend toward service and virtual production as well as the effects that working in the spectral rather than material realms has on...

Indiana is married to a brutish man who bullies and abuses her. She is followed around by her cousin Ralph, who loves her but remains a loyal friend to the man who stomps her on the face and kills her dog. Then there is Raymon, the scoundrel, who loves Indiana but is also sleeping with her maid Noun. It's a love pentagon, and somehow no one is having a very good time. George Sand's Indiana is a st...

Greg Grandin, author of the new book America, América, said in an interview this week, "You don't beat fascists by calling fascists, fascists. You beat fascists by offering an alternative and a broad vision of social democracy." But that vision is stalled or mired in nostalgia. Nico and Jessa consider how people on the left from Chris Murphy to Gustavo Petro seem stuck in a 20th century leftism in...

The day that Nico arrived in Colombia this week a presidential candidate was shot, reigniting old fears of perpetual chaos and instability. Meanwhile, Marines are on the streets of Los Angeles. When the Menswear guy gently suggested on social media that if people really cared about immigrants they should spend their time on real immigration cases and policy instead of burning cars, he was swiftly...

Dutch historian and author Rutger Bregman wants to start a new brain drain -- starve industries like finance and consulting from the world's genius by redirecting Harvard grads into "good work." His new book is Moral Ambition, and in it he pleads with those who have a bit of talent, a bit of smarts, to use it to solve social problems rather than create them. Jessa and Nico go through the recent hi...

The story of a young man, filled with fiery ambition, twisted political ideology, and resentment toward everyone and everything and utterly lacking adequate paternal guidance.... gee, I wonder why this might resonate in the age of incels, aspirational fascists, and Elon Musk reply-guys. The Revolution and Ruin podcast gets into 19th century France, manic pixie goth girls, misdirected rage, and why...

AI is hallucinating whole genocides now, our influencers are at war with the bots, and the only beacon of truth and ethical journalism is.... Jake Tapper? Good luck! Jessa and Nico get into the Tapper/Thompson book Original Sin about the cover-up of Biden's decline and why the press is largely ignoring some of its bombshell revelations.  Shownotes and references: http://theculturewedeserve.substac...

All our animals are going to die of bird flu, but at least we'll have raw milk cocktails to take the pain away. Casey Means was suggested for the Surgeon General post the same week that the sex cult/mindfulness startup OneTaste did their media redemption tour and the New York Times invited the wealthy and the celebrated to talk about their skincare regimens and if ruling the world stresses them ou...

Are the jiu jitsu men radicalized? Are gyms a white nationalist training camp? Is protein a masculinist conspiracy? Will the swole take up arms in their big meaty arms and overthrow the government? There has been a lot of fear of the swole and the ripped, with Ezra Klein calling UFC a gateway drug to rightwing radicalization and the New York Times referring to Hasan's physique as a "MAGA body." Je...

Maybe two non-Catholics are not the best people to discuss the legacy Pope Francis is leaving behind, although Catholics like Ross Douthat and JD Vance are doing worse. Jessa cries about the death of the pope, and Nico manages to put his Catholic school trauma to the side to assess Pope Francis as a world leader and not just a religious one.  Shownotes and references: http://theculturewedeserve.su...

Welcome to episode one of The Culture We Deserve's Book Club, Revolution and Ruin: Reading the European 19th Century. In this inaugural episode, Joseph and Jessa discuss Mary Shelley's The Last Man, a prophetic novel about disease, war, and the end of mankind. Unlike the apocalyptic spectacles of your standard end of the world movies and television shows, Shelley's slow burn gets into the grief an...

Looking back at the first round of the Culture Wars, with Jesse Helms discussing a crucifix submerged in urine on the floor of the senate, one figure remains misunderstood: Thomas Kinkade. The "Painter of Light." The guy your alcoholic grandmother who would never admit she terrorized you really loved. Kinkade's career combines the worst of American culture -- multi-level marketing schemes, Jesus C...

Three professors who study totalitarianism and fascism have fled for Canada, is that bad? Is this brain drain or are our elites just refusing to be slightly inconvenienced by a situation they helped to create? Jessa and Nico discuss the capitulation of the academic Resistance, the great Elite Replacement, and why America wants to be Hungary so bad. Shownotes and references: http://theculturewedese...

With all the fuss about Adolescence and the concern about our adrift young men, we have to wonder: are we about to start sending our incels to re-education camps? Jessa and Nico look at RFK Jr's plan for sending the unwell, mentally ill, and addicted to farms (is this our new agricultural policy?), and how much of our economy is now dependent on putting people away: private prisons, rehab faciliti...

Ross Douthat has a new book, arguing that America needs a new religious revival. Sir, there is a theocracy establishing itself in Idaho, we have Tradcaths in the government trying to force us all back into patriarchal marriages, is now really the time?? America has always been weird about god, we can't seem to contemplate him for more than ten seconds at a time without praying he destroys the whol...

Netflix doesn't just make reality dating shows that violate multiple international human rights treaties -- they also make adaptations of the world's greatest literature. Everything is IP! Including A Hundred Years of Solitude and The Leopard. Jessa and Nico discuss turning art into slop, people pretending they can't tell the difference between good and bad, and why what's good for the cultural in...

MAHA is already a mess. With RFK's recent humiliation ritual at Steak N Shake, the return of factory farming, and an international takeover of our rural land, any hope of making America healthy again is slipping away. I guess it's going to have to be mandatory Ozempic then! Jessa and Nico discuss the failed dreams of those who don't want forever chemicals in breastmilk, how health policy became a...

The sex worker community hates Anora, Mexicans hate Emilia Perez, brutalists hate The Brutalist... is this where representation culture has left us? The big winners have mostly been rejected by those they claim to represent and loved by those who like a little song and dance number. Jessa and Nico discuss the aftermath of the OscarsSoWhite campaign and why Hollywood is a misrepresentation and ster...

From the cult of incels running our government to Trump's alliance with Andrew Tate to Elon Musk's mountain of neglected baby boys, one has to ask, what is wrong with all the men? Jessa and Nico discuss the root causes of men's unmooring -- naturally this is all women's doing -- and why we need new ways to organize our domestic lives. Also, coming in June 2025 from Pantheon: Jessa Crispin's new bo...

As America gears up to celebrate its 250th anniversary, Jessa and Nico discuss this country's obsession with its founding, what Kamala's vision for the anniversary would have been, and whether we'll all live to celebrate 251. Also: Trump's takeover of the Kennedy Center, Philadelphia celebrates America with the British moppet Ed Sheeran concert, and by the way we both recorded this with the flu. S...

Christopher Rufo and the rest of the anti-DEI crew are planning for a new conservative art world: please, can you spare some aesthetics? What can we all expect from antiwoke art, other than messianic actors rescuing trafficked children from predatory progressives and shirtless pics of a super ripped Donald Trump? Can the conservatives save art with Western Civilization nostalgia and NFTs? And was...

With the release of the Brian Eno documentary, one has to wonder: What is the real cause of our cultural stagnation? Is it that the United States is incapable of creating new geniuses, or that all the geniuses are working now in tech? Nico and Jessa get into how media consolidation, a failing educational system, and the so-called democratization of creativity have created an entertainment industry...