The End of the World with Michael and Stu

This week we are discussing the recent furor over the Jeffrey Epstein case which has begun to surface divisions within the MAGA movement. We go over the actual history of the prosecutions of Epstein and Maxwell, look at the various ways Trump supporters have justified the administration's refusal to "release the files," while also speculating about what the reasons behind that refus...

This week we are discussing the Biblical Antichrist. What does the New Testament have to say about this ominous figure? Why do some Christians maintain his return is a necessary precondition for the so-called "second coming" of Jesus Christ? What historical (or contemporary) figures have people asserted might just be this Antichrist? Is the Antichrist even a singular person or is it more...

This week we are discussing Edgar Wright's zombie comedy about the mundanity of day to day life under late capitalism,  Shaun of the Dead . Featuring star turns for Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, the movie examines the question of how to live a meaningful life through the familiar tropes of a zombie picture. We consider the ways the issues at play in this film from 20 years ago might be handled t...

For our 75th episode spectacular, we are discussing  28 Days Later , the 2002 film directed by Danny Boyle and written by Alex Garland that reinvigorated the zombie movie for the 2000s and launched a franchise that has been back in the news lately. We go over the film's links to Stu's favorite topic, Romanticism, while also comparing it favorably to such dystopian British pictures as  Sh...

This week we are talking about billionaires and what makes them different than the rest of us. Why do they put so much stock into utopian fantasies of human salvation on Mars? Who do they believe Artificial General Intelligence will solve all of Earth's problems if we just allow for it to be born (with as few regulations in place as possible)? Why do they seem to care so little about other pe...

This week we are discussing the introductory miniseries of the rebooted  Battlestar Galactica as a kind of "culmination" of our recent robot/AI-themed episodes. For once we both really like the show, and we dissect how it deals with the complex issues of technology and religion as well as the question of "fatherhood" with respect to both characters in the show as well as the dy...

This week we are continuing our suite of robot themed episodes by discussing the play that originated the word, R.U.R. by Karel Čapek which was first written in 1920. Derived from a Czech term meaning "serf" or "worker," these robots are more akin to the androids and other humanoid robots to be found in works like Blade Runner or Companion than the metallic beings to be found i...

This week we are talking about robots. Where did they come from? What are they? Are they really going to replace all human workers? We get into the history of these machines, while looking at the implications for them, should they be paired with AI. We also discuss Elon Musk's fixation on humanoid robots, and where this obsession derives from.  We also get into the Ukrainian drone attacks in...

This week we are discussing E.T.A. Hoffman's short story,  The Sandman , which presciently anticipates some potential psychological consequences of a too-deep dependence on artificial beings for companionship, while also pointing towards the fundamentally destabilizing possibilities a world filled with autonomous, robotic beings might bring. We go over the story, making reference to Freud&apo...

This week we are talking about the growth of emotional dependency on AI as programs like ChatGPT become more ubiquitous and more sophisticated. We recognize that this has the potential to be, in a sense, a double apocalypse, as the rise of AI threatens to make human beings completely redundant while at the same time the resources used to power AI make the planet increasingly uninhabitable as clima...

This week we are discussing Rian Johnson's 2012 film  Looper, a time travel movie that (perhaps accurately) predicts a bleak future where class stratification and rampant criminality have flourished unchecked. Time travel has been invented and its primary use seems to be the elimination of hit men who are sent back in time to be murdered by their younger selves. We get into some of the proble...

This week we are talking about global supply chains and how they might be stretched, perhaps to the breaking point, if the Trump tariffs are allowed to take effect. We revisit the moment when many of us were first introduced to the idea of a supply chain, the early days of Covid-19, and look at how the current potential supply chain disaster differs. We also revisit another cherished memory from r...

This week we are discussing Ridley Scott's 1982 classic sci-fi noir  Blade Runner . While we praise the visual depiction of a post-nuclear-war American city, we both found the plot somewhat difficult to hook into, so to speak. While the essential examination of the question of humanity, and what it would mean for an android to achieve a fully realized humanity, we both had some issues with th...

This week we are discussing psychics, specifically psychic medium John Edward of  Crossing Over with John Edward . This program which ran from 2001 to 2004 purported to connect living people to their dead relatives by means of Edward's psychic mediumship. We go over a brief history of psychics from ancient times to the present before digging into Edward's methods and claims; does he real...

This week we are discussing two recent albums by mainstays of 2000s era indie rock that deal directly and obliquely with climate change, namely Mount Eerie's 2024 release  Night Palace and Dirty Projectors/David Longstreth/s t a r g a z e's 2025 record  Song of the Earth . We talk a bit about the history of both artists and why it might be that they are turning to considering the questio...

This week we are looking at  Train to Busan , a 2016 film directed by Yeon Sang-ho. It's a zombie apocalypse movie set on a train moving from the South Korean capital of Seoul to the southern city of Busan. We get into the film's historical overtones, as well as the family drama that plays out amid this unfolding horror show.  We open the episode with a discussion of the economic turmoil...

This week we're are discussing Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson's recent book Abundance . This text offers a new vision of the future for the Democratic Party to center as it attempts to claw back power, ignoring for the most part the larger societal issues of wealth inequality in favor of focusing on regulatory changes that could be made to spearhead a new era of American growth and innova...

We're talking about the rise and fall of Julius Caesar and the end of the Roman Republic this week, following up on our previous episode. We've got anecdotes about Caesar weeping before statues, his run in with pirates, his war against Vercingetorix in Gaul; all your favorite Caesar stories are here! Plus we also muse a bit on Caesar's death; why did he not take more precautions? Wa...

This week we're discussing the run up to the final collapse of the Roman Republic, charting such characters as Scipio Aemelianus, the Gracchi Brothers, Gaius Marius, and Sulla and attempting to map them and their historical circumstances onto some of the events of recent American history. While the analogies are imperfect, there are enough similarities for the comparison to be...troubling. We...

This week we are diving into the weird world of Robert Francis Kennedy, Jr., the newly confirmed Secretary of Health and Human Services in the second Trump administration. We go over his history of environmental activism and chart how this morphed into a profoundly conspiracist worldview that, with him now in control of the levers of power in the American health sector, has the potential to do eno...

This week we are discussing Todd Haynes's film  Safe  (1995). We get into how the movie explores the creeping sense of meaning being sapped out of suburban life in the late 1980s, focusing on the ways this parallels dilemmas that are manifesting in our contemporary moment. We also go over the film's consideration of "environmental illness" and how this notion of being poisoned...

This week we are tackling one of Stu's all-time favorite comics, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons's  Watchmen . We go through the main characters and discuss the apocalyptic ramifications of this extremely well-wrought tale of a society on the edge of destruction. We also tease out the implications of costumed vigilantism suggested by Moore's text, considering how it is these figures whi...

This week we are discussing all things CANADA! Specifically, why does President Trump claim it is a "great contender" to become the 51st state? What is it about the US's northern neighbor that is so attractive to the would-be empire builder president? How is this issue playing out in Canada itself? Would a military conquest of Canada result in a brutal insurgency that might destroy...

This week we are joined by comedian, actress and writer Maggie Crane to discuss Bo Burnham's divisive comedy special  Inside from 2021. We get into some of the critiques of the special, while also noting the things about it which we really like. Is  Inside "our  King Lear " or are we still waiting for the definitive covid-era great work to emerge?  If you are in Los Angeles, catch M...

This week we're talking about the first season of the hit Apple TV+ show  Severance . We examine the ways the show functions as a reflection of our current, corporation-dominated world, exploring questions of work/life balance as well as the potential abuses inherent in a severance-like procedure. We also ask the all important question: what if severance could go even further? Is the severanc...