Totally Unrelated: History, books & banter among friends

Horrible labor practices brushed under the carpet of 'customer obsession' might sound like the pinnacle of soulless corporatese right from Jeff Bezos' mouth. However, many of the things companies such as Amazon are doing right now bear a striking resemblance to the 19th century horrors of the meatpacking industry in the U.S. and the British Empire. ==WARNING: Episode may contain hexes!== Books ref...

Find out why Irina is the ultimate literary Karen, as she goes off on an hour-long rant about some of the top-rated books of fiction on Goodreads in 2020. Can you just shrug off news of alien contact just because it comes from your dad who is cringe? Are you interested in detailed descriptions of heavy curtains amid cannibalism, oppression and incest at the hacienda? And just what exactly happened...

Diana and Irina continue their discussion of Jonathan Haidt's book and Abby Shapiro's hilariously bad review of it. There's talk about what innateness really means in scientific terms, and moral foundations. Also, quite a bit about riders and futile attempts to steer their unruly elephants. P.S. No elephants were harmed during the making of this episode, regardless of their political convictions....

We all have our disagreements, but why does it sometimes feel like the person on the other side sees the world in such a radically different way? Diana and Irina discuss Jonathan Haidt's take on this issue, in his book The Righteous Mind. They also reference a hilariously bad review of the book made by self-described 'Conservative influencer' Abigail Shapiro (more commonly known by all those bomba...

Diana and Irina continue their discussion about Mukherjee's book and talk about important questions such as: What does it mean - from a scientific point of view - when we say something is genetic? Why are gender and identity so complicated and, most importantly, why even men? :P

How many times have you heard/read this before: 'Look, I know it's not politically correct to say this about X, but this is what the science says.' Well, what does the science say? Turns out, a lot of things, Whether we're talking about gender, race or identity, nuances are a big thing. And as Siddhartha Mukherjee highlights in his book, our understanding on such topics has been distorted in the p...

Diana and Eliza talk about how time is a flat circle and how - whether you're a 19th century feminist or just a woman on the internet nowadays - you'll often find yourself having the same arguments about the basic humanity of women. We react to a public exchange between Romanian feminist Sofia Nadejde and literary critic and politician, Titu Maiorescu on the topic of female intelligence. The only...

He might have been Vienna's most beloved son, but if there is one group of people mayor Karl Lueger didn't love back it was - yes, you've guessed it - the Jews. Diana and Eliza talk about how Lueger rose through the ranks, switched allegiances, discarded principles that were no longer useful to him and spouted the most fashionable bigotry du jour, all in an effort to become mayor of Vienna. Books...

Hey, we all make mistakes. Vienna, however, has a few more oopsies in its recent history than the average Josef. This episode, Diana and Bogdan discuss the first generation of politicians who left their mom's basement and - drawing inspiration from antisemitic authors like Liebenfels and List - made a career out of inciting violence and hatred against any non-German groups within the empire, but e...

Diana and Irina are back and they're still annoyed with Greg and his defense of the one percent ! This time around, it's time to dissect some more Mankiw bullshit about why we can't have (more evenly distributed) nice things. From genoeconomics (bay-beeh!) to why we shouldn't change anything for fear of disturbing the gentle creatures known as job creators, disruptors and other assorted 'people of...

Words. These building blocks of communication can be rendered into ever-so-many potholes that will wreak the Chevy of human dialogue. Diana and Irina talk about the academically-sanctioned bad faith arguments of American economist Greg Mankiw, in his essay titled 'Defending the One Percent.'

Irina comes clean about her unhealthy media consumption habits. We complain about the way couple dynamics are portrayed and why so few productions engage with the non-epic side of healthy and loving relationships. We are also definitely showing our age through our references. Know any movies or series that feature well-written couples and would warm our hearts? Shoot us an email at the.totally.unr...

We start off by talking about the wholesome parts of fanfics and fandoms. How they act as a great catalyst for creativity, solidarity and joint action for members. Then we swerve right into the horrible mess that is the work of yet another fash fanfic writer and the not so great community of enthusiasts that Lanz von Liebenfels gathered around himself. P.S. For those of you who told us the dog was...

Diana and Irina discuss the parallel rise of eugenicist and occult movements - from Francis Galton to the founder of the Theosophical Society, Madame Blavatsky. They then talk about Austrian writer Guido von List - big fan of runes - who drew inspiration from both occultism and scientific racism for his proto-fascist fanfics that would go on to create the lore of 20th century fascist movements. Bo...