We live in the best of times in which we are able to learn about the world and its incredible diversity of cultures/beings/places/perspectives in a way never historically possible. We live in the worst of times when we are able to isolate ourselves completely from anything different from our own narrow view/conception of the world/reality. The choice is yours!
Fendrix, Jerskin, et al. "Yorgos Lanthimos & Team on Poor Things."Film at Lincoln Center #481 (October 1, 2023) ["We were happy to have director Yorgos Lanthimos back at the New York Film Festival to discuss Poor Things, a Main Slate selection of this year’s festival, as well as cinematographer Robbie Ryan, costume designer Holly Waddington, composer Jerskin Fendrix, and production designers James Price & Shona Heath, with NYFF programmer Rachel Rosen. In his boldest vision yet, iconoclast auteur Yorgos Lanthimos, previously featured in NYFF with The Lobster (NYFF57) and The Favourite (NYFF56), creates an outlandish alternate 19th century on the cusp of technological breakthrough, in which a peculiar, childlike woman named Bella (Emma Stone) lives with her mysterious caretaker, the scientist and surgeon Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe). At once poignant and grotesque, Poor Things, based on a 1992 novel by Alasdair Gray, is a punkish update of the Frankenstein story that becomes a deeply feminist fairy tale about women taking back control of their own bodies and minds. A Searchlight Pictures release."]
Kadner, Noah. "LED Wall Evokes Early-Cinema Effects for Poor Things."The American Society of Cinematographers (January 15, 2024) ["Most scenes in Yorgos Lanthimos’ highly stylized dark comedy Poor Things were shot on traditional sets, but key portions of the steamship journey that Bella (Emma Stone) embarks on with Duncan (Mark Ruffalo) called for virtual production on an LED volume — a first for both Lanthimos and cinematographer Robbie Ryan, BSC, ISC. "]
Marcks, Iain. "Life Anew: Poor Things."The American Society of Cinematographers (January 11, 2024) ["Robbie Ryan, BSC, ISC and director Yorgos Lanthimos maintain their intuitive methodology on a grand-scale production."]
S.G. Goodman; Time Heidecker; Car Seat Headrest; Black Pumas; Erykah Badu; Jon Kennedy; Alice Temple; Wall of Voodoo; Bon Iver; Bruce Hornsby and the Range; Fatboy Slim; Hurray for the Riff Raff; The Flaming Lips; Helmet; Fontaines D.C.; Corinne Bailey Rae; Flowers for the Dead; Priests; Emma-Jean Thackray; Kassa Overall; Dogpark; Marcus King; The xx; Leif Vollebeck; Babe Rainbow; Portishead; The Chamber Brothers; Pink Floyd; Electric Light Orchestra; Bonnie Raitt; Harry Maslin; The Beatles; Johanna Warren; Mamalarky; OK Go; Ribbon Skirt; Galactic; Irma Thomas; Simon & Garfunkel; Nina Simone; Julien Baker; Torres; Carolina Chocolate Drops; Rhiannon Gidden; Justin Robinson
Ebiri, Bilge. "Perfect Days: Where the Light Comes Through."Current (July 16, 2024) ["The city and the trees. These are the first two things we see in Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days (2023): a wide shot of Tokyo at dawn, and an angle looking up at a leafy canopy against a dark blue sky. The former feels like an establishing shot, the latter like a mental image—fitting, since we next see the protagonist, Hirayama (Koji Yakusho), opening his eyes in his modest home, awakened by the sounds of a solitary street sweeper outside. Perfect Days lives, in essence, between these two tableaux. It’s a city symphony about a man who appreciates the patches of nature and light he can find in his concrete world, and it’s a film about how everyday existence drifts into our dream lives."]
Wenders, Wim. "Perfect Days: — Wim Wenders cures his post-pandemic blues."MUBI Podcast (April 11, 2024) ["Legendary filmmaker Wim Wenders returns to the show to tell host Rico Gagliano about his Cannes-winning, Oscar-nominated PERFECT DAYS—the story of a Tokyo toilet cleaner who finds joy in routine. They also get into a few of Wenders’s favorite things: Japan, travel, Nina Simone, and having time on his hands."]
Butler, Judith. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex. Taylor & Francis, 2011. ["In Bodies That Matter, renowned theorist and philosopher Judith Butler argues that theories of gender need to return to the most material dimension of sex and sexuality: the body. Butler offers a brilliant reworking of the body, examining how the power of heterosexual hegemony forms the "matter" of bodies, sex, and gender. Butler argues that power operates to constrain sex from the start, delimiting what counts as a viable sex. She clarifies the notion of "performativity" introduced in Gender Trouble and via bold readings of Plato, Irigaray, Lacan, and Freud explores the meaning of a citational politics. She also draws on documentary and literature with compelling interpretations of the film Paris is Burning, Nella Larsen's Passing, and short stories by Willa Cather."]
---. "Capitalism Has Its Limits."Verso (March 20, 2020) ["One reason I voted for Sanders in the California primary along with a majority of registered Democrats is that he, along with Warren, opened up a way to re-imagine our world as if it were ordered by a collective desire for radical equality, a world in which we came together to insist that the materials that are required for life, including medical care, would be equally available no matter who we are or whether we have financial means. That policy would have established solidarity with other countries that are committed to universal health care, and so would have established a transnational health care policy committed to realizing the ideals of equality. The new polls emerge that narrow the national choice to Trump and Biden precisely as the pandemic shuts down everyday life, intensifying the precarity of the homeless, the uninsured, and the poor. The idea that we might become a people who wishes to see a world in which health policy is equally committed to all lives, to dismantling the market’s hold on health care that distinguishes among the worthy and those who can be easily abandoned to illness and death, was briefly alive. We came to understand ourselves differently as Sanders and Warren held out this other possibility. We understood that we might start to think and value outside the terms that capitalism sets for us. Even though Warren is no longer a candidate, and Sanders is unlikely to recover his momentum, we must still ask, especially now, why are we as a people still opposed to treating all lives as if they were of equal value? Why do some still thrill at the idea that Trump would seek to secure a vaccine that would safeguard American lives (as he defines them) before all others? The proposition of universal and public health reinvigorated a socialist imaginary in the US, one that must now wait to become realized as social policy and public commitment in this country. Unfortunately, in the time of the pandemic, none of us can wait. The ideal must now be kept alive in the social movements that are riveted less on the presidential campaign than the long term struggle that lies ahead of us. These courageous and compassionate visions mocked and rejected by capitalist “realists” had enough air time, compelled enough attention, to let increasing numbers – some for the first time – desire a changed world. Hopefully we can keep that desire alive, especially now when Trump proposes on Easter to lift constraints on public life and businesses and set the virus free. He wagers that the potential financial gains for the few will compensate for the increase in the number of deaths that are clearly predicted, which he accepts, and refuses to stop – in the name of national health. So now those with a social vision of universal health care have to struggle against both a moral and viral illness working in lethal tandem with one another."]
---. Frames of War: When is Life Grievable? Verso, 2016. ["In Frames of War, Judith Butler explores the media's portrayal of state violence, a process integral to the way in which the West wages modern war. This portrayal has saturated our understanding of human life, and has led to the exploitation and abandonment of whole peoples, who are cast as existential threats rather than as living populations in need of protection. These people are framed as already lost, to imprisonment, unemployment and starvation, and can easily be dismissed. In the twisted logic that rationalizes their deaths, the loss of such populations is deemed necessary to protect the lives of 'the living.' This disparity, Butler argues, has profound implications for why and when we feel horror, outrage, guilt, loss and righteous indifference, both in the context of war and, increasingly, everyday life. This book discerns the resistance to the frames of war in the context of the images from Abu Ghraib, the poetry from Guantanamo, recent European policy on immigration and Islam, and debates on normativity and non-violence. In this urgent response to ever more dominant methods of coercion, violence and racism, Butler calls for a re-conceptualization of the Left, one that brokers cultural difference and cultivates resistance to the illegitimate and arbitrary effects of state violence and its vicissitudes."]
---. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Routledge, 2006. ["One of the most talked-about scholarly works of the past fifty years, Judith Butler's Gender Trouble is as celebrated as it is controversial. Arguing that traditional feminism is wrong to look to a natural, 'essential' notion of the female, or indeed of sex or gender, Butler starts by questioning the category 'woman' and continues in this vein with examinations of 'the masculine' and 'the feminine'. Best known however, but also most often misinterpreted, is Butler's concept of gender as a reiterated social performance rather than the expression of a prior reality. Thrilling and provocative, few other academic works have roused passions to the same extent."]
---. Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. Verso, 2004. ["In this profound appraisal of post-September 11, 2001 America, Judith Butler considers the conditions of heightened vulnerability and aggression that followed from the attack on the US, and US retaliation. Judith Butler critiques the use of violence that has emerged as a response to loss, and argues that the dislocation of first-world privilege offers instead a chance to imagine a world in which that violence might be minimized and in which interdependency becomes acknowledged as the basis for a global political community. Butler considers the means by which some lives become grief-worthy, while others are perceived as undeserving of grief or even incomprehensible as lives. She discusses the political implications of sovereignty in light of the prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. She argues against the anti-intellectual current of contemporary US patriotism and the power of censorship during times of war. Finally, she takes on the question of when and why anti-semitism is leveled as a charge against those who voice criticisms of the Israeli state. She counters that we have a responsibility to speak out against both Israeli injustices and anti-semitism, and argues against the rhetorical use of the charge of anti-semitism to quell public debate. In her most impassioned and personal book to date, Judith Butler responds to the current US policies to wage perpetual war, and calls for a deeper understanding of how mourning and violence might instead inspire solidarity and a quest form global justice."]
---. "This Is Wrong - On Executive Order 14168."London Review of Books 47.6 (April 3, 2025) ["It’s not surprising, then, that Executive Order 14168 includes among its dictates the need to correct any ‘misapplications’ of Bostock v. Clayton County. Indeed, the order shifts the basis of ‘an individual’s immutable biological classification’ away from genitalia to gametes: ‘“Female” means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell ... “Male” means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell.’ Why this shift? And what does it mean that the government can change its mind about what is immutable? Is the ‘immutable’ mutable after all? The existence of intersexed people has long posed a problem for sex assignment since they are living evidence that genitalia can be combined or mixed in certain ways. Gametes must have seemed less problematic. There is a larger one and a smaller one: let that be the immutable difference between female and male. There are two significant problems with using gametes to define sex. First, no one checks gametes at the moment of sex assignment, let alone at conception (when they don’t yet exist). They are not observable. To base sex assignment on gametes is therefore to rely on an imperceptible dimension of sex when observation remains the principal way sex is assigned. Second, most biologists agree that neither biological determinism nor biological reductionism provides an adequate account of sex determination and development. As the Society for the Study of Evolution explains in a letter published on 5 February, the ‘scientific consensus’ defines sex in humans as a ‘biological construct that relies on a combination of chromosomes, hormonal balances, and the resulting expression of gonads, external genitalia and secondary sex characteristics. There is variation in all these biological attributes that make up sex.’ They remind us that ‘sex and gender result from the interplay of genetics and environment. Such diversity is a hallmark of biological species, including humans.’ Interplay, interaction, co-construction are concepts widely used in the biological sciences. And, in turn, the biological sciences have made considerable contributions to gender theory, where Anne Fausto-Sterling, for example, has long argued that biology interacts with cultural and historical processes to produce different ways of naming and living gender."]
---. Undoing Gender. Routledge, 2004. ["Undoing Gender constitutes Judith Butler's recent reflections on gender and sexuality, focusing on new kinship, psychoanalysis and the incest taboo, transgender, intersex, diagnostic categories, social violence, and the tasks of social transformation. In terms that draw from feminist and queer theory, Butler considers the norms that govern--and fail to govern--gender and sexuality as they relate to the constraints on recognizable personhood. The book constitutes a reconsideration of her earlier view on gender performativity from Gender Trouble. In this work, the critique of gender norms is clearly situated within the framework of human persistence and survival. And to "do" one's gender in certain ways sometimes implies "undoing" dominant notions of personhood. She writes about the "New Gender Politics" that has emerged in recent years, a combination of movements concerned with transgender, transsexuality, intersex, and their complex relations to feminist and queer theory."]
---. Who's Afraid of Gender? Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 2024. ["From a global icon, a bold, essential account of how a fear of gender is fueling reactionary politics around the world. Judith Butler, the groundbreaking thinker whose iconic book Gender Trouble redefined how we think about gender and sexuality, confronts the attacks on “gender” that have become central to right-wing movements today. Global networks have formed “anti–gender ideology movements” that are dedicated to circulating a fantasy that gender is a dangerous, perhaps diabolical, threat to families, local cultures, civilization—and even “man” himself. Inflamed by the rhetoric of public figures, this movement has sought to nullify reproductive justice, undermine protections against sexual and gender violence, and strip trans and queer people of their rights to pursue a life without fear of violence. The aim of Who’s Afraid of Gender? is not to offer a new theory of gender but to examine how “gender” has become a phantasm for emerging authoritarian regimes, fascist formations, and trans-exclusionary feminists. In their vital, courageous new book, Butler illuminates the concrete ways that this phantasm of “gender” collects and displaces anxieties and fears of destruction. Operating in tandem with deceptive accounts of “critical race theory” and xenophobic panics about migration, the anti-gender movement demonizes struggles for equality, fuels aggressive nationalism, and leaves millions of people vulnerable to subjugation. An essential intervention into one of the most fraught issues of our moment, Who’s Afraid of Gender? is a bold call to refuse the alliance with authoritarian movements and to make a broad coalition with all those whose struggle for equality is linked with fighting injustice. Imagining new possibilities for both freedom and solidarity, Butler offers us a hopeful work of social and political analysis that is both timely and timeless—a book whose verve and rigor only they could deliver."]
Butler, Judith and Aziz Rana. "Trump's War by Executive Order."The LRB Podcast (April 9, 2025) ["Judith Butler and Aziz Rana join Adam Shatz to discuss Donald Trump’s use of executive orders to target birthright citizenship, protest, support of Palestinian rights, academic freedom, constitutionally protected speech and efforts to ensure inclusion on the basis of race, gender and sexual orientation. They consider in particular the content of Executive Order 14168, which ‘restores’ the right of the government to decide what sex people are, as well as the wider programme of rights-stripping implied by Trump’s agenda."]
Butler, Judith and Jack Halberstam. "Who's Afraid of Gender?"Pioneer Works (Posted on Youtube: June 2024) ["In 1990, Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity helped revolutionize how we understand sexuality, gender, and the performative dimensions of identity. In the decades since, Butler has become one of our most trenchant and iconic public intellectuals—a thinker who has made countless timely and urgent interventions on questions of violence and peace, language and war, and precarity and cohabitation. Now, in Who’s Afraid of Gender? (2024), Butler returns to the topic that made their name, to illuminate how “anti-gender ideology movements” have become central to reactionary politics and rising authoritarianism worldwide."]
Butler, Judith, et al. "Open letter to President Biden: we call for a ceasefire now."The Guardian (October 19, 2023) ["We are a group of Jewish American writers, artists and academics. We oppose what the Israeli government is doing with US assistance."]
Gleeson, Jules. "Judith Butler: ‘We need to rethink the category of woman’."The Guardian (September 7, 2021) ["The author of the ground-breaking book Gender Trouble says we should not be surprised when the category of women expands to include trans women."]
Barton-Fumo, Margaret. "Paul Verhoeven."The Film Comment (November 15, 2016)["What are the uncanny forces at work behind Paul Verhoeven’s visceral and transgressive cinema? In anticipation of the Film Society’s complete retrospective of the Dutch master’s films and the U.S. release of Elle, this episode offers a comprehensive discussion of the director’s audacious and eclectic career encompassing art-house Dutch films (Turkish Delight [1971], Spetters [1980]) and big-budget Hollywood productions such as Basic Instinct (1992), Total Recall (1990) and Starship Troopers (1997). In the first part of the podcast, Film Comment Digital Editor Violet Lucca sits down with a panel of Verhoeven connoisseurs, including Cinema Scope critic Adam Nayman, Film Comment Deep Cuts columnist Margaret Barton-Fumo (also the editor of a forthcoming book of interviews with Verhoeven), and Fort Buchanan director Benjamin Crotty, to tackle the controversy that lies at the core of Verhoeven’s work. In the final part of the episode, Margaret Barton-Fumo speaks to Verhoeven about the uncomfortable eroticism that pervades Elle and his Brechtian influences."]
Hedges, Chris. War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. Public Affairs, 2014. ["General George S. Patton famously said, "Compared to war all other forms of human endeavor shrink to insignificance. God, I do love it so!" Though Patton was a notoriously single-minded general, it is nonetheless a sad fact that war gives meaning to many lives, a fact with which we have become familiar now that America is once again engaged in a military conflict. War is an enticing elixir. It gives us purpose, resolve, a cause. It allows us to be noble. Chris Hedges of The New York Times has seen war up close -- in the Balkans, the Middle East, and Central America -- and he has been troubled by what he has seen: friends, enemies, colleagues, and strangers intoxicated and even addicted to war's heady brew. In War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, he tackles the ugly truths about humanity's love affair with war, offering a sophisticated, nuanced, intelligent meditation on the subject that is also gritty, powerful, and unforgettable."]
Koski, Genevieve, et al. "Kill 'em All, Pt. 1 - Starship Troopers."The Next Picture Show (March 18, 2025) ["This week’s pairing is brought to you by: space bugs! Specifically, space bugs as a metaphor for a fascistic society’s disregard for any perceived-to-be-lower life form, human or otherwise. Inspired by the clear satire of Bong Joon Ho’s new MICKEY 17, we’re revisiting Paul Verhoeven’s STARSHIP TROOPERS, whose satirical intent was less clear to some audiences when it hit theaters in 1997. Today, while we’re on the same page as far as what Verhoeven was going for with his propagandistic display of military might, opinions still differ among our panel as to how well he pulled it off. We get into that disagreement, as well as the surprisingly enduring effects and the improbability of a film like this being made in Hollywood today."]
---. "Kill 'em All, Pt. 2 - Mickey 17."The Next Picture Show (March 25, 2025) ["Bong Joon Ho’s new MICKEY 17 takes a lot of big swings, from star Robert Pattinson’s vocal affectation to a comedic fixation on “sauce,” all of it in service of big, bold, arguably blunt satire. It all makes for a somewhat messy but highly discussable film, both on its own and in conversation with Paul Verhoeven’s STARSHIP TROOPERS, another big swing of a sci-fi satire that aims to entertain as it undermines propagandistic societies where leaders rule by catchphrase, where citizenship is conditional, and where working-class lives are expendable. We dive into all of that, plus space bugs that may not actually be bugs, then offer a Your Next Picture Show recommendation for another MICKEY 17 pairing contender, Duncan Jones’ MOON."]
Koski, Genevieve, et al. "Cinde-F***ing-Rella, Pt. 1 — Pretty Woman."The Next Picture Show #451 (November 19, 2024) ["Sean Baker’s new ANORA takes its initial cues from 1990’s PRETTY WOMAN, but its story of a sex worker who develops romantic feelings for a client in spite of class difference and social stigma soon peels off in a vastly different direction. So this week we’re focusing on that shared starting point to determine what makes PRETTY WOMAN both a deeply weird depiction of sex work and a resoundingly successful romcom — and no, it’s not just Julia Roberts, though it’s hard to imagine us discussing PRETTY WOMAN as a classic film today without that star-making performance."]
---. "Cinde-F***ing-Rella, Pt. 2 — Anora."The Next Picture Show #452 (November 26, 2024) ["Sean Baker’s ANORA takes the fairy-tale premise of 1990’s PRETTY WOMAN as its starting point, but ends up on a very different route to a very different sort of happy ending. It’s also a best-of-the year contender for most of us, so we spend some time discussing what makes it so before bringing its romcom predecessor back in to consider how these two films about sex workers falling for their wealthy clients are in conversation when it comes to classicism and social hierarchies, conspicuous consumption, and what happens when a transactional relationship evolves into something more."]
Roberts, Risdon. "Heaux Joy."Slant (October 23, 2024) ["I’m a sex worker. Anora is one of the few movies about my profession that doesn’t make me cringe."]
Schuster, Aaron. "The Ethical Dignity of Anora."E-Flux (November 20, 2024) ["Contemporary cinema might congratulate itself on having a harder-hitting approach to capitalism as compared to the saccharine fantasy of Pretty Woman. But today’s highly successful genre of anti-capitalist movies and television is above all pacifying and reassuring: the capitalists are punished, the rich get their comeuppance, and the downtrodden achieve some measure of revenge. Even when this genre displays real genius (particularly in its comedy of manners—the analytic precision with which it dissects the speech and behavior of the hyper-privileged), it still partakes of this impotent morality. Succession, White Lotus, The Menu, Triangle of Sadness, Glass Onion, Parasite, Saltburn, Industry: one can loathe the rich and love them too. This was put well by Martha Gill: 'We should recognize ‘eat the rich’ TV for what it is: not as any sort of cultural ‘reckoning’ for the prosperous and corrupt, but pure catharsis—a sort of inverted mirror of society. The more violently a culture squishes the undeserving wealthy on screen, the more it tends to valorize them in reality.' Truffaut once said that it’s impossible to make an anti-war film. What about an anti-rich film?"]
---. Green is the New Red: An Insider's Account of a Social Movement Under Siege. City Light Books, 2011. ["At a time when everyone is going green, most people are unaware that the FBI is using anti-terrorism resources to target environmentalists and animal rights activists. The courts are being used to push conventional boundaries of what constitutes "terrorism" and to hit nonviolent activists with disproportionate sentences. Some have faced terrorism charges for simply chalking slogans on the sidewalk. Like the Red Scare, this "Green Scare" is about fear and intimidation, using a word"eco-terrorist"to push a political agenda, instill fear and silence dissent. The animal rights and environmental movements directly threaten corporate profits every time activists encourage people to go vegan, to stop driving, to consume fewer resources and live simply. Their boycotts are damaging, and corporations and the politicians who represent them know it. In many ways, the Green Scare, like the Red Scare, can be seen as a culture war, a war of values. Will Potter outlines the political, legal, extra-legal, and public relations strategies that are being used to threaten even acts of nonviolent civil disobedience with the label of "terrorism." Here is a guided tour into the world of radical activism that introduces the real people behind the headlines and tells the story of how everyday people are being prevented from speaking up for what they believe in."]
---. Little Red Barns: Hiding the Truth, from Farm to Fable. City Light Books, 2025. ["Little Red Barns is a groundbreaking investigation of factory farms and the unprecedented measures being taken to hide their impact - on animals, public health, and the environment - from the public. Will Potter had planned to write a book about a troubling form of censorship, namely, a host of new "ag-gag" laws that criminalize photographers and journalists as terrorists for their efforts to expose abuses on factory farms. But his work soon expanded into a much larger investigation of a nexus of political corruption and corporate power that works to silence protest and to obscure reality with propaganda. What emerges is a chilling account of the secret campaigns of weaponized storytelling being used to prevent us from seeing the ecological, public health, and authoritarian threats that these farms represent. Potter's journalistic practice of bearing witness took him to places he had never expected, from factory farms to fascist groups, from whistleblowing to censorship laws, political corruption and propaganda campaigns, and the book is an immersive, engaging personal account of the ups and downs of his journey. A well-woven tale of investigative reporting, archival research, photography, and memoir, Little Red Barns is about how the biggest industries on the planet hide from the public and secretly campaign to silence protest. The little red barns are a case study, and a warning for anyone concerned about the right to protest and hold corporations accountable"--]
---. "Little Red Barns: Hiding the Truth, from Farm to Fable."New Books in Food (April 6, 2025) ["Little Red Barns: Hiding the Truth, from Farm to Fable (City Lights Books, 2025) is a groundbreaking investigation of factory farms and the unprecedented measures being taken to hide their impact -- on animals, public health, and the environment -- from the public. Hiding behind the little red barns that dot the landscape of rural America and decorate so many of the animal-based products we consume is a dangerous truth and a very real threat. Little Red Barns is the record of a harrowing journey that took investigative journalist Will Potter from factory farms to international climate summits, from congressional hearings to neo-Nazi fascist groups. As Potter uncovers the frightening truth about animal agriculture's role in accelerating climate collapse, he shows how the authoritarian measures being taken to maintain control over this key aspect of the global food supply chain are directly linked to the proliferation and empowerment of far-right militias. Writing in an engaging, personal style, he invites his reader to accompany him on the journey as he confronts a maelstrom of disturbing information, asking searching questions along the way about the role of a journalist and the impact of "bearing witness" in a world where we're bombarded with images, real and faked."]
---. "The Secret U.S. Prisons You've Never Heard of Before."TED Talks (August 2015) ["Investigative journalist Will Potter is the only reporter who has been inside a Communications Management Unit, or CMU, within a US prison. These units were opened secretly, and radically alter how prisoners are treated -- even preventing them from hugging their children. Potter, a TED Fellow, shows us who is imprisoned here, and how the government is trying to keep them hidden. "The message was clear," he says. "Don't talk about this place.""]
Amory Gethin, Clara Martínez-Toledano, and Thomas Piketty. "How politics became a contest dominated by two kinds of elite."The Guardian (August 5, 2021) ["Studying hundreds of elections, we found that political parties increasingly cater to only the well educated and the rich."]
Piketty, Thomas. Capital and Ideology. trans. Arthur Goldhammer. Harvard University Press, 2020. ["Thomas Piketty’s bestselling Capital in the Twenty-First Century galvanized global debate about inequality. In this audacious follow-up, Piketty challenges us to revolutionize how we think about politics, ideology, and history. He exposes the ideas that have sustained inequality for the past millennium, reveals why the shallow politics of right and left are failing us today, and outlines the structure of a fairer economic system. Our economy, Piketty observes, is not a natural fact. Markets, profits, and capital are all historical constructs that depend on choices. Piketty explores the material and ideological interactions of conflicting social groups that have given us slavery, serfdom, colonialism, communism, and hypercapitalism, shaping the lives of billions. He concludes that the great driver of human progress over the centuries has been the struggle for equality and education and not, as often argued, the assertion of property rights or the pursuit of stability. The new era of extreme inequality that has derailed that progress since the 1980s, he shows, is partly a reaction against communism, but it is also the fruit of ignorance, intellectual specialization, and our drift toward the dead-end politics of identity. Once we understand this, we can begin to envision a more balanced approach to economics and politics. Piketty argues for a new “participatory” socialism, a system founded on an ideology of equality, social property, education, and the sharing of knowledge and power. Capital and Ideology is destined to be one of the indispensable books of our time, a work that will not only help us understand the world, but that will change it." This is the Harvard University Press book page, it has links to app. 50 interviews and features on the author & the book.]
---. Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Trans. by Arthur Goldhammer. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014. ["What are the grand dynamics that drive the accumulation and distribution of capital? Questions about the long-term evolution of inequality, the concentration of wealth, and the prospects for economic growth lie at the heart of political economy. But satisfactory answers have been hard to find for lack of adequate data and clear guiding theories. In Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Piketty analyzes a unique collection of data from twenty countries, ranging as far back as the eighteenth century, to uncover key economic and social patterns. His findings will transform debate and set the agenda for the next generation of thought about wealth and inequality. Piketty shows that modern economic growth and the diffusion of knowledge have allowed us to avoid inequalities on the apocalyptic scale predicted by Karl Marx. But we have not modified the deep structures of capital and inequality as much as we thought in the optimistic decades following World War II. The main driver of inequality―the tendency of returns on capital to exceed the rate of economic growth―today threatens to generate extreme inequalities that stir discontent and undermine democratic values. But economic trends are not acts of God. Political action has curbed dangerous inequalities in the past, Piketty says, and may do so again. A work of extraordinary ambition, originality, and rigor, Capital in the Twenty-First Century reorients our understanding of economic history and confronts us with sobering lessons for today."]
---. Nature, Culture, and Inequality: A Comparative and Historical Perspective. Other Press, 2024. ["In this unique work, Thomas Piketty presents a synthesis of his historical and comparative research on inequality. He challenges the idea that there could be natural inequalities and shows that the march toward equality has always depended on political and social struggles, addressing diverse topics such as: education, inheritance, the climate crisis, the taxation of wealth, and gender disparities."]
---. "Trump's national-capitalism likes to flaunt its strength, but it is actually fragile."Le Monde (February 15, 2025) ["The United States, following misguided policies since Reagan, is on the verge of losing control over the world. Rising nationalism will only accelerate this decline and disappoint public expectations, the economist argues in his column."]
Oketty, Thomas, Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman. "Rethinking Capital and Wealth Taxation."Oxford Review of Economic Policy (August 30, 2023) ["This paper reviews recent developments in the theory and practice of optimal capital taxation. We emphasize three main rationales for capital taxation. First, the frontier between capital and labour income flows is often fuzzy, thereby lending support to a broad-based, comprehensive income tax. Next, the very notions of income and consumption flows are difficult to define and measure for top wealth holders where capital gains due to asset price effects dwarf ordinary income and consumption flows. Therefore the proper way to tax billionaires is a progressive wealth tax. Finally, as individuals cannot choose their parents, there are strong meritocratic reasons why we should tax inherited wealth more than earned income or self-made wealth for which individuals can be held responsible, at least in part. This implies that the ideal fiscal system should also include a progressive inheritance tax, in addition to progressive income and wealth taxes. We then confront our prescriptions with historical experience. Although there are significant differences, we argue that observed fiscal systems in modern democracies bear important similarities with this ideal triptych."]
Throwing Muses; Fluid Druid; Cole Chaney; Kate Bush; The Rumjacks; Tindersticks; Car Seat Headrest; Nirvana; Ringo Starr; Billy Strings; Molly Tuttle; Annie DiRusso; Jason Isbell; Lady Gaga; Franc Moody; Hamilton Leithauser; House of All; Hotwax; Moreish Idols; Snails; Alice Cooper; The Toads; Night Heron; The Barracudas; Snarky Puppy; The Cars; Atomic Momma; Fleetwood Mac; The Fur Coats; Shotski; Dana Gavanski; Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek; Artic Monkeys; Green Day; Led Zeppelin; Cass McCombs; Black Country, New Road; Sparks; Lenny Kravitz; Chaparelle; Zella Day; Jesse Woods; The Black Angels; The Dandy Warhols; Deep Sea Diver; Hayes Carll; Sharon van Etten; Delivery; Mavis Staples; Levon Helm
The Significance of Climate Change Mitigation Policies The Evolution of AI and Its Ethical Implications Should we be concerned about climate change? The Decline of the American Dream Why Should We Care About Family Separation at the Border? The influence of social media on human behavior and mind The Benefits of Canine Companions: How Your Furry Friend Improves Your Mental and Physical Health Who is to Blame for Climate Change? Disappearing Wetlands: Examining Environmental Consequences of Development in Florida The Crisis of America A Call for Compassion: Defending Mexican Immigrants in America Social Media: A New Frontier for Political Campaigns The Art of Freedom The Psychology of Horror Movies: Why We Like Being Scared Teens On the Screen: the image of youth in cinema Technology in K-5 education is more damaging than beneficial The Power of Psychology in Understanding and Enhancing Human Potential Artificial Intelligence: The Great Workforce Displacement You Are What You Eat: Unpacking the Social and Cultural Impact of Modern Diets The Importance of Free Speech in Upholding Individual Freedom and Social Democracy The Problem of Child Abuse in America Mountaintop Removal: The Ease of Destruction
Onychectomy: The Barbarous Practice of Feline Declawing Disparties in Kentucky K-12 Education Religion is a tool for controlling the world Why Martial Arts are Beneficial to Society The Cultural Significance of Braiding Hair The Need for Healthcare Reform An Argument to Restore Voting Rights of Felons Who Have Served Their Time An Argument Against Standardized Testing The Silent Struggle: The Overlooked Foundation of Communication and Its Crucial Role in Human Growth Justice for Animals Social and Psychological Impact of Having Natural Hair Instagram: The Cycle of Scrolling A Critique of Racist Immigration Policies Why We Should be Concerned About Conflicts Over Taiwan Science and Christianity are not at odds; instead, they can complement each other in understanding truth and reality, whereby science informs the material world, and religion provides moral and spiritual insights. The Dark Web and the Evolution of Cybercrime: Challenges for Law Enforcement Blank Melodies: A Critique of Contemporary Pop Music Social Media's Effect on Underdeveloped Brains The Transformative Power of Atomic Habits Questioning Justice: The Injustice of Death Row in America Problems in the Assessment and Treatment of Bipolar Disorders Sustainably Stylish The Importance of Trauma-Focused Early Education Strategies and Practices Life Under Brazil’s Military Rule: Censorship, Fear, and Control In Defense of Women's Autonomy Over Their Body What is the Impact of Video Games on Players/Society Why American soccer is Falling Behind Compared to Europe Free Will: Is it an Illusion? Icarus and The SuperComputer: Have We Flown Too Close To The Sun? Climate ChangeEffect on Crops and the Food Supply The Importance of Considering Mental and Physical Health Together Creating a Positive Classroom: A Key to Academic and Behavioral Success The New Generation of Latinos: Overcoming Trauma The Ongoing Conflict Between Russia and Ukraine The Negative Effects of Excessive Screen Time on Teens and Children Should College Be Free? Finding Meaning in Suffering Data Privacy is More Important Now Than Ever Before As immigration continues to shape the demographic and cultural makeup of the United States, the experiences of Hindu immigrants and their descendants offer valuable insights into the broader themes of integration, multiculturalism, and religious pluralism. A Critique of American Healthcare A Critique of the Contemporary Legalization of Cannabis Products Addressing Child Abuse in America How Music Effects Emotions and Experiences Cultural Identity and the Purposes of God: A Biblical Theology of Ethnicity The Palestinian Struggle Adapting to Change: The Evolution of COVID-19 and Its Variants Addressing the Problem of Domestic Violence
Cryptocurrency's Environmental Impact and Future Sustainability The Importance of Client-First Human Services Raising the minimum wage is crucial to ensure workers can sustain their everyday needs Is Online Tracking for Advertising Ethical? Ensuring Artificial Intelligence is Ethically Developed Through Augmented Intelligence The Problem of Screen Maxing: An Argument for Digital Minimalism
"In the now famous words of Benedict Anderson (1991), nations are imagined communities; that is, a nation connotes a group of people who believe and imagine that they belong together even though an individual will never meet more than a tiny fraction of the other members of his/her 'community'. Understanding the politics of nations, therefore, involves much more than studying their geopolitical boundaries; it involves analyzing cultural discourses. People believe and imagine that they belong together because they participate in, read, and hear a common set of cultural practices. This national imagination is constantly being made and remade through words, images, music, performance—that is, through pageants, patriotic songs, political speeches, holiday rituals, iconic figures, memorialized landscapes. The political geography of nations then is intricately bound up with cultural practices and products.
Understanding how and why certain of these practices and products participate in the making of national identity is no simple matter, yet it is extremely important to do. As Jan Pettman argues, ‘nationalism constitutes the nation as above politics, and so disguises the politics of its making. This is the extraordinary power of the nation as that thing which people will kill and die for’ [Worlding Women: A Feminist International Politics. NY: Routledge, 1996: 48]. In other words, feelings of national identity are what prompt people to act in powerful ways, yet the politics of nationalism - how and for what reasons it has been formed in particular ways - are disguised from common view. The most basic research questions stem from the quest to disclose and make visible the workings of nationalism. Cultural geographers and others investigate the constitution of national identity - how notions of race, class, sexuality and gender are used to set up distinctions between ‘us’ and ‘them’ hierarchically, so that ‘others’ outside the nation are placed lower in the ranking; they examine the deployment of nationalism - how national identity is reiterated daily, often in the most banal ways; and they study the relationship of nationalism to landscape - how nationalism both shapes and is reinforced by particular symbolic landscapes and human-environmental practices.
Imperialism – the imposition of one country on another – is often predicated on a form of nationalism based on ‘natural’ superiority. The Roman world, for example, distinguished between those ‘civilized’ people of the Roman nation who spoke Latin, and those living outside of Roman boundaries who spoke other languages – the ‘barbarians’. Assumptions of national superiority provided both the reasons for and legitimation of the conquest of ‘barbarians’ by the ‘civilized’ Romans. National identity in nineteenth and early twentieth-century England was based partly around notions developed from evolutionary theory that posited the English people as ‘naturally’ more evolved and civilized than others living outside its borders; again providing cause for and legitimation of imperial conquest. Understanding the cultural practices and products of national identity formation, therefore, is critical to analyzing imperialism – the actual military or political or economic imposition of one country over another is made possible by and legitimized with a set of cultural ideologies and practices that we call nationalism. (141-142)" -- Domosh, Mona. “Selling America: Advertising, National Identity and Economic Empire in the Late Nineteenth Century.” Cultural Geography in Practice. Ed. Alison Blunt, et al. NY: Oxford UP, 2003: 141-153.
"We are so submerged in the pictures created by mass media that we no longer really see them. ... And their effects run deep: popular culture is not tagged as ‘propaganda’ but as entertainment; people are often exposed to it when most relaxed of mind and tired of body; and its characters offer easy targets of identification, easy answers to stereotyped problems. (333, 336)." - Mills, C. Wright. White Collar. NY: Oxford UP, 1951.
Carey, Alex. Taking the Risk Out of Democracy: Studies in Corporate Propaganda. (Posted on Youtube: June 4, 2012) [""The twentieth century has been characterised by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy." - Alex Carey This compelling book examines the twentieth-century history of corporate propaganda as practiced by U.S. businesses and its export to and adoption by other western democracies, chiefly the United Kingdom and Australia. A volume in the series The History of Communication, edited by Robert W. McChesney and John C. Nerone."]
Gaffney, Adam. "Medicare For All Is Still The Solution!"Current Affairs (February 22, 2025) ["Dr. Adam Gaffney, the former head of Physicians For a National Health Program, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, and the author of the book To Heal Humankind: The Right to Health in History. Adam is one of the most articulate and effective champions of Medicare For All, having once fought five Fox Business Channel commentators at once. Today he joins to discuss why Medicare For All is still the #1 best way we can improve people's healthcare. He responds to common objections, and Nathan challenges him with quotes from the author of the book The False Promise of Single-Payer Healthcare. Adam shows why the objections are silly and we need to build a consensus around the necessity of a single-payer plan."]
Gorfinkel, Elena. "The Prop and the Performer: Actors Need to Touch Things."Notebook (March 4, 2025) ["The relationship of props to the embodied performer, the integral role they play in the gestural labor of the actor, is threaded through our entire discussion, but it is worthwhile here to tease out the investments and entrenched relations between performance and prop value. Cinema’s foundational fascination with bodily movement entails a frequent lingering on the prop and the role of objects; this preoccupation is noticeable across the history of cinema, from pre-cinematic motion studies and early cinema’s development as a narrational medium, all the way through actor training exercises in various schools of performance, including The Method and its multiple tributaries and variants. In numerous attempts to account for the essence of cinema, theorists suggest that the capture of corporeal movement entails a grappling with things that is central to the prop’s circulation through the diegesis, and thus to the unfolding of the diegesis itself. As plot vector, currency, relational mediator, agent of memory, appendage or illuminator of character, and dramatic catalyst, the prop buttresses and expands the very energies of cinematic narration and the articulation of character. The hands that hold and grab props set fields of activity in motion and generate horizons of narrativity. The prop’s status as an expressive resource is bound up with the performer’s bodily activity. In his account of film acting, James Naremore suggests that “actors need to touch things” by necessity, and this necessity of handling the prop world is a vital means of producing screen presence, key to the construction of a coherent fictional self. He further notes that “part of the actor’s job is to keep objects under expressive control, letting them become signifiers of feeling.” Concerned with how the border between prop and performer breaks down or becomes porous, Naremore points to elements of screen performances, from Charlie Chaplin’s cane to Barbara Stanwyck’s subtly wielded handkerchief in the tearful ending of Stella Dallas (King Vidor, 1937), as examples of how acting techniques extend from an intensified relation between prop and character. In their different generic registers Chaplin’s comedic hyperbole and Stanwyck’s melodramatic realism demonstrate how prop work generates the gestural flow between action and expression."]
Hardt, Michael. "The Subversive Seventies."New Books in Critical Theory (October 29, 2024) ["A thought-provoking reconsideration of how the revolutionary movements of the 1970s set the mold for today's activism. The 1970s was a decade of "subversives". Faced with various progressive and revolutionary social movements, the forces of order--politicians, law enforcement, journalists, and conservative intellectuals--saw subversives everywhere. From indigenous peasant armies and gay liberation organizations, to anti-nuclear activists and Black liberation militants, subversives challenged authority, laid siege to the established order, and undermined time-honored ways of life. Every corner of the left was fertile ground for subversive elements, which the forces of order had to root out and destroy--a project they pursued with zeal and brutality. In The Subversive Seventies (Oxford UP, 2023), Michael Hardt sets out to show that popular understandings of the political movements of the seventies--often seen as fractious, violent, and largely unsuccessful--are not just inaccurate, but foreclose valuable lessons for the political struggles of today. While many accounts of the 1970s have been written about the regimes of domination that emerged throughout the decade, Hardt approaches the subversive from the perspectives of those who sought to undermine the base of established authority and transform the fundamental structures of society. In so doing, he provides a novel account of the theoretical and practical projects of liberation that still speak to us today, too many of which have been all but forgotten. Departing from popular and scholarly accounts that focus on the social movements of the 1960s, Hardt argues that the 1970s offers an inspiring and useful guide for contemporary radical political thought and action. Although we can still learn much from the movements of the sixties, that decade's struggles for peace, justice, and freedom fundamentally marked the end of an era. The movements of the seventies, in contrast, responded directly to emerging neoliberal frameworks and other structures of power that continue to rule over us today. They identified and confronted political problems that remain central for us. The 1970s, in this sense, marks the beginning of our time. Looking at a wide range of movements around the globe, from the United States, to Guinea Bissau, South Korea, Chile, Turkey, and Italy, The Subversive Seventies provides a reassessment of the political action of the 1970s that sheds new light not only on our revolutionary past but also on what liberation can be and do today."]
Jenkins, Henry. "I’m Still Here: A Harrowing Retelling and Warning."Pop Junctions (February 24, 2025) ["After government operatives enter and occupy the Paiva home in the film I’m Still Here, their daughter innocently runs into the home to retrieve a ball. She is unaware of what is happening and insists on being allowed back outside to play with her friends. At this moment, unbeknownst to the daughter but acutely sensed by the mother, their mundane life has been stolen. The family’s patriarch, Rubens (Selton Mello), a former Brazilian left-wing politician, has been detained without explanation. The Paiva family can never experience their blissful mundanity again, or rather their mundanity will always be framed by “eternal psychological torture,” as Paiva matriarch Eunice (Fernanda Torres) describes it. In many ways, I’m Still Here is about the limitations on the insistence of mundanity in times of turmoil and what we lose as a society when gradual escalations are unaddressed."]
Kaiser, Jocelyn and Max Kozlov. "The War on Science."Science vs (February 19, 2025) ["U.S. science is in turmoil. Amid agency firings and confusion over federal funding, researchers are freaking out. Many can’t do their work, and they have no idea what the future holds. Plus, we’re hearing that all of this could jeopardize medical treatments for people in the U.S. and all over the world. So, what exactly is going on? And how bad is it? We speak with Nature reporter Max Kozlov and Science magazine reporter Jocelyn Kaiser."]
Noble, Judith. "On Magic and Artistic Practice."The Secret History of Western Esotericism (October 30, 2023) ["In this interview we speak with Judith Noble – visual artist, film-maker, Professor of Film and the Occult at Plymouth Arts University, and all-around woman of parts – about artistic practice and its many intersections with magic. We discuss: An ‘enchanted turn’ currently underway on many levels in the world of fine art, Judith’s own artistic practice, wherein a number of landscape-based and other spirits are collaborators in creating curious multimedia productions (some of which can be perused in the gallery below), The fringes of Surrealism, and how that’s historically where the surreal action really was, The role gender-bias has played in the ‘art world’, and how that relates to magic-bias, The importance of form, but also the importance (for magic) of the artists’ formal intentions being subverted (taking Kenneth Anger’s films as a case-study) Judith Noble is Professor of Film and the Occult at Arts University Plymouth (UK), and an artist for whom the practice of magic is central to the work. ]
Pelly, Liz. "How Spotify Remade the Music Industry."Tech Won't Save Us #262 (February 6, 2025) ["Paris Marx is joined by Liz Pelly to discuss how Spotify changes how we listen to music and the broader impacts it has on the wider music industry. Liz Pelly is a music journalist and the author of Mood Machine."]
Ratner, Adam. "Why Measles Is Resurging—And The Rise Of Vaccine Hesitancy."Current Affairs (February 20, 2025) ["In 2000, the United States declared that measles had been eliminated. But just 15 years later, the disease made a comeback—and it hasn’t gone away since. In this episode, Dr. Adam Ratner, director of the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at NYU and author of Booster Shots: The Urgent Lessons of Measles and the Uncertain Future of Children's Health, explains why measles outbreaks are occurring again—as vaccine hesitancy and the antivax movement is on the rise—and what this means for the future of children’s health. Ratner describes why measles is the most contagious disease we know of, and why it can be particularly harmful to children. As vaccination rates for children and adults continue to decrease in the U.S., are we at risk of undoing decades of medical progress? And what can we do to stop it?"]
Rushkoff, Douglas. "Program or Be Programmed."Team Human (October 4, 2024) ["Is the internet good or bad? How can technology be directed? In this spirited, accessible poetics of new media, Rushkoff picks up where Marshall McLuhan left off, helping readers come to recognise programming as the new literacy of the digital age and as a template through which to see beyond social conventions and power structures that have vexed us for centuries. This is a friendly little book with a big and actionable message."]
Blackburn, Brandon. "Vera Drew's The People's Joker."The Brooklyn Rail (May 2024) ["Badness is the primary aesthetic The People’s Joker picks up and runs with, because this particular kind of aesthetic badness is decidedly trans."]
Drew, Vera. "The Future is Indie."Bitches on Comics (October 30, 2024) ["Vera Drew joins us to discuss her indie feature film The People’s Joker! We get into using comic book characters to tell autobiographical stories, the film’s unconventional path to distribution, and turning a personal story into a collaborative creative process. Vera also discusses trans storytelling and humor, drops deep DC references, and just generally entertains our butts off!"]
