Douglas Rushkoff: Media Theory/Digital Technologies/Techno-Feudalism (Azimuths)

[Team Human is Rushkoff's latest project and title of his new book - he is host of the podcast, starting off each time with a monologue on relevant issues (why the various episodes are listed here), and a participant in all of the episodes]

Douglas Rushkoff's Substack

Rushkoff (His personal website)

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dewey-Hagborg, Heather and Douglas Rushkoff. "Stranger Visions." Team Human #8 (October 4, 2016) ["... the brilliant and terrifying artist and bio-hacker Heather Dewey- Hagborg. As a transdisciplinary artist, Heather explores the intersection of science, art and biopolitics. Heather recently made the headlines with a project called Stranger Visions, in which she collected random human genetic material left behind in the detritus of public spaces to generate portrait masks of strangers using a process called forensic DNA phenotyping. In another recent project, Radical Love: Chelsea Manning, Heather again used this process of DNA phenotyping to create a series of 3D portraits of whistleblower Chelsea Manning, who is not allowed to be photographed while in prison. Radical Love is both subversive and thought-provoking as it calls attention to Manning’s incarceration as well as issues of gender stereotypes and identity."]

Gokey, Thomas and Astra Taylor. "Debt Collective." Team Human #1 (July 29, 2016) ["Joining team human are debt resisters Astra Taylor and Thomas Gokey. Astra Taylor is a filmmaker, writer, activist, and musician. Her films include the documentaries Zizek! and the Examined Life.Taylor’s recent book The People’s Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age takes a hard look at the persisting and embedded inequalities in today’s digital media landscape. Thomas Gokey is a visual artist, adjunct professor at Syracuse University, and activist. Gokey’s piece entitled, Total Amount of Money Rendered in Exchange for a Masters of Fine Arts Degree to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Pulped into Four Sheets of Paper reimagined his own student debt as art. Both Thomas Gokey and Astra Taylor seized the momentum of Occupy Wall Street to help launch a direct action campaign of debt resistance. Working through the collective force of Strike Debt, Rolling Jubilee, and the Debt Collective, Gokey and Taylor are fighting back against the economic injustice of debt in America."]

Gorbis, Marina and Douglas Rushkoff. "At PDF 2016." Team Human #7 (September 27, 2016) ["...recorded live on the floor of the 2016 Personal Democracy Forum, where we caught up with Marina Gorbis, executive director to the Institute for the Future (IFTF). Marina joins Team Human to help us see how a utilitarian value set has been embedded into our society and its technologies. Together Marina and Douglas discuss those ambiguous and even anomalous qualities of being human, while looking to a future that embraces humanity as something greater than mere data points. This episode also features Rushkoff’s closing talk at the Personal Democracy Forum."]

Horowitz, Mitch. "Occultism and the Fight for Reality." Team Human (December 18, 2024) [MB: This is an interesting discussion around the concept of "collective occultism" as a form of resistance to monologic discourses that deny alternative ways of thinking/perceiving/being.] 

Maxwell, Richard. "Greening the Media." Team Human #2 (January 2016) ["Playing for Team Human today is Professor Richard Maxwell. Richard Maxwell is a political economist of media. His research begins at the intersection of politics and economics to analyze the global media, their social and cultural impact, and the policies that regulate their reach and operations. Richard has published on a wide array of media topics. Recent work includes The Routledge Companion to Labor and Media (Editor) Media and the Ecological Crisis (co-editor) and Greening the Media with Toby Miller. In this episode of Team Human, Professor Maxwell provides an eye opening account of the environmental damage caused by media technology, the myth of a “Post Industrial” society, and what we must do create a world sustainable for people."]

Rushkoff, Douglas. "Coronavirus Is Making Me Believe in the Power of the Internet Again." Medium (March 16, 2020) ["Online resources provide a much better tool for understanding COVID-19 than broadcast news."]

---. "Economics is Not a Natural Science." Edge (August 11, 2009)

---. "The Epidemic of Civic Amnesia Is Spreading to Liberals." Medium (November 14, 2018)

---. "How We All Became Russia's Useful Idiots." Medium (December 5, 2018) ["Nationalism may have started as a side effect of fake news, but it’s quickly becoming the new American way."]

---. "I ditched Facebook in 2013, and it's been fine." CNN (March 21, 2018)

---. "Introduction: They Say." Coercion: Why We Listen To What 'They' Say. Penguin Putnam, 1999 (Excerpt)

---. Merchants of Cool (Frontline: Season 19, Episode 5, 2001)

---. "Merchants of Cool Interview." Frontline (2001)

---. "The only fix for Facebook is a competitor that puts users first." CNN (April 11, 2018)

---. "On the Contradictory Numbers of Contemporary Capitalism." Keen On (March 27, 2020)

---. "Our reptile brains were triggered by MAGA hat video." CNN (January 22, 2019)

---. "Survival of the Richest: The Wealthy are Plotting to Leave Us Behind." One Zero (July 5, 2018)

---. "This Game is Not Reality." (Substack: November 11, 2024) ["The political institutions that seem to be failing us now are just one symptom of a civilization whose many institutions are no longer up to the challenge of contemporary, digital life. Their inconsistencies and compromised value systems simply can’t hold up to the stresses of this time. How can we discuss border policy and immigration when the essential premise of the “nation state” is itself an intrinsically unjust construction? People who live on one side of an imaginary line are entitled to basic human rights that are to be denied those who live on the other side? No amount of policy can correct for the injustices of neoliberalism, nationalism, or colonialism. So we can’t pretend that any political solution is more than duct tape. While a good one percent of us might choose to task ourselves with party politics at this moment, I think it’s ultimately a distraction from the matter at hand. Rather than spend all of our effort at getting the right person in a seat of power, many of us can do things that make it less important who controls the strings of government. I’m not saying it’s not important; I’m just saying that presidential politics may not be our primary means of lessening the decree. Rather than focusing so much on the institutions that are failing us, what if we take on the functions that our institutions are failing to execute? The more engaged we are in mutual aid, the less our impoverished neighbors need to depend on the institutionalized social safety net for their food and shelter. The more we engage our troubled friends in our own and less fortunate communities, the less they will need to turn to welfare, mental health clinics, homeless shelters, and other failing national programs."]

---. "We Were Naive to Think Digital Media Would Be Democratic." Medium (April 16, 2020)

---. "We will coup whoever we want!’: the unbearable hubris of Musk and the billionaire tech bros." The Guardian (November 25, 2023) 

---. "Winning Is for Losers: Enspiral and the Politics of Consent." Medium (November 7, 2018) ["How a collective in New Zealand is pointing the way to social change from the bottom up."]

Rushkoff, Douglas interviewed by Seth Godin. "Book Launch: A Live Human Team Conversation." Human Team #117 (January 23, 2019) ["Not the typical book reading, Douglas and Seth use this live event as an opportunity to engage with each other and audience in a spontaneous, free-form Team Human conversation. It’s a talk launched by a question that cuts to the heart of the book itself – How have technologies meant to connect us come to alienate and atomize us instead? Douglas and Seth share why we must reclaim connection and find the others. “It’s not too late! We can retrieve what it means to be human in a digital age.” Join Douglas, Seth and the live Betaworks Studios audience for this invocation of the spirit of community and solidarity so desperately needed in this pivotal moment in the human story."]

Stark, Kio. "Talk to Strangers." Team Human #6 (September 20, 2016) ["Kio’s new book When Strangers Meet explores the transformative power to be found in person-to-person interactions with strangers. Kio describes how even a brief interaction can foster empathy and open up the possibility for meaningful human connection. Kio and Douglas challenge the unwritten rules of social interaction and talk about how basic human connection can spark positive social change."]

Team Human. W.W. Norton & Co., 2019.

Tucker, Ian. "Douglas Rushkoff: 'I’m thinking it may be good to be off social media altogether.'" The Guardian (February 12, 2016) ["The media critic on the malfunctioning tech economy, digital detoxes and why Facebook is unhygienic."]

David Graeber: Anthropology/Economics/History (Azimuths)

  David Graeber (Website on him and his work)

David Graeber Institute ["We believe that a different social narrative has started to emerge which unleashes the political imaginary and reshapes public common sense. It is leading many people throughout the world to challenge the status quo through concrete actions, projects or structures that are making our societies socially and ecologically just and sustainable. The David Graeber Institute (DGI) provides a platform for projects related both directly to David Graeber’s legacy, developing his ideas and for projects that will take on a life of their own, continuing and contributing to his work."]

"There are many mysteries of the academy which would be appropriate objects of ethnographic analysis. One question that never ceases to intrigue me is tenure. How could a system ostensibly designed to give scholars the security to be able to say dangerous things have been transformed into a system so harrowing and psychologically destructive that, by the the time scholars find themselves in a secure position, 99 percent of them have forgotten what it would even mean to have a dangerous idea? (10)" - David Graeber (2017)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Calhoun, Craig and David Graeber. "The Democracy Project." The London School of Economics and Political Science." (April 30, 2013)

Deloria, Philip, et al. "A New History of Humanity." Open Source (August 11, 2022) ["Giant questions this hour, and a slew of fresh answers: Where do we humans come from? Who are we, after all? Where are we going? Was our pre-history a Garden of Eden, or a nasty war of survival, or some of both? Are we human beings good or evil, by the way? Pretty much the same, the world around, or many different varieties? An anthropologist and an archaeologist walked into a bar, so to speak—into an endless chain of emails, in fact, and produced a bestseller, chock full of Stone Age history and modern science. Their book is titled The Dawn of Everything. A main argument is that we’ve been one free-wheeling, improvisational species for fifty thousand years. A main question might be: when and how did we get to feel so stuck in this 21st century? Make way this hour for the news of our human pre-history. Could it be: that our Stone Age ancestors were just as smart as we are, as playful and strong—if anything more inventive and adaptive than we, as they settled a planet and seeded a great variety of civilizations 10,000 years ago? The questions come from a surprise bestseller, The Dawn of Everything: it’s a 600-page brick of a book by an anthropologist and an archeologist, sharing fresh evidence and best guesses in A New History of Humanity. The sadness in reading it is that the American co-author David Graeber died as he was finishing the great work of his life. The relief is that his writing partner in London, David Wengrow, is still grappling with the puzzles they posed."]

Evans, Ellen and Jon Moses. "Interview with David Graeber." The White Review (December 2011)

Glaser, Eliane. "Bullshit Jobs: A Theory by David Graeber review – the myth of capitalist efficiency." The Guardian (May 25, 2018)

Graeber, David. "America's Kurdish allies risk being wiped out – by NATO." The Guardian (February 1, 2019)

---. "Concerning the Violent Peace-Police: An Open Letter to Chris Hedges." N + 1 (February 9, 2012)

---. Debt: The First 5,000 Years. Brooklyn, NY: Melville House, 2011 [PDF file of the Book: also available Here]

---. "Debt: The First Five Thousand Years." Mute (February 10, 2009)

---. Direct Action: An Ethnography Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2009. [Entire book in PDF format]

---. "I didn't understand how widespread rape was. Then the penny dropped." The Guardian (November 5, 2017)

---. "‘I had to guard an empty room’: The rise of the pointless job." The Guardian (May 4, 2018)

---. "Occupy and anarchism's gift of democracy. The US imagines itself a great democracy, yet most Americans despise its politics. Which is why direct democracy inspires them." The Guardian (November 15, 2011)

---. "Occupy Wall Street's anarchist roots: The 'Occupy' movement is one of several in American history to be based on anarchist principles." Al Jazeera (November 30, 2011)

---. "Of Flying Cars and the Declining Rate of Profit." The Baffler #19 (March 2012)

---. "On Bureaucratic Technologies & the Future as Dream-Time." School of Visual Arts (January 19, 2012)

---. "On Inequality and Human History." Against the Grain (November 21, 2018) ["Open any world history book and you’ll read that the Neolithic Revolution was the key turning point in human history, when hunter gatherers gave up roaming in small egalitarian tribes and settled down to farm. Out of that, civilization was born, with all the benefits and ills connected to it: the rise of cities, the emergence of the state, inequality, and class society. But, according to anthropologist David Graeber, that tale is not based on fact. Graeber interrogates this chronicle of paradise lost — and much more."]

---. "On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs." libcom (August 20, 2013)

---. "Roy Bhaskar Obituary." The Guardian (December 4, 2014) ["One of the most influential voices in the philosophy of science and a political revolutionary."]

---. "The Shock of Victory." UK Indymedia (October 15, 2007)

---. The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World. Fararr, Straus, and Giroux, 2024. ["Drawn from more than two decades of pathbreaking writing, the iconic and bestselling David Graeber's most important essays and interviews. "The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently," wrote David Graeber. A renowned anthropologist, activist, and author of such classic books as Debt and the breakout New York Times bestseller The Dawn of Everything (with David Wengrow), Graeber was as well-known for his sharp, lively essays as he was for his iconic role in the Occupy movement and his paradigm-shifting tomes. There are converging political, economic, and ecological crises, and yet our politics is dominated by either business as usual or nostalgia for a mythical past. Thinking against the grain, Graeber was one of the few who dared to imagine a new understanding of the past and a liberatory vision of the future—to imagine a social order based on humans’ fundamental freedom. In essays published over three decades and ranging across the biggest issues of our time— inequality, technology, the identity of “the West,” democracy, art, power, anger, mutual aid, and protest—he challenges the old assumptions about political life. A trenchant critic of the order of things, and driven by a bold imagination and a passionate commitment to human freedom, he offers hope that our world can be different. During a moment of daunting upheaval and pervasive despair, the incisive, entertaining, and urgent essays collected in The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World . . . , edited and with an introduction by Nika Dubrovsky and with a foreword by Rebecca Solnit, make for essential and inspiring reading. They are a profound reminder of Graeber’s enduring significance as an iconic, playful, necessary thinker."]

---. The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy. Melville House, 2015.

---. "What’s the Point If We Can’t Have Fun?" The Baffler #24 (2014)

---. "Why are world leaders backing this brutal attack against Kurdish Afrin?" The Guardian (February 23, 2018)

Graeber, David and Astra Taylor. "Democracy May Not Exist, But We Will Miss It When It's Gone." At the Bookshop (December 16, 2019) ["In her latest book, Astra Taylor – ‘a rare public intellectual, utterly committed to asking humanity’s most profound questions yet entirely devoid of pretensions’ (Naomi Klein) – argues that democracy is not just in crisis, but that real democracy, inclusive and egalitarian, has never existed. Democracy May Not Exist but We’ll Miss It When It’s Gone (Verso) aims to re-examine what we mean by democracy, what we want from it, and understand why it is so hard to realize."]

Graeber, David and David Wengrow. "How to Change the Course of Human History (at least, the part that's already happened)." Eurozine (March 2, 2018)

Purves, Miranda. "You’re Not Just Imagining It. Your Job Is Absolute BS." Bloomberg (May 15, 2018)

Robinson, Andrew. "Bakhtin: Carnival against Capital, Carnival against Power." Cease Fire (September 9, 2011) ["The dominant worldview of medieval Europe was of a natural order which is hierarchical, stable, monolithic and immutable, but poised on the brink of disaster or ‘cosmic terror’, and hence in need of constant maintenance of order. This is similar to Aristotle’s view. For Bakhtin, such a view is oppressive and intolerant. It closes language to change. The fear of ‘cosmic terror’, the pending collapse of order if things got out of control (or the threat posed by the Real to the master-signifier), was used by elites to justify hierarchy and to subdue popular revolt and critical consciousness. Today, we might think of this vision of monolithic order in terms of fantasies of ‘broken Britain’, of civilisation under siege from extremists, and a discourse of risk-management (and the crisis-management of ‘ungovernability’) in which ‘terrorism’, disease, protest, deviance and natural disaster fuse into a secularised vision of cosmic collapse. This vision of collapse has infiltrated legal and political discourse to such a degree that any excess of state power seems ‘proportionate’ against this greater evil. The folk view expressed in carnival and carnivalesque, and related speech-genres such as swearing and popular humour, opposes and subverts this vision. For Bakhtin, cosmic terror and the awe induced by the system’s violent power are the mainstays of its affective domination. Folk culture combats the fear created by cosmic terror.""]

Shaviro, Steven. "Anarchism and Principle of Play: Steven Shaviro reviews David Graeber’s posthumous essay collection The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World." Los Angeles Review of Books (November 15, 2024) ["The volume’s title comes from an earlier book by Graeber: in The Utopia of Rules, he wrote that “the ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently.” Such rhetoric is typical for Graeber: a phrase that sounds grandiose (“the ultimate, hidden truth”) is brought down to earth, since the “secret” really consists of things that we already do on an everyday basis. Graeber is unusually optimistic for an anti-capitalist activist: he seeks to remind us that we ourselves have ultimately constructed the forms and institutions that oppress us, which means that these structures of social and economic life have no necessity to them but can be reorganized in multiple ways. Some of these ways may in fact be substantially better than anything we have now."]

 Taylor, Astra, et al. "David Graeber, 1961–2020." The New York Review of Books  (September 5, 2020) ["David Graeber, the anthropologist and activist, died aged fifty-nine on September 2, 2020. The New York Review, to which he began contributing last year, is collecting tributes from his friends and colleagues."]

Velmet, Aro. "An Interview with David Graeber: Anarchism, work and bureaucracy." Eurozine (May 9, 2017)

The Lunatics Have Taken Over the Asylum - Music Mix #37

Fela Kuti; Freak Slug; Salo Panto; New Dreams; Day Dreams; Black Pumas; Kristin Hersh; Mr. Vale's Math Class; TV on the Radio; The Tamed West; King Black Acid; Kim Deal; Jimi Hendrix; Erin Sliney; Robyn Hitchcock; Michael Kiwanuka; Father John Misty; Say Lou Lou; Devendra Barnhardt; Blake Mills, Beverly Glenn-Copeland; Lightning Bug; Benet; Faye Webster; Bill Withers; Crosby, Stills and Nash; Louis Armstrong; Blackalicious; Ben Harper; Camp Saint Helene; Angel Olsen; Jenny Don't and the Spurs; Mobilities; Lo Fives; Culpeppers; Rascal Miles; An Invisible Jet; Robert Wynia; Peter Cornett; Atomic Momma; Camper van Beethoven; Cracker; The Macks; The Black Flash; Time Theft

 The Lunatics Have Taken Over the Asylum - Music Mix #37

Howard Zinn: History/Political Science (Azimuths)

 As a teacher, I'm not interested in just reproducing class after class of graduates who will get out, become successful, and take their obedient places in the slots that society has prepared for them. What we must do--whether we teach or write or make films--is educate a new generation to do this very modest thing: change the world. (15)

---Zinn, Howard. "Stories Hollywood Never Tells." The Sun #343 (July 2004): 12-15.

Biographies/Archives

(August 24, 1922 – January 27, 2010)


Zinn Education Project

Democracy Now: Howard Zinn Interviews

Bill Moyers' Journal: Howard Zinn

Voices of a People's History: A Tribute to Howard Zinn

Howard Zinn Digital Collection


Resources by and about Howard Zinn


Arnove, Anthony. "Anthology for Change: Howard Zinn's Impassioned Progressive Speeches Span Four Decades." TruthOut (November 28, 2012)

Arnove, Anthony, Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein and Alice Walker. "Howard Zinn (1922-2010): A Tribute to the Legendary Historian." Democracy Now (January 28, 2010)

Arnove, Anthony, et al. "Howard Zinn Read-In at Purdue University." We Are Many (November 5, 2013)

Atwan, Helene. "On the Loss of Howard Zinn." (January 28, 2010)

Benton, Michael and Michael Marchman. "So long—it’s been good to know ya: Remembering Howard Zinn." North of Center (February 13, 2010)

Kreisler, Harry. "Howard Zinn." Conversations with History (2001: posted by University of California Television on Youtube on June 12, 2008)

Schell, Jonathan, Marilyn Young and Howard Zinn. "Vietnam War Architect Robert McNamara Dies at 93: A Look at His Legacy." Democracy Now (July 7, 2009)

Vodovnik, Ziga. "An Interview with Howard Zinn on Anarchism: Rebels Against Tyranny." Counterpunch (May 12, 2008)

Whitney, Joel. "A People’s History of Howard Zinn." Guernica (October 27, 2004)

Zinn, Howard. "America's Blinders." Progressive (April 2006)

---. "Anarchism: Rebels Against Tyranny." Revolution by the Book (January 28, 2010)

---. Declarations of Independence: Cross-Examining American Ideology. Harper Perennial, 1990.

---. "Don't Despair About the Supreme Court." The Progressive (November 2005)

---. "Holy Wars." Democracy Now (January 1, 2010)

---. "In Depth with Howard Zinn." C-SPAN (September 1, 2002)

---. "The Myth of American Exceptionalism." MIT Video Productions (Posted on Youtube: July 29, 2019)

---. "The Omissions of U.S. History." The Tavis Smiley Show (November 27, 2003)

---. "On Anarchism and Marxism." An excerpt from the DVD Theory and Practice: Conversations With Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn: posted on YouTube January 29, 2010)

---. "A People's History of Empire." (Video on the Graphic Novel by Zinn posted by the publisher Henry Holt: March 28, 2008)

---. A People's History of the United States History is a Weapon (Entire book posted on the site: No Date)

---. "The Problem is Civil Obedience." (1970) The Zinn Reader (Seven Stories Press; Posted on Third World Traveler)

---. "War and Social Justice." Democracy Now (January 2, 2009)

---. "Why Teach a People's History." (Video of talk given to 2008 National Conference for the Social Studies (NCSS) conference)

---. "You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train." Books of Our Time (Posted on Youtube by the The Massachusetts School of Law: May 19, 2010)

The Big Lebowski (USA: Joel and Ethan Coen, 1998)

 

The Big Lebowski (USA: Joel and Ethan Coen, 1998: 117 mins)

Ager, Rob. "Greatest Screen Heroes: The Dude in The Big Lebowski." (Posted on Youtube: September 7, 2014)

Beyl, Cameron. "The Coen Brothers." The Directors Series (7 Video Essays: 2017)

Brandt, Jimmy. "Does the Dude Abide by the Tao?: A comparative study of Dudeism and the Tao Te Ching." The Dudespaper (August 3, 2016)

Collins, K. Austin, et al. "Ballad of the Coen Brothers." The Film Comment Podcast (September 26, 2018) ["“In their films—especially Barton Fink, The Man Who Wasn’t There, No Country for Old Men, A Serious Man, and Inside Llewyn Davis—there’s always the sense that the deck is stacked against us and that we’re the authors of our own misery, a doubly discomfiting, Camusian view that perfectly matches their aesthetic approach, an overwhelming omniscience that results in a kind of bravura melancholy,” Michael Koresky writes in his feature about Joel and Ethan Coen’s The Ballad of Buster Scruggs in our September/October issue. This week, Koresky, FSLC Editorial and Creative Director, moderates a special Film Comment Podcast featuring three more Coeniacs in conversation about the brothers’ dazzling 30-year-plus body of work, from greatest hits to lesser-known ballads: K. Austin Collins, film critic at Vanity Fair; Aliza Ma, head of programming at Metrograph; and Adam Nayman, Toronto-based critic and author of the new book The Coen Brothers: This Book Really Ties the Films Together (Abrams)."]

Coughlin, Paul. "Great Directors: Joel and Ethan Coen." Senses of Cinema (May 2003)

Ebert, Roger. "Great Movie: The Big Lebowski." The Chicago Sun-Times (March 10, 2010)

Jacobs, Tom. "Scholars and The Big Lebowski: Deconstructing the Dude." Pacific Standard (July 11, 2011)

Kerr, James. "Psychological Analysis of the Dude." The Dudespaper (August 16, 2009)

Mac, Mark. "That's Fucking Interesting, Man." The Dudespaper (February 16, 2013)

Orr, Christopher. "30 Years of Coens: The Big Lebowski." The Atlantic (September 16, 2014)

Swash, Rosie. "My Favorite Film: The Big Lebowski." The Guardian (November 2, 2011)

Tyree, J.M. and Ben Walters. "The Big Lebowski." The Library of Congress (ND)

Make Love, Not War - Music Mix #36

 Kula Shaker; The Liminanas; Amythyst Kiah; Black Pumas; Taylor Swift;The Coup; Nilufer Yanya; Angel Olsen; Death Cab for Cutie; The XX; The Stone Roses; Fontaines D.C.; Blur; Gnarls Barkley; Karen O.; Danger Mouse; Fleet Foxes; The Beatles; The Flaming Lips; King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard; Pixies; Margo Price; Eivor; The The; The Fur Coasts; The Pool Boys; Blitzen Trapper; Sea Lemon; Soccer Mommy; Lady Blackbird; Crystal Murray; Kit Sebastian; Kelly Finnegan; Aaron Frazer; Jungle; Jack White; Jon Hopkins

Make Love, Not War 

Capitalisn't: Podcast - Economics/Political Economy (Shooting Azimuths)

Part of ENG 102: Concepts, Theories, and Thinkers

 Capitalisn't is a podcast hosted by Luigi Zingales and Bethany McLean: "Is capitalism the engine of destruction or the engine of prosperity? On this podcast we talk about the ways capitalism is—or more often isn’t—working in our world today. Hosted by Vanity Fair contributing editor, Bethany McLean and world renowned economics professor Luigi Zingales, we explain how capitalism can go wrong, and what we can do to fix it." 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ahmari, Sohrab. "When Capitalism Becomes Tyranny." Capitalisn't (November 2, 2023) ["In his new book, Sohrab Ahmari argues that the concentration of economic power in the hands of a few corporations has created a new form of tyranny in America. "Coercion is far more widespread in supposedly noncoercive societies than we would like to think—provided we pay attention to private power and admit the possibility of private coercion," he writes. Ahmari, founder and editor of Compact magazine, joins Bethany and Luigi to discuss his book, "Tyranny Inc.: How Private Power Crushed American Liberty--and What to Do About It." In this episode, they discuss the complex relationship between capitalism, personal freedoms, and political power. The conversation sheds light on what classical liberalism ignores, how today's Right is discovering what the Left may have forgotten, and ultimately, where today's political Left and Right may be able to work together."]

Coffee, John C. "How Corporations Get Away With Crime." Capitalisn't (July 22, 2022) ["When it comes to corporate rulebreaking, data from 2002 to 2016 reveals that the US government arranged more than 400 "deferred protection agreements" as a means of deterrence. Under these, a company acknowledges what it did was wrong, pays a fine, promises not to misbehave for a period of time -- and thus is largely let off the hook. Columbia Law School Professor and author of "Corporate Crime and Punishment: The Crisis of Underenforcement", John C. Coffee, says these have done little to deter future wrongdoing. Coffee joins Luigi and Bethany, both of whom have also extensively researched and exposed corporate wrongdoing, to discuss how to reform aspects of enforcement, such as self-reporting mechanisms, internal investigations, independent external auditors, whistleblowers, and even shame and humiliation."]

Faux, Zeke. "Crypto: SBF and Beyond." Capitalisn't (November 16, 2023) ["In his new book "Number Go Up," Bloomberg News investigative reporter Zeke Faux takes readers on a wild ride through the world of cryptocurrency, from its origins in the dark corners of the internet, its meteoric rise to mainstream popularity, and finally its equally precipitous fall. A few days after the 'convicted' verdict in the trial of beleaguered crypto entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), Faux joins Bethany and Luigi to make a case for why we should judge cryptocurrency by what it has done and not what it can do. They discuss whether it is too soon to write crypto off, what larger commentary it offers about capitalism, and why Luigi, who teaches a popular MBA course on fintech, feels "crypto is money that can only be created by computer scientists who don't understand history.""]

Haidt, Jonathan. "The Economic Costs of a Phone-Based Childhood." Capitalisn't (July 18, 2024) ["In one of this year's bestselling books, "The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing An Epidemic of Mental Illness," New York University social psychologist Jonathan Haidt argues that today's childhoods spent under the influence of smartphones and overprotective parenting has led to the reported explosion in cases of teenage anxiety and depression. He calls this process a "three-act play": the diminishment of trust in our communities, the loss of a play-based childhood, and the arrival of a hyper-connected world. Haidt also believes the problem is solvable. On this episode of Capitalisn't, he joins Bethany and Luigi to discuss parenting, learning, adolescence, and in an age where Congress won't act on regulation, his four proposed solutions to break social media's "collective action trap" on children. But are his solutions feasible? How do we weigh their costs, benefits, limitations, risks, and the roadblocks to their implementation? What are the consequences of an anxious generation for our economy — and what can we really do about it?"]

Ahmari, Sohrab. "When Capitalism Becomes Tyranny." Capitalisn't (November 2, 2023) ["In his new book, Sohrab Ahmari argues that the concentration of economic power in the hands of a few corporations has created a new form of tyranny in America. "Coercion is far more widespread in supposedly noncoercive societies than we would like to think—provided we pay attention to private power and admit the possibility of private coercion," he writes. Ahmari, founder and editor of Compact magazine, joins Bethany and Luigi to discuss his book, "Tyranny Inc.: How Private Power Crushed American Liberty--and What to Do About It." In this episode, they discuss the complex relationship between capitalism, personal freedoms, and political power. The conversation sheds light on what classical liberalism ignores, how today's Right is discovering what the Left may have forgotten, and ultimately, where today's political Left and Right may be able to work together."]

Coffee, John C. "How Corporations Get Away With Crime." Capitalisn't (July 22, 2022) ["When it comes to corporate rulebreaking, data from 2002 to 2016 reveals that the US government arranged more than 400 "deferred protection agreements" as a means of deterrence. Under these, a company acknowledges what it did was wrong, pays a fine, promises not to misbehave for a period of time -- and thus is largely let off the hook. Columbia Law School Professor and author of "Corporate Crime and Punishment: The Crisis of Underenforcement", John C. Coffee, says these have done little to deter future wrongdoing. Coffee joins Luigi and Bethany, both of whom have also extensively researched and exposed corporate wrongdoing, to discuss how to reform aspects of enforcement, such as self-reporting mechanisms, internal investigations, independent external auditors, whistleblowers, and even shame and humiliation."]

Faux, Zeke. "Crypto: SBF and Beyond." Capitalisn't (November 16, 2023) ["In his new book "Number Go Up," Bloomberg News investigative reporter Zeke Faux takes readers on a wild ride through the world of cryptocurrency, from its origins in the dark corners of the internet, its meteoric rise to mainstream popularity, and finally its equally precipitous fall. A few days after the 'convicted' verdict in the trial of beleaguered crypto entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), Faux joins Bethany and Luigi to make a case for why we should judge cryptocurrency by what it has done and not what it can do. They discuss whether it is too soon to write crypto off, what larger commentary it offers about capitalism, and why Luigi, who teaches a popular MBA course on fintech, feels "crypto is money that can only be created by computer scientists who don't understand history.""]

Mullins, Brody. "How Lobbying Led to Crony Capitalism." Capitalisn't (October 24, 2024) ["Mullins is the co-author (along with his brother Luke, also an investigative reporter) of The Wolves of K Street: The Secret History of How Big Money Took Over Big Government. Brody joins Bethany and Luigi to discuss how corporations ranging from Genentech to Google participate in the invisible but massively influential lobbying industry to bend government policy toward their favor. Together, the three trace the roots and evolution of political lobbying from the 1970s to now and explore how it penetrates and leverages other spheres of society to abet its operations. How are academia and the media complicit in this ecosystem of influence operations? How has lobbying adapted to the changing attitudes of Americans towards Big Business? How might it change under either a Harris or Trump administration and beyond?"]

Rodrik, Dani. "The New Economics of Industrial Policy." Capitalisn't (August 1, 2024) ["Harvard professor of international political economy Dani Rodrik has long been skeptical of what he calls "hyperglobalization," or an advanced level of interconnectedness between countries and their economies. He first introduced his theory of the "globalization trilemma" in the late 1990s, which states that no country can simultaneously support democracy, national sovereignty, and global economic integration. At the time when he proposed his trilemma, Rodrik was considered an outcast. However, economists and policymakers have come to accept his theory as governments seek to address populism, trade imbalances, and uneven growth through renewed interest in industrial policy, or government efforts to improve the performance of key business sectors. Rodrik joins co-hosts Bethany and Luigi to discuss changing attitudes towards globalization: its distributional effects, how it affects politics, and how it is still searching for a narrative consistent between academic circles and the media. Together, the three of them discuss what role corporate America should play in our world restructured by economic and political populism and if economics is getting too far away from the rest of the social sciences when it comes to shaping industrial policy and creating the jobs of tomorrow."]

Schaake, Marietje. "Can Democracy Coexist with Big Tech." Capitalisn't (September 26, 2024) ["International technology policy expert, Stanford University academic, and former European parliamentarian Marietje Schaake writes in her new book that a “Tech Coup” is happening in democratic societies and fast approaching the point of no return. Both Big Tech and smaller companies are participating in it, through the provision of spyware, microchips, facial recognition, and other technologies that erode privacy, speech, and other human rights. These technologies shift power to the tech companies at the expense of the public and democratic institutions, Schaake writes. Schaake joins Bethany and Luigi to discuss proposals for reversing this shift of power and maintaining the balance between innovation and regulation in the digital age. If a "tech coup" is really underway, how did we get here? And if so, how can we safeguard democracy and individual rights in an era of algorithmic governance and surveillance capitalism? Marietje Schaake’s new book, “The Tech Coup: Saving Democracy From Silicon Valley."]

Ziblatt, Daniel. "How Big Money Changed the Democratic Game." Capitalisn't (January 2, 2024) ["Daniel Ziblatt is an American political scientist, Eaton Professor of the Science of Government at Harvard University, and the co-author (with Steven Levitsky) of several bestselling books, including How Democracies Die and Tyranny of the Minority. Ziblatt writes from the position that what defines strong democracies is free and fair competition for power, inclusive participation, and a package of civil liberties that make those first two conditions possible. 2024 saw voters in more than 60 countries go to the polls—and deliver difficult outcomes for incumbents and traditional political parties. This week, Ziblatt joins Bethany and Luigi to discuss the fate of democracy after 2024. They explore how big money and corporate power have destabilized democracies worldwide by interfering with the conditions for free and fair competition for power. The consequence has been the movement of voters toward political extremes, which in turn can often threaten economic growth, civil liberties, and the rule of law. Nevertheless, should we judge the strength of democracy by process or outcome? Does democracy still thrive when the people vote for undemocratic politicians and parties? Together, Ziblatt and our co-hosts discuss how to curb global democratic decline by realigning government away from the interests of corporations or big money and back to those of the people."]

Jason Stanley: Epistemology/Fascism/Language/Political Philosophy/Propaganda (Azimuths)

Beaver, David and Jason Stanley. The Politics of Language. Princeton University Press, 2023. ["
A provocative case for the inherently political nature of language. In The Politics of Language, David Beaver and Jason Stanley present a radical new approach to the theory of meaning, offering an account of communication in which political and social identity, affect, and shared practices play as important a role as information. This new view of language, they argue, has dramatic consequences for free speech, democracy, and a range of other areas in which speech plays a central role. Drawing on a wealth of disciplines, The Politics of Language argues that the function of speech—whether in dialogue, larger group interactions, or mass communication—is to attune people to something, be it a shared reality, emotion, or identity. Reconceptualizing the central ideas of pragmatics and semantics, Beaver and Stanley apply their account to a range of phenomena that defy standard frameworks in linguistics and philosophy of language—from dog whistles and covert persuasion to echo chambers and genocidal speech. The authors use their framework to show that speech is inevitably political because all communication is imbued with the resonances of particular ideologies and their normative perspectives on reality. At a time when democracy is under attack, authoritarianism is on the rise, and diversity and equality are being demanded, The Politics of Language offers a powerful new vision of the language of politics, ideology, and protest."]

Stanley, Jason. "Erasing History." Converging Dialogues (November 3, 2024) ["... Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with Jason Stanley about the importance of preserving history. They talked about why authoritarians attempt to erase history, fascist ideas, nationalism, immigration, book burning, classical education, how to defend history, and many other topics. Jason Stanley is the Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale University and honorary professor at the Kyiv School of Economics. Before coming to Yale in 2013, he was Distinguished Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Rutgers University and was also Professor at the University of Michigan (2000-4) and Cornell University (1995-2000). He has his PhD in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at MIT and his BA from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He is the author of seven books, which include How Propaganda Works, How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them , and the newest book, Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future."]

---. Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future. Atria/One Signal, 2024. ["From the bestselling author of How Fascism Works, a searing confrontation with the far right’s efforts to rewrite history and undo a century of progress on race, gender, sexuality, and class.
The human race finds itself again under threat of a rising global fascist movement. In the United States, democracy is under attack by an authoritarian movement that has found fertile ground among the country’s conservative politicians and voters, but similar movements have found homes in the hearts and minds of people all across the globe. To understand the shape, form, and stakes of this assault, we must go back to extract lessons from our past. Democracy requires a common understanding of reality, a shared view of what has happened, that informs ordinary citizens’ decisions about what should happen, now and in the future. Authoritarians target this shared understanding, seeking to separate us from our own history to destroy our self-understanding and leave us unmoored, resentful, and confused. By setting us against each other, authoritarians represent themselves as the sole solution. In authoritarian countries, critical examination of those nations’ history and traditions is discouraged if not an outright danger to those who do it. And it is no accident that local and global institutions of education have become a battleground, the authoritarian right’s tip of the spear, where learning and efforts to upend a hierarchal status quo can be put to end by coercion and threats of violence. Democracies entrust schools and universities to preserve a common memory of positive change, generated by protests, social movements, and rebellions. The authoritarian right must erase this history, and, along with it, the very practice of critical inquiry that has so often been the engine of future progress. In Erasing History, Yale professor of philosophy Jason Stanley exposes the true danger of the authoritarian right’s attacks on education, identifies their key tactics and funders, and traces their intellectual roots. He illustrates how fears of a fascist future have metastasized, from hypothetical threat to present reality. And he shows that hearts and minds are won in our schools and universities—places, he explains, that democratic societies across the world are now ill-prepared to defend against the fascist assault currently underway. Deeply informed and urgently needed, Erasing History is a global call to action for those who wish to preserve democracy—in America and abroad—before it is too late."]

---. How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them. Random House, 2018. ["As the child of refugees of World War II Europe and a renowned philosopher and scholar of propaganda, Jason Stanley has a deep understanding of how democratic societies can be vulnerable to fascism: Nations don’t have to be fascist to suffer from fascist politics. In fact, fascism’s roots have been present in the United States for more than a century. Alarmed by the pervasive rise of fascist tactics both at home and around the globe, Stanley focuses here on the structures that unite them, laying out and analyzing the ten pillars of fascist politics—the language and beliefs that separate people into an “us” and a “them.” He knits together reflections on history, philosophy, sociology, and critical race theory with stories from contemporary Hungary, Poland, India, Myanmar, and the United States, among other nations. He makes clear the immense danger of underestimating the cumulative power of these tactics, which include exploiting a mythic version of a nation’s past; propaganda that twists the language of democratic ideals against themselves; anti-intellectualism directed against universities and experts; law and order politics predicated on the assumption that members of minority groups are criminals; and fierce attacks on labor groups and welfare. These mechanisms all build on one another, creating and reinforcing divisions and shaping a society vulnerable to the appeals of authoritarian leadership. By uncovering disturbing patterns that are as prevalent today as ever, Stanley reveals that the stuff of politics—charged by rhetoric and myth—can quickly become policy and reality. Only by recognizing fascists politics, he argues, may we resist its most harmful effects and return to democratic ideals."]


---. How Propaganda Works. Princeton University Press, 2015. ["How propaganda undermines democracy and why we need to pay attention. Our democracy today is fraught with political campaigns, lobbyists, liberal media, and Fox News commentators, all using language to influence the way we think and reason about public issues. Even so, many of us believe that propaganda and manipulation aren't problems for us—not in the way they were for the totalitarian societies of the mid-twentieth century. In How Propaganda Works, Jason Stanley demonstrates that more attention needs to be paid. He examines how propaganda operates subtly, how it undermines democracy—particularly the ideals of democratic deliberation and equality—and how it has damaged democracies of the past. Focusing on the shortcomings of liberal democratic states, Stanley provides a historically grounded introduction to democratic political theory as a window into the misuse of democratic vocabulary for propaganda's selfish purposes. He lays out historical examples, such as the restructuring of the US public school system at the turn of the twentieth century, to explore how the language of democracy is sometimes used to mask an undemocratic reality. Drawing from a range of sources, including feminist theory, critical race theory, epistemology, formal semantics, educational theory, and social and cognitive psychology, he explains how the manipulative and hypocritical declaration of flawed beliefs and ideologies arises from and perpetuates inequalities in society, such as the racial injustices that commonly occur in the United States. How Propaganda Works shows that an understanding of propaganda and its mechanisms is essential for the preservation and protection of liberal democracies everywhere."]

---. "Introduction: The Problem of Propaganda." How Propaganda Works. Princeton University Press, 2015: 1 - 26. ["Our democracy today is fraught with political campaigns, lobbyists, liberal media, and Fox News commentators, all using language to influence the way we think and reason about public issues. Even so, many of us believe that propaganda and manipulation aren't problems for us―not in the way they were for the totalitarian societies of the mid-twentieth century. In How Propaganda Works, Jason Stanley demonstrates that more attention needs to be paid. He examines how propaganda operates subtly, how it undermines democracy―particularly the ideals of democratic deliberation and equality―and how it has damaged democracies of the past. Focusing on the shortcomings of liberal democratic states, Stanley provides a historically grounded introduction to democratic political theory as a window into the misuse of democratic vocabulary for propaganda's selfish purposes. He lays out historical examples, such as the restructuring of the US public school system at the turn of the twentieth century, to explore how the language of democracy is sometimes used to mask an undemocratic reality. Drawing from a range of sources, including feminist theory, critical race theory, epistemology, formal semantics, educational theory, and social and cognitive psychology, he explains how the manipulative and hypocritical declaration of flawed beliefs and ideologies arises from and perpetuates inequalities in society, such as the racial injustices that commonly occur in the United States. How Propaganda Works shows that an understanding of propaganda and its mechanisms is essential for the preservation and protection of liberal democracies everywhere."]

Fall 2024 ENG 102: First Essay Topics for Student Essays

The rising popularity of cosmetic surgery among young people, driven by social media and popular culture, is reshaping perceptions of beauty and self-worth
The Criminal Mind: What Makes a Murderer? Is it Learned or our Genetics?

Is the Death Penalty helping society
The Positive of The Negative: A Critique of the Myth of Positive Thinking
Abortion - a Pro-choice Argument
Fast Fashion, Please Slow Down
The Importance of Nature to Our Mental Well- Being
Video Games: The Underrated Story Medium
Inflation and How it is Destroying The Economy
The Negative Impact of Social Media on the Young
Social Media: The Negative Impact on Our Society
Ultra-processed food is an addiction and what we are consuming is progressively killing us
Digital Minimalism: Choosing a focused life in a noisy world
Gambling, and Why it Should be Regulated by The Government
The Ongoing Struggle for Equitable Treatment of Artists
Plastic as a Pollutant: How Harmful is it to the Environment
Disability Rights: We Are Human Too
Conspiracy theories: the more they’re denied the harder people fight.
Fitness: The Power of the Mind and Body

Agape: An exploration of “love” in the Christian faith
Exploring the Themes of Fate, Morality, and Violence in Cormac McCarthy’s and the Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men
A Critique of America's Tipping Culture

Importance of Mental Health
The Effects of Drugs on Athletes
Psychological Analysis of Marvel Characters
The internal military conflicts and civil war in Burma (Myanmar)
Serial Killers: Are They Born or Created?
The impact of a ketogenic diet on mental and physical well-being
The Bible’s Authority in Modern Ethics

Eschatology: The Study of the Biblical End Time
Artificial Intelligence: The Impact on Jobs
Marilyn Monroe: The story behind the blonde beauty

On Social Suffering, Healing, and Art
We need proper mental healthcare in America's prison system

Don’t That Picture Look Dusty?: An Argument for the Continuing Relevance of the Western Genre
The History and Psychology of Advertising
Modern-Day Propaganda: The Biggest Influence on Young Voters
Ancient Slavic pagan myths are not just interesting stories, fairy tales, or legends but also a legacy of ancient knowledge.
Problems with funding and performance of social care in America
The Negative Impact of Electric Vehicles
Social Media: Disconnected Minds
Overmedicating of Prescription Drugs & Loss of “Drug War”
Identify and control your anxiety
Unraveling the Tragedy: Addressing Injuries and Fatalities in Thoroughbred Horse Racing
Improving STEM Education in Grades K–12 for Academic Achievement and Job Readiness
The Origins of you: How your childhood impacts your later life

Why Read: A Defense

The Importance of Enterprise Management in Leadership
The Dangers of Pesticides
Policing and White Power
Childhood Echoes- How Early Experiences Sculpt Later Life
We as a human species need to form a solution to our destructive behaviors before it gets out of control and reaches a point of irrevocability.
Is Social Media Detrimental to Adolescents Development and Mental Health
Social Media: The Teenage Effect
Rapid Etymological Changes in the Language Used by Gen Z
Good and Bad Parenting and Its Effects on Children
The impact of poverty on overall health
Asteroid Mining: Is It Ethical?
Why is soccer so popular, and why is it interesting?
The Power and Influence of Microtrends in Modern Society
Social Media in Relation to Childhood Development and Psychology
Animal Experimentation: Inhumane or Progress
Cybersecurity plays a crucial role in modern criminal justice by enhancing the investigation and prosecution of cybercrimes through advanced digital forensics, legal frameworks, and historical context
Is Cloning Soldiers Ethical in the Star Wars Universe
A Defense of African American Studies
The Red River Gorge does not need a resort built due to economic and environmental reasons.
Black Education as Resistance: From Historical Struggles to Contemporary Activism

Eraserhead (USA: David Lynch, 1977)

 

A dream of dark and troubling things . . .
David Lynch’s 1977 debut feature, Eraserhead, is both a lasting cult sensation and a work of extraordinary craft and beauty. With its mesmerizing black-and-white photography by Frederick Elmes and Herbert Cardwell, evocative sound design, and unforgettably enigmatic performance by Jack Nance, this visionary nocturnal odyssey continues to haunt American cinema like no other film. - Criterion Collection

Our Eraserhead screening was naïve and unexpected and for me had lasting impact, because when art enters our heads uninvited, leaves traces after it’s flashed through our consciousness, jars the brain beautifully so we can’t help watching wide-eyed, these experiences take root and give the imagination fertile reach. - Chris Vaughan

 
Eraserhead (USA: David Lynch, 1977: 89 mins)

Bond, Lewis. "David Lynch: The Elusive Subconscious." (Posted on Youtube: September 3, 2016)

Caldwell, Thomas. "Great Directors: David Lynch." Senses of Cinema #20 (May 2002)

Carvajal, Nelson. "Beautiful Nightmares: David Lynch's Collective Dream." (Posted on Vimeo: 2013)

Cox, Catherine S. "Eraserhead." Senses of Cinema #40 (July 2006)

Ebiri, Bilge. "David Lynch Thinks That No One Will Ever Agree on What Eraserhead is About." Vulture (September 16, 2014)

"Eraserhead: Who Hurt You David Lynch?" The Critical Cinephile (February 1, 2014)

Godwin, Kenneth George. "Eraserhead: An Appreciation." Cagey Films (ND)

Gonzalez, Francisco. "David Lynch's Eraserhead Explained." The Film Connosieur (November 18, 2013)

Graham, Garrett. "Made my film students watch Eraserhead and this was their reaction." r/davidlynch (2021)

Johnson, David. "Henry's Window is the Key to Eraserhead." Welcome to Twin Peaks (November 25, 2014)

Lim, Dennis. "David Lynch's Elusive Language." The New Yorker (October 28, 2015)

Lynch, David and Chris Rodley. "I See Myself: Eraserhead." The Current (September 16, 2014)

Sobczynski, Peter. "Defying Explanation: The Brilliance of David Lynch's Eraserhead." Roger Ebert (September 16, 2014)

Vaughan, Chris. "Strangest Damn Things: Eraserhead in My Head." Bright Lights Film Journal (October 23, 2020)

ENG 102 2024: Resources #27

    Communication is communion. When we communicate with others, we take something from them into ourselves, and give them something of ours.
    Perhaps it is this thought that makes us so nervous about the idea of encountering cultures outside the human. The thought that what it means to be human will shift - and we will lose our footing.
    Or that we will finally have to take responsibility for our actions in this world. - Dr. Ha Nguyen (Nayler, Ray. The Mountain in the Sea. Picador, 2022: 301)

Orinoco, Achelous, Mississippi, Nile ... Ganges, Hudson, Danube ... Styx and Lethe ... Namings of moving waters flowing between two banks, waters rolling as Time itself, as if veins of Great Mother Earth. River is vital fluidity; the rivers move through both the upper world and the lower world, over ground and underground, inside and outside: rivers of fertility and prosperity, rivers of forgetting, rivers of binding oath, rivers of commerce, rivers of blood and rivers of water, rivers of rebirth, rivers of death, rivers of sorrow, all presided over in our mythic history by beneficent deities, dreadful nixes or changeable river spirits, offering fresh or freshening water, living fish, clay, fertile soil, flood cycles and waterways as famously along the Nile, Tigris and Euphrates. The rivers have been the abode of immortals who have offered these many gifts of purity, cleansing, grace and a mythic passage to the "other shore." Nefarious river spirits can just as easily take life, claiming the bodies of  those who drown in swift and unpredictable currents. The river speaks of life a s flow, freedom, movement, dangerous currents, drowning, running ever along, running its course, flooding, also as confinement, direction, holding, channeling. The river reminds us that we can never rise above our source; all rivers flow downhill from their source, finally terminating in a sea or confluence. Creatures can be driven to swim upstream, like the salmon, and others just go with the flow; rivers carry things and are transporting in ways both literal and metaphorical. And rivers can run dry, their beds worn and empty, signs of a changing course or season, nature living in time. Language is a river of words ... a river of poetry and music transporting the head of Orpheus; rivers are weary, strong, flowing, sparkling, gushing, falling, rapid, smooth, heavy, bright. Everything that lives partakes of the quality of riverness (40). -- The Book of Symbols: Reflections on Archetypal Images (Taschen, 2010)

Yet how could so many good, committed liberals - philosophers and statesman who were otherwise so dedicated to the ideals of human freedom and self-governance - allow chattel slavery to flourish in America. ...
The answer to that question can tell us something not only about slavery in America but also about the shadow side of American vision of self-making as a whole, an insidious undercurrent that will continue to run throughout the narrative of American self-creation. ...
Liberal language about human rights was in this regard often contradictory - insisting on equality and yet locating human dignity in highly specific conceptions of what (some) people were capable of doing. Those who did not fit the paradigm of what human beings should be, conversely, were understood as moral children, still needing the authoritative guidance of those civilizations that had already come of age. Thus, for example, does the English philosopher and statesman John Stuart Mill, a major proponent of the ideal of personal liberty who was nevertheless employed the the colonial East India Company, insist in 1874 that so-called barbarians are too intellectually immature to observe a social contract. "They cannot be depended on for observing any rules," he announced, and therefore "nations which are still barbarous have not gone beyond the period during which it is likely be for their benefit that they should be conquered and held in subjection by foreigners. (76-78) Burton, Tara Isabella. Self Made: Creating Our Identities from DaVinci to the Kardashians. Hachette Book Group, 2023.

In the old days, when you couldn't show sex on film, directors like Hitchcock had metaphors for sex (trains going into tunnels, etc). When you can show more realistic sex, the sex itself can be a metaphor for other parts of the character's lives. The way people express themselves sexually can tell you a lot about who they are. Some people ask me, 'Couldn't you have told the same story without the explicitness?'. They don't ask whether I could've done Hedwig without the songs. Why not be allowed to use every paint in the paintbox? --John Cameron Mitchell, "How to Shoot Sex: A Docu-Primer" (2007): Shortbus Region 1 DVD release (Th!nk Film) 

Because we are ostensibly a democracy, whose citizens potentially have the world’s information at their fingertips, powerful interests work to ensure that we are the most propagandized society. Propaganda can work to purposely distort reality through targeted misinformation, but it also operates to distract through endless entertainments and disillusion through aggressively disruptive white noise chatter. It doesn’t matter how much knowledge is available to us if we remain blind to the possibilities of critical thinking and active resistance. This is not a hyperbolic conspiracy theory; it is just common sense that those who benefit the most from the current socio-political structure will work to reproduce the status quo and keep those who are not benefiting, who are even suffering, from recognizing their predicament. One important way in which propaganda works in a democratic society is to keep us blissfully entertained and distracted while indoctrinating us into an official narrative. This can be most clearly seen in the Pentagon and CIA directed support, funding and vetting of a range of TV Shows and films that follow a narrow and manipulative action entertainment narrative about American wars abroad while conditioning Americans to accept abhorrent and anti-democratic practices, such as torture. Three prominent examples are the TV show 24 (2001 - 2010) and the films Zero Dark Thirty (2012) and American Sniper (2014), all of which turned torture and assassinations into entertainments designed to reinforce a complacent American public's belief in the necessity of these acts of state terror. - Michael Benton, "Ideological Becoming" (September 30, 2022)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

Eig, Jonathan. "King: A Life - New Bio Details Extensive FBI Spying & How MLK’s Criticism of Malcolm X Was Fabricated." Democracy Now (May 30, 2023) ["We speak in depth with journalist Jonathan Eig about his new book, King: A Life, the first major biography of the civil rights leader in more than 35 years, which draws on unredacted FBI files, as well as the files of the personal aide to President Lyndon Baines Johnson, to show how Johnson and others partnered in the FBI’s surveillance of King and efforts to destroy him, led by director J. Edgar Hoover. Eig also interviewed more than 200 people, including many who knew King closely, like the singer, actor and activist Harry Belafonte. The book has also drawn attention for its revelation that King was less critical of Malcolm X than previously thought."]

Flight, Thomas. "Why Do Movies Feel So Different Now?" (Posted on Youtube: May 23, 2023) ["In this video I dive into what Metamodernism is and what it looks like in film, and chart how the movies have evolved since their modernist origins."]

Galeotti, Mark. "Putin's Wars: From Chechnya to Ukraine (Bloomsbury, 2022)." New Books in Military History (May 5, 2023) ["Mark Galeotti's book Putin's Wars: From Chechnya to Ukraine (Bloomsbury, 2022) is a timely overview of the conflicts in which Russia has been involved since Vladimir Putin became prime minister and then president of Russia, from the First Chechen War to the two military incursions into Georgia, the annexation of Crimea and the eventual invasion of Ukraine itself. But it also looks more broadly at Putin's recreation of Russian military power and its expansion to include a range of new capabilities, from mercenaries to operatives in a relentless information war against Western powers. This is an engrossing strategic overview of a rejuvenated Russian military and the successes and failures on the battlefield. Thanks to Dr Galeotti's wide-ranging contacts throughout Russia, it is also peppered with anecdotes of military life, personal snapshots of conflicts, and an extraordinary collection of first-hand accounts from serving and retired Russian officers. Russia continues to dominate the news cycle throughout the Western world. There is no better time to understand how and why Putin has involved his armed forces in a variety of conflicts for over two decades. There is no author better placed to demystify the capabilities of the Russian military and give a glimpse into what the future may hold. Putin's Wars is an engaging and important history of a reawakened Russian bear and how it currently operates both at home and abroad to ensure Russia is front and centre on the world stage."]

Habib, Connor. "The Archangel Michael and the Challenges of Our Time." Against Everyone #275 (September 29, 2024) ["Michaelmas is the esoteric christian celebration of the Archangel Michael. How can connecting with the impulses of the holiday show us how to co-share their burden of those who are suffering; strengthen love through our will; and leave the path of empowering violence?"]

Hertag, Julia. "Timekeeping." Sidecar (May 19, 2023) ["Unrueh – ‘unrest’ – the title of Swiss director Cyril Schäublin’s latest film, set in 1877 among anarchist watchmakers in Saint-Imier, a remote village in Switzerland’s Jura mountains, is the term for the wheel in the centre of a mechanical watch that ensures its continuous and even ticking. The unrest wheel inside a pocket watch is so tiny and the act of adjusting it so meticulous that, despite the film’s extended close-ups on the mechanism, its workings remain mysterious. Even the detailed explanations given by a young factory worker, Josephine Gräbli (Clara Gostynski), to her fellow anarchist, Pyotr Kropotkin (Alexei Evstratov), who happens to be visiting the village, don’t entirely clarify it. When Josephine asks if he understands her, Kropotkin replies: ‘I think so’. If the functioning of the unrest wheel is largely impenetrable, Unrueh suggests, so are the forces revolutionizing production in Kropotkin’s time (as well as those that keep our own economic system running)."]

Hoag-Fordjour, Alexis and Sara Mayeux. "We the People: Legal Representation." Throughline (August 8, 2024) ["The Sixth Amendment. Most of us take it for granted that if we're ever in court and we can't afford a lawyer, the court will provide one for us. And in fact, the right to an attorney is written into the Constitution's sixth amendment. But for most of U.S. history, it was more of a nice-to-have — something you got if you could, but that many people went without. Today, though, public defenders represent up to 80% of people charged with crimes. So what changed? Today on Throughline's We the People: How public defenders became the backbone of our criminal legal system, and what might need to change for them to truly serve everyone."]

Kelsey, Janice and Paul Kix. "60 Years Ago Today: Police Attack Children’s Crusade with Dogs & Water Cannons in Birmingham, Alabama." Democracy Now (May 2, 2023) ["Sixty years ago today is known as “D-Day” in Birmingham, Alabama, when thousands of children began a 10-week-long series of protests against segregation that became known as the Children’s Crusade. Hundreds were arrested. The next day, “Double D-Day,” the local head of the police, Bull Connor, ordered his white police force to begin using high-pressure fire hoses and dogs to attack the children. One photograph captured the moment when a white police officer allowed a large German shepherd dog to attack a young Black boy. Four months after the protests began, the Ku Klux Klan bombed a Black Birmingham church, killing four young girls — Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley and Denise McNair. We revisit the history of the Children’s Crusade with two guests: civil rights activist Janice Kelsey, who joined the Children’s Crusade as a 16-year-old in 1963, and author Paul Kix."]

Li, James. "America's New Caste System Exposed." 51/49 (Posted on Youtube: June 11, 2023) ["James breaks down two new laws, HF 68, known as the “The Students First Act”, which approves the use of taxpayer money to fund private schools, and SF 542—“An Act Relating to Youth Employment”, which allows 14 year olds to work 6 hour night shifts, allows 15 year olds to work on assembly lines moving items up to 50 pounds, and also allows 16 and 17 year olds to serve alcohol. Are these new laws meant to provide more opportunity to ordinary Americans, or are the rich passing laws to codify a modern day caste system?"]

Like Stories of Old. "Escaping Our Mental Prisons: What Psychedelic Movies Are Really About." (Posted on Youtube: May 31, 2023) ["An analysis of psychedelia in cinema, and of the philosophical and neurological insights it provides."]

Lombardo, Paul A. "Three Generations, No Imbeciles: Eugenics, the Supreme Court, and Buck v. Bell (John Hopkins University Press, 2022)." New Books in Political Science (April 24, 2023) ["“Three generations of imbeciles are enough” were the infamous words U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. wrote in 1927. In Buck v. Bell, an almost unanimous Court upheld a Virginia law allowing the sterilization of people the state found to be “socially inadequate” and “feebleminded.” This landmark decision allowed the eugenics movement to take full effect, with multiple states passing similar laws. In Three Generations, No Imbeciles: Eugenics, the Supreme Court, and Buck v. Bell (Johns Hopkins UP, 2022), Dr. Paul Lombardo unpacks the case of an individual – Carrie Buck – to argue that the case not only represents the collective power of the eugenics movement in the early 20th century but an individual miscarriage of justice. Using extensive archival sources, Dr. Lombardo demonstrates that Carrie Buck was neither a “moral degenerate” or “feeble-minded.” She was a rape victim of sound mind. Her sterilization was based on fraudulent evidence. The powerful eugenics lobby manufactured a case – and a sympathetic court gave them a precedent that justified Carrie Buck’s sterilization – and over 60,000 sterilizations in the following decades. Three Generations, No Imbeciles frames the history of sterilization as essential to understanding contemporary legal fights over birth control and abortion. Does the constitution’s promise of “liberty” include the right to become pregnant or end a pregnancy? Dr. Lombardo’s epilogue and afterward outlines the connections between Buck and modern cases involving abortion, disability rights, and reparations for those sterilized. Originally published in 2008, the book has been updated in 2022 with a terrific epilogue and afterward with an eye towards contemporary events in reproductive politics. Dr. Paul A. Lombardo is Regents’ Professor and Bobby Lee Cook Professor of Law at the Center for Law, Health & Society at Georgia State University. He has published extensively on topics in health law, medico-legal history, and bioethics and is best known for his work on the legal history of the American eugenics movement. His website houses the images and all documents discussed in the podcast including the petition for rehearing created by the National Council of Catholic Men."]

Longworth, Karina. "Thelma & Louise (Erotic 90S, Part 4) ." You Must Remember This! (April 17, 2023) ["One of the most controversial movies of the 1990s, Thelma & Louise pushed every hot button of the new decade: date rape, sexual harassment, the failure of the feminist movement to create real change for the working class, and how pissed off women were, or were not, entitled to be about all of the above. Though it made more noise as a media phenomenon than at the box office, Thelma & Louise made so many people so mad that it had the feeling of a turning point. We’ll talk about the anger the movie communicated, the anger it inspired, and debate its lasting legacy."]

Remnick, David. "Israel vs. Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran — and Itself." The Ezra Klein Show (September 20, 2024) ["It’s been almost a year since Oct. 7. More than 40,000 Palestinians in Gaza are dead. The hostages are not all home, and it doesn’t look like there will be a cease-fire deal that brings them home anytime soon. Israeli politics is deeply divided, and the country’s international reputation is in tatters. The Palestinian Authority is weak. A war may break out in Lebanon soon. There is no vision for the day after and no theory of what comes next. So I wanted to talk to David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker. Remnick has been reporting from Israel for decades and has a deep familiarity and history with both the region and the politics and the people who are driving it. He first profiled Benjamin Netanyahu back in 1998. In 2013, he profiled Naftali Bennett, the politician leading Netanyahu in polls of who Israelis think is best suited to be prime minister. And he recently profiled Yahya Sinwar, the head of Hamas in Gaza. In this conversation, we talk about what Remnick learned profiling Netanyahu, Bennett and Sinwar, as well as where Israel’s overlapping conflicts with Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, Hezbollah and Iran sit after nearly a year of war. Remnick and I were both recently in Israel and the West Bank, as well as near Israel’s border with Lebanon, and we discuss our impressions from those trips."]

"Tested: Questions of a Physical Nature." Throughline (August 6, 2024) ["In 1966, the governing body of the Olympic track and field event started mandatory examinations of all women athletes. These inspections would come to be known as "nude parades," and if you were a woman who refused the test, you couldn't compete. We're going back almost a century to the first time women were allowed to compete in Olympic track and field games, and to a time when a committee of entirely men decided who was a female and who wasn't."]