Throughline: History (Shooting Azimuths)

Podcast description: "Throughline is a time machine. Each episode, we travel beyond the headlines to answer the question, "How did we get here?" We use sound and stories to bring history to life and put you into the middle of it. From ancient civilizations to forgotten figures, we take you directly to the moments that shaped our world. Throughline is hosted by Peabody Award-winning journalists Rund Abdelfatah and Ramtin Arablouei."

Abdelfetah, Rund, et al. "Affirmative Action." Throughline (June 15, 2023) ["The Supreme Court is expected to rule on affirmative action sometime this month. Most of us understand that some colleges use race as a factor in college admissions. But journalist Jay Caspian Kang argues that this focus is too narrow, and that it avoids harder conversations we need to have as a culture. In his view, focusing on the admissions practices of a select few universities creates "a fight for spots in the elite ranks of society" — and blinds us to the bigger problems plaguing American democracy. On today's episode, we talk with Kang about affirmative action's origins in the civil rights era, what it does and doesn't achieve, and what a more equitable education system could look like."]

---. "All Wars Are Fought Twice (2022)." Throughline (July 20, 2023) ["'All wars are fought twice, the first time on the battlefield, the second time in memory,' writes Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen. This week on Throughline, we want to pause the news cycle to think about not just how war is experienced or consumed, but how it's remembered. A refugee from the Vietnam War, Nguyen calls himself a scholar of memory — someone who studies how we remember events of the past, both as people and as nations. As the war in Ukraine continues and conflicts around the globe displace millions, we speak with Nguyen about national memory, selective forgetting, and the refugee stories that might ultimately help us move forward."]

---. "After Roe: A New Battlefield."  Throughline (June 29, 2023) ["The Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade transformed the landscape of abortion rights overnight. For the doctors, lawyers, feminists, and others who had fought for nationwide legalization, Roe was the end of a long battle. But for the growing movement against abortion rights, it was the beginning of a new battle: to protect the fetus, challenge abortion providers, and ultimately overturn Roe. This is the story of how opponents of abortion rights banded together, built power, and launched one of the most successful grassroots campaigns of the past century."]

---. "Before Roe: The Physicians Crusade." Throughline (June 8, 2023) ["Abortion wasn't always controversial. In fact, in colonial America it would have been considered a fairly common practice: a private decision made by women, and aided mostly by midwives. But in the mid-1800s, a small group of physicians set out to change that. Obstetrics was a new field, and they wanted it to be their domain—meaning, the domain of men and medicine. Led by a zealous young doctor named Horatio Storer, they launched a campaign to make abortion illegal in every state, spreading a potent cloud of moral righteousness and racial panic that one historian later called "the physicians' crusade." And so began the century of criminalization. In the first episode of a two-part series, we're telling the story of that century: how doctors put themselves at the center of legal battles over abortion, first to criminalize — and then to legalize."]

--- "The Freedom of Speech." Throughline (May 25, 2023) ["Book bans, disinformation, the wild world of the internet. Free speech debates are all around us.What were the Founding Fathers thinking when they created the First Amendment, and how have the words they wrote in the 18th century been stretched and shaped to fit a world they never could have imagined? It's a story that travels through world wars and culture wars. Through the highest courts and the Ku Klux Klan. What exactly is free speech, and how has the answer to that question changed in the history of the U.S.?"]

---. "The Ghost in Your Phone." Throughline (June 1, 2023) ["It's hot. A mother works outside, a baby strapped to her back. The two of them breathe in toxic dust, day after day. And they're just two of thousands, cramped so close together it's hard to move, all facing down the mountain of cobalt stone. Cobalt mining is one of the world's most dangerous jobs. And it's also one of the most essential: cobalt is what powers the batteries in your smartphone, your laptop, the electric car you felt good about buying. More than three-quarters of the world's cobalt supply lies in the Democratic Republic of Congo, whose abundant resources have drawn greed and grifters for centuries. Today on the show: the fight for control of those resources, and for the dignity of the people who produce them."]

---. "The Hidden War." Throughline (July 27, 2023) ["How does a country go from its leader winning the Nobel Peace Prize to all-out war in just one year? That's the question surrounding Ethiopia, which has become embroiled in one of the deadliest wars of the 21st century. The U.S. has called it an ethnic cleansing campaign against Tigrayans, a minority group in the country; some human rights organizations have called it a genocide. But many people outside Ethiopia and its diaspora had no idea it was happening. In U.S. media, it's hardly discussed, even as violence has intensified throughout the country. In this episode, we tell the story of Ethiopia — the oldest independent country in Africa — and the political, cultural and religious factors that led to this war."]

---. "The Labor of Love." Throughline (June 23, 2023) ["There's a powerful fantasy in American society: the fantasy of the ideal mother. This mother is devoted to her family above all else. She raises the kids, volunteers at the school, cleans the house, plans the birthday parties, cares for her own parents. She's a natural nurturer. And she's happy to do it all for free. Problem is? She's imaginary. And yet the idea of her permeates our culture, our economy, and our social policy – and it distorts them. The U.S. doesn't have universal health insurance or universal childcare. We don't have federally mandated paid family leave or a meaningful social safety net for when times get rough. Instead, we have this imaginary mother. We've structured our society as though she exists — but she doesn't. And we all pay the real-life price."]

---. "The Lavender Scare." Throughline (August 10, 2023) ["One day in late April 1958, a young economist named Madeleine Tress was approached by two men in suits at her office at the U.S. Department of Commerce. They took her to a private room, turned on a tape recorder, and demanded she respond to allegations that she was an "admitted homosexual." Two weeks later, she resigned. Madeleine was one of thousands of victims of a purge of gay and lesbian people ordered at the highest levels of the U.S. government: a program spurred by a panic that destroyed careers and lives and lasted more than forty years. Today, it's known as the "Lavender Scare." In a moment when LGBTQ+ rights are again in the public crosshairs, we tell the story of the Lavender Scare: its victims, its proponents, and a man who fought for decades to end it."]

---. "The Legacy of Henry Kissinger." Throughline (July 6, 2023) ["Depending on where you stand, Henry Kissinger is either a foreign policy mastermind or a war criminal. Some see him as a brilliant strategist who made tough but necessary decisions to advance American interests in a complex world; others point to his infamous order that American warplanes should "bomb anything that flies, on anything that moves" as evidence that he bears responsibility for the loss of countless civilian lives. But one thing both sides agree on is that few figures in the 20th century have had a more profound influence on how the U.S. conducts foreign policy. Kissinger grew up in an orthodox Jewish household in Germany, under the shadow of the Nazis' rise to power; he and his family fled to the U.S. when he was a teenager. Professor Jeremi Suri, author of "Henry Kissinger and the American Century," argues that Kissinger's experiences during the Holocaust have informed his approach to global politics throughout his career, as well as his relationship with democracy, war, and power. Today on the show, how Henry Kissinger shaped, and was shaped by, the 20th century."]

---. "The Most Sacred Right (2020)." Throughline (November 3, 2022) ["Born into slavery in the early 1800s, Frederick Douglass would live to see the Civil War, Emancipation, Black men getting the right to vote, and the beginning of the terrors and humiliations of Jim Crow. And through all of that, he kept coming back to one thing, a sacred right he believed was at the heart of American democracy: Voting."] 

---. "No Bad Ideas." Througline (July 13, 2023) ["Humans have always created. But historian Samuel W. Franklin argues that "creativity" didn't become a social value until the Cold War. Today, we're at another inflection point for humanity, technology, and national identity. The meaning of originality is blurring; there are legal disputes about what constitutes original art; and AI can write a song like your favorite artist in seconds. So what does it mean to put creativity on a pedestal? And what would it look like to tear it down?On this episode, we talk with Franklin, author of "The Cult of Creativity: A Surprisingly Recent History," about original thinking, AI, and how the human drive to create gets branded, packaged, and sold."]

---. "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."]

Allen, Arthur, Elena Conis, and Paul Offit. "The Anti-Vaccine Movement." Throughline (February 13, 2025) ["The alleged link between vaccines and autism was first published in 1998, in a since-retracted study in medical journal The Lancet. The claim has been repeatedly disproven: there is no evidence that vaccines and autism are related. But by the mid-2000s, the myth was out there, and its power was growing, fueled by distrust of government, misinformation, and high-profile boosters like Jim Carrey and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. In this episode: the roots of the modern anti-vaccine movement, and of the fears that still fuel it – from a botched polio vaccine, to the discredited autism study, to today."]

Arablouei, Ramtin, et al. "The Labor of Love." Throughline (May 9, 2024) ["There's a powerful fantasy in American society: the fantasy of the ideal mother. This mother is devoted to her family above all else. She raises the kids, volunteers at the school, cleans the house, plans the birthday parties, cares for her own parents. She's a natural nurturer. And she's happy to do it all for free. Problem is? She's imaginary. And yet the idea of her permeates our culture, our economy, and our social policy – and it distorts them. The U.S. doesn't have universal health insurance or universal childcare. We don't have federally mandated paid family leave or a meaningful social safety net for when times get rough. Instead, we have this imaginary mother. We've structured our society as though she exists — but she doesn't. And we all pay the real-life price. Today on the show, we look at three myths that sustain the fantasy: the maternal instinct, the doting housewife, and the welfare queen. And we tell the stories of real-life people – some mothers, some not – who have fought for a much more generous vision of family, labor, and care."]

Bayoumi, Moustafa, Timothy Brennan, and Mariam Said. "Edward Said and the Question of Palestine." Throughline (July 17, 2025) ["Edward Said brought the question of Palestine into the American mainstream. He taught at Columbia University for nearly 40 years, and today, more than two decades after his death, pro-Palestine student protesters on that campus and others have invoked his name. Meanwhile, his interviews circulate on social media and his books are taught at universities around the world. On this episode: the story of the man who pushed for recognition of the Palestinian perspective, the pushback he faced, and the dangers he foresaw."]

Bell, Thomas W. and Michael Smith. "We The People: Canary in the Coal Mine." Throughline (July 24, 2025) ["The Third Amendment. Maybe you've heard it as part of a punchline. It's the one about quartering troops — two words you probably haven't heard side by side since about the late 1700s. At first glance, it might not seem super relevant to modern life. But in fact, the U.S. government has gotten away with violating the Third Amendment several times since its ratification — and every time it's gone largely unnoticed. In a time of escalating political violence, police forces armed with military equipment, and more frequent and devastating natural disasters, why the Third Amendment deserves a closer look."]

Bessler, John and Carol Steiker. "We The People: Cruel and Unusual Punishment." Throughline (January 23, 2025) ["The Eighth Amendment. What is cruel and unusual punishment? Who gets to define and decide its boundaries? And how did the Constitution's authors imagine it might change? Today on Throughline's We the People: the Eighth Amendment, the death penalty, and what cruel and unusual really means. John Bessler, law professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law, and adjunct professor at the Georgetown University Law Center. Author of The Death Penalty's Denial of Fundamental Human Rights. Carol Steiker, law professor at Harvard Law School and author of Courting Death: the Supreme Court and Capital Punishment."]

Bregman, Rutger, Malik Rahim, and Rebecca Solnit. "When Things Fall Apart." Throughline (April 10, 2025) ["Climate disaster, political unrest, random violence: Western society can often feel like what the filmmaker Werner Herzog calls "a thin layer of ice on top of an ocean of chaos and darkness." But is that actually true — or the way it has to be? Today on the show, what really happens when things fall apart." Guests: Rutger Bregman, author of Humankind: A Hopeful History; Rebecca Solnit, author of A Paradise Built in Hell; Malik Rahim, co-founder of Common Ground Relief]

Brown, Wendy, Angus Burgin, and Lily Geismer. "What Makes Us Free?" Throughline (July 10, 2025) ["What's the role of government in society? What do we mean when we talk about individual responsibility? What makes us free? 'Neoliberalism' might feel like a squishy term that's hard to define and understand. But this ideology, founded by a group of men in the Swiss Alps, is a political project that has dominated our economic system for decades. In the name of free market fundamentals, the forces behind neoliberalism act like an invisible hand, shaping almost every aspect of our lives."The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free Markets since the Depression by Angus Burgin
Don't Blame Us: Suburban Liberals and the Transformation of the Democratic Party by Lily Geismer
Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism's Stealth Revolution by Wendy Brown.]

Burton, Vernon and Kenneth Mack. "We the People: Equal Protection." Throughline (August 15, 2024) ["The Fourteenth Amendment. Of all the amendments to the U.S. Constitution, the 14th is a big one. It's shaped all of our lives, whether we realize it or not: Roe v. Wade, Brown v. Board of Education, Bush v. Gore, plus other Supreme Court cases that legalized same-sex marriage, interracial marriage, access to birth control — they've all been built on the back of the 14th. The amendment was ratified after the Civil War, and it's packed full of lofty phrases like due process, equal protection, and liberty. But what do those words really guarantee us? Today on Throughline's We the People: How the 14th Amendment has remade America — and how America has remade the 14th."]

Cobb, Paul, et al. "The Battle for Jerusalem." Throughline (October 3, 2024) ["Today, the city of Jerusalem is seen as so important that people are willing to kill and die to control it. And that struggle goes back centuries. Nearly a thousand years ago, European Christians embarked on what became known as the First Crusade: an unprecedented, massive military campaign to take Jerusalem from Muslims and claim the holy city for themselves. They won a shocking victory – but it didn't last. A Muslim leader named Saladin raised an army to take the city back. What happened next was one of the most consequential battles of the Middle Ages: A battle that would forever change the course of relations between the Islamic and Christian worlds, Europe and The Middle East. In this episode, we travel back to the front lines of that battle to explore a simple question: What is Jerusalem worth?Guests: Paul Cobb, Professor of Middle Eastern Languages & Cultures at the University of Pennsylvania and author of The Race for Paradise: An Islamic History of the Crusades. Jonathan Phillips, Professor of Crusading History at Royal Holloway University of London and author of The Life and Legend of the Sultan Saladin. Suleiman Mourad, Professor of Religion and Middle East Studies at Smith College and author of Muslim Sources of the Crusader Period: An Anthology. Tom Madden, Professor of History and Director of the Center of Medieval and Renaissance Studies at St. Louis University, and author of The Concise History of the Crusades."]

Dripps, Donald and Corinna Barrett Lain. "We the People: The Right to Remain Silent." Throughline (March 27, 2025) ["The Fifth Amendment. You have the right to remain silent when you're being questioned in police custody, thanks to the Fifth's protection against self-incrimination. But most people end up talking to police anyway. Why? Today on Throughline's We the People: the Fifth Amendment, the right to remain silent, and how hard it can be to use it. Guests: Donald Dripps, Professor of Law at the University of San Diego. Corinna Barrett Lain, Professor of Law at the University of Richmond School of Law."] 

Franks, Mary Ann. "We the People: Free Speech." Throughline (July 25, 2024) ["The First Amendment. Book bans, disinformation, the wild world of the internet. Free speech debates are all around us. What were the Founding Fathers thinking when they created the First Amendment, and how have the words they wrote in the 18th century been stretched and shaped to fit a world they never could have imagined? It's a story that travels through world wars and culture wars. Through the highest courts and the Ku Klux Klan. Today on Throughline's We the People: What exactly is free speech, and how has the answer to that question changed in the history of the U.S.?"]

Frederick, John. "We the People: Succession of Power." Throughline (March 6, 2025) ["The 25th amendment. A few years before JFK was shot, an idealistic young lawyer set out on a mission to convince people something essential was missing from the Constitution: clear instructions for what should happen if a U.S. president was no longer able to serve. On this episode of our ongoing series We the People, the story behind one of the last amendments to the Constitution, and the man who got it done."John Feerick, Norris Professor of Law at Fordham Law School and author of The Twenty-Fifth Amendment - Its Complete History and Applications.]

Glied, Sherry and Paul Starr. "Health Insurance in America." Throughline (February 27, 2025) ["Millions of Americans depend on their jobs for health insurance. But that's not the case in many other wealthy countries. How did the U.S. end up with a system that's so expensive, yet leaves so many people vulnerable? On this episode, how a temporary solution created an everlasting problem." Guests: Sherry Glied, Dean of the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University; Paul Starr, professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton University."]

Hirschhorn, Sara Yael, et al. "The Rise of the Right Wing in Israel." Throughline (October 12, 2025) ["This week, we’re bringing you the story of the rise of right wing politics in Israel and President Benjamin Netanyahu’s political career."]

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."]

Span, Christopher, Michael Steudeman, and Jonathan Zimmerman. "The First Department of Education." Throughline (June 12, 2025) ["Whose job is it to educate Americans? Congress created the first Department of Education just after the Civil War as a way to help reunify a broken country. A year later, it was basically shut down. But the story of that first department's birth – and death – set the stage for everything that's come since."]

Sutton, Matthew, et al. "Apocalypse Now." Throughline (June 13, 2019) ["Evangelicals have played an important role in modern day American politics - from supporting President Trump to helping elect Jimmy Carter back in 1976. How and when did this religious group become so intertwined with today's political issues? In this episode, what it means to be an evangelical today and how it has changed over time."]

Sy, Lloyd Alimboyao. "What Future for Native Sovereignty?" Public Books (December 3, 2025) ["Five years ago, the Supreme Court handed down a landmark decision in McGirt v. Oklahoma, which Robert J. Miller (Eastern Shawnee Tribe) and Torey Dolan (Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma) call “likely the most significant Indian law case in well over 100 years.”1 McGirt affirmed that the Muscogee (Creek) Nation’s reservation had never been disestablished, meaning much of eastern Oklahoma remains tribal land. The ruling was celebrated for restoring treaty promises and affirming the legal endurance of tribal sovereignty after centuries of settler encroachment and legal erasure. But it has also ushered in a new era of jurisdictional entanglement: tribal governments were suddenly tasked with exercising criminal jurisdiction over vast swaths of land—including serious felony cases involving Native defendants—without the infrastructure, legal humanpower, or federal funding necessary to match state prosecutorial capacity. For many tribes, the 2020 decision poses a paradox: sovereignty is reaffirmed, but so too are the burdens of governance under inequitable conditions.2 That’s why there’s now a major debate in contemporary Indigenous political theory, asking whether sovereignty can still serve as a radical framework, or whether it has already been co-opted by the settler state.3 Especially in the aftermath of McGirt, a pivotal question for Indigenous political leaders is how to ensure that Indigenous sovereignty does not calcify into the same punitive logics, bureaucratic violences, and elite self-perpetuation that have long defined colonial rule. That question of sovereignty is answered by Jon Hickey’s 2025 novel Big Chief, which considers how Native self-determination navigates the same institutional forms that have long suppressed it. Sovereignty is the problem of Big Chief, but to be sure, Hickey, an enrolled member of the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians, refuses to add any simple buzz to that too-often-essentialized word. As its front-cover blurb by David Heska Wanbli Weiden puts it, Big Chief may be “the great Native American political novel,” but in the process it complicates some of the rudimentary political aims of Native peoples today."]

Tichenor, Daniel. "The Alien Enemies Act." Throughline (April 17, 2025) ["In March 2025, President Trump issued an executive order invoking a centuries-old law: the Alien Enemies Act. The Act allows a president to detain or deport citizens of foreign adversaries to the United States, but only in the case of a "declared war" or "invasion." Now, the Trump administration and the courts are locked in a battle over whether the president's use of the Act, under which people have already been deported, is legal. Today on the show: where the Alien Enemies Act came from, how presidents have used it before, and what that tells us about what's to come."]

Poor Things (Ireland/UK/USA: Yorgos Lanthimos, 2023)

 

Poor Things (Ireland/UK/USA: Yorgos Lanthimos, 2023: 141 mins)

Burn, Johnnie, et al. "Yorgos Lanthimos, Tony McNamara, and the Creative Team of Poor Things." Film At Lincoln Center #503 (December 8, 2023) 

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."]

Muncer, Mike and Honey Ross.  "Man-Made Monsters Pt. #36: Poor Things (2023) and The Substance (2024)." The Evolution of Horror (May 1, 2026) ["Mike is joined by Honey Ross to discuss two recent films about female identity and bodily autonomy."]

Prabhu, Amruta. "Poor Things: a fascinating flight of fancy that holds up a mirror to its viewers." Medium (March 8, 2024) 

Rutigliano, Olivia. "Poor Things is a Curious Phantasmagoria." Literary Hub (December 5, 2023) 

Small, Mike. "Insatiable Curiosity: The Real Politics of Poor Things." Medium (February 19, 2024)

Vicino, Mia Lee. "Beauty and Brains: Yorgos Lanthimos, Emma Stone, Ramy Youssef and Tony McNamara dissect the body world of Poor Things." Letterboxd Journal (December 12, 2023) ["The mad geniuses behind Poor Things—stars Emma Stone and Ramy Youssef, director Yorgos Lanthimos and writer Tony McNamara—talk to Mia Lee Vicino about the literal anatomy of their Buñuel-inspired fantasy and why surgery is (and isn’t) the new sex."]

Booking a Stay at the Chapel Perilous - Music Mix #43

 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

Booking a Stay at the Chapel Perilous - Music Mix #43

Perfect Days (Japan/Germany: Wim Wenders, 2023)

 Perfect Days (Japan/Germany: Wim Wenders, 2023: 124 mins)

Babiolakis, Andreas. "Perfect Days." FilmsFatale (January 16, 2024) 

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."]

Kelly, Nolan. "Wim Wender's Perfect Days." Brooklyn Rail (January 2024)

Little White Lies. "Wim Wenders and the Road Less Traveled." (Posted on Youtube: April 15, 2024)

Perfect Days Official Soundtrack

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."]

Judith Butler: Philosophy/Gender/Political Theory (Shooting Azimuths)

Butler, Judith. "A Gender Studies Icon Strikes Back." College Matters (April 15, 2026) ["In states across the country, conservative lawmakers and university governing boards are purging what they describe as gender ideology from college campuses. As part of a larger backlash against diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, several universities have in recent years shut down women’s and gender-studies programs and closed LGBTQ-focused campus spaces. These developments are particularly worrying to Judith Butler, a pioneer of queer theory whose 1990 book, Gender Trouble, is considered a seminal work of the field. But what does Butler, a distinguished professor in the Graduate School at the University of California at Berkeley, have to say to the increasingly vocal critics of the discipline they helped to popularize?"]

---. 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."]

---. "Hannah Arendt's challenge to Adolf Eichmann: In her treatise on the banality of evil, Arendt demanded a rethink of established ideas about moral responsibility." The Guardian (August 29, 2011)

---. 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."]

---. "Trump is unleashing sadism upon the world. But we cannot get overwhelmed." The Guardian (February 6, 2025) ["Those who celebrate his defiance and sadism are as claimed by his logic as those who are paralyzed with outrage."]

---. 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."]

---. "Why is the idea of ‘gender’ provoking backlash the world over?" The Guardian (October 23, 2021) ["Increasingly, authoritarians are likening ‘genderism’ to ‘communism’ and ‘totalitarianism’"]

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."]

Callis, April S. "Playing with Butler and Foucault: Bisexuality and Queer Theory." The Journal of Bisexuality 9.3/4 (2009): 213-233.

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."]

Starship Troopers (USA: Paul Verhoeven, 1997)

Starship Troopers (USA: Paul Verhoeven, 1997: 129 mins)

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."]

Britt, Lawrence W. "Fascism Anyone?" Free Inquiry 23.2 (Spring 2003)

Cribbs, John, James Hancock and Leanne Kubicz. "The Cinema of Paul Verhoeven." Wrong Reel #200 (November 2016)

Dien, Caspar Van and Paul Verhoeven. "Robocop and Starship Troopers." The Close-Up (March 2, 2017)

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."]

Laliberty, Justin. "Buggin’ Out: The critical lashing and cultural reappraisal of Starship Troopers." Deep Impact (August 2, 2024) ["To celebrate 100 years of Columbia Pictures, Justin LaLiberty examines the marketing blitz, initial dismissal and eventual reappraisal of Paul Verhoeven’s fascism satire Starship Troopers."]

Marvin, Carolyn and David Ingle. "Blood Sacrifice and the Nation: Revisiting Civil Religion." Journal of the American Academy of Religion 64.4 (1996)

Neumeier, Ed and Paul M. Sammon. "Starship Troopers." The Projection Booth #99 (January 29, 2013)

Scott, Suzanne. "Starship Troopers: The Massacre Is the Message." Reverse Shot (June 22, 2003)

"Starship Troopers: A Misunderstood Masterpiece." Stay Connected with Chesco Libraries (August 2, 2024)

Thorn, Bill Rose. "Starship Troopers and Intelligence." Critical Fantasies (April 23, 2022) 

Anora (USA: Sean Baker, 2024)

Anora (USA: Sean Baker, 2024: 139 mins) 

Baker, Sean and Mikey Madison. "Club Classic: On the accents and improv of their new screwball dramedy Anora." Journal (November 1, 2024)

---. "Sean Baker and Mikey Madison break down Anora’s club scenes." Letterboxd (November 15, 2024)

Bodjoran, Sam. "Under the Table: Sam Bodrojan considers Anora and the emasculated sadism of Sean Baker." Los Angeles Review of Books (January 5, 2025)

Daniels, Drew. "Anora Ignites Bride War." American Cinematographer (March 3, 2025)

Hudson, David. "Anora's Big Night. The Daily (March 3, 2025)

---. "A Second Look at Anora." The Daily (December 11, 2024)

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."]

Lopez, Kristen. "Anora Won Best Picture and What It Says About This Year and Last." TFM (March 3, 2025) ["Films, no matter what you want to say, are inherently political. They point to the politics of our time, no matter how small. Anora, amongst the Mikey Madison stripteases and screaming, is the story of a working stiff trying to make ends meet and falling into the con of a fairy tale. Ani, as much as she tries to resist Vanya and call him out for his joking, truly wants to believe this is the moment everyone waits for: the idea of a windfall hitting you in a way that will take you our of your circumstances and change your life for the better, immediately and permanently. Whether it’s hitting the lottery or meeting a Russian billionaire, we all dream of a magical fix that is going to make us feel financially and socially secure for the rest of our lives. In the end, Ani is the one left broken, humiliated and right back where she started. And what’s sadder is she tried so hard to be realistic. As a millennial, I’ll tell you there isn’t really a time I’ve felt the economic security and prosperity most people mythologizing the ‘90s for."]

Madison, Mikey. "Mikey Madison (‘Anora’) Enters Her Golden Age." Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso (February 9, 2025) 

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?"]

Will Potter: Journalist/Civil Liberties/Political Persecution/Social Movements (Shooting Azimuths)

Bedic, Tamara and Phillip Murray. "Basic Legal Rights for Animals: Activists and Advocates." Law and Disorder Radio (March 16, 2020)

Lennard, Natasha. "How the Prosecution of Animal Rights Activists As Terrorists Foretold Today’s Criminalization of Dissent." The Intercept (December 12, 2019)

Potter, Will. "From Tim DeChristopher to Tar Sands Protests, the Environmental Movement Steps Up Civil Disobedience." Green is the New Red (September 2, 2011)

---. 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."]

---. "Indiana Bill Would Make It Illegal to Expose Factory Farms, Clearcutting and Fracking." Green is the New Red (April 2, 2013)

---. 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.""]

Will Potter (His website)

Thomas Piketty: Economics/Inequality (Shooting Azimuths)

Chang, Ha-Joon, et al. "Humans are not resources. Coronavirus shows why we must democratise work." The Guardian (May 15, 2020) ["Our health and lives cannot be ruled by market forces alone. Now thousands of scholars are calling for a way out of the crisis."]

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."]

Talk to Me (Australia: Michael Philippou and Danny Philippou, 2022)

 Talk to Me (Australia: Michael Philippou and Danny Philippou, 2022: 95 mins)

Kemp, Ella. "Terrifying Twos: Danny and Michael Philippou on Racka energy and Talk To Me." Letterboxd (July 28, 2023)

McDunnah, Martin G. "Talk to Me (2022)." The Unaffiliated Critic (August 2, 2023)

Philippou, Danny and Michael Philippou. "Talk to Me Interview." Evolution of Horror (August 1, 2023)

Music Mix #42: Cosmic Trigger

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

Music Mix #42: Cosmic Trigger