Bit of a break from regular programming here — sorry if you were expecting another scintillating essay on Israel/Palestine. But for the first time, watching a movie motivated me to track down the director and interview him about it, in hopes that I could encourage more people to watch. The movie is called Some Kind of Heaven and it’s a documentary that defies any easy description. Ostensibly, it’s about The Villages, a massive retirement community in Florida that’s become well-known as a political flashpoint given the strident support for Trump there. But the movie isn’t overtly political, thank God — which is actually a good way to gain genuine insight into the political/cultural dynamics of The Villages. I really recommend watching the documentary, which is available on Video On Demand and most recently, Hulu. In this occasional edition of my Substack-hosted podcast, I chatted with the director, Lance Oppenheim.

Notwithstanding the comically intense online vitriol he often seems to provoke, Jesse Singal is a fairly laid-back guy. He also has a new book out this week, The Quick Fix, which I’ve read and can recommend. Upon its publication Singal has been greeted with a new wave of attempts to stigmatize both him and the book, primarily on the ground that he is allegedly “transphobic”—even though the book has nothing to do with Trans issues, and by no conceivable standard of reasonability could he be deemed “transphobic.” But that hasn’t stopped the LGBTQ advocacy organization “GLAAD” from placing him on their scary-sounding “Accountability List,” with the precise mechanism of “accountability” they are aiming for left suspiciously unspecified.

The book provides a helpful framework to understand how bogus, evidence-devoid pop psychology concepts get transmitted through the academia —> journalism pipeline, and how the uncritical acceptance of those concepts encourages poor reasoning and bad political outcomes. So if you notice any questionable “fads” gaining prominence today, the book will give you a methodology to process them with some critical distance—which, as Singal demonstrates, the media is often uninterested in doing.

Reminder that in addition to listening directly on Substack, you can subscribe to the podcast on all the typical platforms, as well as YouTube where I post video versions. Enjoy!

Helen Andrews’ fabulously acidic book Boomers has earned a rousing enough recommendation from me that I decided to feature her as the first guest in the newly revived M. Tracey podcast series, now hosted on Substack. Previously I’d been averse to demarcating political conflict by generational lines, but this book has spicily dispelled any lingering apprehension I had in that regard. There’s plenty of cancellable material in here if you’re inclined to be scandalized — an apologia for the virtues of old-style European empire, a counter-intuitive ode to the savvy of Al Sharpton, numerous bitter pills to swallow on the failures of American imperial hegemony and modern feminism, etc. Mysteriously though, Helen reports not yet having been canceled — which raises the question of whether she’s immunized by dint of already being a hardened conservative, and therefore not susceptible to demands for her to grovelingly repudiate herself. Or maybe it’s just because the potentially-scandalized lack the attention span to get through the book, which would be in keeping with her general thesis of boomer violence upon our collective cognitive faculties. Hope you enjoy the conversation.

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I talked to Branko Marcetic, writer for Jacobin and In These Times, about the foreign policy positioning of the Democratic primary candidates (or lack thereof).

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I talked to Aaron Maté about the latest Ukraine/impeachment developments. This is derived from a YouTube livestream recorded September 25.

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I spoke to Ben Howe, author of the new book "The Immoral Majority," about his criticism of Evangelical Christian political power in the age of Trump. He himself is an Evangelical Christian and strongly dislikes Trump, but I tried to avoid the typical "Never Trump" discursive pitfalls!

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I spoke to Democratic presidential candidate Joe Sestak in New Hampshire. If you're not familiar with him, you're probably not alone. But even "minor" candidates deserve a fair hearing, and it was an interesting discussion.

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Fredrick Brennan, the founder of 8chan, has been in the news due to mass shooters posting "manifestos" on the site. We discuss his views on the contemporary internet.

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I talked to Kyle Kulinski, the popular YouTube commentator also known as Secular Talk, about how he conceives of his role in the contemporary media landscape. We also discuss how he set up Bernie Sanders' interview with Joe Rogan!

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I talked to former Congressman and two-time presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich about the most recent Democratic debates, his 2017 trip to Syria with Tulsi Gabbard, and more.

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