I just listened to the Twunkhole Capital episode and nearly got killed by the Eurofinance Debauchery bit. What are some other great Trashfuture episodes? I already have all the Felix guest episodes bookmarked after listening to the Malcolm Gladwell one
Britainology Falklands War (recently unlocked) was amazing. Years and Years miniseries review delivers an excellnt understansding of the microcosm of the British liberal mindset. An interesting crossover is the Kornerspati ep on Italian politics. I nearly died listening to that one.
Line Go Stop (Mar 3 2020), they called this “Season 3” and I thought it was a really good period of economic discussions around this time. American Magic (May 11 2020) keeps on with the same themes, which I find very interesting. Also Sep 30 2020 w Alexandra Scaggs. So really any episode about Line.
There’s the duo of Frankenstein’s Balance Sheet (June 19 2020 and May 1 2021) on Greensill + “reverse supply chain financing” which turns out to be a surprisingly big deal for UK capital, or at least got a bit of time in the “non black pilled socialist weirdo” spotlight.
And any of the episodes with Patrick Wyman, in which the gang describes the fall from grace of the US empire (Mar 30 2020 and Jun 18 2020 in particular, though the latter is a premium episode).
Pretty much every episode from March 2020 to now is great tbh
I kinda think they were expecting a bigger rupture before too long (eg, all the jokes about having run off a cliff and not falling until you look down), and got a bit lost waiting for it. I would absolutely say that the US and UK have, by and large, simply not looked down.
At least that’s been my perspective. Obviously a big rupture hasn’t come, and there’s only so long you can stare at the dark sky in the distance and say “yep, storms comin” before it gets old. But I really liked the “storms comin” vibes when covid etc put so many contradictions on full display. Those contradictions haven’t been resolved in the slightest, but their latest manifestations have been normalized to a much larger degree, compared to early 2020
So I dunno. I found the last couple months to be a little less interesting than when shit first hit the fan. Still good, just not quite the same
not looking down also involved huge amounts of "quantitative easing" i.e. printing money
Every podcast completely overlooks the capitalist system's ability to persevere and ideologies hold on people. Basically nothing improved.
I think the episode that got me interested in TF was "Precision Strikes from the Shorty Airforce," wherein they talk about Tesla's sham practices and their viability as a company being the result of Cali's neoliberal schemes.
I'm having trouble finding it, but they also did this episode with a cool anecdote wherein they mention how a certain private company was deterred from installing fiber optic cable because the board of directors would have their yearly bonuses penalized by any course of action that would amortize over a period of 5 years or longer as opposed to more short term actions, whereas an old holdover telephone co-op from the New Deal was able to install fiber in a small Appalachian county with the help of a mule named 'Ol Bub, that later boosted it's per capita earnings by doing online English courses to these rich young Chinese kids who have millionaire parents and, now, Appalachian accents. I think they became known as Silicon Holler.
