We speak to Paris Marx of Tech Won't Save Us on the shifting politics of Silicon Valley. We'll traverse the intellectual history of hippies-turned-arch-capitalists, and focus especially on their ideas for transportation policy. Do they have a radical vision for a different transportation future, or is it a vision of maintain the status quo?
The first two episodes of this series told stories of technocrats who tied themselves to a muscular state. They believed the state could remake society, if it had the right expertise. However, the state under neoliberalism doesn’t have the technocratic ambitions or capacities it used to. Does that mean technocracy is dead? No, technocracy is just moving into the private sphere.
Canadian media is full of galaxy brain columnists. Luckily there is a show who reads their crap so that you don't have to: Big Shiny Takes, aka Jeremy Appel, Eric Wickham and Marino Greco.
We're featuring this episode because your esteemed host and editor Gordon Katic made an appearance to discuss the latest unfathomably smart take: Matthew McConaughey has a moral obligation to run for president of the United States. It's stunning intellectual work like this that has led Big Shiny Takes to become the world's first anti free speech podcast.
It's a different vibe to our usual programming, but we think you'll like it because Big Shiny Takes is witty and anarchic and smart. The team really deserve a lot of recognition for doing the lord's work: shit-talking columnists.
The pickup truck is the symbol of rural conservative masculinity. So, it often takes centre stage in the tired culture wars between reactionary neo-populists and liberal moralists. Like today, with Canada’s right crudely embracing the truck–and tweeting furiously about those ‘Laurentian elites,‘ and ‘Toronto columnists‘ who thumb their nose at it. But, if you really want to piss off the libs: don’t just post about it. Why not hang some big veiny nuts from your truck? Today on the show, we talk about the political history of trucks and trucking.
Why does the democratic establishment always avoid turning left, even when it might mean a political win? Gordon asks David Sirota. Sirota is behind the smash-hit Netflix movie Don’t Look Up! He is also host and co-writer of an excellent podcast series called Meltdown, which documented how Obama’s lacklustre response to the financial crisis set the stage for Trump. We cover a range of topics: from the limits of technocracy, the political co-option of science and expertise, the critical reaction to Don’t Look Up, and whether or not Ideocracy (2006) has bad politics.
