Outsider Theory

Tim Abrahams, an architecture writer and publisher of Machine Books, explores why the real literature of lockdown may come from older weird fiction. They discuss uncanny homes, domestic confinement, Freud, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Algernon Blackwood, Maupassant, O. Henry, and Mark Fisher. The conversation connects isolation, work, technology, invisible threats, and political unease to the forthcoming anthology The Machine Book of Weird.

In this special episode, guest host Daniel Hadas interviews Medical Nemesis on covid, Illich, industrialized medicine and thought, and more. https://twitter.com/DanielHadas2 https://twitter.com/Medical_Nemesis https://medicalnemesis.substack.com/

Matthew Crawford explores whether postwar social engineering helped reshape sexual norms, from Wilhelm Reich and the Frankfurt School to sex education and the therapeutic state. The conversation ranges through masculinity, masturbation, Freud, Foucault, bureaucracy, and the uneasy politics of liberation.

Brian Chau returns to Outsider Theory to discuss ChatGPT's woke catechism. https://cactus.substack.com/

Blaise Bayno (@urgurlblaise), former critical theory PhD student and co-organizer of the conference "Society Must Be Inoculated," joins me to discuss how critical theory became uncritical cheerleading for biopolitical authoritarianism, academic labor issues, the history of the UC Santa Cruz History of Consciousness program, and more.

Thomas and Brett of Psyop Cinema join a deep dive into Hollywood’s role in cultural engineering. They explore Roland Emmerich, *Under the Silver Lake*, MKUltra, mind control, and the shifting archetypes of the outsider, assassin, serial killer, and mass shooter. The conversation also traces how counterculture, psychological dissociation, and conspiracy stories weave through cinema and American pop culture.

Why do bureaucracies reward status games over getting things done? Brian Chau joins a lively discussion about institutional decline, decentralization, Curtis Yarvin, right-wing aesthetics, and the legacy of William F. Buckley. They also explore universities, Silicon Valley, and how organizations can end up selecting for the very people who keep them stuck.

Jon Askonas joins me to discuss his ongoing series of essays in The New Atlantis, "Reality: A Post-Mortem." Read the series here: https://www.thenewatlantis.com/collections/reality-a-post-mortem

Essayist and poet Alice Gribbin joins me to discuss her recent essay in Tablet, "The Great Debasement," on the ideological transformation of museums and other cultural institutions into propaganda organs; the utilitarian attitude to art; the continued relevance of John Berger's "Ways of Seeing"; and more. https://substack.com/profile/5192682-alice-gribbin https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/great-debasement-art https://quillette.com/2021/06/05/the-artist-and-the-censor/

Jacob Siegel explores how ideas from Frankfurt School critical theory have found new life on the right. The conversation ranges from Herbert Marcuse and the journal Telos to Paul Gottfried, Curtis Yarvin, and Peter Thiel’s emerging counter-elite. They also examine free-speech battles, populism, and the strange appeal of countercultural politics.