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PODCAST

The End of the World with Michael and Stu

The End of the World with Michael and Stu

The Apocalypse is Everywhere. The End of the World with Michael and Stu is a (hopefully) insightful and (hopefully) humorous exploration of the rise of apocalyptic news, apocalyptic thinking and apocalyptic culture. Each week, we’ll be looking at a work of art, a piece of media, or an historical event related to the (hopefully not) impending End of the World.

comedy

All Episodes

56:30

72: But Are "Friends" Electric?

The End of the World with Michael and Stu ·

2025/06/10

This week we are continuing our suite of robot themed episodes by discussing the play that originated the word, R.U.R. by Karel Čapek which was first written in 1920. Derived from a Czech term meaning "serf" or "worker," these robots are more akin to the androids and other humanoid robots to be found in works like Blade Runner or Companion than the metallic beings to be found in Star Wars. While the play itself is perhaps not the most dramaturgically compelling work we've examined, it is incr...

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57:44

71: We Are Programmed Just to Do Anything You Want Us To

The End of the World with Michael and Stu ·

2025/06/03

This week we are talking about robots. Where did they come from? What are they? Are they really going to replace all human workers? We get into the history of these machines, while looking at the implications for them, should they be paired with AI. We also discuss Elon Musk's fixation on humanoid robots, and where this obsession derives from. We also get into the Ukrainian drone attacks in Russia, as well as discussing the recently aired claim that up to twenty percent of white collar ...

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61:08

70: Bring Me A Dream

The End of the World with Michael and Stu ·

2025/05/27

This week we are discussing E.T.A. Hoffman's short story, The Sandman, which presciently anticipates some potential psychological consequences of a too-deep dependence on artificial beings for companionship, while also pointing towards the fundamentally destabilizing possibilities a world filled with autonomous, robotic beings might bring. We go over the story, making reference to Freud's famous essay "The 'Uncanny'" which he partly based on this story, while also connecting the concerns...

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52:58

69: In This Everlasting Twilight

The End of the World with Michael and Stu ·

2025/05/20

This week we are talking about the growth of emotional dependency on AI as programs like ChatGPT become more ubiquitous and more sophisticated. We recognize that this has the potential to be, in a sense, a double apocalypse, as the rise of AI threatens to make human beings completely redundant while at the same time the resources used to power AI make the planet increasingly uninhabitable as climate change accelerates. We segue directly into a consideration of a film that deals with these ide...

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44:17

68: Round and Round and Round We Spin

The End of the World with Michael and Stu ·

2025/05/13

This week we are discussing Rian Johnson's 2012 film Looper, a time travel movie that (perhaps accurately) predicts a bleak future where class stratification and rampant criminality have flourished unchecked. Time travel has been invented and its primary use seems to be the elimination of hit men who are sent back in time to be murdered by their younger selves. We get into some of the problems with this premise while also praising aspects of the world building; while we didn't love...

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46:31

67: You Can Never Break the Chain

The End of the World with Michael and Stu ·

2025/05/06

This week we are talking about global supply chains and how they might be stretched, perhaps to the breaking point, if the Trump tariffs are allowed to take effect. We revisit the moment when many of us were first introduced to the idea of a supply chain, the early days of Covid-19, and look at how the current potential supply chain disaster differs. We also revisit another cherished memory from recent years, the EVER GIVEN incident, and discuss the ways economists love to use the human body ...

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47:32

66: I Cursed the Gloom that Set Upon Us

The End of the World with Michael and Stu ·

2025/04/29

This week we are discussing Ridley Scott's 1982 classic sci-fi noir Blade Runner. While we praise the visual depiction of a post-nuclear-war American city, we both found the plot somewhat difficult to hook into, so to speak. While the essential examination of the question of humanity, and what it would mean for an android to achieve a fully realized humanity, we both had some issues with the way the film attempted to raise this issue. Stu contrasts this with the novel on which the film i...

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54:40

65: Across the Great Divide

The End of the World with Michael and Stu ·

2025/04/22

This week we are discussing psychics, specifically psychic medium John Edward of Crossing Over with John Edward. This program which ran from 2001 to 2004 purported to connect living people to their dead relatives by means of Edward's psychic mediumship. We go over a brief history of psychics from ancient times to the present before digging into Edward's methods and claims; does he really offer a genuine line of communication between the living and the dead, or is he merely a mediocre pra...

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67:10

64: A Cyclops Walks Across the Sky

The End of the World with Michael and Stu ·

2025/04/15

This week we are discussing two recent albums by mainstays of 2000s era indie rock that deal directly and obliquely with climate change, namely Mount Eerie's 2024 release Night Palace and Dirty Projectors/David Longstreth/s t a r g a z e's 2025 record Song of the Earth. We talk a bit about the history of both artists and why it might be that they are turning to considering the question of climate at this perilous moment in our world's history. We also get into topics like Romanticis...

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55:07

63: Take My Advice You'd Be Better Off Dead

The End of the World with Michael and Stu ·

2025/04/08

This week we are looking at Train to Busan, a 2016 film directed by Yeon Sang-ho. It's a zombie apocalypse movie set on a train moving from the South Korean capital of Seoul to the southern city of Busan. We get into the film's historical overtones, as well as the family drama that plays out amid this unfolding horror show. We open the episode with a discussion of the economic turmoil unleashed by the announcement of Donald Trump's tariff regime. Does the fact that the tariff rates...

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58:19

62: A Dry Voice Comes from a Stingy Heart

The End of the World with Michael and Stu ·

2025/04/01

This week we're are discussing Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson's recent book Abundance. This text offers a new vision of the future for the Democratic Party to center as it attempts to claw back power, ignoring for the most part the larger societal issues of wealth inequality in favor of focusing on regulatory changes that could be made to spearhead a new era of American growth and innovation. Suffice it to say, we have a few issues with the book's focus, while also finding within its pages som...

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65:34

61: One Step from the Great Beyond

The End of the World with Michael and Stu ·

2025/03/25

We're talking about the rise and fall of Julius Caesar and the end of the Roman Republic this week, following up on our previous episode. We've got anecdotes about Caesar weeping before statues, his run in with pirates, his war against Vercingetorix in Gaul; all your favorite Caesar stories are here! Plus we also muse a bit on Caesar's death; why did he not take more precautions? Was it a case of suicide by senator? We get into the details, while also touching on the lives of his friends and ...

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62:18

60: We're Together Dead and Lonely

The End of the World with Michael and Stu ·

2025/03/18

This week we're discussing the run up to the final collapse of the Roman Republic, charting such characters as Scipio Aemelianus, the Gracchi Brothers, Gaius Marius, and Sulla and attempting to map them and their historical circumstances onto some of the events of recent American history. While the analogies are imperfect, there are enough similarities for the comparison to be...troubling. We use the book The Storm before the Storm by illustrious podcaster Mike Duncan as our guide i...

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70:03

59: A Man of Wealth and Taste

The End of the World with Michael and Stu ·

2025/03/11

This week we are diving into the weird world of Robert Francis Kennedy, Jr., the newly confirmed Secretary of Health and Human Services in the second Trump administration. We go over his history of environmental activism and chart how this morphed into a profoundly conspiracist worldview that, with him now in control of the levers of power in the American health sector, has the potential to do enormous harm to the well-being of the citizens of this country and indeed the citizens of the world...

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59:56

58: Where Strangers are as Family and Loneliness...

The End of the World with Michael and Stu ·

2025/03/04

This week we are discussing Todd Haynes's film Safe (1995). We get into how the movie explores the creeping sense of meaning being sapped out of suburban life in the late 1980s, focusing on the ways this parallels dilemmas that are manifesting in our contemporary moment. We also go over the film's consideration of "environmental illness" and how this notion of being poisoned by the world in which one lives brings with it attendant psychological challenges. This is one of the best pi...

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58:46

57: A Stronger Loving World to Die In

The End of the World with Michael and Stu ·

2025/02/25

This week we are tackling one of Stu's all-time favorite comics, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons's Watchmen. We go through the main characters and discuss the apocalyptic ramifications of this extremely well-wrought tale of a society on the edge of destruction. We also tease out the implications of costumed vigilantism suggested by Moore's text, considering how it is these figures which have such a large place in popular culture have no purchase at all in reality. Would a Watchmen-esque sche...

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53:57

56: As Parasites Might in your Blood

The End of the World with Michael and Stu ·

2025/02/18

This week we are discussing all things CANADA! Specifically, why does President Trump claim it is a "great contender" to become the 51st state? What is it about the US's northern neighbor that is so attractive to the would-be empire builder president? How is this issue playing out in Canada itself? Would a military conquest of Canada result in a brutal insurgency that might destroy the United States itself? All these questions and more are tackled in this episode. We also discuss the re...

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56:25

55: The Ocean at your Door

The End of the World with Michael and Stu ·

2025/02/11

This week we are joined by comedian, actress and writer Maggie Crane to discuss Bo Burnham's divisive comedy special Inside from 2021. We get into some of the critiques of the special, while also noting the things about it which we really like. Is Inside "our King Lear" or are we still waiting for the definitive covid-era great work to emerge? If you are in Los Angeles, catch Maggie's half hour standup set at the Lyric Hyperion on March 19, 2025. This episode contains spo...

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63:04

54: The Birds of Leaving Call to Us

The End of the World with Michael and Stu ·

2025/02/04

This week we're talking about the first season of the hit Apple TV+ show Severance. We examine the ways the show functions as a reflection of our current, corporation-dominated world, exploring questions of work/life balance as well as the potential abuses inherent in a severance-like procedure. We also ask the all important question: what if severance could go even further? Is the severance procedure merely the first step in a Frankensteinian process moving humanity ever closer to the d...

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47:34

53: If I Could Turn Back Time

The End of the World with Michael and Stu ·

2025/01/28

This week we are devoting a full episode to news, recapping the first week of Donald Trump's second term as president. We discuss the myriad executive orders the president has issued, ranging from his pardons, to his crackdown at the border, to his taking the United States out of the World Health Organization and the Paris Climate Agreement. What are the long term implications of these moves, and is there a light at the end of the tunnel? Is there a tunnel? Are we just now in a cave at the ce...

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92 results

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