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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

59:01

Episode 32: Rainbows Have Nothing to Hide

The End of the World with Michael and Stu ·

2024/09/10

This week we are discussing Karen Tei Yamashita's novel Through the Arc of the Rainforest, a magical realist look at the realities of corporate exploitation in the developing world. By turns comedic and tragic, the book weaves together the lives of a number of characters in the manner of a Brazilian novela (akin to an American soap opera). It's a great, underappreciated book, and we really enjoyed discussing it, and hopefully our conversation can spur some new readers to give it a l...

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53:57

Episode 31: Into the Great Wide Open

The End of the World with Michael and Stu ·

2024/09/03

We're turning back the clock to 2009 to discuss an epochal turning point in our society, namely, the Balloon Boy incident. While perhaps not as "earth shattering" as some of the other topics we've covered, we make the argument that this incident does mark an important turning point in the nature of media, in that it was one the last "crises" to occur before the 24-hour news networks were subsumed by the all powerful, crushing rise of social media. We recap the incident, look a little bit at t...

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55:02

Episode 30: We're Not Going Back?

The End of the World with Michael and Stu ·

2024/08/27

This week we're covering the recently concluded DNC, noting the ways in which, despite the theme of "not going back," in many ways it feels as if the Democratic party has, in fact, gone back to previous eras of its strength, the Obama Era, the Clinton Era, and so forth. What does this nostalgic reversion bode for the potentially world ending phenomenon looming just over the horizon? We also cover an anti-apocalyptic instance of nostalgia at the top of the episode, namely the looming Oasi...

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59:56

Episode 29: It's Getting Hot in Here

The End of the World with Michael and Stu ·

2024/08/20

This episode is about the 79 CE eruption of Mount Vesuvius which buried and preserved the Roman city of Pompeii as an example of a real world apocalyptic event. We go over the mechanics of what happened, relying on the account of Pliny the Younger. We also discuss what the most recent science has to say about the events as they unfolded before pivoting to a brief discussion of Paul W.S. Anderson's 2014 film, Pompeii, comparing it to a more successful disaster film, James Cameron's Titani...

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60:37

Episode 28: I Don't Want to Miss a Thing

The End of the World with Michael and Stu ·

2024/08/13

We're journeying back to 1998 to consider one of the greatest of all cinematic masterpieces, Michael Bay's Armageddon. Along the way we point out a few of the more...improbable...scientific elements of the film, while also noting the remarkable way such an apocalyptic event was depicted in the less politically charged environment of its era. This is a lighter episode, as there is not much of, shall we say, substance, in this film, but your hosts still heroically tease out the latent Freu...

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62:18

Episode 27: I'll Never be your Beast of Burden

The End of the World with Michael and Stu ·

2024/08/06

This week we're discussing Bertrand Bonello's 2023 filmThe Beast. Starring the brilliant Léa Seydoux and George MacKay, the movie is set in a not too distant future where AI rules human society and has deemed our petty, combustible emotions the enemy of productivity. Therefore, in order to advance in society, individuals must undergo a psycho-surgical procedure whereby they can be "purified" of their excessive emotionality by means of the excision of their inherited, generational traumas. Ref...

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56:00

Episode 26: It's Easier to Imagine the End of the...

The End of the World with Michael and Stu ·

2024/07/30

This week we discuss the Democrats' strategy of calling their electoral opponents "weird" before plunging into a consideration of Alfonso Cuarón's 2006 dystopian masterpiece, Children of Men, paying particular attention to the analysis of Mark Fisher, as found in his landmark 2009 book, Capitalist Realism. Is this film, as Fisher suggests, an metaphor for the wasting effect of neoliberalism upon creativity? Is it a religious allegory? Can we somehow connect the "weirdness" of JD Vance's natal...

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58:50

Episode 25: What You Thought Would Be Your Future

The End of the World with Michael and Stu ·

2024/07/23

This week we are discussing Omar El Akkad's 2017 novel American War, which imagines a civil war in a future America driven by conflict over the continued use of fossil fuels. Charting the lives of the Chestnut family, the book paints a grim picture of the consequences of civil strife, reversing the polarity of past interventions by showing what it might look like if foreign empires began interfering in internal America conflicts in the way that America has so frequently interfered in the affa...

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54:53

Episode 24: The 2012 Phenomenon and the Current...

The End of the World with Michael and Stu ·

2024/07/16

This week we spend the first twenty minutes of the show discussing the ramifications of the attempted assassination of former President Trump before diving into a consideration of the apocalyptic 2012 Phenomenon, with special attention paid to the 2009 blockbuster, Roland Emmerich's 2012. At the episode's conclusion we adroitly knit the two halves of the conversation together by thinking about apocalypticism and messianism, and how the hoped for Utopia to be ushered in in the wake of a d...

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59:57

Episode 23: Do the Collapse

The End of the World with Michael and Stu ·

2024/07/09

We follow up on the state of contemporary politics as covered in our last episode before turning back the clock to discuss one of the genuinely apocalyptic periods of the past, namely the Late Bronze Age Collapse. Does the sudden dissolution of several ancient Mediterranean societies have anything to teach us about our current situation? Who were the Sea Peoples, and are they coming back? Should we still live in fear of their return? How does this relate to the Trojan War of Ancient Greek lit...

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56:37

Episode 22: The End of the World with Donald and Joe

The End of the World with Michael and Stu ·

2024/07/02

Election fever has gripped the United States and we are here to break it down, specifically the June 27, 2024 debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. We discuss the debate itself briefly, but focus mostly on the aftermath, and what it bodes for the future of our republic. Topics covered include Donald Trump's (potentially disastrous) Project 2025, what (if anything) to expect from a second term for Joe Biden, and some historical precedents for...societies in decline. The pod also explores ...

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66:30

Episode 21: Watching for Pigs on the Wing

The End of the World with Michael and Stu ·

2024/06/25

This week we're getting back into post-apocalyptic literature by considering a novel by legendary Canadian writer Margaret Atwood, namely 2003's Oryx and Crake. Set in a world...surprisingly similar to our own, where bioengineering has become the dominate mode of technological progress, the book tracks three main characters, Jimmy (aka Snowman) and the titular Oryx and Crake and the roles the play in bringing about the end of humanity and the dawn of a new, post-human era. An amazingly presci...

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59:30

Episode 20: Let the Man You Have Become Be the Boy...

The End of the World with Michael and Stu ·

2024/06/18

This week we're talking about Edgar Wright's 2013 film The World's End, a movie that explores the idea of severe arrested development in the context of a covert alien invasion. We also explore some unsettling news regarding a potential tsunami overwhelming the Pacific Northwest in the future, whether in two hundred hours or two hundred years, and what changes might need to be made in order to counter the destructive potential in such a happening. We also get into Stu's comical experience...

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51:38

Episode 19: Last Chance to Dance Trance

The End of the World with Michael and Stu ·

2024/06/11

We're examining the recent "trend" of so-called "Last Chance Tourism" in this episode, which is when travelers seek out places or sites that are likely to be destroyed or rendered utterly unrecognizable in coming years as global warming takes its toll. We explore the paradoxes of this phenomenon, which claims to raise awareness and thus increase "advocacy" while at the same time contributing to the very destruction this raised awareness is supposed to prevent. To wrap things up we also discus...

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59:38

Episode 18: "I Just Want to Say One Word to You:...

The End of the World with Michael and Stu ·

2024/06/04

Plastic takes over the podcast! This week we go over some troubling news about the prevalence of microplastics in certain human organs before diving into a film about human organs that are able to digest plastics, namely David Cronenberg's 2022 movie Crimes of the Future. Is this dystopian depiction of human evolution relevant for changes we see currently happening in our society, or is it merely another opportunity for Cronenberg to indulge in his trademark body horror? We ponder ...

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60:31

Episode 17: California Tumbles into the Sea

The End of the World with Michael and Stu ·

2024/05/28

This week we're discussing Octavia Butler's novel Parable of the Sower, tracking how well this 1993 book predicted the world in which we now find ourselves. Is her vision of a violent, environmentally tormented, violence-ridden California really so far off? We also get into a couple of recent AI-related controversies regarding recent episode topic Her as well as the continuing decline of the now-AI-infected Google. Spoilers in this episode for Parable of the Sower.https://www.i...

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65:38

Episode 16: Love in a Hopeless Place

The End of the World with Michael and Stu ·

2024/05/21

We're going into the marine depths of Yorgos Lanthimos's 2015 meditation on monogamy, The Lobster. What does this starkly delineated world of relationships have to say about our old more loosely defined world? Is our own society headed towards a similarly bleak status quo? We get into these questions and truly so much more!This episode contains spoilers for The Lobster.https://www.instagram.com/theendoftheworldwms/https://youtube.com/@TheEndoftheWorldwMS?si=xmj-2e0s58JdN8-Bhttps://l...

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68:54

Episode 15: Mom, I'm Dating Siri

The End of the World with Michael and Stu ·

2024/05/14

This week we're getting into the many absurdities of 2013's Spike Jonze directed AI romcom, Her. We discuss the technical problems with the film's depiction of AI, plus Stu educates Michael on the particulars of the non-vol-cel community, which he has, for some reason, researched extensively. We also spend a few minutes off the top riffing on Jerry Seinfeld, our greatest living comedian, film star, and philosopher. This episode contains spoilers for Her. https://www.instagram.c...

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58:07

Episode 14: He's the Ghoul that's Kept it Together Best

The End of the World with Michael and Stu ·

2024/05/07

We're talking about Amazon Prime's new smash hit series Fallout. Along the way we touch on such subjects as Ridley Scott, 50's Nostalgia, Plato's Cave, Jerry Seinfeld's scintillating and brilliant new movie about snacks, as well as JRR Tolkien's alleged antipathy for Shakespeare. We also get into why this is such a successful adaptation of a video game property, looking specifically at how it smartly layers an enjoyable and fun plot on top of an interestingly-constructed world, blending new c...

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70:30

Episode 13: "The Greatest Defeat in the History of...

The End of the World with Michael and Stu ·

2024/04/30

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