The popularity of HGTV house-flipping TV shows can’t be overstated: In the second week of July, HGTV was the fourth highest rated cable network, behind only Fox News, MSNBC and CNN, making it the highest rated entertainment network in the United States. Its most prominent programming: the reliable, risk free formula of home flipping shows. All of these shows—Flip or Flop and its many regional spinoffs, Good Bones, Flipping 101, to name just a few—share a basic formula: house-flippers, usually a family business in the form of a husband and wife team or parent and child with a folksy rapport, buy a neglected house on the cheap—cue zoom-ins on mold, water damage, decaying wood, dust and dead bugs—that’s often in a relatively poor or gentrifying neighborhood.

They then turn it into something they describe as "beautiful", to be sold at a much higher price to, most likely, young white people looking for a "funky" home in an "up-and-coming" neighborhood. But at what cost do these glossy, get-rich-quick reality shows entertain us?  What ideologies do they promote, and how do they erase the working class black and brown families whose housing was condemned, and communities were systemically neglected, before the camera’s even began rolling?

On this episode—our  Season 3 finale—we take a look at these shows to understand how and why HGTV became a glorified commercial for house-flipping and gentrification, examining its indifference to housing instability and its dead-eyed cheerleading of “middle-class” bourgeois aspirationalism, no matter the social cost. 

Our guests are culture writer Ann-Derrick Gaillot and Atlanta-based community organizer Kamau Franklin.

Episode 116: The Pro-Gentrification Aspirationalism of HGTV's House-Flipping Shows

One point brought up in Episode 116, highlighting the connection between real estate interests and over-policing, solicited a lot of feedback from listeners. In this News Brief, we wanted to expand upon this topic by interviewing an academic source we cited in the episode: assistant professor of sociology at the University of Colorado Denver Brenden Beck, whose work focuses on the intersection between "urban development" projects and the targeted, sustain harassment of communities of color.

News Brief: Detailing the Connection Between Gentrification and Racist Police Harassment

WE ARE BACK -- and laden with information about Ghislaine Maxwell's post-arrest machinations, and new terrible details about her pre-arrest sprees

Episode 90: Docudump

We take a look at the recent hubbub surrounding the USPS, what motivates the drive toward privatization, and the larger ideological underpinnings of the Libertarian revolution.

Episode 94: Koch'd Up (Part I)

This week we figure out why everyone thinks antifa trying to kill smoky the bear. We also talk about a haunted statue of Melania.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/16/world/europe/melania-trump-sculpture-slovenia.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/09/18/scapegoating-antifa-starting-wildfires-distracts-real-causes/

MERCH:
PodDamnAmerica.BigCartel.com

PATREON:
Patreon.com/PodDamnAmerica

West Coast... You're Fired

Every year, a series of highly anticipated listicles of "successful" and "influential" people hailed for their accomplishments surface in corporate media. Forbes reveals the most successful 30 people under the age of 30, and Fortune hails the most successful 40 Under 40. Meanwhile, other business outlets like TechCrunch, Fast Company and CNBC seek a taste of the hype with their own spinoffs. 

Each time one of these lists is published, a flurry of meta-press ensues. CNN, BBC, and The Los Angeles Times run pieces fawning over these high-profile lists, cementing their status as career launchers within the worlds of tech, politics, finance, venture capital, and other pockets of industry prized in capitalist economies. To the extent left types are chosen, it’s almost always due to their ability to mimic capitalist brand-building or channel activist energy into billionaire-backed nonprofits. Thematically similar stories of “success” are just as ubiquitous: headlines such as Business Insider’s "What 31 highly successful people were doing at age 25" or Oprah's "20 Things Everyone Should Master by Age 40" all create a ticking time bomb notion of "achievement" and success operating under a very specific capitalist framework of human worth. 

But why are these outlets entrusted with determining whose "success" or "influence" matters? How do these concepts punish – or at least – disappear the poor, disabled and people of color who don’t have the institutional resources to “achieve” capitalist success at such a young age? And above all, how does American media’s constant fetishization of "youth" and "accomplishment" create psychological wear and tear for the 99 percent of the population who cannot – or don’t want to – meet this definition of "success" by their 30s or 40s. 

On this episode, we analyze the ways in which corporate media’s narratives of "success" peddle neoliberalism, undermine labor solidarity, reinforce unrealistic expectations that degrade collective mental health, and overwhelmingly center the interests of the white professional class.

We are joined by Edward Ongweso Jr. and Sarah Jaffe.

Episode 120: 30 Under 30 Lists and The Problem with Our Youth-Obsessed 'Success' Narratives

Journalist Talia Lavin joins us to discuss her research on the alt right, q-anon, and why boomers think there are underground child sacrifice sex tunnels everywhere. We also talk HP Lovecraft, the Michigan militia who tried to kidnap their governor, and Trump.

TALIA LAVIN
@Chick_in_Kiev
Patreon.com/TaliaLavin
SATANIC PANIC Q ANON PIECE:
https://newrepublic.com/article/159529/qanon-blood-libel-satanic-panic
BOOK:
https://www.hachettebooks.com/titles/talia-lavin/culture-warlords/9780306846434/?utm_expid=.OyywKgKNQfKo0ZgN1WBZtg.0&utm_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F

MUSIC
JAKE HART - Go Away
IG: JakeHartEatsBrains

DEAD OIL - Drip
https://dead-oil.bandcamp.com/releases

MERCH (SHIRTS, BANDANAS, POSTERS)
PodDamnAmerica.BigCartel.Com

PATREON FOR BONUS EPISODES
Patreon.com/PodDamnAmerica

@PodDamnAmerica
@feraljokes
@ptakjokes
@andersleehere

LISTEN TO ALEX'S THIRD PODCAST AND ALSO WHY YOU MAD AND WATCH REDACTED TONIGHT OK BYE

Q Detective w/ Talia Lavin

In this News Brief follow up to Episode 115 on Hollywood's symbiotic relationship with the Pentagon and CIA, we spoke with director and screenwriter Oliver Stone about his experience making mainstream motion pictures about often taboo subjects like the American imperialism and war crimes.

News Brief - Hollywood and the Pentagon: A Follow Up Conversation with Oliver Stone

Comedian James Austin Johnson joins us to do expert reporting and analysis on the election that's still happening or is over or is still happening I can't tell. Then Donald Trump calls us to announce his resignation sort of.

JAMES AUSTIN JOHNSON
@ShrimpJAJ on Twitter and IG
@WTAWTPod

ATLANTA SOLIDARITY FUND
https://actionnetwork.org/fundraising/contribute-to-the-atlanta-solidarity-fund
@ATLSolFund

PHONE BANK FOR RAPHAEL WARNOCK
https://www.mobilize.us/warnockforgeorgia/event/331688/

MERCH
PodDamnAmerica.BigCartel.Com

PATREON
Patreon.com/PodDamnAmerica

2020 ELECTION ANALYSIS BREAKDOWN w/ James Austin Johnson & Donald Trump

A CNN headline from this past summer read: “Mental health during coronavirus: Tips for processing your feelings.” Psychology Today gave us an article on “Coping With Loneliness During a Pandemic,” while the Washington Post presents, “A guide to taking care of yourself during the pandemic.” Everywhere we’ve turned over the past 9 months, American media has been covering the mental health downside of the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent lockdown and economic crash on one of these two settings: Awareness Mode or Self-Help Mode.

The first setting — “Awareness Mode” — is merely witnessing mass suffering; that is, reporting on the topic with no prescriptions offered. Second is “Self-Help Mode,” which is, to the extent these articles do put forth prescriptions for wellness and mental health, it is entirely individualistic in nature. Your well-being during this once-in-a-century pandemic is up to you — but don’t fret, here are some “guides,” ”plans,” “hacks,” and “tricks” to help you out.

Missing from the vast bulk of coverage is the glaringly obvious third option: actionable, proven, political solutions to mental health crises that operate under the radical assumption that  social problems may require social solutions. Nowhere in any of these articles is the idea that socialized medicine, guaranteed income, free childcare, student debt relief or rent and mortgage cancellations may be the best and most rational “hacks” or “tricks” to actually improve mental health of people at scale.

Obviously, a robust social safety net wouldn’t solve all mental health problems — after all, countries with universal healthcare and generous unemployment and childcare benefits still have depression and suicides — but we have decades of data showing basic social welfare clearly improves mental welfare. But because mental health crises are seen as moral failings rather than diseases thrust upon innocent people, we are conditioned to view those suffering from their effects as inevitable, losses simply factored into the moral framework of the world.

It basically goes like this: If a giant blood-sucking monster were ravaging the country killing thousands of people and terrorizing millions more, the media would never provide us “hacks” or “plans” or “tricks” to cope with the giant blood-sucking monster. It would ask the obvious question: What are those in power doing to stop the monster from killing and terrorizing in the first place?

Unfortunately, such an approach is sacrilege in U.S. media when it comes to mental health. The solution is never to lobby for a specific candidate or policy that would provide immediate relief to the masses because neoliberal hyper-atomization, unlike appeals to social solutions, is not seen as political. It’s simply the objective reporter voice mode of journalism U.S. media has uncritically adopted. But collectivist solutions, marked by the political choice to redistribute resources to the less well-off, is a proven technique to help those suffering mental health issues, doubly so during a pandemic that has cut people off from socialization, radially increased substance abuse, and has left millions unemployed.

Our guest is writer Colette Shade.

Ep124 - Mental Health & Covid: How US Media Spins Societal Failures Into Personal Self-Help Journeys

On August 31, 1997, the world changed forever when the famous Princess Diana died in a car crash. This documentary explores new evidence about what really happened that day. (Written by @necrobranson Starring @DanBoeckner @_devojka_ @humidnightblue @RahRahRaina @ByYourLogic @intellegint @charlesraustin)

E1 on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/e1podcast

155 - Crown of Mist: The Final Day of Princess Diana

Citations Needed is a podcast about the media, power, PR, and the history of bullshit. It is hosted by Nima Shirazi and Adam Johnson, and produced by Florence Barrau-Adams.

News Brief: Detailing the Connection Between Gentrification and Racist Police Harassment

Citations Needed Podcast

Related tracks