"Senate Weighs Investing $120 Billion in Science to Counter China," trumpeted The New York Times in 2021. "A New Economic Patriotism Can Help Unite Our Divided Congress," argued Newsweek in 2023. "US cedes ground to China with ‘self-inflicted wound’ of USAid shutdown, analysts say," cautioned The Guardian in 2025. 

In recent years, we’ve been exposed to the latest version of a centuries-old geopolitical message: We all have a common enemy, and we all need to unite to fight it by making our own country stronger. That enemy—most commonly China—is threatening to outpace, if it isn’t already outpacing, the US in infrastructural investment, educational programs, technological development, and elsewhere, and we need to devote millions, billions, even trillions of dollars to restoring the vitality of our institutions in order to reverse this trend. 

But why must defeating an "enemy" be the justification for policy that has the potential to benefit the public? Why should we just accept the premise that there must be an "enemy" to compete against and defeat? Why can’t policy be enacted for the sole purpose of improving people’s lives? And how does this messaging about the threat of a looming adversary serve the ruling class?

On this episode, we detail the timeworn trope of the common enemy as a "unifying" device, looking at how increasingly so-called progressives are appealing to feel-good sentiments of unity and to the genuine needs for sound infrastructure, robust social safety nets, corporate regulation, and functional institutions in order to sell the idea that there is, and always will be, a shadowy bad guy that must be vanquished. 

Our guest is historian, professor and author Greg Grandin.

Episode 218: The Siren Song of Rallying Around a 'Common Enemy' to Promote Progressive Causes

We discuss the work Jack Lemmon and Walter Mathau did together: GRUMPY OLD MEN, THE ODD COUPLE 2, THE FRONT PAGE, BUDDY BUDDY.

Send us stuff like zines, movie related books, physical media or memorabilia c/o Justin Decloux, Unit 1010, 3230 Yonge St, Toronto, ON, M4N 3P6, Canada

Join the Patreon now for an exclusive episode every week, access to our entire Patreon Episode back catalogue, your name read out on the next episode, and the friendly Discord chat: patreon.com/theimportantcinemaclub

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Check out Justin's other podcasts, THE BAY STREET VIDEO PODCAST (@thebaystreetvideopodcast), THE VERY FINE COMIC BOOK PODCAST (www.theveryfinecomicbookpodcast.com) and NO SUCH THING AS A BAD MOVIE (@nosuchthingasabadmovie), as Will's MICHAEL AND US (@michael-and-us).

#427 - Old Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau Were Huge Comedy Stars in The 90s

“Jaw Clench Study Takes Tax Dollars,” United Press International cautioned in 1975. “‘Shrimp On A Treadmill’: Rand Paul Mocks National Science Foundation Studies,” Forbes reported in 2021. “Gov't waste report finds $400K spent to give lonely rats cocaine: 'Absurd',” Fox News told viewers in 2024. 

According to these headlines, a wasteful, woke liberal government has been squandering taxpayer money on something wholly undeserving: frivolous scientific studies. Tens of thousands to millions of dollars, we’re told, are being handed out like candy so scientists can sit around watching monkeys clench their jaws, putting shrimp on treadmills, and give cocaine to rats. And who gets to choose which studies are funded? Wasteful ultra woke organizations like the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, and Health and Human Services. 

It’s true that some research doesn’t end up having much practical relevance––indeed this is the nature of scientific inquiry! There are sometimes cul-de-sacs and wrong paths. But the majority of the time, studies that are trivialized in media and on the Senate floor aren’t superfluous at all. 

While soundbites like “shrimp on a treadmill” might paint a ridiculous picture, they’re also taken out of context, obscuring the scientific merit and moral import of the research and researchers, who work for years on often obscure, tedious lines of inquiry only to have their lives’ work reduced to a cheap punchline by bad-faith demagogues playing to the public’s ignorance and lizard brain impulses. 

So, why is this media and political punchline so popular? And what’s the agenda of the lawmakers and media organizations that denigrate and misrepresent research and science more broadly, and the larger current of conspicuous anti-intellectualism that has always been present in American political culture, but in the last ten years has entirely taken over the modern American Right? 

On this episode, we discuss the decades-old, anti-intellectual gambit of mocking and attacking the “frivolous study,” examining how it warps and devalues science and international cooperation in a broader effort to defund public institutions, both scientific and otherwise.

Our guest is Brenda Ekwurzel, Senior Director of Scientific Excellence at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Ep 221: Anti-Science Mugging on the Right and the Ascent of American Anti-Intellectualism

Writer Devin O'Shea joins us to talk about the recent tornado that hit St. Louis: how it has revealed the socio-economic past, present, and future, and what we can expect in a world where climate change will continue to disrupt the social landscape

Read Devin's article here: https://www.thenation.com/article/economy/st-louis-tornado-delmar-divide-recovery/

Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

Episode 394: Bring The Kiln (w/ special guest Devin O'Shea)

We talk to Daniel Boguslaw (https://danboguslaw.substack.com/) about Andrew Cuomo’s real estate backers, and his side job as a bag man for Epstein’s business partner.

Hit the tip line: (646) 801-1129 | tips@trueanon.com

Discover more episodes at podcast.trueanon.com

Episode 467: Cuomo & Epstein: Island Boys

This week we're joined by returning guest Tracy Rosenthal to discuss the Zohran Mamdani mayoral campaign: how it was shaped, how it won the Democratic Primary, what it may look like going forward, and how the rest of the media and political class is reacting to it. But first, we catch up on some housekeeping re: Israel and the U.S.'s war against Iran, and talk very briefly about Peter Thiel's fixation on the Antichrist.

Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

Episode 398: If You Don't Fight, You Lose (w/ special guest Tracy Rosenthal)

Will & Hesse sit down with Ari Aster, director of Hereditary, Midsommar, Beau is Afraid, and the upcoming Eddington. They rap on evil movies, mixing stupid slapstick humor with pain & discomfort, creating a contemporary western out of the recent past, some of Ari’s favorite films & filmmakers, and of course…the all-consuming sense of impending doom & lurking doubt that surrounds us.

Check out Eddington, in theaters this summer on July 18th.

Movie Mindset Bonus - Interview With Director Ari Aster


The QAA crew is excited to announce the launch of a new podcast series network: Cursed Media. We hope you’ll also be excited for this expansion of our editorial line and support it by subscribing!

The very first Cursed Media podcast series is Science in Transition, an investigation into the intellectual origins of the contemporary right wing backlash against transgender acceptance. Through six deeply-researched episodes, hosts Liv Agar and Spencer Barrows unearth a bizarre coalition of well-meaning clinicians, aristocratic sexologists, militant feminists, right-wing culture warriors, headline-chasing journalists, and conservative politicians.

On this episode of QAA we are joined by Liv and Spencer to chat about what they found by digging through FOIA documents, interviewing experts, and diving into dense medical journals. 

Get access to Science in Transition plus all other Cursed Media content by following this link: 

https://www.cursedmedia.net/

Subscribers to Cursed Media get access to three new podcast series per year, plus every episode of QAA’s existing mini-series (properly organized!) 

Manclan by Julian Feeld and Annie Kelly, 
Trickle Down by Travis View
The Spectral Voyager by Jake Rockatansky and Brad Abrahams
Perverts by Julian Feeld and Liv Agar

Cursed Media logo by https://dayoff.ltd

What is "Science in Transition" feat Liv Agar & Spencer Barrows (E331)

We managed to catch up with actor and environmentalist Ed Begley Jr. while he was in town for Harry Dean Stanton Fest. We talked about a number of things like, of course, Harry Dean Stanton, as well as demonic possession, our favorite movies, and why a hot pot of magma will make you well-liked among all your friends. Also, happy birthday to our dearly departed Harry Dean Stanton.

Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

BONUS: Six Degrees Of Ed Begley Jr. (w/ special guest Ed Begley Jr.)

This week we're talking "toxic empathy," more Epstein-Trump news, and finally the new Democratic formula for success: saying more curse words

Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

Episode 401: Gotta Have Them Libs

"Exclusive Look at Life in War-Ravaged Gaza," reads the title for a CNN interview with correspondent Clarissa Ward. "'It's a Killing Field': IDF Soldiers Ordered to Shoot Deliberately at Unarmed Gazans Waiting for Humanitarian Aid," report Yaniv Kubovich and Bar Peleg for Ha'aretz. "I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It," argues Omer Bartov in The New York Times.

These stories have something in common: they’re vital pieces of journalism about Gaza, or Palestine more broadly, published in Western and Western-aligned outlets. This is, obviously, important. Reporting like this keeps Western audiences informed about Israel’s genocide in Gaza, fortifies sympathetic Westerners’ solidarity with Palestine, and serves as an essential counter to the pro-Israel PR machine powering so much other Western media coverage.

But while these pieces have made a splash among their audiences, in many cases, they’re building upon points that Palestinian journalists, writers, and activists had been making weeks, months, even years before. So why is the reporting of Palestinian journalists–especially their reporting on what’s happening within their own country and cities–so often ignored, only to be heeded after it gets the Western stamp of approval?

On this episode — our Season 8 finale and also the second part of our two-part series on “The Importance of Seriousness, or Why Palestinians Can’t Be Witness to Their Own Genocide” — we explore the discrepancies in the alleged credibility between Western and Israeli journalists and Palestinian and other Arab journalists, especially when it comes to reporting on Israel’s genocide in Gaza. We’ll look at how, by Western standards, journalists don’t build legitimacy by being correct, so much as by being in close proximity to the political and media establishments.

Our guest is writer and organizer Kaleem Hawa.

Ep 227: The Importance of 'Seriousness,' or Why Palestinians Can't Be Witness to Their Own Genocide (Part II)

Conspiracy theories, melted online communities and cursed media — we pry open the cracks in consensus reality and journey into the hidden worlds below. The QAA Podcast is a mix of reporting, comedy, and history hosted by Jake Rockatansky, Travis View, and Julian Feeld along with co-hosts Annie Kelly, Liv Agar and Brad Abrahams. Formerly known as the QAnon Anonymous podcast.