On this episode of The Future Is A Mixtape, Matthew &amp; Jesse go beyond Michael Moore’s Where to Invade Next and his apt citations of policy successes in other societies found outside the U.S., and will instead grapple with the stasis of the Left and its tragic inability to wrest change from the Death-Dealers of Neoliberalism. How can we learn from both the past and present to make another world possible? How can we transcend the suffering and carnage found in our daily lives that are as deceptively petty as buying child-socks at Target, but are, nonetheless, consumer rituals made heavy by unseen violence? Join our co-hosts as they do a politically drunk version of Jiu-Jitsu via the wreckage of what lies behind, around and ahead of us. Jesse &amp; Matt will then imagine what strategies and tactics are most deserving of our attention in the here-and-now, so we can transcend The Poison Pyramid and finally arrive at The Golden Square.
 
Full Show Notes: https://www.thefutureisamixtape.com/episodes/2017/8/10/012-hitsstillfuckedupandbullshit

012: #$hitsStillFuckedUpAndBullshit

On this episode, Jesse & Matt discuss their fraught and less than ambivalent feelings about their first time at Southern California’s Politicon, and provide a discerning look at how it represents the shallow conceptions of what politics so often involve, and how it could have been reimagined as a democratic space for transformational insights and real debates. The majority of the podcast will discuss solutions to create a utopian future (or at least one that guarantees The Golden Square) by combining the co-hosts’ deflowered experience at Politicon with Episode 12’s arm-wrestling over how to get to this future they keep pressing for. Jesse & Matt will do this by offering up The Slingshot Seven: a policy platform of ideas for anti-authoritarians and activists to demand and work toward, and in doing so, build real power inside the Meth-house of America’s 21st Century. 

Full Show Notes: https://www.thefutureisamixtape.com/episodes/2017/8/17/013-the-slingshot-seven

013: The Slingshot Seven

On this episode of The Future Is A Mixtape, Matt &amp; Jesse explore the most exceptional work of utopian thinking since the days of Occupy Wall Street: Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams’ Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work (2015). This is the co-hosts third such “CliffPod,” and they will hum over some of the most far-reaching and visionary aspects of this book, weighing out the co-authors’ success in diagnosing why the left has been--to use Jesse’s apt phrase--“drowning in failures” amid the continued carnage of Neoliberalism’s rotisserie blades. Matt &amp; Jesse will also evaluate the insights the authors gain from how the founders of the Mont Pelerin Society were able to masterfully deploy “second hand dealers” and create a winning strategy for the right that the left has yet to match in any transformative way (and which go beyond the Cult of Direct Action and Paper Anarchy). Finally, our Abbot &amp; Costello co-hosts will assess these authors’ policy demands and solutions in order to learn why this book about a post-work world is so vital to read for our deserved Star Trek future. 

Full Show Notes: https://www.thefutureisamixtape.com/episodes/2017/8/24/014-a-world-without-work

014: A World Without Work

For this episode of The Future Is A Mixtape, Jesse & Matt have a discussion with Frantz Pierre--a community activist and organizer who’s leading a revolutionary project to educate Los Angeles residents about the benefits of Universal Basic Income via a local, first-of-its-kind, pilot program. But how might Frantz Pierre and other fellow comrades create this program on a citywide scale when the mythology and romance of the “work ethic” and the sin of “laziness” are so indoctrinated in our communities and belief systems? How will we demand “wages” if such an enslaved chunk of our lives--going to jobs we hate--has been entirely automated, and work for the 99% no longer exists? And if and when the argument is truly won, where will the money come from? This podcast will aim to answer those questions. It will also detail why this utopian notion should be viewed as the “New Common Sense” in our global age of shafted, precarious employment, and why UBI is an essential spring-step toward human liberation.  

Full Show Notes: https://www.thefutureisamixtape.com/episodes/2017/8/31/015-they-owe-us-a-living-of-course

015: They Owe Us a Living, Of Course

On this episode, Matt &amp; Jesse have a discussion with Kelsey Goldberg (@KelseyFGold) and Jack Suria Linares (@SuriaLinares213) from DSA-Los Angeles chapter about the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). Kelsey and Jack explore their childhood and later political awakening by describing the moment (or moments) that led to not only their transcendent belief in socialism, but how they went beyond mere beliefs by deciding to take action and become activists and organizers via their self-discovery process. We will also learn about DSA’s history and contributions, as well as its future aims as a consequence of its recent National Convention. Additionally, our visitors to the show will talk about what DSA-LA has in the revolutionary pot that’s about to boil over into a Mario-Brothers pasta of comrade-goodness. By the very end of this podcast episode, Kelsey, Jesse and Jack get our ‘DSA-Curious’ Comrade, Matthew, to break down his resistance and finally #TrySocialism.  

Full Show Notes: https://www.thefutureisamixtape.com/episodes/2017/9/7/016-dsa-curious-trysocialism

016: DSA-Curious? #TrySocialism

What would democracy look like if it first existed at the workplace rather than in the woesome consignment of America’s party-politics, which renders our dreams for The Golden Square into Squalid Shit-mash? For this episode of The Future Is A Mixtape, Jesse & Matt have a discussion about this paradise where workers actually experience freedom, equity and solidarity with two folks who’ve jump-started one of the first media co-ops in Southern California: Dan Nowman Niswander, co-creator of  The Nowman Show and Dr. George Kallas, a political analyst and Political Science Professor at Miramar College in San Diego. We’ll learn about their chance-encounter and their epiphany to do the mind-meld by creating Arete Media Productions. Principally though, they will discuss why we mislabel democracy in Da Yankeelands, define what co-ops are, and also explain what makes worker-owned co-ops so very visionary in our Age of Workplace Tyranny &amp; DollarDoom.  

Full Show Notes: https://www.thefutureisamixtape.com/episodes/2017/9/14/017-imagining-democracy-in-the-workplace

017: Imagining Democracy In The Workplace

For this episode of The Future Is A Mixtape, Jesse &amp; Matt have a discussion with Matt Bruenig--a lawyer, blogger, political analyst and Twitter-dynamo who’s got your back when you’re kettled by Roaming Hillbots and Randian Regressives. More importantly though, Matt has just started the first grassroots, people-powered think tank called The People’s Policy Project (3P). Funded by small donations from $5 to $15 dollars, 3P is an attempt to actually make Think Tanks “think” again, but for the purpose of actually benefitting the 80% Americans who now own only 20% of the nation’s wealth, and are increasingly living lives of quiet desperation. We will discuss Bruenig’s childhood, his educational experiences and awareness-path toward political change, his history as a blogger for the think tank Demos, and his surprising success at crowd-funding 3P via Patreon. We will also talk about where Matt plans to take this new and enterprising venture in the years ahead.

Full Show Notes: https://www.thefutureisamixtape.com/episodes/2017/9/21/018-putting-the-think-into-think-tanks

018: Putting the ‘Think’ Into Think Tanks

For this episode of The Future Is A Mixtape, Jesse & Matt explore the paranoid dread and narcotic pull of Adam Curtis’ most recent documentary of political-noir, HyperNormalisation. In 2 hours and 40 minutes, it charts the globe-hopping travails of terrorists, bankers, politicians and America’s digital aristocracy--all of whom use humanity as pawns by promising simple stories to explain complex problems which can’t be solved with “perception management” and pastel fairy-tales about “good vs. evil.” Considered by many to be the most talented and remarkable documentarian in Britain, Adam Curtis has weaved suspicion and suspense into a BBC career that stretches from 40 Minutes: Bombay Motel in 1987 (which explores the have and have-nots of the city) to his most recent film HyperNormalisation in 2016 (which explores how an entirely Russian condition has now passed into the wider-world). Curtis’ documentary was released less than a month prior to the mind-gagging upset of Hillary Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump, and the film increasingly speaks to a disenchanted, rat-fucked future of no-returns. Jesse & Matt will discuss what makes this “dank” film so compelling and deeply-felt, as well as what makes it, almost equally so, such an evasive work of art.

Full Show Notes: https://www.thefutureisamixtape.com/episodes/2017/10/12/019-fake-plastic-world

019: Fake Plastic World

For this episode of The Future Is A Mixtape, Jesse & Matt discuss the slow, spiral reckoning of Ridley Scott’s much-celebrated and increasingly influential film Blade Runner, whose long and winding road lead to a sequel, Blade Runner 2049. While detractors of the original film might feel they’re viewing a sexy-time noir featuring little more than robots and porn-jazz, for the entranced, the film’s hypnotic imagery and ruminations on universal themes like humanness, memory and belonging still keep many cineaste-hearts aflutter. After the blockbuster ascendency the Star Wars franchise and SF’s increasing maturation as a cinematic genre, Ridley Scott’s formerly “one-off” was released in 1982, and quickly disappeared at the box office and inside film critics’ confused typewriters. However, unbeknownst to many, this leftover lasagna turned into the cult film of cult films. Blade Runner would later grow an organic fanbase from Arty Nerds, Noir Addicts and Cyberpunks, all of whom would despoil their underoos over spinners, unicorn origami and whether Deckard was or wasn’t a replicant. Seeing blinking cash-registers in their eyes, Hollywood producers sought out Denis Villeneuve as their architect to extend the franchise with Blade Runner 2049. Your meta-guidance-counselors, Matt & Jesse, will provide a spoiler-bonanza of both films, weigh out Villeneuve’s sense of cinema, and examine how the sequel’s repeater bleakness short-circuits better questions and ideas. The co-hosts will finally imagine how this film might be retrofitted or retold, narratively speaking, and roust its viewers into utopian dream-scaping.

Full Show Notes: https://www.thefutureisamixtape.com/episodes/2017/11/9/020-more-bleak-than-bleak

020: More Bleak Than Bleak

Beyond Blade Runners and Replicants, there must be a place “Over the Rainbow” for us to exist in solidarity and equanimity. And certainly, the 21st Century hovering above us should be a cause for hope, not despair; yet even with this new century being no way near its quartermark, it’s already given us a planet wheezing from ecological crisis-to-crisis, where an untenable economic system of neo-feudalism ravages plants and animals, as well as the rights of those we love (or should love). In the Terror & Twilight of Our Broken Age, what ideology best speaks and acts from a place made from compassion and love? Instead of passively looking at the new century that hangs in the sky, blinking obliquely above us, we should instead reorganize our motions to The North Star of Human Decency, namely that of Anarchy. For this 21st episode of The Future Is A Mixtape, Matt & Jesse will finally come out of the “political closet” and show some raw & real skin: they are both Anarchists Without Adjectives, and they believe that this ideology of love is the only practical solution to the world’s byzantine disorders, fraught with confusion, warbling on without a just antidote. In their most personal and revealing podcast since the show’s first episode, Jesse & Matt explore their disparate journeys to humanity’s greatest romance, Anarchy; they will describe its origin story, its turbulent relationship with authoritarian communists and how this political philosophy is not only the most idealist of ideologies, but also why it’s the only one which can ride inside us--whispering out “hope” for a utopian future. 

Full Show Notes: https://www.thefutureisamixtape.com/episodes/2017/11/25/021-the-north-star-of-human-decency

021: The North Star of Human Decency

The Dumpster Fire of 2020 is over, but the song remains the same: capitalism, white supremacy and patriarchy rage on in a celebrity-fueled clusterfuck of mass death and ecological collapse. And so it begins: A new calendar unfurls like a blanket to smother or console our traumatized lives. The New Year is a time when Christmas decorations get wanly huffed into garage boxes and when people busy themselves by hatching plans for privatized notions of change; some post their resolutions publicly on social media, while others whisper theirs sheepishly to friends and lovers, almost all of which get thwarted by the exhaustion, depression, and despair of life in this capitalist inferno. But what if real change in our personal lives is contingent upon the collective emancipation of all of us? Let’s face it: each and every year comes with the same urgent imperative: everything must change. But yet, too much is expected to come from within ourselves for ourselves. And our relationship with time is too passive. Upon any year that passes, we too often say that this 12-month cycle did us wrong, did a bad thing, crushed our diaphanous dreams to shards of amber. But what if a year was just a random collection of days, and “2021” is only worthy of its name if it inspires us to abolish what’s unjust and hurts us all? This year, unlike past furtive ones, we must work collectively toward a global socialist revolution against the dark, driving engine of capitalism, which forever churns out newer hierarchies to grind against older, more ancient ones. We must start anew with a struggle that confronts the onslaught of climate chaos propelled by a capitalist death-cult. So to burst forth in this New Year, The Future Is A Mixtape humbly offers our version of a double-album. In this episode, Jesse will be flying solo by reading To Change Everything: An Anarchist Appeal from CrimethInc, an ex-worker collective that surfaced out of Olympia, Washington, more than two decades ago. Immediately following the reading, the next episode contains Matt &amp; Jesse’s conversation about this eminently accessible anarchist manifesto. This international network of anonymous, aspiring revolutionaries declares that we should be free to direct our limitless potential on our own terms, and that no government, market, ideology or sky-daddy should be able to tell us what our lives must be; and that, finally, the world should be arranged by self-determination and mutual aid, just as water from a lake is best collected from two hands rather than one.

Comprehensive Show Notes Can Be Found at thefutureisamixtape.com

039: Everything Must Change: A Reading

The Future Is A Mixtape

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